The Problem with Artemis

                                            The Problem with Artemis


   It might be a worm, or it could be a bug. I am not sure exactly what it is, but I can feel it, sometimes. At first it only made itself known in the quiet times, when I was alone, but over time it has grown, and become more active. It no longer cares about outside noises, as it has grown to feel safe in its cocoon. It is feeding, I am sure, but on what, I wonder? On me, no doubt, but upon which part of me is what I mean. Is it feeding on an important part, or does it only chew around the edges? I hope it is only chewing around the edges, but it is in my head, so perhaps even the edges are important? If it did eat away something important, how would I even know?

   I am ticklish. It tickles when it moves, so that I sometimes laugh when there is nothing funny, and I swat at my head, thinking I might kill it if I were to hit just the right spot. When I laugh people look. They stare at me wide-eyed, and then they find a reason to go. There was a woman once, a caring woman, who grew concerned when I laughed and swatted. She asked me what was wrong. When I explained to her about the worm, she left too.

   I am devising a means to kill it. I thought about a gun, but the worm moves, and I could miss something so small. Poison seems the best answer, as the worm could be female, and it might have laid eggs. I certainly don’t want a head full of little crawlies. Poison might get them all. I found a bottle of liquid Diazinon in father’s tool shed. The bottle is old, but perhaps the poison will still work. The label on the bottle states, “harmful if swallowed,” so I must find a way to administer it directly into my skull, without swallowing it. I could drill a hole, or maybe it would be easier to puncture an eardrum and pour the poison into the tilted up ear? This seems like the better idea. I could puncture it with one of mother’s brass knitting needles. She rarely uses them, and would not mind.

   I stuck the needle in hard. It hurt badly, and the worm took heed to the needle's intrusion, crawling about wildly, causing me a fit of laughter. I stood over the sink and tried to pour the Diazinon into the ear, much of it missing as I shook with laughter from the tickling worm. Blood came out in spurts, so that the Diazinon could not get in! Would nothing work as it should? Angered, I punched the needle into the other ear, and began pouring the poison in side-to-side, hoping to catch the blood splishing from one side to the other so that some poison could get in.

   My plan did not work. In fact, it proved to be a bad one. When the bleeding finally stopped, the skin around my ears was blistered, and the tracks of blisters flowed across my face, scalp, and neck. I could no longer hear anything. I could hear nothing, that is, other than the crawling worm. The worm, or whatever it is, still crawls around up there, eating and tickling so that I laugh and swat, and laugh and swat, and laugh some more, wondering all the while how I might kill it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Shame of it All

The Shame of It All So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends? The man crouching on the stool atop the stage touches the strings with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall on the floor beside him, the one one which his boot rests, doesn't seem to care. The Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson plugged into the amp does, and just as the old rocker who cradles the classic guitar to his breast does. And just like the other two, the aged amp still works fine, which it proves by ejecting the single chord that the man strummed through the “business end” of it’s speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights that one who is paying attention can see where his fingerprints and sweat streaks have besmudged the guitar’s fire-burst d...
Read more

The Many Roads to Reward

  I watched it all from my spot on the bench beneath the cedar-pole awning of la Hacienda Gustamos over the course of one solitary month. During those thirty days, for lack of anything better to do, I whittled their likenesses from chunks of manzanita wood as I watched them work; the super-hard, desert-dried ironwood forcing me to make frequent pauses for blade resharpening, but by the time their construction project was completed so was mine, as I had carved out rather lifelike 3D figures of them all… boy, girl, and burro. The pair rode double into Ciudad Juarez with the boy behind, their bouncing synchronized astride the swayed back of an overloaded, yet quick-stepping burro, the burro‘s pace appearing suited to the pair’s dispositions. A bulging towsack tied to it’s rump increased the burro’s already considerable load. The day was warm in Ciudad Juarez, as always, the sky clear, as usual. The burro came to an abrupt standstill on the banks of the city’s thinly flowing river, whe...
Read more

The Shame of it All

  So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends? The man crouched on the stool atop the stage touches the strings of his guitar with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall amp on which his boot rests doesn't care. The cranked up Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson connected to the amp does, and just as the old rocker who has slung the classic guitar low down from his shoulder does. And like the other two the aged amp still works fine. It proves this by ejecting the single chord the man has strummed through the “business end” of its speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights his fingerprints and sweat streaks besmudge the guitar’s fire-burst design, soiling it, the same as the man’s blue jeans are soiled, and the boots be...
Read more