A Horror Anthology

The Itch - @Twisted_Disney

Have you ever felt that feeling inside, that indescribable feeling, the feeling that tells you something isn't right? That something terrible is happening? That you shouldn't do something?

Sam had been feeling it for days. She'd been feeling energetic and tired at the same time, wanting to eat but not wanting to swallow, wanting to go outside but not bringing herself to do it. Instead she'd been sitting around inside, Netflix-ing and chilling. Except she wasn't chilling.

She had an itch. Something inside of her that she wanted to scratch, but something she couldn't. She had already tried clawing at her skin, massaging her muscles, taking medicine. Nothing worked, nothing quelled that itch.

So, after another tiring day of doing nothing, Sam collapsed in her desk chair. She was tired of it. The itch. And she could feel it again, something sickening inside of her. She looked down at her bright red arm, red because of all her scratching, and did a double-take.

"God. What the fuh-" She began, before she was cut off by her own scream. The itch was terrible now, and her arm was even worse. That sinking feeling inside of her stomach was dissipating, but the same thing was blowing up in her arm. It was like something was eating it out from the inside, slowly gnawing at the flesh of her arm, creating that disgustingly unreachable itch.

She was watching her arm, her mouth open so far that it couldn't become any wider, her last scream dying at her lips. She couldn't move. She couldn't do anything. She just had to watch as something, something, moved under the surface of her skin.

If you had seen it, you would've screamed yourself. Sam was barely holding it in.

Her beautiful blonde hair dropped out of its bun, falling in tresses down her back, some of it brushing her arm. The something that was inside of her stopped, as if it felt the brush. How the heck did it feel that? Sam thought, but it was later drowned out by another question - How did it get inside of me?

****

Day 2. The thing was still dormant, sitting inside her arm, unmoving. She had not gone to see a doctor, had not told anyone of the something that created the itch inside of her.

The itch had been banished, in the whole time the thing was dormant. The itch hadn't bothered her again. Sam enjoyed the freedom of being able to walk and talk without that physical, draining pain in the pit of her stomach, but hated the fact that that freedom came at a price. The price being whatever the something was inside her arm. The something that might just want to come out.

****

Day 9. Sam couldn't take it anymore. The thing was moving again. It was a bulge, something dark against her ivory skin. It had crawled from her forearm all the way up to her shoulder, and she couldn't take it. She picked up her cellphone with her normal hand, her right one, and called the emergency services. "Hello," came a happy voice from the other side of the line. "You have reached the emergency services. How might I be of assistance?"

"Hello, God, you can start by sending an ambulance to," and Sam told the woman her address. She was crying, her hiccuping voice obviously striking something inside of the woman, as she could hear her scrambling about on the other end of the line, picking up another receiver and screaming into it.

Sam couldn't think anymore. She sat down in her desk chair and hugged her knees into her chest. She screamed into her legs, and the something moved towards the vibrating vocal chords in her neck. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her sob-screams filling the small space of her study.

The phone was still on, and the other lady tried to calm the distressed Sam. But she couldn't. Sam ended up hanging up the phone. She didn't need another person right now.

Well, she did. But Sam wasn't thinking straight. The itch was in her neck now, and it was deeper and stronger than ever. She clawed at her throat, her overgrown nails tearing her skin and striking some flesh. Sam didn't care about the pain, she just wanted this thing out of her.

She was only doing it a favour - helping it kill her faster.

****

The services arrived twenty minutes later. It's not like they could help the car crash that happened in front of them, they just had to sit in their ambulance and hope that Sam would be okay.

They'd reached her house, parked their ambulance in her driveway and kicked down her front door. They went searching for her around her two-story home, filled to the rafters with books and movies. They found her at her desk chair, slumped over, her face on the oaken table. Two paramedics found her, with another paramedic and their driver waiting downstairs. They turned the chair around and screamed.

The person was no longer recognisable as Samantha Rose Jones, but the best way to describe it was a human corpse. She was talking minutes ago, but was reduced to this. The back of her head was fine, but as soon as you turned it around... Sam's skull was a concave mess. The front half was gone. Her brain had been picked at, as if by small teeth, and bloody clumps of hair were hanging down from her head. Her eyeballs hadn't even been spared.

By looking at this, you could not tell that she was once a fun-loving librarian with thick blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. You could only see that something that drove Sam mad.

And you could see it, as clear as day. It was finishing off her brain, perched atop her bloody mess of a head. A large, hairy, ugly... Spider.