Restless, the Insomniac considers the blades before him. He isn’t sure what causes the crawling in his leg, but he has an idea now, and that idea requires cutting in. The knife set isn’t anything spectacular, but it isn’t a budget set either. The knife block holds eight steak knives, a set of kitchen shears, a sharpening iron, a bread knife, a paring knife, and two chef’s knives—one traditional, and a Japanese style knife that’s blade curved upward. The set must also have come with two more knives, their designated slots now empty, but they had clearly gone missing at some point, into the same domestic black hole that claimed socks, batteries, earrings.
The Insomniac weighs each knife, rests the blades on the pad of his thumb to gauge sharpness. He liked the santoku best when he cooked, the way the knife would slide through muscle and fat with ease. That it was sharp enough was no question, but the size could prove problematic, cumbersome. The slender blades of the steak knives would allow a greater accuracy, and the serrated edge could be used to saw through sinew, but the blade was otherwise blunt. After careful deliberation, the Insomniac chooses the paring knife. There were no teeth on this blade, but it would be sharp enough to cut cleanly, and small enough to maneuver precisely.
The moment of epiphany came while watching a movie. He hadn’t been able to sleep again, the crawling in his leg especially distracting, so he had laid in bed, willing his mind to wander elsewhere. The Insomniac remembered the movie from his childhood, one of the B-movie action-adventures that his father loved so much. The movie was a creature feature about an archaeologist awakening a cursed mummy. The Insomniac remembered, too, the inspiring scene, the way the scarab beetle burrowed into the comic relief’s hand and up his arm. Before, he had never been able to describe what it felt like, the restlessness. It was more than an itch. It felt intentional, the way the feeling crept up and down his calf.
The possibility that his restlessness was more than a cruel trick played by his own body, his leg and his brain co-conspirators, had never occurred to him. He wondered if, instead, the culprit was alien, sentient, a foreign parasite that had made its way beneath his flesh. The Insomniac knew that what he saw in the movie would not be accurate to real life, that special effects and Hollywood embellishment made the scene more exaggerated, the way the beetle could be tracked as it moved up the character’s arm. And anyways, he wasn’t sure that particular species of beetle could be found in the Midwest. Probably not.
The Insomniac wavers on whether to get drunk before the process. It might help alleviate the pain, or at the very least calm his nerves. The alcohol would also disorient him. He decides against it, but takes the mostly empty bottle of whiskey anyway, considering that it might prove useful as a disinfectant. The Insomniac then wavers on whether to take an edible. He’d welcome the calming effect, and cannabis had sometimes helped ease the restlessness. He wondered if the drug affected the invaders, as well. If they, too, felt the warm and sinking sensation as they melted into the high. If it did, he might have better luck with removal. The Insomniac eats the infused gummy, grimaces at the bitterness. He’ll have to wait for the effect, but it gives him time to prepare for the procedure.
In the movie, the beetles are almost always fatal. Once burrowed, they seek out vital organs. The lungs. The heart. The brain. They gorge. Often, there are many beetles. They swarm. The Insomniac wonders if the beetles are simply seeking sustenance the way all living things must. He wonders if the beetles are simply responding to a larger threat, that their swarming is a defensive tactic. He wonders, finally, if the beetles are malicious after all. The only character to survive the beetles is the comic relief. The beetle moves quickly, but the hero is quicker, cutting the bug out with a butterfly knife. The Insomniac paused the movie. He could not flip and twirl the paring knife like the hero, but there was no flourish needed for his purposes. All he had to do was cut and remove.
The Insomniac holds the blade of the knife over a stovetop flame until it glows, and when it cools down, he dips it into a glass filled with the whiskey. He’s not a doctor, has no real sense of how to make a cutting tool sterile other than what he has absorbed through television, but he hopes this will be enough. He prepares the suture kit he has purchased. He hopes the online videos he watched would be accurate guides through the process. He sets out a clean towel, something to protect the bedsheets from staining.
The Insomniac isn’t as nervous as he expects to be. He isn’t confident, either. He suspects that he’s prepared as best as he can, and that he’s determined enough to go through with it. The Insomniac considers how the restlessness manifests, how it most often starts in the upper portion of the soleus, before migrating down the gastrocnemius tendon. It’s there, in the meat of his calf that the Insomniac theorizes the invaders dwell, and there that he begins. He twists his leg inward. With his right hand, his dominant hand, the Insomniac grips the knife. With his left, he stretches the skin of his calf taut. If he’s lucky, the Insomniac will catch the invaders by surprise. He’ll pluck them out, one by one, release them in the yard. He’ll suture his leg. He’ll be sore, but in time he will heal, will sleep peacefully. The Insomniac considers this. He smiles. He cuts.
“Restless” is special to me because it was the first story I finished after a 6 year break from writing. It was proof for myself that I could still start AND finish a story, and I was pretty stoked with how it turned out. I submitted it around for a year but it never landed anywhere, and I’d honestly rather focus on producing new work than spend more time on this one. Maybe that’s a bad philosophy, but I’m always ready to start on the next thing!
I’ve had really terrible restless leg syndrome (RLS) for the last 7 or 8 years. It fucking sucks. It comes and goes, usually for a few weeks at a time. I’ve wanted to write a story about it for some time—one early version would have seen the protagonist amputating his leg instead—and then I had the bug/parasite idea, but it wasn’t until rewatching it that the Mummy (1999) component came to me and that felt like the final piece. It’s a comfort movie for me, something that my dad owned on VHS and we watched (and rewatched) often. The scarab beetles burrowing into flesh scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.
As I looked over the story for this post, I’m realizing that it’s been several months since I’ve read it. I made a few minor changes, but it’s still pretty close to the final edits. I think if I wrote this story today, it would look completely different. It’s strange how frequently and subtly our styles and voices change, reflecting new life experiences, new artistic influences, new ideas.
In other news, we’ve finalized details for our next hex reading, and I’m beyond excited to say that we’ll be partnering with our friends at Wigleaf for an offsite event at the 2024 AWP in Kansas City. The lineup of readers is stacked. There will be drinks of all varieties. I think it’s going to be a blast. If you are in KC for AWP, we hope you’ll join us!
For the final DadBodWrites post of the year, I’ll be talking about my favorite things this year! If all goes well, that will go up on the 29th—hope to see you there.
-dan