Innie Infection

*This is a very unique circumstance, so I want to preface this piece by saying that I created this story last year in January and finished it shortly after. A few days ago I stumbled upon a deep dark fear that bore quite a striking resemblance to my story. The fear and my story, Innie Infection, respectively, are as follows: 

If Jill had to pick her biggest pet peeve it would be people poking her midriff like the Pillsbury doughboy. She was pudgy; she got it.

She was lying on her bed watching TV and spinning the cogs of her sweatpants’ drawstring, running her fingers along the insides of the rope. Her anti-idle hands gravitated upward, squeezing the fatty flesh of her obliques, and her fingers marched down around the barrel of her belly.

Ten-hut! The procession halted. She dipped one soldier down, her index finger, down into the crevice and felt something sharp in the tiny pit of her stomach. A booby trap!

Your bellybutton is full of bacteria, her sister said before she fell sleep.  All kinds of bacteria.  

Again Jill dunked her finger in the hole of her button and touched what felt like a crumb that might have fallen out of her mouth during dinner; it also felt like the point of a petite arrow.  She pinched her hand into a sign language ‘q’ and used her thumb and index nails as a tweezer. Like a mini claw-crane-machine trying to yank a stuffed animal at an arcade, she swiped the sharp something with the tips of her nail but could not clasp it.

“What is that?” she said aloud while her sister stirred beside her. 

Full of bacteria.

Jill lifted her finger to her nose and sniffed a rotten mildew smell; the same smell as the space between your toes or behind the posts of your earrings—cottage-cheesy.  

What if her belly button could breathe, would it choke behind the blocking sharp something? Her Grandma always told her to never pick at her face nose or ears—It could go to your brain, she would say. But Jill doubted anything would happen if she pulled the sharp something out of her stomach; it felt minuscule, like a piece of lint.  

She flicked at the thing stuck in her bellybutton, nipping the top but not latching on to it.  Pushing down with her pincher, she plunged in deeper.

There in the depths, her nails grasped at the sharp thing and caught its pointy top. Clutching and pulling she finally released a thin, two-centimeter-long, strand of spongy lint looking like a bit of flesh-toned toothpick. 

Her bellybutton sighed with a breath.  

Jill rolled over onto her side and in seconds dropped to sleep.    

The shade was not covering the sun when Jill awoke—her sister’s doing before heading out to work. She tossed her comforter off, kicked it below her feet, and squinted down at a brown stain that had leaked through her sheets. 

Shit, I bled through! she thought. But the blotch did not look like dried blood—and wait, she was not supposed to get her period yet.   

Okay, spilt soda maybe, she resolved, and walked away to the bathroom.  

Squatting to the toilet Jill lifted up her shirt to inspect her bellybutton, vaguely remembering that something sharp had been stuck inside it. Below the base of the button she saw a sticky trail of saliva drooling down: sparkling brown bubbles of soda syrup. 

I don’t really remember spilling soda all over myself, and I think I would’ve—should’ve remembered, she thought. She tore a sheet of toilet paper, pressed it against the spout of the adjacent sink, and dabbed at the spittle stain on her stomach.

And then she laughed—because the soda stain resembled the vampire blood from the movie The Lost Boys: glistening and tinted purple—and dripping all over Kiefer Sutherland.

On the way back to her bedroom, Jill grabbed a sponge from the kitchen sink. She had to clean the mess of whatever the stain could be from her bed; she was not convinced that it was soda spillage. She was halfway through the living room when she looked down at her belly again. And then she looked lower. 

At her feet Jill noticed three drops of fluid—the beginnings of a water bag breaking.

“What the hell is going on?” she said.

She lifted her shirt and saw a fresh trail of that vampire blood below her button. She sunk a finger into the space in her stomach and felt nothing but the flesh of her inner belly. But when she pulled her finger out again it was stained with that glittery liquid—her bellybutton crying.

The inside of the button still smelt like moldy cheese, and nothing like coke syrup.

All kinds of bacteria.

It was ten in the morning and she supposed she was hungry because her stomach was rumbling. She placed a hand on her abs and rubbed to subside her appetite. The reflexes in her neck were bubbling something up to the brim of her mouth. She burped. At least it wasn’t vomit.   

Her stomach rumbled again, and this time she felt the liquid as it oozed through her belly. She watched it dampen the parallel part of her tee.

“What’s happening to me?”

She whipped off her shirt and witnessed as her insides squeezed through the small circle shape like chop meat spinning in a grinder; her intestines pouring out like sausage links through the crevice of her belly. 

She ran through her living room towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of insides behind her like a garbage bag breaking. Underneath the sink she reached for her bucket of cleaning supplies. Tossing out the Windex and bleach and Lysol wipes, Jill held the pail to the pouring orifice to gather herself. 

Her bellybutton was vomiting toxic waste—sewage spewing a dirty pink-peach color slowly turning beige—bile squeezing through like toothpaste.   

She could hear her mind screaming. Her stomach still rumbling. Her sister’s warning.

She tried to shove her guts back inside her belly hole, but the gunk was still gushing. For five minutes she fruitlessly continued shoveling and stuffing herself back inside like a build-a-bear. But she was losing weight—a Capri Sun packet of juice stuck with a straw and being drained by a child on a playground. 

From her utensil drawer she found a used wine cork and pushed the plug into her bellybutton; but the cork was too big to clog it. So she ran back to the bathroom and blocked her barfing belly with a Q-tip.

She sighed.

And then the Q-tip dunked down deeper till it was gone.