Tick

FICTION

by Alex Haber

          That summer the sun was a crankshaft, turning loudly, getting hotter all the time. We ate sandwiches by the river. Never mind that hobos didn’t eat sandwiches. We took turns staring at the sun, trying to see who could last the longest.
         “What the hell?” I said.
         I looked down. There was something on my leg. It was moving back and forth. At first I thought it was a sun hallucination.
         “Whoa, that’s a big one,” said Mikey. 
         “You can see it?”
         “Of course.” 
         “What the hell is it?”
         “It’s a tick.”
         “It looks like it’s trying to get inside me.”
         “It is. You better get him out. If you don’t you’ll get diseased.”
         I started clawing. 
         “Not like that,” he laughed. He was on his hands and knees, inspecting me up close.
         “If you hit him too hard, you’ll break his head off. It’ll get stuck inside your leg and keep eating.”
         “What do I do?”
         “You gotta pinch your skin. Like this.”
         He did it on his belly.
         “Use your nails to work the blood out. You gotta drown the sucker, shoot him out.”
         I tried. His tiny legs were cycling. Blood was dripping down my leg. I tried to wipe it off, but when I did, I brushed too hard and the body ripped off, just like Mikey said. His head was still in there. A tiny speck.
         “Shit.”
         “You blew it.”
         “What do I do now?”
         “Nothing you can do. But don’t worry. It’ll die before long.”
         Mikey lay on the grass, stretched and sunny. The sun was still grinding. It sounded like a room of machines, pumping, jacking. 
         I got up and washed in the river. I could see the minuscule head in my skin, like a bud of hair. I squeezed and pinched my leg until it was raw. The thing wouldn’t budge.
         “I told you not to flick it,” said Mikey. 
         “How the hell do you know so much about it?” 
         “I’ve had plenty of ticks.”
         I’d never seen Mikey with a tick before. He was full of stories about creatures and happenings. Never mind that he’d lived here all his life. 
         “Did you get diseased?”
         “Hell no. I got them out.”
         “Am I gonna get sick?”
         He shrugged. “My brother got one stuck once. He was fine after a while. It’s still in there to this day. It’s on the bottom of his foot.”
         We lay there by the river, in the sun. There weren’t any clouds out. Just sun. Hot and grinding. I rubbed my leg again and again. It started to hurt. I stopped. 
         “You should name him,” said Mikey. 
         I laughed. “I’ll call him Mikey.”
         “What about Lou? That sounds like a real hobo’s name.” 
         “Okay.”
         It stayed in my leg all summer, below the skin. It was just the three of us, me and Mikey and Lou. The sun kept grinding, churning, producing heat. 
         Sometimes I wonder if it’s still there, under the hair. Maybe over time it was absorbed into my body and now I’m part-man, part-tick.
        More likely it got eaten by bacteria, I guess. Flushed out. I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.