>The shifting downward of the dirt was the result of an ant colony collapsing. A big one. All the ants came up out of the wreckage and had been hanging out on the surface of the dirt right below grandpa’s hips. But as he started to settle in to the new position overnight, the ants became agitated and swarmed him. And by him, I mean his crotch. Maybe the only thing that equalled the level of horror at the table as he talked about ants crawling into his penis and rectum was how hard my grandmother laughed as he told it. “You’ve gotta get really close to see the scars!,” she exclaimed, as tears of laughter ran down her cheeks. My brother Derek’s new girlfriend turned green and left the table with Derek hurrying after her. Grandma and grandpa shared a kiss and he continued with the story.
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>With ants up his dick and asshole and flies building a housing project in his armpit, grandpa suffered through the next two days in a haze of pain and fear. The lack of food and water had taken a toll on him. This, he told us, was somewhat helpful. The pain grew less acute as his consciousness waxed and waned. A tarantula wandered into the hole and grandpa was able to bite its abdomen in half and suck out what was inside. This, of course, attracted more flies but there was nothing he could do about it. If he didn’t get some food and water in him, he’d die. His survival instinct was still intact despite the all the trauma.
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>A couple more days went by and he blurrily realized he’d been stuck for about a week. The rainfalls and insect pulp had kept him hydrated just enough to stay alive. His armpit was numb all the way down to the last rib on his right side. Flies were ignoring everything else and just going straight in and out of the pit. The adventurous ants had lost interest after a while, but every so often he felt a nasty pinch on one incredibly sensitive area or another. More time passed.
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>Late one afternoon, he heard gunfire. He’d heard quite a bit while he was stuck, but it was always off in the distance and too far for him to get any hope that he’d be rescued. This time, though, it was very close. He was overwhelmed with a sense of hope which was tainted by the concern that he’d be found by the wrong side. But, to his astonishment, it wasn’t the VC who he heard shouting after all the gunfire. Grandpa starting waving his arm with the tiny bit of movement he could muster. He heard someone yell, “Hey there’s an arm over here!” Grandpa yelled back incoherently and was soon greeted by the sight of a US soldier peering down at him.
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>It took him and his squadmates ten minutes to dig grandpa out of the hole. He remembers all of them saying some variant of “holy fucking shit” after they’d freed him. Someone radioed their position and after some unknown amount of time, a helicopter landed in a nearby clearing. Grandpa was loaded onto a stretcher and they lifted off. A medic who was along for the ride cut off grandpa’s shirt and promptly threw up. When the rest of the soldiers in the chopper looked at what the medic had seen, a few of them also rained puke down from the side of the aircraft.
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>A few days after being rescued, grandpa woke up in a hospital. Not one on the base, either - one in the US. He had no idea how he got there; once he was rescued, he passed out and slept for almost 36 straight hours. Some people thought he was in a coma until some poor medic tried to wake him up and grandpa said “fuck off” and knocked the guy out with a single shot to the chin.
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>Now awake, the doctors told grandpa the extent of his injuries. Aside from the severe dehydration, he was absolutely riddled with infected bites. The ones on his more sensitive areas weren’t much cause for alarm, despite their unpleasantness. It was the bigger bites that were much more of a concern. The one from the red ant was the worst and for a while the doctors worried he’d lose the eye. His lips and nose had terrible swelling from the infected centipede bites. Even though all those bites were awful, he could’ve recovered in a few weeks and would have been back in the tunnels soon after. But his armpit was why he was sent home.
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>Botflies are a type of insect which lay their eggs inside flesh. Here’s a picture of them in some poor bastard, and again, I’m sorry to do this to you. Until grandpa’s experience, no one knew they even had them in Vietnam. But apparently they do; the underside of his right arm all the way down to nearly his hip was completely reshaped into horrible cavities for their larvae. The doctors wouldn’t operate, saying the only way to excise them was to let them gestate, and at a certain point, suffocate them with adhesive tape so they’d crawl to the surface. It took another few weeks, but that’s what happened. Grandpa regaled us with the story of how he personally gave birth to 313 botfly larvae. Then he lifted up his shirt to show us the pockmarked skin.
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>No one said much after that. He was done with the story and after shoveling a slice of fruit cake into his mouth, he and grandma left. They laughed all the way to the door. I don’t really know what else to say. So yeah. That’s grandpa. Happy New Year.
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>Unsettling Stories
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>Transfigurations

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