u/mynameswill672

Movie on, lights off. Some wonderfully cheesy creature feature from the 80s about lizard people living way out in the empty desert somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. It looked like some proto tech bro was planning on building a utopian city fueled by the sun. I assumed he would try to build it on the lizard people’s home and I assumed it would not go well for him. I don’t know though. I didn’t make it too far.

I took a massive hit from my bong and laid back into the couch, and felt the familiar tickle in the back of my throat. It would fade away after a few seconds and I would forget about it, but it would always come back. It seemed to get a little worse after smoking. I realized about 30 minutes into the movie, I had no idea what was going on. The sensation in my throat was too distracting. Whatever horror was playing on the screen couldn’t hold a candle to what was playing on a loop in my head. A little black and brown spider, packed into the dark tunnels of my tonsil crypts, moving stones and making a home. The thought horrified and exhilarated me. I stood up from the couch and grabbed onto a lamp to steady myself for a moment before heading into the bathroom.

It must have known I was coming. I turned my headlamp on, jammed a finger into my mouth to open up the crypt entrance, and saw legs frantically skittering and pushing deeper into the tunnel. By the time I had the tweezers ready though, it was gone, too deep into the crypt. Lizard screams played from the tv while I prepared warm salt water. I paused the movie, recoiled from the oppressive silence, and then let it continue playing louder so that it could be heard in the bathroom. This fucking thing was coming out tonight, no matter what. 

It took a little bit of digging to glimpse it again. I had removed two tonsil stones after gargling salt water and mouthwash while wiggling and prodding. I suffered another bite when I gargled the mouthwash but didn’t care. I actually laughed after the initial burst of pain faded. Let it get pissed and fight back. It didn’t matter. Behind the second stone, I glimpsed a few legs and a little glimmer of hidden(afraid?) eyes. They disappeared as the spider burrowed even deeper in.

While holding the entrance flap open, I pushed the tip of tweezers into the crypt. I was operating blind now and trying not to gag. It was tough work; I would pinch the tweezers, flinch from the pain, take a breath then push in a little deeper. A few times, I felt a snag when closing the tweezers, like I had caught a hold of something firm. Yanking them out, I would see no trace of the spider, curse, and then reinsert, digging a little deeper next time.

The tweezers were coming out red and I could taste the tang of blood on the back of my tongue. I didn’t stop though, couldn’t stop. I had to gargle warm water after each attempt with the tweezers to clear the blood out before going back in. The crypt opening had grown noticeably larger, the tissue torn and ragged. I kept digging. 

The tweezers bit down on something and I yanked. I had pulled one of the bastards legs off. I ran the tap, spitting blood into the sink and rinsing my mouth before going back in. The wound was becoming numb, or maybe I was too desperate to notice the pain. I had fallen into a sort of trance, working more quickly and precisely. 

Before long I had another leg. Then two more. And then something else. Something small and black, much wider than the legs. Most likely a pinched off fragment of carapace or shell or whatever the fuck this things body is called. I was dismantling and removing it piece by piece. I wanted it out. Needed it all the fuck out of me. The blood was making it hard to work. I would rinse my mouth out after every attempt but the blood kept pouring from the large, nearly gaping now, wound. 

Trembling, I dropped the tweezers into the sink. I spit blood(and a few spider fragments) onto them. I then rinsed with peroxide for a few minutes, taking breaks to stuff wads of toilet paper against the back of my throat. Eventually the blood flow slowed to a trickle. 
Swaying on my feet, I stumbled out of the bathroom, holding the bottle of trazadone. If there was ever a time for bong rips and a sleep aid, it was now. Tonight was a success. I didn’t fully remove the bastard but it was dead. Surely. Dead or dying.

My stomach churned as I thought of the mangled spider, entombed in its stolen crypt.

The movie had run its course and had auto played another old cheesy horror flick. A subterranean crocodile monster comforted me as I packed and smoked my bong. The smoke stung against my mutilated throat but as I held it in my lungs, the pressure in my head started to fade and my pulse began to slow down. I kept smoking until the bowl was charred and then repacked it. After finishing the second bowl, I laid back into the couch and began laughing. The worst was over. I had done what I needed to do. It was going to be alright now. 

It was dark as hell outside. No street lights, no passing cars, no stars. Just pure empty darkness pressing into the window. I stood up off the couch to get a closer look, and banged my head on the ceiling. The room was too short. I began hunch walking to the front door to get outside and catch some fresh air. The air, so hot and stale, was difficult to breathe. After only a couple of wobbly steps, the carpet under my feet began to ripple and rise, almost like waves at the beach. Each step I tried to take forward seemed to fall out from under me and only move me further back, towards the window. It was nearly an arms length away now, that impenetrable darkness on the other side of the glass. I tried to sprint towards the door, but my limbs would not cooperate. It felt as if I was moving in slow motion, unable to run and stumbling over the rippling carpet. The walls were now undulating as well as the floor. And closing in. I was being funneled to the window. 

The walls pressed upon me, forcing me against the glass before knocking me left, right, and down into the floor, finally thrusting me back up against the glass again. The window was cracking against the force, the fracture points lacerating my skin. The walls continued to undulate and press upon me. My left elbow cracked and twisted, pinned between my back and the ever shifting walls. Glass shattered and my face was forced through the window. I watched as blood poured from my wounds into the infinite darkness. I was being ground through the disintegrating window, skin and bone peeled and forced through the open cracks. Just let this end. Please let me die. It was unbearable. I watched, my head impaled upon the shattered precipice, as the rest of me was mangled, shredded, and fed to the abyss. I watched until there was nothing left. Only then was I given reprieve and allowed to fall into the darkness where the rest of me was waiting. 

I came to on the couch, disoriented and slick with sweat. Thirsty as hell too. I took a sip of water from a glass I left on the coffee table and cried out and coughed as it passed by the ragged tatters of my throat. It seemed I had fucked my self up pretty good. I stood to turn the tv off, and immediately plopped back down on my ass. Needed to catch my breath, and maybe get up a bit slower. I didn’t know how long I had been out but the Trazodone(or did I take 2?) was still in full force. A bit slower this time, I got to my feet and waited a moment for the world to stop spinning. 

My very first step knocked over the bong I had set on the floor by my feet. The following step landed on the neck of that same bong, snapping it and lacerating the bottom of my foot. There wasn’t really a third step. I was face down on the floor groaning and crying, not out of pain(though that feels less pathetic), but out of grief over that stupid fucking bong. It had been a gift from someone I used to be close with. It was also the only one I had. 

But that’s the past and the past is dead. I was crying into a dirty carpet about a broken bong while my blood swirled and pooled together with rancid bong water. I couldn’t imagine a more pathetic scene. And seeing as I couldn’t make it more than two steps without collapsing onto the floor, the tv was still playing. This time, a movie about hordes of spiders taking over an apartment building. Screams and the skittering of a million little legs filled my living room. 

As the Trazodone grabbed hold and pulled me under, spiders crawled into my mouth. They crept upon my tongue, dug into my throat, and they danced. They danced up and down my spinal cord, burrowed into my brain, and there they rested, nestled nice and neat into the soft, spongy grey matter inside my head.

———-

(Part 5 tomorrow) there’s two or three more parts.
Thanks!

Beginner hobbyist looking for feedback. This is just the beginning of the story. I will post another chunk tomorrow if there is any interest. Of course happy to read 4 read. Thanks!

CRYPT CREEPERS

I couldn’t shake the feeling. A hard little lump in the back of my throat. It had been nagging me all day. I tried coughing, gargling, and massaging my neck. Nothing worked. I had spent the evening stoned and playing video games, same as nearly every night these days. My focus kept drifting from the game however, and returning to the nagging pressure in the back of my throat. Frustrated, I turned the game off and switched over to YouTube, clicking the first thing that popped up. I just needed something to fill the silence.

I had been living alone for months now and still had not adjusted to the oppressive silence of the empty apartment. I sucked in a huge hit from my bong and started coughing. Something dislodged from the back of my throat and got caught under my tongue. I wiggled it out and spit it onto my palm. It was a lumpy green thing, maybe half the size of a skittle. And holy shit, it smelled fucking disgusting. Although the pressure had lightened, I could still feel something in the back of my throat. I dropped the nasty little thing on the coffee table and walked into the bathroom.

Leaning in front of the mirror, I shined a light into my mouth. There was still something crammed up in the back of my throat it seemed. Something small and green. I reached in to poke it and my skin flushed as I realized I was only glimpsing the surface. The rest of whatever this thing was was buried, packed into the flesh of my throat. 

I had an old friend(we hadn’t talked in many years) that would send me pictures after removing a particularly large and nasty tonsil stone. While I would laugh and give him shit, the unsolicited photos repulsed me and I silently begged(never been much for praying) to never have one myself. Unfortunately it seemed my silent pleas went unanswered, as I was looking at a rather large tonsil stone, and it looked like it was about to pop right out. 

I was correct in my assumption. The rotten little thing needed very little persuasion to come out. Just a nudge from my pointer finger and the putrid green stone tumbled out onto my tongue. I could taste it, or smell it. Maybe both, I’m not sure. It was fucking rancid though. The stench and taste of decay danced across my taste buds and flooded my sinuses, causing me to retch before spitting the rotten stone out.
It glistened there in the sink, a sickly pale green tainting the white ceramic. I watched with sick fascination its nearly imperceptible movement toward the open drain along a puddle of saliva. 

A hidden cave entrance, dark, damp, and carved deep into the wall of my throat was now exposed. Nudging the edge of the hole, I spied the green glisten of another stone. With a bit of prodding, the stone, slightly smaller than the last, tumbled out of its hidden little home and sat, pale green and slick, on the tip of my finger. I rubbed it between finger and thumb, crushing it and exposing a stringy fibrous interior. It reeked of rotten food and decaying teeth. I rinsed the foul thing off the tip of my finger and returned to poking around.

The light did not immediately reveal another stone, just the small glistening hole in the back of my throat, slick with saliva. Bracing myself for another stinking surprise, I pulled the hole wider. A glimmer of green, of course. And also something else. A hair maybe? It was thin and black and wrapped halfway around the stone. I started prodding and applying more pressure, trying to wiggle the damn thing out. As it became more exposed, I saw more of the hair like substance wrapped around the back side of the stone. Two or three more strands it looked like. I did not know how hair could have been packed into my tonsil crypts but the thought nauseated me.

The stone began to emerge as I applied more pressure. The thin black strands began moving with it, scrabbling and scratching at the stone. This one was large, perhaps even bigger than the first, and on the precipice of popping out. I backed off a little pressure and watched with sick fascination as the black strands frantically and desperately grabbed at the stone, as if they were trying to keep it where it was. Too bad, I thought, and pushed in, fully dislodging the stone. 
Just like the first, this tonsil stone dropped onto my tongue. This time however, the stone did not emerge alone. There was something else. And it was moving. My vision darkened. I cried and spat, then stared in horror at the large stinking tonsil stone in the sink. And at the brown and black spider, just about the same size, writhing beside it. 

The faucet was on and both intruders were plummeting down the sink drain before I even realized what I was doing. Trembling and bracing against the counter, I stared at myself in the mirror. The faucet was still open, dumping water into the open hole of the sink drain. I left it on, couldn’t stand the idea of the spider(itsy bitsy little trespasser that it was) crawling up the drain pipe and finding me. 

I had to check if there were others. Mouth open. Light on. I leaned in towards the mirror, shined the light into my mouth and saw four little legs stretched out from the back of my throat. A terrible gasping croak sang out from deep within me. The spider’s legs stiffened then slowly retreated back into the hole it had claimed as its home. The world was closing in. Gravity fell heavy upon me and pulled me down. I thought of spiders. Crawling into my mouth, my nose, my eyes. Making a home inside of me. Crawling, feeding, breeding. Dancing up and down my spinal cord.

They didn’t stand a chance. I had called down a supply drop and hopped up on a building to look around. They came sneaking along toward the noise and I took them down before they could even react. I gasped when I opened their bag and saw a purple mizzy and cryo-6 key.

I love a good mizzy but I am a long ways away from needing a cryo-6 key. It’s going to sit in my vault until maaaybe the end of the season if I can manage to commit to finding a crew and running cryo. I only play solos and as much I want to do cryo, I honestly just don’t find it fun playing with strangers. I’m in my 30s. I don’t wanna play with kids or rude dudes who run around talking shit and teabagging. I know there’s good people playing this game and I know I could find a good crew that I would have fun with. But I don’t think I actually want to go through the work of finding it. Anyways that’s just a ramble on why this key gave me such conflicted feelings.

That key that might just collect dust in my vault most likely was a really big deal for the runner I took it from. My “oh hell yeah nice loot” moment might have really soured someone else’s night. And that’s what I’m thinking about and wanting everyone else’s perspective on because I very rarely play competitive games but this one just has a fucking grip on my brain and won’t let go.

It seems that nearly every incredible gain you make or sick play that gives you a good rush is at the immediate expense of someone else and in some cases, like the one I described above, it’s very disproportionate. That kill for me was a decent gun and a key I may or may not use. It might have been weeks of grinding and stress from the person I took it from though. I know it’s silly bc it’s just a video game but I feel kinda bad about it.

So I’d love to hear how other runners feel about this dynamic and what they do about it. How do you feel when you kill a runner and get a crazy haul. And how do you feel when you get killed and lose that item you’ve been lusting after or you finally get into that gold key room and get killed before you can extract, or you finally completed that three step priority contract and a rival runner kills you at final exfil when you thought you actually managed to pull it off this time.

Is it fun? Is it sustainable?