H a i r y Eyeballs
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As if Tommy the Terrorizer chasing you through the halls to class wasn’t embarrassing enough, a single strand of stiff, black hair is now growing out of your mouth. Yeah. Your mouth. It comes from the back of your throat, and at first you think it’s just a hair in your mouth. Gross. But when you try to get it out of there, you realize it’s attached. Attached? In your mouth? You think, “What the…,” and between classes you sneak to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror. Yep. It’s coming from the back of your throat, and it’s too dark back there and too far around the bend to really see what it’s attached to, and it’s pointing straight out of your pie hole. You grab it between your fingers and brace yourself before you pull because you know this is going to hurt.
But it doesn’t. You raise an eyebrow and give yourself a what-the-crap-was-that look in the mirror. Looking at the strand of hair, you realize it’s pretty freakin’ long. Too long to be coming from the back of your throat. You drop it tentatively in the trash and watch it fall to the bottom. You look around to see if anybody else was watching and wipe your hands on your jeans. You back your way out of the bathroom. That was weird. The next day during class, you feel the hair in your mouth again. You’ve got to be kidding me. Again? You try to swallow, but the thing won’t budge. You can feel it in there with your fingers, and you try to pull it
out without being noticed. Your eyes scan the rest of the room as you cover your mouth and jerk. But it’s too long, so you crunch it in a ball in your hand as you pull it out. After class you deposit it in the nearest trash receptacle without looking down. The next day it’s back, of course, but this time it’s stiff enough to poke the inside of your lips. It’s stiff enough that you can’t keep it from pushing through to the outside. You’re a little disgusted at this point, so again, you give it a yank. Again, no pain. But this time, you’ve pulled two. You look at the wiry strands standing up between your fingers and swallow hard. The next time, you’re certain, it’ll be four. And then eight.
And so it goes. Next week you’ll wake up and head straight for the bathroom mirror to do your daily hair-plucking, but when you open your mouth you’ll see several tiny red eyes staring back at you at the ends of the hairs. You’ll spring back and fall over the toilet. You’ll begin feeling nauseous and lift the lid to stick your head in. Remember that bug you accidently swallowed last week when you were sucking wind running from Tommy the Terrorizer? Yeah. Tommy’s the least of your worries. That cute little bug’s all grown up now. And he’s made himself some friends.
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