It's Always Been There

David sat back in the waiting room chair and glazed over a few ancient magazines on the side table. The damn thing was at it again: itching, burning... driving him fucking crazy. He absently scratched at the irritating area, and rolled his eyes with a sigh.

"David Wilson? The doctor will see you now," The white-coated nurse from behind the counter announced pleasantly over the intercom.

David got up, quickly rubbed his fingers over the malady, and made his way through the opening doors.

"So, Mr. Wilson, what seems to be the problem?" Dr. Black asked as he nudged his glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

"Well," David began, instinctively removing his shirt to give the problem its proper appearance, "It's this... thing on my shoulder; it absolutely is driving me up the wall."

Dr. Thomas Black scooted his wheeled chair closer to the mass on David's shoulder and barely concealed a shuttering gasp. "H-Holy God! What on earth is THAT!"

"Honestly, I don't know... it's always been there," David began as he prepared to lapse into the stories millionth retelling.

"One day, maybe fifteen years ago, it really started to bother me. I remember it being there long before that, though, in one capacity or another. It was just a lump, nothing major, then it began to get a little bigger, then a little bigger still... yeah, it got pretty big. So, instinctively I started prodding it and picking at it... you know, typical reaction from a regular stupid no-nothing. I never thought it was necessary to tell a doctor about it, though plenty of my friends and family practically begged me to do it..."

"I should say so, Mr. Wilson!" Dr. Black interrupted, sitting up. "Something like this absolutely needs medical attention! How you thought you could just go around basically ignoring something so obviously serious is so beyond me..."

David suppressed a bit of laughter. "You sound just like my mom,"

"Mr. Wilson, I'm afraid this problem is nothing to laugh at. We need to get you looked at by a specialist right away! I mean, I have no earthly idea what this could potentially mean; cancer, epidermal trauma... the potential problems are staggering!"

"Well, be that as it may, I'm afraid you haven't heard the most interesting part," David said sitting back, slowly stroking his shoulder with an almost affinity.

"After the, well, organs started to appear, I became at once curious and revolted. So, with a little wonder and fear all rolled into one, I began to poke it with stuff..."

Dr. Black's mouth fell open as though he had something to add, but David cut him off with a swipe of the hand not then massaging the thing on his upper arm.

"So, one day, as I was jabbing it lightly with a fork I'd just gotten done eating with, a tongue... or something kind of like a tongue, lashed out and licked it clean. Of course I was freaked out and proceeded to smack at it until it bled. It hurt, and the thing let me know by somehow creating noise and growls. I couldn't sleep that night so, in a fit of sheer exhaustion, I fed it."

Dr. Black collapsed back in his chair and began furiously jotting notes while thumbing in a number into his cell phone. His face had gone flush and the gorge, made all the more apparent by his prominent Adam's Apple, rose and fell with every beat of his quickening heart.

"Well," David began again as he sinisterly watched the thing on his shoulder produce more of itself. "It was then I figured out that what I had was so much more than just a lump, or a "dead twin", as some web sites led me to believe."

Dr. Black dropped his phone. The notebook and pen clattered to the floor. What was something no bigger than a Billiard ball had grown in proportion to that of a raccoon-sized mammal. Though it bore it's similar shape, this was no animal (or anything, for that matter) that Dr. Black had ever seen. It was festooned with thousands of half-inch long, opaque teeth that stuck out in every imaginable angle. There was one eye, misshapen, yellow and oozing, off to the left of what might have been a head, and what could only be described as warts or boils etched every bit of its long, weasel-like length. But, worst of all, was the very last thing Dr. Black ever saw: just how lightning-quick the thing was as its endless maw engulfed him.

"Yep, doc," David said as he sighed, swallowed, and climbed back into his shirt, "It's always been there."