I Got Some Kind of Skin Disease While Camping

I am currently writing this from a scratchy bed of a hospital room. It’s five in the morning and I can’t sleep, no matter how hard I try, my mind keeps coming back to that night.   

A few weeks ago, I went camping with my girlfriend. We live in a pretty wooded spot, in a cabin, a few miles away from any civilization, so it wasn’t hard to pack up and head out for a few nights, to clear our heads. The woods near my home are very beautiful and often times I’d find myself getting lost in them.   

Anyway, we’d packed a tent, some water bottles, a pot, some cans of soup and two sleeping bags and off we went.    

I was cooking dinner at the fire when it happened, my girlfriend was in her tent, laying down for a nap.

I felt a stinging on my arm, like a needle being pushed under the skin and I dropped the wooden spoon I was sitting with.

I noticed a spot on my arm was inflamed, red and risen, and a little black dot had formed there. I examined it and after a few moments, it began to bleed, a steady trickle of crimson trailing down my arm and onto the ground below.

I shrugged it off, figuring it was a mosquito or some other small insect. I made a mental note to pick up some bug spray next time we went out like this and moved on.   

A couple days later, we were back home and I was watching T.V when it began to itch, subtly at first, then growing unbearable, like someone was raking their nails down the length of my arm. It burned, I tried to scratch it, but it only made the pain and burning worse.

I went to the doctors, they told me to put some ointment on it and ice. I did, the pain didn’t stop.   

A few more days pass, I wake up to the sound of a pop from below my bedsheets and found that my arm had begun to sprout red and purple boils, one now oozing pus from where it burst.

I quickly ran to the toilet, flipped on the light and ran it under the cold tap, relieving the pain slightly.

Day five was when the hallucinations began.   

I had wrapped my arm in bandages, blood oozing through them, I went to the kitchen to change them when I heard, what sounded like, the sound of someone laughing from behind me.   

I quickly turned around but found no one was there.

“Babe?” I said, wondering if it was my girlfriend I had heard. Then again, it hadn’t really sounded like her much. It sounded like a child.

“Yeah? What is it, hun?”   

“Were you...Did you just laugh?”   

“Uh, no, why?” I was confused now. I felt a chill run down my spine and a pain shocked through my arm again.   

“N-Nothing, no reason, it’s fine.”   

It definitely was not fine.   

They got worse and worse. It went from auditory hallucinations, to visual, I remember laying in my bed at night when I saw a dark figure approach me, fast, I jumped up, finding it strange that I could, I thought I was having some sort of sleep paralysis or nightmare, the thing, whatever it was got closer and closer to me, but as it approached, I heard the distinct buzzing noise, getting louder and louder as it hit me, the cloud of darkness parted, like flies.   

I think I nearly pissed myself.

I chalked it up to just stress, knowing that my work was getting harder and harder every day, even harder because the pain in my right arm got worse and worse with it.

I woke up in the middle of the night on day seven. I was sweating pinballs, I had some nightmare that I couldn’t remember, but I knew it shook me up enough to wake up screaming, so loud my girlfriend awoke, asking me what was wrong.

I told her and she kissed my forehead.

“Katie...You need to go back to bed.”

“I-I know, I know.” I said, trying not to worry her, a crease already set in on her forehead from concern. “I will, promise.”

“Good.”

Day eight, the pain had gotten unbearable to live with. I had to call in sick after spewing vomit all over the carpet from the agony.   

My girlfriend, of course, decided to take care of me, bringing me soup I could not eat and a cold cloth for my forehead, which had to be removed after I told her I was freezing.

“You feel so warm though...Are you sure I don’t need to call the doctor.”

“I...I don’t know. Maybe.” I said, my mind buzzing, a ringing in my ears.

That night, I made my way to the toilet to throw up into the bowl when I saw it, more black holes were in my skin, not just on my arm now but spreading like a virus, down my collarbone, my stomach, my legs and even my breasts.

It itched and burned all over, it hurt so fucking bad.

I walked into the shower, stunned by the black dots all the while, I turned it all the way to scalding but I could hardly feel it. The water didn’t help nor did the heat.

Five minutes in, I felt it.

It felt like...Something crawling from the inside of me, I looked down to see something moving from inside the skin, bumps moving and trailing down my arms and legs.

I screamed as the things began to pour out of the black dots in my skin, small black bugs oozed out of everywhere and fell down the drain, I could feel them writhing and pooling at my feet. I screamed again, louder this time.   

I watched as the things began to sprout wings from their backs and fly, swarming me. I passed out before my girlfriend burst in, calling the ambulance.   

And this is where I am now, bandaged in the hospital, bleeding, hooked up to a heart monitor.

They told me I had a skin disease but I know the truth, it was not a skin disease that made bugs pop out of my skin.   

I was horrified about what happened but glad it was over.   

Today I noticed something...Terrible. My girlfriend came to visit me today, she brought me flowers and fresh fruit. When she gave them to me, however, I noticed she was itching.

A small, black dot had begun to form on her skin, and I knew what it was.

I was lucky the bug went inside my arm, my girlfriend’s dot is just under her eye.