A Massacre of Émigrés

Written By: Teege Braune

I awoke with a runny nose and congested sinuses, the kind of throbbing, itchy discomfort that seems to extend from one’s face like a keratinized outgrowth and puts in one’s mind the apt nomenclature “rhinovirus.” After taking a deep breath through my mouth, I ejected a stream of viscous mucus onto an aloe infused paper tissue retrieved from its cardboard box conveniently near at hand on the bedside table.

In the pleasurable throes of good health, untroubled by allergens, bacteria, or viruses, most people are inclined to deride those who examine the contents of a tissue after blowing their excretion into it. And yet circumstances will eventually make hypocrites of us all, for who among us has not unfolded that soiled bit of flimsy paper for fear of finding… what exactly?

The presence of crimson bloody strands amongst one’s snot is not uncommon. On these particularly dry winter mornings with the furnace blasting dusty air, one may even find a veritable crime scene splattered therein, yet those untroubled by disorders of delusional anxiety do not leap to the conclusion that they are leaking nasal tissue or—even more absurd—brain matter from their nostrils.

In many ways, I am a typical person—though perhaps prone to certain proclivities and eccentricities of habit beyond the scope of this narrative—and like so many before me, succumbing to a kind of morbid curiosity, I peeled back the crumbled layers of tissue in order to examine what had a moment before existed within the confines of my inflamed face.

Among the usual pallid sputum, typical of a morning discharge, and streaks of bloody crimson, in no small supply but not of such profusion as to immediately drive a man of my disposition to agitation, I was surprised to find something entirely unfamiliar. I perceived a dozen or so oddly colored specks that ranged in spectrum of color from pale pink to blue/black. They were too miniscule to make out in any detail, but being inquisitive by nature, I kept a magnifying glass handy. Peering through it, however, only further aroused my alarm while doing nothing to assuage my bewilderment. The nature of the specks remained unclear; yet lurid and misshapen, they struck me immediately of mites. Was my sinus cavity infested by some heinous parasite?

Fearing for the wellbeing of my entire upper respiratory system, my impulse was to rush off to the emergency room, but after sliding half into my jacket—the left sleeve dangling limply at my side—a moment’s reflection gave me pause. What kinds of torturous devices would be inserted into my nostrils? The staff—doctors and nurses in name, though more akin to dispassionate technicians—with cold determination treating my body like some grotesque specimen, and then slapping me with an extravagant bill, my consolation prize for the excruciating treatment that would itself only lead to more painful tests and an ever-growing midden of debt. 

Better to first take a more probing look at these ominous anomalies myself. I rushed over to the closest and found my microscope in a shoebox under a pile of spare linens. With an innate inclination to probe the material world around me, a quality I’ve retained since childhood, I keep the microscope in good working condition, so it only needed to be quickly dusted and plugged into a wall socket for use. I wiped a bit of the tainted mucus onto a glass slide, making sure to include several of the odd specks, laid the slide cover over the sample, and placed the specimen under the illuminated lens. As I peered into the eyepiece while adjusting the focus to make out the details, a wormy sickness knotted my gut in anxious anticipation of the creeping verminous forms I feared to discover. 

Never could I have prepared myself, however, for what I saw when the odd flecks finally came into stark relief! The charnel house horror sent me reeling backwards. I fell painfully onto my backside, sensitive tailbone ringing out in protest, and remained recumbent on the less than comfortable linoleum with aching posterior for some time, disturbed and astounded by the vision in the microscope. Waiting for the initial shock to pass, I both needed and dreaded to confirm my mounting incredulity.

Rising to my feet, I peered once more into the eyepiece and fiddled needlessly with the focus, stalling as I steeled myself for either a reappearance of the horrific scene or revelation that my sanity had indeed collapsed, for the presence of the bodies revealed on the slide was simply impossible.

But it was no hallucination; the odd specks were tiny nudes, all of whom had perished violently. In some cases their forms were distorted nearly beyond recognition in the spray of gore, disjointed and dismembered limbs, crushed skulls, and disemboweled bellies with intestines and other viscera spilling forth. Yet it was by their own shattered humanity that I was forced to acknowledge I had not mistaken their nature. In some of the least damaged cases, I could even make out the victims’ sexes, while in terms of pigmentation, they constituted a cornucopia of human diversity.

Had these Lilliputians died in the violent expulsion from my nostrils, only to be crushed posthumously between the glass slide and its offending cover? Perhaps others, still living in my cranium, placed their deceased in a position to be expelled when next I blew my nose: their culture’s form of funeral rite, lacking as they did the means of either burial or cremation. 

Squeamish that the casualties might be intrepid explorers, pioneers, or astronauts who survived the hazardous journey onto my tissue only to be crushed by my own oafishness, I was all the more disconcerted at the thought of being invaded. If they were not occupying the space inside my head with nefarious intentions, their ability to thrive would, nevertheless, come at my own expense. If, in fact, having a race of tiny people in one’s face presented some benefits, they did not strike me as outweighing the potential risk of harm.

I put my hands to my face and tried to imagine what the intruders, if in fact any survivors remained, might be doing now. How did the inside of my face appear to such tiny trespassers? Could I, if I concentrated, perceive them moving about in my sinus cavity? I focused all my attention on a spot between and just below my eyes.

Yes, maybe there was a slight sensation, not quite a tickle or vibration, but something. The more I concentrated, the more the sensation grew into a pronounced wriggling. Was their activity increasing as a result of the loss of their comrades, or was it an effect of my attention to their presence. Were they trying to convey some message to their host? As soon as I was certain something was there, it occurred to me that the sustained focus on such a specific part of my body could merely have created the illusion of a sensation, and I once again grew unable to determine if I was actually feeling anything at all. Communication with the colony seemed an act of hopeless futility.

Having already tossed the used tissue into the wastebasket, I was loathe to exhume it, but as it sat near the top of several days’ worth of refuse, I removed it gingerly, pinching not but a small corner between thumb and forefinger, applying pressure to as little of its surface area as possible. With the utmost care, I spread the tissue open and examined the remaining specks for indications of movement, but finding none, I chose to assume its miniscule occupants were already dead, and I had no desire to scrutinize the carnage the tissue likely contained.

Certainly, I had the right to defend myself. Nevertheless, I deemed it sagacious to dispose of the evidence knowing not what legal consequences might arise for dispatching these interlopers. I found a lighter in my kitchen’s junk drawer. After several unsuccessful flicks of the spark wheel, it ignited. The tissue combusted and flamed up almost instantly. I dropped it into the sink and soon after washed the ashes down the drain. Then scrubbed the slide and slide cover thoroughly, breaking the glass and nicking my fingertip in the process. In the end, I threw them both away, tainted as they now were, and held a fresh tissue next to the laceration.

I turned the sink’s faucet back on, let the water grow as hot as I could stand, and filled a small bowl. I added a tablespoon of salt and stirred vigorously until it dissolved. Then I leaned over the bowl and inhaled the salinized water up through both nostrils. My sinuses and mouth flooded and stinging, I snorted, coughed, and sputtered the water into the sink along with a significant amount of snot. As uncomfortable as this process was, I felt confident it would drown and flush out any aliens remaining inside my face.

While I struggled to catch my breath and recover from the invasive saline treatment, a surge of bile welled in my stomach and climbed up my esophagus. I threw up into the sink. Though my vomitus was little more than fluid, a result of the previous evening’s liquid dinner, I had no desire to examine it, choosing ignorance to the emotional and existential discomfort sure to accompany the unexpected discovery of whatever I might find within. I turned on the faucet and splashed the water around in the basin, washing away the result of my morning purge. I drank right from the faucet, rinsed out my mouth, and spat into the sink.

After splashing a couple of handfuls of cool water onto my face, I felt sufficiently recovered and decided not to call in sick for work. I was employed by a titan of industry who recompensed me generously for my assistance, and as it was Friday, the weekend promised no lack of debaucheries, the nature of which would surely redden the cheeks of even the most depraved libertine.

Teege Braune grew up in southern Indiana and lives in Orlando, Florida with his partner and their cat. He has been a finalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize, The Driftwood Press Short Story Contest, and a semifinalist for the Disquiet Literary Prize. His work has been published in various journals, anthologies, and magazines, including Pithead Chapel, Weirdbook Magazine, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. He has performed his own work in various contexts, most recently in Compagnia de' Colombari’s Orlando Whitman on Walls event.