 Horror/Scary: August 09, 2017 Issue [#8428] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: It's The Little Things Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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It's The Little Things That Kill Us
Everybody fears a nuclear holocaust or some catastrophic event that will do them in, but actually it's the little things that kill you; the cancers eating you on the inside or the dust mites eating you on the outside. The little things, like the common cold or a chicken bone, a lit cigarette or just crossing the street; for a writer it's things like commas and critics, cliches and bad opening sentences.
Eventually, that's what will take you down. The little things like that nagging cough or the small lump under your skin. The invisible killers like parasites and microbes that enter your body and decide their going to take over. I believe the big one is stress: the silent killer.
If the doomsayers are right and we are headed toward a zombie apocalypse, I’ll have a laugh from the grave about whoever eats my friend. Unless they cook his flesh to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, they’re going to experience the same torture that he recently endured after enjoying a meal of under-cooked black bear meat in central Alaska that was contaminated with the roundworm Trichinella spiralis. The parasites bred inside him and sent forth untold thousands of progeny to burrow through the walls of his vascular system and into his muscular tissue. The gastrointestinal issues were horrific, but not nearly so nasty as the muscle pain. He said it felt like a bad weight-lifting accident spread across his entire body. The Pepsi-colored urine that he was passing served as a visual aid to help him understand just how much hard-won muscle he was literally flushing down the toilet.
The worms were just the latest invaders in a series of microscopic parasites and bacteria that infiltrated his body in recent years. In terms of severity, the highlight of the run was a bout of Lyme disease, caused by bacteria transmitted through a tick bite that manifested with amnesia and concluded a few agonizing months later with a four-week round of intravenous antibiotics administered through a tube that ran from a hole in his arm to his heart. Preceding the Lyme was a complex case of giardia, an intestinal infection from parasites, that landed him in the emergency room twice in one day and then in a hospital bed for four nights. Following the Lyme was the trichinosis. The larvae of those worms now survive in his muscles, protected by calcified cysts. They have no way of harming him again, though they will make life hell for any creature that digests his uncooked flesh and thereby liberates the legions of pests.
I’d take the argument a little further and say that those of us who turn a blind eye to the little things we come across are also courting disaster. Granted, a giardia cyst is only about one-fiftieth the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The larvae of Trichinella spiralis are plenty small, too—you can’t detect them with the naked eye.
Microthreats are hardly confined to the wilderness. From the common cold to the Ebola virus, various nasties could be waiting to pounce on you every time you shake someone’s hand. But in the outdoors, there’s this whole other league of bizarre and miniature predators desperately wanting to make the jump from the animal to the human world. I could go on for hours trying to name them all: Rocky Mountain spotted fever, leishmaniasis, rabies, malaria, cryptosporidium, hantavirus, tularemia, leptospirosis.
So, yeah, it's the little things.
Until next time,
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The Little Things
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DEAD LETTERS
Azrael Tseng  writes:
This was an outstanding issue -- I've been struggling recently with getting my head back into horror, and your article reminded and refocused me on how to go about doing that. I especially love King's style -- terror, you call it. Invisible birds pecking you to death? *Shudder* And that two-sentence story was a blast!
Thank you for finding my attempt at terror worthy of a space on your newsletter!
Quick-Quill  writes:
I guess that's why I haven't read any Clive Barker books. I'm sure his lack of theology would be sprinkled if not laced through out his stories.
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