The itching hand

Frantic writing story - timed writing - opening sentence (in italics) of the story below was the seed sentence.

Disclaimer: My apologies, the only purpose of this story was to generate a gross out feeling. Yes, I know, very childish, but still a lot of fun.

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The palm of my left hand was itching, and then a tiny red spot appeared and a fierce burning spread across my hand and up my wrist. Had I been bitten or stung by a bug? I examined the spot, a minute dot, but as I watched, it moved, changed position and began to grow.

Then as the itch became unbearable, the burning flared across my palm and a bulging angry red bump raised up in the middle. I squeezed my eyelids shut in pain. Then opened them to examine my hand more closely. As I peered down at it, the bump burst apart, tearing the skin open in a jagged wound, and a squirt of puss and blood hit my nose. I swung my head away, wiping my nose with my other hand and then turned back to look again.

A minuscule mouth with wildly gnashing teeth wriggled from my palm followed by a wormlike body ridged with thorn like spikes. I bit my lip in agony as the creature ate away at my flesh as it struggled to emerge. Frantic, I ran to the kitchen sink leaving a trail of red that dripped from my hand to the tiled floor, no longer clean now. Yes, even in the midst of this strange encounter, I worried about the cleanliness of my floor.

Over the sink I stared in a paroxysm of disbelief as the creature wriggled its way out of my now torn flesh, its serrated teeth chewing away at my soft tissue and skin like a surgeon’s blade. I reached out with my right hand to grab at its head, but had to pull away as it lunged and gnashed at my approaching fingers. “Arghh!” I screamed trying to figure out what to do about this nightmare come to life, this horror shredding my hand.

Grabbing a pair of freshly washed tongs from the draining board, I hesitated momentarily, not really wanting to bloody my clean kitchen implements. Then, shaking it off, I squeezed the creature’s head with the tips. I swear it screeched a high pitched warbling shriek of desperation, and I, I felt like joining it in its cry of dying despair.

Shuddering, it thrashed around against my palm for a full minute, before dropping its crumpled head and laying it down in defeated death.

Surprisingly, a moment of shock and sadness flitted through me. Then, I gripped its body with the tongs and began to draw it out of my hand. I pulled and pulled, and its long, spiked, worm like body kept coming, and I felt an internal trembling all the way up my arm and across my shoulders and down my back. I steeled myself and continued steadily to draw it out, and it seemed endless until finally a full ten foot of this strange deadly worm lay coiled in the sink. I did a silent prayer that the entire creature had been removed intact and that some segments had not remained behind, still embedded within me.

I applied antiseptic and polysporin and bandaged my wound. I cleaned the floor and then, taking out a large pot, added oil, some ginger, garlic, salt, pepper, and a pinch of coriander, and after washing the worm, dropped its coils into the pot and fried it all up, stirring slowly. It smelled delicious.

I felt like a primal hunter, returning home with food for his hungry family. An unexpected dinner treat for my wife and kids. I hoped they would appreciate the difficulty of this hunt and its spoils.

Perhaps there was a silver lining after all to this incident, I thought, as I reached for a fork and knife to taste test this hard-earned meal.

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