The Bite

I first noticed it one afternoon after coming back from work. It was subtle—an excuse that I use to justify why it took me some time to notice the oddness of it all. It bewildered me to the point where I thought I was losing my mind. It first started when I stumbled across a half-eaten apple on the counter—what I confidently presumed to be my unfinished breakfast from that morning. Furthermore, on some occasions I would encounter an apple in my fruit basket with a missing bite, distinctively protruding from the pile of the other untouched vividly crimson apples. Even for a scatterbrain like myself, I was impressed. Despite the uncertainty, reason prevailed, leading me to believe that the events were simply an innocent mistake on my part. Somehow my intuition must've started its own hibernation period, as I became aware of this peculiarity only when it reached higher levels. My colleague’s leftover birthday cake, my mom’s lemon pie, and my first attempt at baklava—all of them had sizable bites taken from them. Curiously, I had a brief consultation with my brain’s frontal lobe on what caused this. Ultimately, this little detective game I was amusing myself with quickly turned sour. One evening, I noticed half of my bar soap was bitten off. An unsettling feeling sent shivers down my spine. The perplexity casted shadows over any coherent thought. My colleagues laughed at my failed attempts to portray this crawling, ominous feeling that slowly took hold of me.

Soon it became worse—I couldn't sleep knowing that I would wake up and find another one of my belongings completely bitten off. At some point, the bites started getting bigger and bigger. It was something I could not bear to ignore anymore. It was the worst kind of torture—the slow rise of alarming panic that overwhelms all your senses. I didn’t want to admit it, yet the thought that this maniacal biting was going to come for me haunted me day and night. What else could it be? It tore apart my clothes, it shredded my bedding, and it even went for my coffee table, with the latter case leaving me so petrified that I begged my friend to stay at her place for a couple of days. I was falling behind at work and could barely get anything done. I could not calm down because it was always there in the back of my mind.

Two days ago, I woke up with sporadic bite marks on my arms, suggesting some sort of weak and unsure attempt on its part. I am painfully aware that I don’t have much time before its endeavor finally achieves success.