The worms are eating away my female parts first. They have almost entirely eaten away my vagina and my breasts and now they are working on my mouth and throat. I wish the doctors and nurses would let my soul die, but they are still experimenting with trying to reunite the body and the spirit.
Today I woke up feeling rational and sound. I guess the bummer is over. The nurse says I have been here ten days, and when I read back what I have written I really must have been out of it.
Today my hands were placed under a kind of sunlamp to promote the healing. They haven’t given me a mirror yet but I can feel that my face is all clawed up too, and my knees and feet and elbows, in fact most of my body is wrenched and battered and bruised. I wonder if my hands will ever look like hands again. The ends of my fingers look like hamburger cooking under the sunlamp, and they’ve given me a spray to use to ease the pain. They are no longer bandaged, but I almost wish they were because I have to keep looking closely to be sure they aren’t getting wormy.
A fly got into my room today and I couldn’t stop screaming. I was so afraid he was going to lay more maggot eggs on my face and hands and body. It took two nurses to kill him. I can’t let flies get on me. Maybe I will have to stop sleeping.
I just got out of bed and walked to the mirror. I have splints on four toes so I guess they are broken too, but anyway I hardly recognized myself. My face is puffed and swollen and black and blue and scratched, and my hair has been pulled out in big patches till I have completely bald areas. Maybe it isn’t really me.
I refractured two toes getting up so now both feet are in casts. Mom and Dad come by to see me every day, but they don’t stay long—there isn’t much to say, till I get my mind working again.
I’m really dizzy but the nurse says that is just from my brain concussion. The worms have almost gone away. I guess the spray kills them.
I found out how I got the acid. Dad says that someone put it on the chocolate covered peanuts and I guess that’s right because I remember eating the peanuts after I’d washed the baby. At the time I thought Mr. Larsen had left me a surprise. But now that I think about it I don’t remember why I thought Mr. Larsen had been there and gone without saying anything. That part is blank. Actually I’m amazed that I remember anything. But I guess no matter what kind of damage I pile on myself, my mind keeps working. The Doctor says that’s normal because it really takes a lot to knock your brains loose permanently. I hope that’s right because I feel like I’ve taken a lot already.
Anyway, I remember that the candy reminded me of Gramps because he was always eating chocolate peanut clusters. And I remember starting to get dizzy and sick to my stomach. I guess I tried to call Mom to ask her to come over and get me and the baby when I realized that somebody somehow had tripped me. It’s all very unclear because when I try to think back it’s like I’m looking through fuzzy, colored lights but I do remember trying to dial home and taking eternities to get each number to the end. I think the line was busy and I don’t really remember what happened next except that I was screaming and Gramps was there to help me, but his body was dripping with blazing multi-colored worms and maggots which fell on the floor behind him. He tried to pick me up, but only the skeleton remained of his hands and arms. The rest had been picked clean by wriggling, writhing, slithering, busily eating worms which seethed on his every part. They were eating and they wouldn’t stop. His two eye sockets were teeming with white soft-bodied, creeping animals which were burrowing in and out of his flesh and which were phosphorescent and swirled into one another. The worms and parasites started creeping and crawling and running toward the baby’s room and I tried to stomp on them and beat them to death with my hands but they multiplied faster than I could kill them. And they began crawling on my own hands and arms and face and body. They were in my nose and my mouth and my throat, choking me, strangling me. Tapeworms, larva, grubs, disintegrating my flesh, crawling on me, consuming me.
Gramps was calling me but I could not leave the baby, nor did I want to go with him for he frightened me and nauseated me. He was so badly eaten I could barely recognize him. He kept pointing to a casket next to his and I tried to get away but thousands of other dead things and people were pushing me inside and forcing the lid down on me. I was screaming and screaming and trying to claw my way out of the casket, but they wouldn’t let me go.
From the shape I’m in now I guess when I tried to get the worms off me, hunks of flesh and hair came out in my own hands. How I cracked my head I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to beat the bummer out of my skull, I really don’t remember it seems like such a long long time ago and writing this down has made me incredibly tired. I have never been so tired in my life.
Mother and Dad believe that somebody tripped me! They do, they do! They believe me! I have a good idea who it was but I guess there will never be any way of finding out. I must just try to rest and get well as they suggested. I will not think about what happened. Thank God I didn’t hurt the baby. Thank you God.
In a few days I am going to be transferred to another hospital. I was hoping I could go home because my hands are healing and most of the bruises have started to fade. The doctor said it will be a year before my hands are completely better with the two nails really grown out but in just a few more weeks they should be fit to look at.
My face is almost back to normal and little fuzzy hair is beginning to grow on my bald patches. Mama brought some scissors and she and the nurse cut my hair really short, short, short. It’s almost like a shag cut and isn’t quite professional, but Mama says I can go to the beauty shop and have it trimmed in a week or two or whenever I’m released from the other hospital, besides I wouldn’t want anyone to see me looking as dingy as I do now.
I still have nightmares about the worms, but I am trying to control myself and I never mention them anymore. What good would it do? I know they aren’t real and everybody else knows they aren’t real, still at times they seem so very real that I can even feel the warmth and slimy fat softness of their bodies. And every time my nose or one of my many scabs itches, I have to fight myself to keep from screaming for help.
Mother brought me a packet of letters from Joel. She had written and told him that I was in the hospital very ill, and he has written every day since. He even called one night on the phone and not wanting to get too involved she told him that I had had kind of a nervous breakdown.
Well, that’s one way to put it!
I could tell Mom had been crying when she came to see me today, so I tried to be very strong and put on a really happy face. It’s a good thing I did because they are sending me to an insane asylum, a loony bin, a crazy house, freak wharf, where I can wander around with the other idiots and lunatics. I am so scared I cannot even take a full breath. Daddy tried to explain it all very professionally but it was obvious that he had been completely unhinged by the whole thing. But not as much as I am. No one could be.