Something Sick

The air was hot and sticky even without the sun being out. The only light illuminating the street came from the unfeeling lampposts looking down at me. It was light enough to see, but I still kept turning around every minute or so, paranoid of what the night could conjure behind my back. On most nights like these, I just talk to myself, for what feels like hours. It ranges from soft whispers to provoked cries of anger, all in the confines of my cranium. I feel my heart pump and my mind race. It can get overwhelming, but it’s better than nothing. From these internal dialogues have come the discoveries of everything I hold close and dear to me - my feelings, my ideas, my values. All of what I have has come from inside this world of mine.

I arrived back at my house around midnight, where everything was quiet, inside and out.   My family doesn’t know about my late-night walks, and most likely wouldn’t approve of them.

 As I quietly tiptoed through the hallway to make my way upstairs and back to bed, I noticed a spider on the other side of the hall that must’ve crawled in as I opened the door. I knew how much my parents hated bugs in the house, so I grabbed a newspaper from the coffee table in the living room next door, rolled it up, slowly approached the spider, and whacked it swiftly so that it fell off the wall and to the ground, lifeless. Hesitantly, I got down to pinch it between my pointer finger and thumb and cast it into the trash. Then, a quiet voice hissed,

“Shhh! You’ll wake them up!” I practically jumped out of my skin and dropped the flattened creature,

“Who’s there?” I asked,

“Ow! What did I just say? You’re being too loud, you’re going to wake up your parents,” I leaned down to hear the voice grow louder as I got closer to the spider I had just whacked off the wall. And surely enough, its tiny spider body wriggled around in frustration as the voice continued to speak, “It’s already bad enough you left a stain on the wall from where you hit me with a goddamn copy of The New Yorker - thank you very much for that by the way, and now you have to clean that up too. That is, of course, only if you can keep your damn voice down!” I turned around to see he was right. There was a little stain of what I could only assume was ‘spider-juice’ from where I had hit him,

Shit. I thought

You know your parents hate it when you curse too.

How can you listen to me inside my head?

For the same exact reason that I’m a dead spider that can talk! But guess what, sweetheart? It doens’t matter!

Confused, but mostly embarrassed, I took the arachnid’s advice and wiped its remains off the wall with the side of my palm,

“Are you serious? With your hand?? That’s disgusting! Go get a paper towel like an actual adult and take care of the mess you made!”

“Aren’t you the one who’s going to wake up my parents now? You keep yelling,”

“I’m no bigger than the tip of your thumb. I can shout at you all I want but they won’t hear me,”

“Then why do I hear you?” I hissed back. The spider sighed,

“We’ve gone over this,” For. The Same Reason. You. Can hear me. In. Your. Head. Understand?

I turned back to the spider, 

“Is it the same reason that you’re an asshole?”

I’m just being honest and you know it.

“You’re being mean.”

Cry me a river.

“You suck.”

Not as much as you. I could feel my eyes begin to well up with tears. The spider scoffed, Please don’t tell me you’re not only losing a fight to a dead bug but now you’re going to cry over it too?

“Shut up,” I murmured,

What’s that?

“Shut up.” I repeated

Speak up.

“No.”

Why? Why are you so scared to get it out? Is that really all you’re worth? One measly ‘shut up’? Is that really all you have in you?

“Please stop.” A tear fell from my eye as my heart began to pump and my mind started racing. My head grew hot,

Just get it out,

“What?”

Get. It. Out. Now. What do you think will happen if you don’t just let out everything there is inside you? What do you have to lose? I was dizzy and started gagging, trying my best to hold it in,

Get it out.

No.

Let it out.

No, I feel sick,

You waited this long, that’s your fault. Be sick then. Just let it out! Let it- I fell completely to my knees and spewed out a heap of vomit from my burning throat onto the floor and all over the spider, drowning it in an instant. But as the hot yellow bile spilt out from my mouth, I noticed hundreds of more little spiders caught in its vicious flow as it spread. Waving around their spindly legs in a frenzy as they crawled out of the puke and all over the floor, desperately escaping. 

When the last few vile bits had dripped from my lips, I didn’t run or scream, I just stared. Stared at what I had let out, after having kept it in for so, so long. 

The lights switched on and I heard both my parents’ footsteps quickly run up behind me,

“What happened?” My mother asked, shocked. I looked a little bit longer at the heap of vomit in front of me, knelt up straight, still on my knees, and turned behind me to face both my parents and answer,

“I took a walk tonight.”