NO STRINGS
By Josh Shiben
Copyright 2015
All rights reserved, including that one you’re thinking of right now
No Strings was originally published in Jennifer Word’s exquisite Creepy Campfire Stories (for Grownups) short story collection, available now anywhere you can buy books. It’s also the first short story I ever sold, so it holds a very special place in my heart. Special thanks to Jennifer and the rest of the staff at EMP Publishing. You guys are great.
“I’ve got no strings,” muttered Evan to himself through gritted teeth as he hauled his heavy body roughly up the side of the metal structure. The song had been stuck in his head, on repeat, for days, just endlessly looping like an annoying commercial tune. “To hold me up.” Sweat of the exertion dripped from his body, making it sheen in the baking Virginia sun. He watched as his forearm gleamed in the light, watched it ripple and distort as something inside him slithered just beneath the surface. It was one of the worms, or parasites, or whatever they were. He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.
Evan grunted and continued climbing up the ladder. His mouth was so dry. So thirsty. They used to hurt, the worms. He remembered the pain they’d caused as they stretched his skin and bored through him. He remembered the fear, as he lay there on the hospital table, worrying that some parasite was turning him into a human-shaped block of Swiss cheese. But then, the doctor had given him drugs and it’d stopped. The pain. The crawling under his skin. They’d assumed the worms had died, but now Evan knew better. Poisons didn’t kill them. Antibiotics just drove them deeper into his body. They were still there – still hiding inside of him. Burrowing into the very core of him. But when they came back, the pain stopped. Evan knew why – he was getting used to them. He was numb. Even the thought of pain was fuzzy – he knew it was an unpleasant sensation, but like a blind man thinking of color, he could not summon any impression of it. Pain, like most other sensations, was something that had passed out of his life. It had become an alien. He tried to worry about it, but all he felt was dry. Like a leaf in the fall, threatening to crumble to dust in the slightest breeze. He licked his lips and continued his climb.
“I’ve got no strings.” He only knew the two lines, so he sang them over and over like a skipping record.
His hands were blistering on the rungs of the ladder, but he ignored them and climbed on. They didn’t hurt, and he was too close to the top to stop now. It was so hard to climb with the heavy tools strapped to his back and his stomach distended the way it was; too heavy and awkward, and the writhing inside sometimes pushed him off balance. He had no attention to waste on something as trivial as blistering hands – he had to focus on gripping the ladder tightly, dragging himself up one rung at a time. Evan needed more water. He had to hurry.
He’d tried submerging himself in his bathtub, but it hadn’t been enough. He’d just lay down there, watching as his breath bubbled to the surface, staring up through the ripples at the ceiling. He had drunk until he vomited the water back up, and then kept drinking, desperate for any kind of relief. After all of that, he’d still felt parched.
One summer, years ago, Evan had gone to the beach and gotten a nasty sunburn. But the burn hadn’t hurt – it itched. The itch couldn’t be scratched – it was under the skin, down deep in the muscle, and so he had paced his room in agony, thinking that if only he could cut the skin back, flay his chest and shoulders like a butchered animal, he might cure the irritation. That was his thirst now – a deep seated, unquenchable itch, burning in his throat and mouth. It permeated every solitary cell in his body – his entire being cried out for water. He needed more than just a bathtub or a pool. He needed something drastic. He needed the impossible weight of thousands of gallons. He wanted to be buried in that crushing, impossible wetness – that black, freezing gulf, where even the sun cannot penetrate.
Evan had once seen a submarine flood in an old World War II movie he’d watched with his father. The hull had been breached by a depth charge, and the crew frantically sealed bulkheads to stop the implacably rising water from taking them all. As a child, Evan had stared at his ceiling, shuddering at the thought of being surrounded by the icy depths in that cold prison. He would lie awake, trying to exorcize fears of a black tide sliding up to consume him. Now, he fantasized about it. The icy cold grip of the water rising, promising more than he could ever drink.
He reached the catwalk, and with some effort, rolled himself onto the structure, where he rested only a moment before rising slowly to his feet. His legs were so weak and he was so heavy. He wondered-how much of him was still Evan, and how much was worm. Two-thirds? Half?
He looked at his bloated, bulging stomach, wriggling with alien mass, and considered how much it must weigh. He’d been fit before all of this. Not in great shape, but good enough. He would have at least passed for a healthy person. Not now, though. The lesions on his flesh and undulating shapes under his skin removed any doubt as to his condition. He wanted to feel angry, or sad, or anything about it, but couldn’t seem to muster the emotion. The thirst outweighed it all. He moved along the catwalk, to the small ladder leading to the top of the rounded tower, and with some effort, began hoisting himself up.