Day Eight: Scab

There was no picture that defined today, so I put one that makes me happy.
- - - x

Woke up. Something on my neck, like a scab. Peel it off, glance at it. It's a tick. The sight of this bloodsucker squirming makes me impulsively drop it. The shock of being awake and already bleeding.

Two minutes later, I find another or the same bastard sticking his head in my belly. You're supposed to burn them out, right? So I light match after match and hold it up to this vermin. I'm late for work and I'm just burning myself. The tick is still squirming in my gut. So I break the rules, pull the bugger out and decapitate it. A little white spinal cord is oozing out his neck. The head is still inside me, burrowing deeper, sucking me up. Toss the corpse in the toilet.

I could get Lyme disease, which doesn't seem that bad. Very treatable. I don't have the "bullseye" rash.I probably picked the tick up yesterday, when I was in the woods with my cousins finding scrap metal. It was drinking of me all night long.

Work was somehow more bearable than before, but not much. Watching the clock, like some office whore. Tick tock. I came home with a migraine and couldn't think clearly. I felt like I'd given blood.

The tick was still floating in the toilet, waiting for me.