To mask one's thoughts with placidity it can be helpful to repeat a motto.

Julis had chosen the chipper and meaningless "no time like the present!" They repeated it in a constant mental chorus, thousands of times a day.

Whenever they caught a glimpse of movement at the corner of their eye.

When their head ached, or muscles twitched in their poorly-controlled body.

Worst of all, at night, when they lay in bed, listening to the sound of chewing, like a caterpillar munching slowly on leaves but inside, inside.

No time like the present.


#


The Slithig hunted in thoughts. It would graze peacefully upon the brain as long as its host feigned ignorance to its presence; once the monster knew it had been detected it would kill its victim so they couldn't kill it first. To acknowledge it meant death; hence the feigned calm that Julis now struggled to maintain.

Julis had picked up the parasite on the train to work. They'd been sitting next to a jumpy man who was rocking back and forth in his seat when they'd felt something buzzing near their face. Then came a scritching sound in their ear canal, but they'd found no insect. When they awoke the next morning to a headache and the sound of chewing, it was only too obvious. That had been a week ago; now the days were a terror-painted normalcy.

Over a week now NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT. Has to be soon NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT. No time like the present.

A few dozen repetitions to calm the body and stop their eyes from twitching. With no ability to think about a cure, they were trapped in this nightmare. How to plan to kill a parasite that could read their plans? How to suppress fear and panic, when the creature would kill them for fearing it? In desperation, they tried walking into a hospital, shouting their motto in their thoughts, but the Slithig stirred in their brain and nearly caused them to faint.

Can't faint NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT. No doctor! No need for the doctor all fine all good no time like the present. Feeling so good, feel fine. No time like the present.


#


The refrain Julis wore as camouflage had lost its power after a week of constant repetition. There was little time left, and no time like the present. Some part of their brain which thought not in words or images but in hard resolve decided to do something. Julis began pacing their apartment, searching for nothing in particular.

Chopsticks power drill q-tip pencil house keys tweezers hammer for fuck's sake no time like the present. Items leapt into their hand unbidden and uncategorized until they were looking at an array of everything they owned that was sharp and pinching, trying desperately to see them as random objects. In one of their eyes a small tendril had been waggling all morning, which they had been desperate to ignore, knowing that to see it, to acknowledge it, would lead the Slithig to clamp down on their brainstem and kill them, and knowing, too, that the loose end hanging from their eye socket was their best chance at removing the monster.

Keeping up their internal refrain as best as they could they sat down at the bathroom mirror.

No time like the — present no time no time like the present

Looking straight into their own pupils, imagining tweezing their eyebrows, a completely innocuous activity.

So bushy those brows time to tweeze time to squeeze

A shaking hand raising tweezers to their eyebrow, eyes open so wide that tears were leaking, and in the corner of one eye a little black tendril, thick as a horsehair and waggling placidly. They could feel the Slithig in the stabbing headache that no longer abated. They could hear the creature in their left inner ear. Chewing, the lewd little gnash.

No time like the — chewing. Now chewing like the present presently no time chewing no time like no time

Julis waited until they were calm, until they could feel the creature munching contentedly. They would have only seconds to extract it.

Aha ahaaha ha no time no time like the present no no no present

The tweezers held poised over the corner of their eyebrow above the waggling tendril. When they had not blinked for so long their eyes were brimming with tears and the fear threatened to bubble over into vomiting Julis could wait no longer.

NOW NOW NOW NOW

They gouged the tiny points into the wet corner of their eye socket after the Slithig. The pincers closed around that thick tail which struggled against the tool with surprising strength for a thing so small. Julis wrapped both hands tight around the tweezers and pulled, pulled with all their might. There was a stab of numb agony deep in their head but they pulled and kept pulling,

as the shaggy horse-hair tendril emerged inch by inch from their eye socket,

as the blood began to leak from where the Slithig was extracted,

as a small hairy thorax emerged, fat as a dog-tick from under their eye, grey matter still clinging to its two wicked mandibles,

as the rest of the tendrils followed in a wet knot that slid out their eye socket, slick with blood.

Julis flung the Slithig onto the bathroom tile and went at it with the hammer as it flailed, propelling itself on long bloody tendrils around the floor. Tiles shattered from a few failed swings but at last they struck true: in a single wet splat the Slithig burst, leaving a puddle of grey snot on the floor and the hammer, and Julis's torment was over.

They leaned back on the cold bathroom wall, eye bloody, head pounding. Inside their skull was silence.

Alone in their thoughts, Julis drew breath, and let out the scream they'd been holding all week.
.