One Perfect Bite

Today's episode follows the journey of one doctor exploring a precarious and dangerous ecosystem. 

Transcript

You always leave your phone inside when you’re hanging out on your porch. You started doing it for practical reasons; it was too far away to connect to your wifi, but not far enough to switch over to data, so it basically just became a useless brick out there anyway. Then your porch became a refuge, a place where you could hide from bad news. A place where arguments and stressful texts couldn’t reach you, and a place where you couldn’t reach it and end up scrolling the hours away. Tonight you’re going to hide out there as long as you can. You saw the email as soon as you got home from work, so you haven’t eaten, haven't showered, haven't even gotten a glass of water. Because when you go back inside, you know you’ll have to look at your email. You’ll have to open the message you’ve been dreading. And you’ll have to see if the news is just bad or catastrophic. The breeze and the birds sustain you for hours out there before you finally admit defeat and have to go inside for a drink of water, and to get some food in your stomach. Rolling open your door, you stare at the coffee table, at the preview of not only the email, but of seven missed calls. You chug a glass of water, and then you open your phone. Lighting up your screen is The Podcast Inside Your House. 

The Doctor always waited just a few seconds to open his balcony door in the mornings. He liked to gaze outside and brace himself for the weather, be it sun, wind, rain, or snow. And when he braced himself, he was always happy with whatever nature gave him. That morning, though, he spotted something unusual on his balcony. There were little wood chips along the outer railings, little shavings like those left by wasps or carpenter bees. And though he loved the bees dearly, he made a note to do something about that later. He couldn’t have them borrowing into his balcony. 

The air was cool and foggy, a welcome break from the summer heat. It carried with it the promise of a long overdue fall. As The Doctor gazed out over the forest, he noted just a few trees beginning to turn. He also spotted a hiker nearing his backyard. That happened often, the game trails he’d forged for himself over the years confusing those visiting the nearby park. He never minded, though. They’d spot his house, and sometimes take a moment to admire his garden, before realizing they were off trail and going back on their way. This hiker lingered for just a bit, though, and when he spotted The Doctor he waved. The Doctor waved back, then turned his attention to his tea. 

Coffee had been his drink of choice until recent years, his heart just couldn’t handle caffeine the way it used to. Now he started his days with English breakfast tea, stirred with just enough milk and sugar to make it a bit of a treat. He brought the mug up to his lips to take that first warm sip. The first sip of the day was the most important one, it set the tone for how the rest of one’s day was going to go. But before his lips could make contact with the hot porcelain, his world collapsed. 

After he managed to suck some air back into his lungs, he realized it had only been his balcony. 

And after that still when the shock started to wane, he realized that his back had taken the brunt of the fall. His thoughts rushed to him the way his breath had, and he called out for help, hoping the hiker wasn’t too far gone. But only silence answered him. He yelled out a few more times, then decided to wait. He’d try again in a few minutes. He didn’t have the strength to be yelling nonstop. 

The Doctor waited for the pain to hit him, but it didn’t. He also waited for the feeling to return to his body, but that didn’t. He knew that could only mean disaster. He was about to try yelling again when he realized he was not alone. Breathing, raspy but muffled, was drawing closer to his left side, the side facing the woods. His head and neck were the only parts of his body that he could feel, so when he tried to crane his neck to the side to see what approached him, the pain stopped him. He was scared then that some animal, a coyote or a bear, might have found him. Might start eating him as he lay helpless on the ground. 

“Hello?” He called out. And after a few more seconds and several wheezing breaths, another voice finally echoed his greeting. 

“Hello, Doctor.” The voice said. The words chilled him; he wasn’t dressed for work yet. The Stranger continued, “This is quite a predicament you’ve got yourself in, huh?”

The Doctor tried to ignore what he thought might be a sinister edge to the man’s voice. “Please, you’ve got to call an ambulance. It’s my neck, or my spine, I can’t move.”

“I’d love to help you,” The Stranger said, and this time there was no mistaking the malice in his words. “But I’ve left my phone at home.”

The Doctor was looking up, his vision limited to the lightly cloud-dappled sky. But if he really strained, he could see the trees at the edge of his yard before the pain in his neck stopped him. He tried to push just that little bit further to lay eyes on The Stranger, to try and find out if he knew him. And for just a second, he caught a glimpse of a skeletal hand resting on a branch, the bones threatening to break out of paper-thin and mottled skin. 

The raspy breathing started up again, like wind blowing through old leaves, and The Doctor worried that whatever might be wrong with The Stranger might be affecting his mind. But surely if he could cut through his confusion, the man would help. 

“Go use my phone.” The Doctor told him, “It’s on the kitchen counter, and the back door -” He moved instinctively to gesture, before remembering his arms no longer obeyed him. “The door closest to us, that one is unlocked.”

The Stranger responded in a voice that sounded much younger than his hand had looked. Yet it nearly matched The Doctor’s in strain, like it was difficult for him to speak as well. “That doesn’t seem very safe, leaving your door unlocked like that. Anyone could wander in.” 

The Doctor did not respond, but the breathing moved further away, and soon he heard the familiar sliding of the glass door that went into his living room. 

When he felt something wet touch his hair and noted the smell of copper in the air, he willed The Stranger to hurry. He was bleeding, but he didn’t know from where. 

That voice greeted him as the door opened back up, excited and lively now. “You’ve got some super fresh spices in there,” The Stranger said. And he made his way back to The Doctor and the wood splinters, and the blood. “Most people just let their spices sit, you know, and they don’t really use em. But spices expire, and sure, they’re not gonna hurt you, but they’re not going to taste the same. And taste is the whole point of having them in the first place.”

The Doctor asked, “Did you call an ambulance?”

To which the man replied, “No.” Then the Doctor heard the clinking of glass and realized the man had brought out some of his spice jars. “I was impressed to see you even had saffron in there, that’s a rarer one. Of course, that’s not one I can eat, but still, it shows you’ve got a fine palette.”

The Doctor raised his voice as much as he dared, “Listen here, young man. CALL. AN. AMBULANCE. Call 911. Go pick up the phone!”

“I don’t think I will,” The Stranger replied. “That sounds like a you problem.” He sighed, “You know I totally wish I could help, but I’m just super busy at the moment, and really, I’m not the one you should be asking anyway.” More clinking and fussing and raspy breathing followed, before the jolly tone was completely gone from his voice. “It’s honestly kind of weird that you’re asking me that.”

The Doctor decided then to wait. To decide how best to use his energy. Clearly, reason and rationality were not going to work. The two men listened then to the birds and the gentle rustling of leaves on the breeze. Then, The Stranger decided to fill the silence. 

“I was a chef, you know. Not anywhere fancy or anything, but I loved it. It was one of those bougie places where the menu is always changing, and you were always learning new things to cook with. Of course, there was all the yelling and the heat, and the benefits sucked. But that stuff never bothered me. Well, not until I had to actually use the benefits, of course.”

And the Doctor felt his heart flutter. From the blood loss, but also from the dread of recognizing The Stranger’s voice at long last. 

“Can you move your head?” The Stranger asked. 

“No.” The Doctor replied. 

“Can you see the trees from where you are?” The Stranger asked. 

“Only a little.” The Doctor said. “But yes.” 

“You know, you’re right, you’re not quite under them. I was hoping you might roll a bit more when you fell.” 

With that, The Stranger grabbed him. Though he couldn’t feel the rest of his body, his neck and the left side of his face hurt in a way that felt almost electric. The Stranger dragged him to the edge of the yard, to just beneath the trees. As he flopped to one side, The Doctor caught a glimpse of the puddle of blood that had come out of him, and felt a strange sense of calm at seeing the size of it. Like what he was fighting for so hard might already be a decided battle. Like he should just let go.

He looked up at oak, pine, and walnut above him, the walnut just beginning to turn fluorescent orange. As The Stranger released his grip, The Doctor also got a better look at the purple and red sores all over the other man’s arms. 

“Did you know that what you’re doing right now is dangerous?” The Stranger asked. The Doctor still thought of him as The Stranger because even though he remembered his voice, he couldn’t remember his name. He remembered the name of The Stranger’s grandfather, though, the man he’d treated a lifetime ago; Ernie Simms, the man whom The Doctor had made his name on. The man whose life he’d saved so long ago.

“Did you know that you don’t even have to be walking through the grass or hiking in the woods to worry about ticks? If you’re anywhere outside, anywhere beneath the trees, you’re in danger of them landing on you.” 

The pain in the Doctor's neck and face began to ebb away, as he imagined his blood ebbing away with it. 

“Do you know how much just one little bite from one of those bugs can fuck up your life?” The Stranger asked. 

The conversation that The Doctor had had with The Stranger was coming back to him. If he hadn’t been so busy that week he might have entertained The Stranger’s ideas. But he’d been swamped with work, and really, the man needed a psychiatrist more than anything. He was crazy.

“Look, son, I remember you now, alright?” The Doctor’s words were quieter now. “But what you described isn’t possible. When I treated your grandfather, that was a well-known illness, just not in his part of the world. It was a real sickness. What you were describing to me is more of a sickness of the mind, son.”

“You keep calling me ‘son,’” The Stranger said. “You don’t even remember my name, do you?” 

The birds and the cicadas were all that answered him. 

“I did manage to find a few things I could eat, after you hung up on me.” The Stranger said. “Just a few spices and seasonings. No fresh herbs, though, nothing I could eat in bulk. Nothing to really stave off the starvation.”

“I tried everything. I thought maybe I’d just become allergic to everything I’d eaten before, so I tried new things, fruits I’d never heard of, animals I’d never tried. I even started picking up bugs from the ground and testing those. But everything just made me so sick.”

The Doctor interjected. “You just have to make yourself eat, son, that’s not a real disease. Sure, there’s Alpha Gal, that one makes you allergic to red meat, but there’s not a tick bite that makes you allergic to everything, son.”

The Stranger ignored him, as the Doctor once again felt his hair getting wet. His blood was running out faster than the dirt below could drink it up. 

“Oh, it’s not everything.” The Stranger said, “I finally figured it out, I think.”

“I wonder if maybe my grandfather, doing all those tests back in the day, made this happen. Like my immune system was ready for the usual symptoms, and made its own disease or something. I’ve had to come up with my own theories, since everything’s out of network, or referral only, or booked six months out. I’ve had to be my own Doctor. And I’ve been conducting my own experiments.”

The Stranger held up a bag full of spices to the Doctor's nose. It smelled warm and earthy and just a little hot. “I made my own little seasoning blend of the spices I can tolerate, but it took me sooooo long to find anything of substance I could eat.” 

“See, I discovered it by accident. I started getting these nosebleeds last week, a side effect of starving to death, I guess. And the blood tasted so sweet to me.” 

“I did a better test run, of course.” The Stranger then held up a foot above the Doctor's face, one that was missing two toes in the middle, the stumps freshly scabbed over. “I needed to know for sure how far gone I was, if I was being crazy. And those toes were the sweetest things I’d ever tasted. They didn’t make me sick. I still think about the smell, they were the only thing that smelled so good in so long. Everything else just smells rotten to me.”

The Stranger shuffled around, then at long last put his face above the Doctor's face. He had the same sharp nose, the same smile lines as his grandfather had had. But though he was young, he looked worse than his grandfather ever had, even on death's door so many decades ago. His entire face was covered in sores, caked over with makeup. On one of his cheeks, the blood had absorbed the tan paste and was dripping out in thick clumps. The Stranger smelled like he was dying. He smelled like he was already dead.

“You’re going to kill me just becasue I wouldn’t run a medical trial on you? Son, there are so many other people you could have gone to; I’m half retired, I’m not an emergency doctor, and I’m not a damn psychiatrist.”

Then The Stranger said words back to The Doctor that sounded so familiar, and when he did so, he mocked The Doctor’s voice. “I’m not killing you. I’m just not able to help you right now. I’m very busy, and there are so many other people you can call.”

The Stranger snapped back to his own voice, having an argument with himself. “And don’t you think I tried?” The Stranger asked, once again yanking the Doctor up, but though he braced for pain, none came. “Don’t you think I tried everything I could? Don’t you think I called everyone I could? I’m fucking dying.”

“Anyway, don’t worry. You’re not special. I’m visiting you first because you were my last resort, the last person who could have helped. And also, if we’re being honest, because you live all alone in the woods. But when your body runs out, I’ve got so many other people to call on.”

The Doctor heard bottles clinking once again. “I think I’ll make my own little spice mix just for you. You have such fine tastes after all.” He laughed, “and I have a feeling you’ll taste just fine too.”

As The Stranger dragged The Doctor back, he started talking once more, this time the rasps and the labor of his breathing doubled from the exertion. “People always try to save the best bite for last when they’re eating, you know. But I’ve always thought the first bite was the most important, especially with trying a new dish. It sets the tone, the expectation for how the rest of the meal is going to go. It’s so important, especially when trying a new food.”

The Doctor heard his sliding glass door open, and then close one last time. The Stranger laid him down on cool tile. “I think, for you Doctor, I’ll start with the heart. It’s time we warmed it up a little. I’m thinking in the cast iron, with some salt, oregano, and savory. We’ll keep it simple for now. I’m very excited for my new culinary journey, and I don’t want to risk spoiling that first perfect bite.”

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and Bluesky. 

Until Next Time: Remember that when one door closes, another door might also close, and maybe a few more after that, but hey, sooner or later one door has to open up somewhere, right?