Paranoid
A short story
(TW)
TRIGGER WARNING FOR SH AND PARANOID PARASITOSIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tormented is the man of whom no one likes to see.
Incessant picking, scratching, and wet groans fly in his presence. All from him. Always from him.
He never speaks. Never does he have to. His premature, dying words are of no use to him. Everyone knew by now what the young man would say, if not for the bugs he claims to house in his very flesh and muscle, clogging his throat up like thick phlegm.
No one dares to ask what he sees and feels, for they know better than to meddle with the disturbed man and his deluded mind.
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Scars, deep and unforgivably infected, coated in mucusy pus, are deeply scored into his deformed face. He used to say it killed the parasites. That the infection wasn’t him, but the blood of thousands of worms, bees, cockroaches and their unborn larve, nested into and feeding off his oily, flake-covered pores.
A metal scourer lies by the man’s bed, skin and scabs all mushy and entangled in the steel mesh. He likes the scratchy sensation. Or maybe the made-up sense of security. No one can tell.
Nowhere is safe. He just can’t help himself. The bugs, THE BUGS! O’ how they hurt him so!
He feels maggots busting out of his gums but tastes nothing.
He feels caterpillars crawling out of his eyes, but can still see.
So how then can he be believed?
There is no way.
Besides…
He’s just paranoid…
