Hemikrania

First published in Murder Park After Dark, Volume III in October 2020

It started as a little bit of pressure. A stuffed up nose and a twinge of pain. It wasn’t even that bad at first. As I went through my day, going to the gym, going to work, running errands, it faded into the background and I forgot about it.

Over the course of the next few days, the pressure began to build. It spread to my temples, to the top of my head. It felt like someone was pushing the back of my eyeball, applying a steady thumb. Trying to pop it out.

Even then, I lived with the pain for a while, hoping it would get better. I kept hydrated. I wore sunglasses more. I took Excedrin until my stomach hurt.

It didn’t get any better.

I snapped at my wife. I tried apologizing, but she didn’t let me into the bedroom that night.

That was the last night of sleep I got, on our downstairs couch. I dreamed of a red sky and squirming black bodies stretching out to the horizon.

The next day, the pain had only increased. Light and sound made me want to vomit. By the time my wife came down, I was writhing in pain.

She took me to urgent care.

The fluorescent lights in the waiting room buzzed and I tried closing my eyes. I only saw that same red sky.

When I saw the doctor, she diagnosed me with retinal migraines.  She gave me Topamax and sent me home, with instructions to stay in a dark, quiet room, stay hydrated, and stay away from chocolate, wine, and fatty foods. She also gave me an appointment in three days to see a neurologist.

Those three days were hell. Every single sound, every whispered question from my wife, was a lance of molten fire through my skull. Every car that passed outside, every flap of a bird’s wing, bloomed new pain in my eye socket.

I considered ending it all during those three days. Laying there, in the dark, unable to close my eyes because the weight of my eyelid on my cornea was too painful. Unable to keep them open because even the faint crack of light coming in through the blinds was searing agony.

By the time I saw the neurologist, I hadn’t slept in three days. They admitted me immediately.

#

Every sound in the MRI machine was a new sledgehammer to my eye socket.

Stay still, they told me. Don’t move, they said. How about you lay down here and have this pain in your fucking skull and try to stay still.

It took three attempts before they got the images.

#

The Topamax isn’t working, I said, as the neurologist looked at the images. I need something else.

The sound of my own voice made me want to vomit in pain.

I can see why, he replied. There’s nothing here to indicate you’re having a migraine.

What are you talking about? This migraine is reducing me to a vegetable. You have to do something. The pain, the fucking pain.

He placed the images down so calmly I wanted to jump across his minimalistic post-modern fuck-stack of a desk and press my thumbs into his eyelids and pop—

Don’t worry, he said with a smug smile. We will get to the bottom of this. For now, here’s a prescription and a referral to another specialist. I know this seems like—

I snatched the two pieces of paper and left. I didn’t even notice my wife was with me until she got into the car after me.

“Are you sure you should be driving?“

“I’m fine.”

#

I pinched the referral between my thumb and forefinger. The pain of the migraine—it was a fucking migraine—had subsided to a manageable roar. Like standing next to a space shuttle launch.

The words were blurry, but the postscript wasn’t. Psy.D.

A psychiatry referral.

I crumpled the piece of paper and threw it away.

I’m not making this up, you fuck. The pain is real. The changes are there. How can you explain me being able to see this black planet with the red sky?

#

The Vicodin isn’t helping. I’m taking double, triple the dose. Acid churns in my stomach. My fingertips pulse numb. The pain only grows.

Now I’m out of pills and the pain is worse than ever.

I inspect my bug-eye in the mirror. A bulbous, shiny thing that sticks out of my face, red and angry. I’m not looking at myself; that isn’t me. I brush my finger against the bottom lid. Pain lances through my skull and, for a moment, I think my eye is going to explode. The lights above me flicker. Am I going crazy?

“Honey, are you all right?”

“Go away.”

I tilt my face so my left eye stares into my right, and the fucking thing shimmers. I lean closer.

Something beneath the surface wriggles and I cough bile into the basin from the pain. The porcelain of the sink is cold and wet from my palms. My mouth tastes like battery acid.

And the pain…

Needles stab through the front half of my brain and scratch at the inside of my skull, digging grooves into the bone and slicing my brain matter. My knuckles crack under the strain of my grip, but I can’t let go.

“Honey, please—”

“Go away!”

It’s growing. Through the haze of tears, my right eye is swelling even bigger. Everything is turning red.

I have to do it. Whatever is in there, I have to let it out, or it’s going to kill me. I have to give it my eye or I’ll lose everything.

I poke my bottom lid and my eye pops.

Flecks of it splatter the mirror, the sink, my face. A red hole stares back at me where my eye used to be.

There’s something in the hole.

A chitinous leg stretches out and stabs the mirror. Spiderweb veins crackle out from the impact and shards fall into the sink, breaking into a hundred twinkling pieces. Another leg squeezes through the small hole, pressing against the other, and digs into the wall for a better grip. I should be screaming, but I can’t.

A third leg slips out, stretching my eye socket as it thrusts forward. I hear my cheekbone crack and my mouth falls open, but still I say nothing, do nothing. It slashes at my reflection once before hooking around the medicine cabinet.

With the three legs, it pulls itself out. The bulbous body seeps out through the crowded hole in my face, widening it with its bulk. The bones of my face crack and shift, giving way to the creature pulling itself free.

And then it’s out, slipping the last of its legs through the ruined crater in my face. It falls into the sink and flails in the shards of glass, filling the basin with its amorphous body.

“I’m coming in.”

No, don’t, I try to say, but I’m frozen. The door opens and she sees everything. She starts screaming and the sound nearly splits my head open.

Another leg stabs out of my eye, followed by another. A second creature squeezes out of my ravaged skull and the pain is a shockwave of heat through my body.

The first creature hisses through a ragged orifice of teeth at my wife, but the second is bigger. Faster. It stabs her through the forehead and pulls the rest of itself free.

Her screaming finally stops.

A third flops out of my face onto the counter. And another. So many. One after the other, they pull themselves free from me and crowd the room. Some set to killing each other, others to eating my wife. Some scurry out the door. A window breaks. The front door shatters.

As they pour out of me, sound fades. Light dims.

The pain finally stops.