Speech Marks

All critiques welcome, but I'd particularly like to know if you think the piece is coherent and if you can follow the progression of the scene at the end. Hope you enjoy.

~

He first notices them as he raises his hand to write on the whiteboard, his sleeve sliding back over his arm. There. Two red scratches, one either side of the tendons in his wrist. He looks closer.

“Sir, we can’t see what you’ve put,” a student calls.

He starts. “Sorry.”

He ducks out of the way, and his brain tangents while he explains trigonometry to the blanket of faces before him, his lips forming around the words without really feeling them. Like a mime. Like a sock puppet.

When they’re all hunched over their exercise books, he looks down at his wrist again, peeling his cuff back with one finger. Two scratches. No, two pairs of scratches, slightly curled, set about a half-inch apart. Speech marks closed around an invisible word.

He frowns as he pulls his cuff back up. Now he’s seen them, they’re starting to hurt.

*

In the general realm of nine o’clock, when the world is turning spongy from the wine, he drops a glass. It starbursts on the kitchen tiles, glass pattering over his socks, wine soaking in underfoot. His vision bobs around the mess, unmoored, then drifts to his hand. He flexes his fingers, frowning.

The red marks eye him over the edge of his sleeve. When he touches one, the pain is sharp beneath the haze of alcohol.

He slumps out of the kitchen. Lounge. Sofa. Computer. When he brings up Google, the screen is a stinging gleam.

scraches on wrist, he types. Gets a stack of links about self-harm.

pair scratches wrist. Same thing.

pair scraches painfulllllllllllllllllllllllllllll—

His hand jars and locks over the ‘l’ key and he snatches it away too late. His heart thrums in his chest. With only his left hand, his unmarked hand, he types:

pair scratches speech marks

Up flickers a link to NHS.uk, and his throat closes. He clicks it.

Possession is a serious but rare condition caused by bacteria spread to humans by demonic ticks.

Many people with early symptoms of possession notice small, twin scratches with a resemblance to speech marks—

He slaps the laptop shut, the world folding in on him – corners and edges, collapsing, crumpling, wrapping him up in the dark. No. No. Be rational. First step of any illness, don’t Google. You don’t bloody Google. Google tells you you’re dying no matter what so you don’t Google, you don’t Google, you don’t fucking Google.

He grabs the wine bottle from the coffee table. The glass bumps again his teeth, and then there’s only sourness.

*

The world comes in waves. In and out and out and in and in and in and out. Dark shapes swim in the cracks between his eyelids, and he notices the sofa arm jutting into the bones of his neck. Too tired to hurt.

Something’s crawling on his leg. Big spider. Rat.

No. His hand, dancing lazily over his thigh like a marionette.

The sight wrenches him awake, pushing vomit into his throat. He rolls sideways, crashes onto the carpet, scattering unopened letters, mugs, remotes, clatterclatterthump. Then he’s up, backing away, pressing his back to the wall, breath coming thick and fast.

Silence. He stares.

His own hand hovers in front of him, fingers pedalling against the air. It weaves left, dragging his arm with it. It weaves right. He watches it touch finger to thumb, thumb to finger, feels the spark of his nerves and the sweat on his fingertips.

He tries to clench it into a fist. Nothing.

In one movement, he lurches to the floor, scrabbling blindly with his left hand, his only hand. Fingers bump paper, wool, wood, glass – yes, glass. He grips the stem of the wine bottle, raises it, then smashes it hard against the edge of the table.

A shriek of shards. He sees the jagged teeth of the bottle, edged with grey half-light, and then he’s swinging it round, stabbing it down to where his marked hand lies flat against the sofa—

It yanks away from him, jerking his body with it, and the bottle stabs chintz. The marked hand flails, slapping at his face, pushing its nails into his throat while he stabs blindly, turning his face away, biting at his own fingers until tears spark in his eyes. The bottle swings. Its teeth lick the back of his wrist, the pain white hot, and the hand falls from his face.

He readjusts, shifting his grip on the bottle. He eyes his target, a silhouetted spider clawing at the sofa arm, writhing like something living.

He turns away, but it doesn’t leap for his face this time. Hard fingers close around his wrist, and the impact throws him onto his back, crushing the wind from him.

A desperate struggle, one hand against another. No. No. No. Sweaty fingers slip against the glass. The marked hand wrenches the stem of the bottle free, twists it round, lifts it high.

The broken glass blurs between his eyes.

Then it dives.