Bo heard a thousand screams. He laughed, and a city fell. On his morning jog, oceans sloshed and spilled over coastlines, drowning the praying tourists and locals. It was indiscriminate destruction. Unintentional, mostly.
Bo belched, and with it came a collective cry for mercy. He shrugged. What was he to do about it? He’d tried everything he could think of: he ingested Ipecac, punched himself in the stomach, got black-out drunk, ate ghost peppers—it only made him feel sick. Sure, some of them were vacated in the violent discharge of various bodily fluids, but these things were resilient.
On occasion, when Bo was feeling particularly sympathetic to their situation, he held a speaker up to his belly and played his favorite concerto. The chaos in his gut would calm and he’d feel an overwhelming sense of belonging. In these moments, he felt unified with the things within him. He pictured them sitting beneath grand oak trees, sunbathing upon rooftops, enjoying wine during a sunset—was there a sun within his belly? Grapes?
Other times, Bo considered drinking the liquid plumber or throwing himself down the stairs. After the autopsy, the coroner would certainly have a story to tell around a poker table.
And when I cut the man’s stomach open, I saw a million dead things. It was like the men and women of Pompeii, you know, huddled together in those final moments before death, only instead of cities preserved by ash, these things were preserved by the copious amounts of processed shit this guy must have consumed. I guess there’s an anthropological excuse for eating foods with preservatives. Right, fellas? Deal me in.
Bo went to see a doctor.
An expression of repressed doubt lingered on the doctor’s face long after Bo told him about the things within him.
“What about the exhaust?” said Bo, his hands over his belly. “I smell it day and night.”
“We’ll know in about a week when the labs come back, but as far as I can tell, you’re in good health.” He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “When did you say this started happening?”
“The feeling of…them?”
“Yes, that feeling.”
“About three weeks now. It started as an unpleasant taste in my mouth, then one morning I woke up to the sounds of hammering. The windows were shut—double-paned—and I don’t live above or below anyone. I’m in a single-family home. And this hammering wouldn’t stop. It just kept banging and banging and—”
“Can you follow my finger?—just your eyes—thank you.” After looking into Bo’s eyes, the doctor pressed lightly on his pelvis. “Hmm, actually, I do feel something here. It’s hard but seems to break up when I push on it.”
Bo winced. “You just killed some of them.”
“It may feel like there are living things within your stomach, but that would be a first. Why don’t we do a quick ultrasound? We have the machine here. It shouldn’t take much time and we’d be able to spot anything obvious. Sound okay to you?”
“I am willing to try anything. More than this feeling, it’s the thought that I’m responsible for these things. If I wanted that responsibility, I’d get a dog. Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Depends. Why don’t you ask it, and we’ll see if I can give you an answer?” The doctor removed his glasses and folded his arms.
“Do you have children?”
“Yes, I have three kids. All in college now.”
“Do you like them?”
The doctor raised an eyebrow.
“What I mean is, do you ever wish you’d chosen the other path? The path where you ended up not having any kids.”
“It’s natural to think about what could have been,” said the doctor, “but I wouldn’t change a thing. I love my kids. You don’t have children, correct? Unless I’m missing that in my notes…”
“I’m only asking because, well, I wonder if this was a decision I made and not just a virus. It’s a little embarrassing, but I did something a few weeks ago that I’m not entirely proud of.”
“What did you do?”
“You know those silica packs that come with food to keep it fresh?”
The doctor leaned in to better hear him.
“I accidentally cooked a pizza with one of those packs on top of it.”
“Did you eat the silica pack?” said the doctor.
“No—God, no! I would probably be dead, right? No, I took it off, but I was so hungry I ate the pizza anyway.”
The doctor smiled and patted Bo’s knee.
“I don’t think that’s it,” said the doctor. “Let’s wait to see what the ultrasound shows.”
The room was cold, but the gel the nurse applied to the man’s belly was warm. He pushed back the feelings of arousal that began to nag him. He thought about the things inside his stomach. Was he being selfish for wanting to cut them out? For wanting to poison them? Then he thought, maybe I don’t want that. Maybe being a god could be my thing.
“This shouldn’t take long, we just need to grab a few images from—” The nurse stopped short. On the screen, there lived a breathing world: cities with high-rises, factories, rolling hills and jutting mountains. A SUN!
Bo cradled his belly, and laughed. A city crumbled.
I wrote this flash for a contest on Reedsy back in Aug 07, 2023. My debut in fiction! Originally titled: A Taste Of Progress. The prompt was: We are not alone.
It was also the first story I published on Substack, back in November of 2023. I had 7 people open the email! Sure, all 7 of them were me, but hey, my delivery rate was 100%! The data don’t lie, folks.
Thanks for reading! xoxo Shony
Oh, and jic you’re wondering, I did one time accidentally cook a pizza with a silica pack on it. And yes, I still ate it. I’m not sure what that did for the ol’ gut flora, but ever since that night I can recite William Blake’s The Tyger even though I’ve never read it.
I relate to this.
Again, so many layers. Some filled with tiny people. So many things make sense now about the world.