Butterflies in the Stomach

by Edward Barnfield

Simeon’s mind is elsewhere when Adam crawls upon him. Sleep is impossible in this place, where every surface oozes and burns, where the rush of blood in the vessels overhead sounds like thunder. Still, there are times when exhaustion takes him elsewhere and he passes to another place beyond the fear and pain.

“Friend,” says Adam, his hand fumbling for Simeon’s face to better read his expression. “I have something.”

Even after all this time, Simeon’s eyes rebel against the darkness. They sting, from the stench of rot and bile, from the juices that coat his lids, but still strain for the smallest light.

“Feel, feel.”

The touch is sharp, stabbing. He has grown to tolerate daily stings—internal acids have burned away a layer of skin and hair—but this is different, harsher.

“Knife,” says Adam. “Knife.”

And then: “Merry Christmas.”

Adam makes a movement, pushes the blade up, and Simeon’s face is coated in a rush of metallic heat, bitter and sweet at once. He knows blood, knows its consistency and pull, but this is—

Roar. The noise is overwhelming, otherworldly. The thing is reacting to the pain in its gut, shaking, scratching, muscles contracting and making their world rotate with its discomfort. Simeon curls, foetal, waits for the earthquake to end.

He thinks—last night, the school.

He has been lodged in the beast’s forestomach for more than a month. The only light he sees shines down through its gullet, followed by a cascade of whatever the creature is consuming at that moment. It is a perilous endeavour—there is sustenance in the flow that falls, and snatches of fresh air, yet it is all too easy to be dislodged and dashed below. In the first week, the behemoth consumed a herd of deer, and his wife, Esther, was struck by a flailing hoof and knocked into the pyloric stomach.

She screamed for an hour.

The things that tumbled last night were made of metal and wood, at first. He saw bits of a fence and a great brass bell. Then came the downpour of blood and body parts, most still in their uniforms. When the mouth closed and the beast settled to sleep, they felt around for survivors and scraps. The leviathan often swallows without chewing, which is how they got there. Adam must have discovered the weapon then, he thinks. Simeon found only protein.

“Help,” says Adam. “Cut. Get free.”

Adam has been here longer than Simeon. There are others like him, their humanity burned away by exposure to enzymes. They lose lashes and brows, then skin, then language. Eventually, they become worms in the gut, slithering things that exist only to absorb nutrients from whatever the monster has eaten. Simeon thinks of them as parasites, as cestodes, beholden to the leviathan for food and shelter but abandoning every aspect of their former lives in return. He is relieved that Esther did not suffer in here long.

But Adam…

Adam has continued to struggle. One time, he attempted to climb up through the oesophagus, squirming towards freedom until a belch sent him screaming down. Simeon caught his leg, saved him from the pit.

This knife offers more lasting salvation.

“Give it to me, Adam,” he says. “I know of a weak spot, near the ribs. There is an artery there, close to the skin. We can cut that and ride to freedom on a rush of blood.”

Words come easily to him. He was a doctor on the outside, a man of learning and ambition. He fled with his wife when news of the creature broke, joining a slow procession of vehicles out of the city that became an all-too-easy lunch. Fate delivered them past its jaws.

“Give me, friend,” he says, and feels the handle tickle its way down his wrist to his grasp. And then: “Merry Christmas.”

It is easy, even in this darkness, to stab his comrade away. Proximity is inevitable, compacted as they are between walls of tissue and sinew, and Adam cannot pull back. When it is done, and the shuddering and gasping has stopped, Simeon pushes the body down into the lower belly. Any evidence will be gone in an hour.

He is a rational man. A knife makes him a king down here, in this hostile environment made of flesh. The beast will keep showering gifts down its gullet, along with those unfortunate few who make it past its teeth. He will make himself king of the tapeworms. He will emerge resplendent and new once the monster has destroyed all resistance outside.

Light explodes as the mouth opens. He hears cries and screams from the world before its maw and prepares to welcome his new subjects.