in this town. The lifers. The people who had grown up here and decided to stay; the people who had no choice but to make their childhood home their adult home.
Something caught in my throat as I looked at them. At first, I thought it was just my emotions getting the better of me. After all, it wasn’t every day I stood up to them, that I told them I didn’t plan on making this tiny town in the middle of nowhere my forever home, that I wanted to go to college and get the hell out of here.
But the lump in my throat started to get bigger as I stared at my parents. They stared back, their eyes almost too wide. No one said anything; me, because something was in my throat, and my parents, because they were frozen. Not fully frozen, because I could see them breathing, but frozen in shock, probably.
Something twitched in the corner of my mom’s eye, and as I started to cough, trying to retch out whatever was in my throat, I saw that it wasn’t stress causing my mom’s eye to twitch like that. It was a worm.
A worm that was currently in the process of poking out of her eye.
Oh, God. I wanted to throw up. Maybe I would’ve, if this thing wasn’t lodged in my throat. I lifted a finger, pointing toward her, about to try to croak out a few words since she didn’t seem to be aware of the worm wriggling around in her eye socket, but it was right then I happened to glance down at the table between us.
Where there should’ve been meatloaf slathered in tomato sauce was now a head. A severed head that looked a lot like me, bleeding out onto the plate it sat on, the wound on its neck jagged and harsh, almost like it had been torn off the body.
My body? No, no, that wasn’t possible. I was here, I was still alive. I… I couldn’t fucking breathe.
Wheezing, I stumbled to my feet, knocking the chair behind me down as I saw what sat on my plate. No one had potatoes and meatloaf on their plates. My dad had intestines before him, his fork and knife bloody, as if he’d tried to cut into it. My mom’s plate held teeth… and the jaw they were still attached to, tendons and muscle tissue still gooey.
What the hell was happening here?
A still-beating heart, all veiny and bright red, sat on my plate, its loud thumping echoing in my ears as I coughed, bringing a hand up to my throat. Something big and hard sat in my esophagus, blocking my airway.
The entire scene before me was nothing but blood and guts, too visceral for me to turn away. How did we get like this? How did we—
My mom and dad looked at me then, but their faces changed. Where my mom had sat, a new person was: Trey, his handsome face covered in blood, as if he’d sunk his teeth into the plate before him. In place of my dad was Nigel, wearing his circus-themed outfit, but he was wrong. His face… he had none. No face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth or ears; just a semi-flat surface of skin.
I started to heave, unable to fill my lungs with breath. Everything became dizzy, my head growing light. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I fell down, though I didn’t find myself suffocating on my parents’ kitchen floor.
No, I was at the circus all of a sudden, staring at the dark red tent above me, the feeling of wood below me. I tried sitting up, but was unable to, still unable to breathe. Again, I reached for my neck, and this time I didn’t feel something hard lodge there. This time I felt nothing but goo and slick wetness.
My throat wasn’t all there, like someone or something had torn it apart, ripped off a good chunk and let me suffer. Rolling onto my side, I held onto my neck, able to see I was in the main tent, on stage. How did I get here? I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that I was going to die, and I didn’t want to.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight, even the hairs on my arms prickling and sticking up. The heaviest, strangest, most uneasy feeling that had ever crossed my body came over me, and even though a part of