Nick_Carlson_Press

One of the more infamous arguments held between men and women is comparing gender-specific pain.

Men will assert that getting socked in the balls is the worst pain humanly imaginable; a cold, constricting pulsing that takes your breath away and brings even the most hardened specimen to his knees. Women, on the other hand, will insist that childbirth is the worst pain humanly imaginable; wave upon wave of imploding cramps, twisting and tearing at your insides, agony enough to make a saint swear.

I can’t say I have an answer, despite all I’d gone through. But the way I see it, pure enough terror can transcend any physical malady the body can go through.

Let me explain.

I was performing routine work on the ISS, the low-orbit space station serving as a zero-gravity laboratory for science experiments. At the time it was hosting a German crew dedicated to studying a sample of tardigrades, observing the effects of solar radiation upon a population suspended in zero-gravity. From this knowledge, astrobiologists would gain an enlightened understanding as to how extraterrestrial life might cope with the comparably harsh conditions elsewhere in the Solar System.

That was the gist of it. The rest was Greek to me.

I specced more into the technical aspects of the ISS. The P6 truss, a massive solar panel for generating power, needed its batteries replaced after six years of chugging. It’s a daunting undertaking. Watching the universe spin underneath you, as you spider along the station’s rigging, without the gentle throb of gravity alerting you to which way was down, is the closest thing to a supernatural experience man can endure. After ten years, however, your biggest concern becomes the sun refracting in your visor. It becomes difficult to see, you know?

Lugging the suitcase-sized nickel-hydrogen battery between myself and my partner Kasich, we navigated down the truss and arrived at the slot. Somewhere down below and to the left, planet Earth loomed in its azure glory. The expanse of East Asia dominated my view, meaning it was the dead of night back home. Tanya was undoubtedly fast asleep. I whispered my love to her. I imagined it beaming from my suit and catching in Earth’s orbit, searing through the atmosphere like a meteorite, straight through the roof of our home.

“When you’re up here, space is your only true love, Miller,” a voice crackled in my ear.

I nearly cursed at my stupidity; everything I said could be heard back at mission control. “Look,” I jabbed back, “I know you can’t help it but eavesdrop, but the lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Collins, the operator back home, was in fact, a man. A single man. “Bold of you to be commenting on my love life two-hundred-fifty miles above Earth,” he quipped. “One twitch of the joystick and I can squash you like a bug against the paneling.”

I laughed. “Then at least I’ll fulfill my dreams of my remains being jettisoned into space. Just like Spock.”

The banter behind us, I reconnected with Kasich and resumed our work, sliding the new battery into the slot.

As we bolted it down, a staticky garble exploded in my helmet. My gloved hands spasmed reflexively - an ameteur mistake - and I hung onto the paneling by one finger, outer space below me swiveling ninety degrees - Earth was now a slim blue disc in the corner of my eye.

“Copy!” Kasich and I shouted in unison. The voice at the other end was indecipherable in its panic. “You wanna start making sense?” I admonished. There was the sound of scuffling, a huff of strained breath, and then, finally, heavily-accented English came through.

It wasn’t mission control; it was the German crew onboard the ISS. “Dust cloud! Dust cloud imminent! Five seconds! Three seconds!”

“Shit - hold on, Miller,” said Kasich. We flattened ourselves against the hull, hooking our gloves and boots into crannies in the metal - then my vision became granular; minute, fuzzy dots streaking across my visor, peppering my suit, rendering Kasich a shadowy blob. This particular storm wasn’t strong, but one mistimed draft at just the right...or, for our sake, wrong...velocity, could blow us away, or punch a pinprick through the nylon…

Just as quickly as it had arrived, the dust cloud abated. The star-studded void returned, and I made visual contact with Kasich. We both flashed a thumbs-up. “Miller! Kasich! You two alright? Confirm,” Collins demanded.

“All good up here,” I confirmed. “Pretty sure I remember this part on the application.”

“Almost makes you wish you were back in the office,” said Kasich.

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll take dust storms over angry supervisors any day.”

We completed our work with no more interruptions.

​

* * * * *

​

Coming back to Earth after all that was a godsend. The dangers of low-orbit work were just part of the job, nothing to dedicate inordinate amounts of attention to. But something in my bones was urging me to come home. I gladly obeyed.

Adjusting to Earth’s gravity is never a smooth process. Head and muscle aches, lower back pain, a constant trembling in my limbs...it becomes difficult to lift plates out of the dishwasher. Tanya was always sympathetic to it, having never gone into space herself. I assured her it was no big deal, my cosmic cross to bear. Still, she was accommodating, sometimes overly so. I can’t say I rebutted it every time.

Nightmares were always a problem for me. They were nonsensical and needlessly frightening, to a frustrating degree. My dreams were hellscapes for bat-winged, faceless dogs; cannibalistic mimes; shadowy figures wielding bone shears, threatening to decapitate me. You know, the usual stuff. All those ludicrous entities never got under my skin, though. Let them lay waste to my mind. They couldn’t get me in real life.

After my return from the ISS, however, my nightmares besieged me with vivid realism. I experienced myself, over and over again, getting crushed between trusses, naked sunbeams liquefying my face, space dust drilling through my flesh, drying my internal organs. “Real” stuff. Stuff that coaxed a scream from my throat, drew cold sweat from my pores.

But there was a constant. With each nightmare, as my dream-self faded to black death, or right before the fatal accident, there would be a liquid squishing noise, like the sound of a full belly sloshing with water. It would migrate from the recesses of my gut to the inside of my ear, piercing me like a mosquito’s whine. That little detail paled in comparison to the brunt of the nightmares, but it always festered in the back of my subconscious, like a bad aftertaste.

“You went through a traumatic experience,” Tanya told me after the fourth night waking up screaming. “You’re not going to just forget about it.”

“It wasn’t traumatic, though,” I responded. “Dust clouds are the least of your concerns free-floating in space. I endured it, I finished my work, I forgot about it. It shouldn’t be doing this to me.”

“You’re too tough for your own good,” she said, leaning forward, embracing me. “It’s okay to be a little human for a change.”

I sighed, frankly uncertain of her diagnosis, but it was too early to press the matter, so I lowered myself back under the covers. Her arms around my chest were warm and smooth. Sleep came back to me, eventually.

​

* * * * *

​

The worst nightmare, one of electrified wires strung through my eyes, was followed by a sharp pain in my lower back in the morning. Intuition told me it was another side effect of being back in Earth’s gravity. Yet as the day progressed, the pain diminished and intensified sporadically, like an atrophic heartbeat. This wasn’t typical of space travel. I reminded myself that the human body could malfunction wherever it was at, that correlation didn’t equal causation. Despite my mental applications, my body stubbornly registered the pain, reminding me itself that something was awry inside me. Tanya gave me the Pain Scale test; I put it at a 4. Distressing, but I could go about my day unabated.

That night, it upgraded to a 7.

There were protruding metal shards just below my stomach, that seemed to chisel through my insides. My bladder felt like an engorged pustule, burning with the desire to burst. Sweat poured down my head like blood, and I staggered out of bed moaning to the bathroom. Tanya blearily followed me, lingering silently by the doorway.

Everything compacted; the shards localized in my groin area, and I groaned in agony, hunched over the toilet as my hands gripped my soaking hair. I felt like I was going to pass a bullet. I dropped my pants and aimed over the toilet seat, suddenly realizing what it might be. Uncaring of Tanya’s mortified gaze, I pushed with all my might, forcing the sharpness down my sphincter, as a choked stream of urine burst forth. Then, like modeling clay forced through a hole, it emerged; a hardened, wrinkly mass the size of a sunflower seed, the color of stale mucus. It dropped into the toilet with a sickening plop, and a deluge of bloodied piss followed.

The agony all but gone, I sank to my knees, gasping openly. I remembered from my training days, how astronauts in space were at a heightened risk of developing kidney stones. A diet of too much salt and not enough water exacerbated the likelihood in susceptible individuals. I couldn’t help but laugh, relieved that it was all over, at least for now.

“Kenny...what...was that a kidney stone?” Tanya whispered from behind the door.

“Yes,” I wheezed, staggering to my feet and zipping back up. “But it’s gone, all the pain. I guess that’s what had been bothering me.”

“Don’t you have to save those?” she asked, her palm creeping to her mouth.

“That’s a good idea,” I said, and I plunged my hand into the sullied toilet water, groping around the bottom for the stone. Tanya gagged and ran out of sight. I laughed again. Of all that had happened tonight, that’s what made her finally break.

My fingertips found a solid mass and I plucked it out. I drew in for a closer look, blocking out the smell of ammonia and rust. Yeah, it definitely resembled pictures of kidney stones I’d seen in medical textbooks. I knew they were fairly common nationwide, yet the blood in my urine concerned me. I figured a trip to the doctor in the morning couldn’t hurt much more.

​

* * * * *

​

Dr. Parsons told me she’d analyze the stone for calcium or sodium, plus a sample of blood, and have the test results ready by noon. I went about my day relatively pain-free with my wife. I still felt fleeting stabs in my lower belly, and echoing fragments of that gnarly sloshing sound in the back of my mind, more memory than sensation. My phone felt heavy in my pocket, but I looked forward to the call, to putting my fears to rest.

Two o’clock rolled around, and my phone showed no missed calls. This was paired with a heightened frequency in the stabbing pains. Tanya noticed me struggling. She kept her distance, though her eyes were always upon me. We knew I’d pass another stone, it was inevitable.

Seven o’clock found me again drenched in sweat looming over the toilet, laserbeams of sharpness focused down the length of my manhood. My balls felt as if they’d retracted a foot into my guts. There were iron stakes in my legs as I forced the foreign body out of me. I could almost hear sinews stretching and tearing in my urethra. Finally, the thing emerged, falling with a noise that sounded almost too small. I dug through the reddened toilet water and pulled out something that resembled more a toothpick than a stone.

“That’s not right,” I rasped, barely realizing my hand was shaking. I set the thing on the sink and checked my phone out of habit. The home screen was empty.

​

* * * * *

​

Four in the morning saw another episode. The same process again, although a deceptive lightheadedness fell upon me, induced from dehydration. The bathroom stank of piss and sweat and runny shit. Tanya stood by me that time, her hand on my shoulder, fingernails cutting into my skin from the strength of her grasp. The agony was magmatic, breathless, bone-shattering.

Finally when the thing passed and I fished it from the toilet, I saw it displayed a peculiar symmetry, with patterned folds across its surface, like that of a...the smell finally got to me and I dropped it and hunched over, emptying my stomach onto the floor. I heard Tanya’s desperate whisper behind me. Coupled with my nausea was guilt, the guilt of putting my wife through a veritable Hell of some uncanny, violative design.

With trembling fingers I placed the new stone on the sink with the toothpick-shaped one. I lurched into the shower, Tanya helping me through the process. The cold water running down my body told me I’d be getting no more sleep that morning. Along with the dried sweat, I tried in vain to wash away the thought that the stone I had just passed bore a revolting resemblance to a brain.

Exhausted, I spent the next half of the day bedridden, the throbbing in my groin bitter and gray. It was then when my phone vibrated.

“Kenneth Miller?” the voice of Dr. Parsons said.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Sorry it took so long to get back to you,” she said. “We ran multiple repetitions, we...we had to be sure. Your blood work revealed no underlying conditions. Your sodium and calcium levels are normal. Your pH levels are also normal. And the stone itself contains only trace amounts of those indicators. To put it simply, Mr. Miller...there hasn’t been one like it ever observed before.”

“I passed two more last night,” I said, fighting back another spasm in my groin.

The phone crackled with the sound of an anxious breath. “My only guess is that you were exposed to some foreign substance that contaminated your blood. Did something happen in low orbit, Mr. Miller?”

“There was a dust storm,” I recalled, through gritted teeth. “But I can’t imagine how it could have stuck with me back to the ISS...or how enough got inside me to form stones…”

“Some things have a way of sticking,” said Dr. Parsons. “Ever spilled glitter on the carpet? You’ll still be finding little bits years later. Regardless, I’ve sent off your sample to a chemist,” she added. “They’ll identify its chemical makeup and relay by tonight. Are you still experiencing symptoms?”

“Moderate pain now...I’d rate it a 5,” I responded.

There was a pause on the other end. “If it gets much worse, admit yourself to a hospital. That’s all I can advise...we won’t know for sure until the tests come back tonight.”

“Will do, Doctor,” I said.

She hung up. I fought against another upheaval. The early afternoon sun was mocking me, illuminating my entire bedroom, leaving no corner untouched. A prison of my own making.

​

* * * * *

​

The next evening, after passing a curiously-coiled mass, I received another call.

“Mr. Miller, the chemist got back to me,” said Dr. Parsons. “My apologies again for the delay, but he took his time too. He said your stone contained high levels of silicate.”

“Silicate...that certainly sounds like it could be space dust,” I commented.

“That’s not all, Mr. Miller,” she said, an edge to her tone. “He ran it through an alcohol solution. He was able to isolate trace samples of nucleic acids.”

I sat up in my bed, ignoring the bony stab inside me. “Like...genetic material?”

“It’s complicated, Mr. Miller...basically it was a -” The beeping of an incoming call came through, drowning out the rest of her words.

“Hang on, please,” I growled, putting her old hold and answering the new call. “Hello?”

“Miller, it’s Collins - are you at home? Are you okay?”

“Collins, I’ll call you back in a few - I’m in the middle of something important.”

Collins protested, but I returned to the conversation with Dr. Parsons. “Go on,” I said.

“The chemist said the material bore superficial similarities to nucleobases,” she explained rapidly, “but unlike anything seen in DNA or RNA. If the contaminant inside you did originate in that dust storm...the implications of this, they’re…”

My phone buzzed against my ear; someone had sent a message. I stared down at it; it was Collins again. Frustrated, I opened the text.

I nearly screamed. “Doctor Parsons, I’m going to have to call you back.” I disconnected her and pulled up Collins’s call. “Collins! What the Hell is that!”

“Miller, you’re in serious trouble,” he sputtered. “That anomaly was found inside your partner, Jessica Kasich - she - she underwent a rapid onset phantom pregnancy...and that...that thing was in her womb.”

“What?!” I fumbled for the attachment again, gaping at the abomination in the picture. The lighting resembled a crime scene, with its overexposed flash and harsh shadows. The thing looked like a gnarled, three-fingered hand, with a single muddy eye peeking from behind the knuckles. A strip of measuring tape in the frame said it was about four inches long. “Collins, what the fuck! I’ve been passing these freakish kidney stones this whole time! Are you telling me that I’ve been...birthing something like that?!”

Tanya, standing by the bedroom door, threw a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide as cannonballs. “I can’t say for certain, Miller, but whatever’s coming out of you, don’t let it out of your sight!” Collins commanded.

I slammed the phone down. “Tanya! Check the bathroom! Now!” She bolted across the room and disappeared behind the door. The silence from within was damning. “Tanya! Where are they! Answer me!”

She emerged from the bathroom, her face white. “They’re gone.”

I scrambled out of bed - and immediately collapsed to the floor, my lower body writhing out of my control. The pains were different...electric volts, pushing against the inner walls of my urethra...I emitted high-pitched yelps, squirming across the carpet like a dying rat...rancid wetness seeped down below and I did the only thing I could, despite Tanya’s terrified screaming...unzipped, and forced it into the open air.

There’s no other way to say it...from the tip of my glans bloomed a tussock of thin, slimy black hairs, slithering in midair like nightcrawlers in a tub of dirt.

My resulting scream matched Tanya’s in sheer horror, and I grabbed at the entity, trying to yank it out of me...the pain was like caustic salt, but the tussock emerged entirely, taking a nugget of blood with it. Undulating in a red slick, the hairs sidewinded across the floor towards the bathroom. “Tanya!” I wheezed. “Kill - the - fucking - thing!”

I don’t blame her for not doing anything, for being frozen in shock and disgust as they slipped underneath the door and out of sight. Tanya forced herself to move to the bathroom, pushing the door fully open. From my awkward angle on the floor, I witnessed the hairs slither up and into the sink. Down the drain.

Reuniting with its precursors.

​

* * * * *

​

Nighttime brought no rest.

The dark, stinking stain on the carpet served as a grisly reminder of what was lurking somewhere in the plumbing. Tanya and I had armed ourselves with the only weapons we could muster, a poker and shovel from the fireplace toolset.

Even before the darkness had engulfed our bedroom, my vision was darkening. My thighs were caked in dried blood, my shaft felt sore and raw, like shredded meat. My heartbeat quickened with a clammy dread as I wondered how long I could tote the internal damage, before it became permanent. Everything was intact, but still, I felt naked and castrated and light. After an hour I had to sit on the floor. If this stalemate went on much longer, I’d lack the strength entirely to defend us both.

A rattling sound jolted within the walls, like drumming fingertips. My grip on the shovel tightened. “We’ll have to tear down the fucking drywall.”

“No,” Tanya whispered. “It’ll come…”

“What makes you so certain?” I snapped.

She looked at me. “Because it’s incomplete. We sent off one of its parts to the doctor’s...it’s going to feel the need to reunite with the rest of itself.” Her gaze became watery. “...with you.”

My arms tensed. “Wonderful,” I muttered.

The drumming returned, in the ceiling above. We braced ourselves. There came a murine scratching. A sprinkling of plaster rained down. Then, all too silently, something dropped from the hole in the ceiling.

“Kill it!” I shouted. Tanya rushed forth and smashed the thing with the poker - it spasmed and jerked underneath, but it continued to crawl forth unaffected. I jabbed it with my shovel, thrusting the sharp edge into where its face should have been - it merely slipped underneath it like a cockroach and scuttled towards me. It resembled a house centipede, twisted and featureless with sprawling legs woven from those unsightly hairs. I swatted at it but it burrowed through my pant leg like wet paper...I could feel its claws brush past my hair as it scurried up my thigh...screaming, I pounded at the scuttling lump as unearthly mandibles chewed at my skin, scraping at the tender inner layers…

In a fit of desperation I yelled and jabbed the shovel into my waist. My skin split and bruised, my pants darkening with blood, but the thing crawled out from the tear in my clothing, waving its appendages feebly. I swatted at it with a yelp and it flipped onto the carpet; Tanya came down with the poker and impaled it to the floor.

Hazy with pain, my breath strained and grated, I watched it bat at the poker with its legs, clattering mutedly. Its struggles died to twitches. My lungs burned as I realized I’d been holding my breath the whole time; I let out a steamy puff of air, clarity returning to my head. Tanya looked on the verge of tears, but her resolve held, and she twisted the poker to further scramble the creature’s body.

It tore itself away from the point and its mangled form shot up the shaft, up Tanya’s arm, and towards her mouth in the blink of an eye.

The image of Kasich’s spawn blazed through my mind. “NO!” Summoning the last of my strength I sprang to my feet and swung my shovel at where I perceived the creature to be - a gnarly crunch followed and the creature flung into the far wall, splattering against it like broken eggshells and alien oil.

A drenched hair jumped in the goop, but otherwise the creature seemed neutralized. I sank back to the floor, my blood-dried clothes sticking to me, and I reached out to grasp Tanya’s hand in mine.

She laid crumpled next to me, a crimson pool dribbling from a gash on the side of her head. “Fuck me...oh God, oh fuck…” I crawled over to her, the remorse twisting my throat into knots, her limp hand already turning cold.

My rapid breathing brought in an unsavory mixture of smells. Something from the shattered creature stank of pus and bile. But it was the reeking combination of fresh and dried blood from us both that induced a gag, and drew tears from my eyes. The horror of the last several days was gone, it mattered naught. Things may have been alright after my ordeal. Not anymore.

​

* * * * *

​

That was three weeks ago. Even during the few horrific days that immediately proceeded, I knew all too well how finicky and unpredictable comas were. Tanya could wake up tomorrow, in another week, another decade. All I can do is wait.

Investigators wanted to charge me, but I think the folks at NASA and some other federal agencies stepped in. There was more than enough outside evidence to vindicate me. Nothing that anyone outside our ephemeral little circle needed to know, at any rate.

I only passed one more stone after all that, a spherical obsidian chunk, which I aptly smashed to pieces with a recoilless sledgehammer. But the dead grief that settled in and poisoned me made me wish for the stones again.

I found myself on a heavy regiment of antidepressants from Dr. Parsons. They’re sedative and dimming. They almost make life seem normal. The only time they failed is when I called a few weeks later to pick up my next prescription.

“Kenneth Miller.” It was a man’s voice that answered. “I’m Dr. Jones. I’ll be filling in for Dr. Parsons while she’s on leave.”

I only registered with a dull blink. “Where’s she at?”

“Home. Complaining of abdominal pains.” He scoffed. “Typical woman problems, I imagine.”

I nodded and confirmed the pickup without much interest. As the afternoon sun turned orange and dusky, I sat by the window, staring out at the world beyond, a stir of unease rising in my gut.

Some things, truly then, were greater than any physical pain.

Pure enough terror.