Everyone Likes an Unexpected Surprise

Here is a piece that I had to complete as part of my Creative Writing course. It is complete as a five hundred word piece or I could make it into a longer story. Enjoy.

“Everyone Likes an Unexpected Surprise”

Jake turned the shower to full power. The cubicle filled with steam and he closed his eyes as hot needles pummelled his back and legs. Drop by tingling drop he felt his body slowly coming back to life.

Stepping out of the bathroom he half tripped over his rucksack, lying against the radiator where he had flung it somewhere between locking the front door and collapsing into bed.

The long flight back to England had been a blur. A bad flyer, he had taken valium upon boarding and a couple of beers to chase it. Dreamless sleep had been swift.  He awoke in surprise to a gentle nudge. The elderly woman beside him was asking him politely in heavily accented English if  he could move his legs so that she and her husband could get out. The plane, he realised had landed and was rapidly emptying. He apologised and stood up.

Descending the steps off the plane at Heathrow, he held the narrow rail to steady himself.  

Back at his flat, disorientation and exhaustion took it in turns to welcome him back. The sounds and smells of the city seemed alien to him, he had exchanged the bright sun of Santiago for the gun metal grey of London.  He had been gone two months but it may have been years.

And now even after twelve hours sleep it seemed his jet lag wasn’t in a hurry to leave. He swallowed two aspirin and a mug of double strength instant coffee, burning the roof of his mouth in the process, he thought about returning to bed.

Jake scratched his head absently. He had begun to feel rather itchy since the shower. The water had been too hot, to the point of scalding. But it felt good in the steamy cubicle, closed off, womb like. He hadn’t wanted to leave.

Perhaps he had burned his scalp? Or maybe it was the shampoo? He wondered if shampoo ever went off.

It was an unsettling feeling -  the itchiness, as if he wasn’t connected with his body. A stranger in his own skin.

Jake scratched again and that’s when he felt it. A lump behind his right ear.

What the….? That definitely hadn’t been there this morning. It hadn’t been there in the shower, he would have noticed.

It was a small nodule like protuberance, about the size of a child’s cardigan button.

He lifted his damp, shoulder length  hair aside with his hand and attempted to capture an image with his iPhone. It was no good, the area behind his ear just appeared blotchy.  Dragging the hall mirror into the bathroom he managed to catch a proper glimpse of the thing.

It was larger than he thought.

Jake squinted into the bathroom mirror to get a clearer view of the back of his head in the glass behind him. In the mirror he watched as his right hand came up sneakily and rubbed the strange lump.

It moved.