Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

tried to reach for the portion of intestine choking her, hoping to loosen it so she could draw in a breath. But her arms were held away from her body, and regardless of how hard she struggled, she couldn’t budge them. She was restrained in four places now – waist, wrists, and neck – and the intestine, flexing like a giant constrictor, lifted her off her feet.

When she’d been a kid, she’d read somewhere that together the human large and small intestines measured around twenty-five feet. That had sounded so long, and she’d found it hard to believe that all of it could fit inside a person. She had no trouble believing it now, though.

Aashrita’s intestines raised her several feet higher, turned her around to face the young woman and brought her closer until their noses practically touched. Flies now buzzed around both their heads.

Aashrita’s eyes bored into hers, shining with eager anticipation. “I’d like to say I don’t want to do this to you.” Aashrita’s weak voice was stronger now. “But that would be a lie.”

The coil of intestine wrapped around Lori’s neck began to squeeze tighter. Her lungs blazed with fire and her head pounded so violently she thought it was going to explode. Darkness crept into her vision, and she realized she was going to die – strangled by the internal organ of a girl she’d worked so hard and so long to forget. She was surprised by how little this distressed her.

I deserve it, she thought.

She fell into blackness, and there, in the great nothing, her memories broke free at last.

* * *

Lori sat on her parents’ front porch, right leg resting on a pillow her mother had brought out and put on a stool for her. A pair of metal crutches lay on the porch next to the chair. It was late afternoon in September, but the day was summer-warm, and she wore a T-shirt and shorts. No shoes. Despite the temperature, she had a fuzzy blanket draped across her legs. She didn’t want to look at the angry red incision on her knee, didn’t want to gaze upon the swollen, puffy flesh there. The knee throbbed with pain, but she’d discovered it was worse – or at least felt worse – when she could see the incision site, so she kept it covered whenever she could. It helped. Her pain meds helped more, and while she would’ve loved to take some now, her next dose wasn’t due for two more hours. She’d just have to tough it out until then.

Even though her meds had nearly worn off, she still felt spacy, and she sat looking out at the street, headphones in, listening to an Alicia Keys song on her MP3 player, and not thinking about much of anything.

After the accident during soccer practice, she’d needed to have a knee replacement, and now she had to wear a CPM – Continuous Passive Motion – machine to slowly move and strengthen her leg several hours a day, as well as doing physical therapy. At first, both had hurt like hell, even with pain meds, but the pain had continued to decrease as the days went by. At this point in her recovery, she didn’t use the CPM much, and she could get around without her crutches, unless she was tired or her knee started hurting too bad. She’d originally come outside so she could walk up and down the street and exercise her knee, as her physical therapist had told her to do. But once she’d gotten outside and felt the warm air, she’d said to hell with it and sat down on the porch and put her leg up. She was finding it increasingly difficult to stay motivated when it came to her rehab. Sure, she wanted to get back to the point where she could get around normally all on her own. But no matter how hard she worked, she wouldn’t be able to play soccer again, so really, what good were the painful exercises her PT wanted her to do? No matter how religiously she did them, she’d never be able to get back her full strength and speed. And if she tried to play, she’d risk screwing up her knee replacement, and she did not want to go through another operation and long recovery period.

So basically, her life sucked.

She’d sit out here for a half hour or so, and then go back inside. With any luck, her mother wouldn’t realize she hadn’t actually gone anywhere. Lori promised herself she’d go walking tomorrow, but she knew she didn’t mean it.

So she was in a dark frame of mind when she saw Aashrita coming down the sidewalk. Aashrita lived a couple blocks from Lori’s house, and while Lori only had one sibling – Reeny – Aashrita had four brothers and sisters, two of each, all older than her. She needed to escape the chaos in her house on a regular basis, and when she did, she’d walk over to Lori’s place and the two of them would hang out. It had been that way for the better part of a decade now, but Lori hadn’t seen Aashrita since the accident during soccer practice. Aashrita hadn’t visited her in the hospital, nor had she been over to the house since then. She had sent a get-well card, however, a small one that had come in a blue envelope. When Lori had opened it, it had begun playing music – soft and slow – in electronic tones, and it had contained a single printed word: Sorry, below which Aashrita had signed her name. Lori hadn’t replied. No calls, no texts, no emails. She’d been so damn angry at Aashrita that she hadn’t wanted to talk to her, see her, or even think about her.

So Lori was not pleased when Aashrita reached her parents’ front walkway, turned, and started walking toward the porch. Toward her.

If she’d had full mobility back, she would’ve gotten up from the chair,