Well, they’re gonna be mentioned a lot here, and I’m using the discomforting word. Since it seems everyone needs trigger warnings these days, there you go. Don’t get your lacy unmentionables in a knot, because you’ve been warned. Door’s right there—don’t let it hit ya where the good lord split ya.

Mine is a weird story—if I weren’t still going through it I’d have trouble believing it myself. But it’s real, and my shrink told me talk therapy is a good way to deal with the “problem.” Like I had something to do with this, you know, especially after the surgeons told me that there was no way to solve the “problem” without sawing me in half and discarding the lower part.

The fact that I almost said yes to that possibility should tell you something about how annoying this “problem” is. But I’ve been told that I have nice legs and a spectacular ass, and I don’t want to part with them.

Besides, have you ever seen a legless stripper?

So anyway, my “problem.” It’s simple and complicated. The complicated part is how the problem came to be and what it’s doing to me. The simple part; that’s, well, simple.

Something inside my panties is alive, and hungry.

There, it’s out in the open. I have something living in my panties. You’re probably thinking I’ve got some kind of fancy acronymic STD. I fucking wish. That could be treated with amped-up penicillin or experimental antibiotics. This thing is part of me, and the specialists who poke and prod me on a regular basis are more interested in the how this—creature—developed inside me than figuring out what to do about it. I hear them when they whisper among themselves about possible bioweapon applications—you know, to embed it in women and have them, ahem, target political enemies.

I wish I were kidding. These fuckers are more interested in making DARPA money off me, which is par for the course. I’ve been doing the old give-and-take far longer than I care to admit. I do all right, but my “handlers” have made out better, if you get what I’m saying.

But I’m getting away from the big reveal. I apologize. Old habits from the pole die hard. As an exotic terpsichorean—yes, this bottle-blonde bimbo knows big words—I was always taught to put off showing your naughty lady bits for as long as you can. Get your audience to invest, literally, in your performance. Then reward them for their attention, and maybe try to lure them into a VIP room for something a little more special.

So here you go. I’m about to render my intimate companion temporarily unsheltered. Better make sure you’ve not had lunch, and if you have, that you’ve expelled it.

Pulling off my panties is hard. It does not like being displayed, and definitely doesn’t like being poked and prodded. There are a couple of doctors around here called lefty because they’ve lost fingers on their right hands. As it is, my little friend usually grabs onto my panties and I have to yank until I can overpower it and drop ‘em. You can see me struggling here, and, thank you, but I don’t need help. What I do need is for you to make sure that you are not right up against the plate glass. It’s been known to shatter the divider on occasion.

And, yeah, that slot is so you can leave me a tip. I do appreciate the compensation for my performance.

Ahh, there we go. The little fucker gave up the ghost. Feast your eyes!

I heard the thump, which was probably you being knocked back a couple of steps. Yeah, it’s just what it looks like. The staff has called it everything from a “pussy python” to a “cunt cobra.” The first guy who saw it—and incidentally, it was the last thing he ever saw—drunkenly called it a “trouser snake.”

Sorry, y’all. It’s not a snake—it just looks like one. If you have a head for movies you’ve probably noticed a slight resemblance to an extraterrestrial with a telescoping mouth full of sharp teeth that shoots out with enough force to bust through your breastplate.

Don’t know that one? Wow, you’re missing out.

But that comparison is not quite right, either.

Basically, the thing telescopes like a coiled spring. It peels back like a dude’s foreskin to expose a horizontal mouth like a penis flytrap, which accurately describes it. Little fucker is a carnivore, and damn near insatiable. See how it moves from side to side, kinda like I used to do on stage, on all fours, twerking my bare derriere and letting guys shove rolled-up fifties into my lubed asshole. Baby, that was hypnosis.

My companion has developed a similar kind of talent.

Even now, it’s trying to mesmerize you. It will probably succeed, at least a little bit. Not to its full power since you’re protected by the glass, but you never know. The last journalist who came in here ended up tipping me nearly five grand, and she was straight. My suggestion: Try not to look directly at it for too long. Take your video and get a better look on the recording. What? Yes, you can broadcast it. But you may not want to. How about just listen to me now and decide when the time comes.

Good.

So, you want to know when I first noticed it? I sure could have used this thing early in my life—it would have come in handy to undick the relatives who passed me around like a party tray as soon as I grew boobs and pubes. I swallowed so much of their jizz that I never wanted for protein, and though they never fucked me they splooged enough on my pussy that it was a wonder I never got pregnant by any of them. I embodied the phrase “cum dumpster” until I finally ran away when I was seventeen. Somehow, I managed to hold onto my virginity despite my male relatives. And now, well, I still have my virginity, because of my elongated companion.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about how my friend—who has grown quite a bit and continues to grow—came to be. I do have one idea that I’ve kept from the scientists, but since you seemed so sincere and sympathetic over the phone, I’ll share it with you. One of my many uncles worked at a nuke plant that, let’s just say, had a pretty laissez-faire attitude toward safety requirements and OSHA. He used to brag about how close he could get to the reactors, and I’m sure he glowed in the dark of night. Now, I never saved any of his jizz, but if he got close enough to the radioactivity to get contaminated, who knows what might have happened. Maybe his sperm got mutated and breached the wall of my uterus. Or maybe they were super strong swimmers that could slide off my belly and into my pussy. Or maybe I accidentally transferred some of it into myself during a solo heavy petting session.

It’s a far-fetched what-if theory. But it’s more than the eggheads have. They’re completely stumped as to this thing’s origin.

I first became acquainted with this little fucker when I tried to lose my virginity. I’ll own this: I initiated, and maybe I went a little bit beyond “no” with the dude; I’m not perfect, mind you. We were both horny, and things went from there.

We were making out hot and heavy on an air mattress in the open bed of his pickup truck. It was at a graduation party so we had an audience. I’d already started working as a stripper by then, so I didn’t give a fuck if people could see us doing the dirty two-backed boogie. But the dude—whose name I can’t even remember—was not into PDA.

“Let’s go get a room,” he said. “This is a little too much for me.”

“Just pretend that it’s just us and the stars above, and focus on the fact that I’m here with you and not with the guy who brought me.”

“I can’t. It’s too weird.”

“Listen, we don’t have to get busy right away,” I told him. “Let me sit on your face and see what that does for you.”

I was completely naked by then except for my socks and was about to straddle him when I felt something in my southern territory give out a lurch. That was followed by something that sounded like a fart and I felt something sliding out of me.

Fuck, I thought, I hope that’s not a period shart. I’d been feeling crummy all day. The tradeoff was that PMS made me incredibly horny, and I was bored with self-care.

“What the fuck is that?” he said, though it was more of a yelp. “Some kind of trouser snake?”

I was barely able to process the words coming out of the dude’s mouth when the screams and gasps ripped into the night and I was slammed against the bed of the truck.

“Hey,” I said, brushing myself off, more offended than hurt. “Listen, I get it. You don’t want to put on a show, but that’s no reason to shove me.”

His answer was a muffled squeal. I looked over and did a double-spit-take.

My now-companion—it was much smaller in its infancy—had clamped itself against the dude’s face like an octopus, embedded itself, and was squeezing, hard. Blood flowed freely around huge lips that reached all the way around the dude’s head. I heard this sucking sound and the banging as it slammed his body against the cab of the truck. He clawed at the thing, struggled hard and gave a good fight, but he was no match and eventually gave up the ghost. His body started deflating, like his insides had been liquified and were being sucked out. I watched, more in curiosity than in horror, as his body shrank away. It slurped up every last bit of the dude, even the leftover skin, leaving only his empty clothes. Then, it raised itself up to sniff the night air, turned to face me, gave me a little bow, and retracted back inside me like a tape measure.

How did I react? Just about how anyone would. I freaked out.

There I was, naked, blood-covered, and alone. Just me and the truck. The partygoers had vamoosed. Maybe they were too drunk to notice and moved on to other scenes. But more likely they saw whatever they saw and their minds blocked it, and they quietly slipped away. Denial is a powerful thing. By then I figured it would be to my benefit to vamoose myself, so I extricated the truck’s keys from the dude’s pocket and swiped what was left in his wallet—not like he was gonna need any of it—and took off north. I drove until I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and pulled into a rest area to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up and realized that I needed to do a number three—that’s one plus two if you need it unpacked—so I got out of the truck and headed for the restrooms, the urge more and more pressing with every step. By the time I reached a stall I was about to spew and barely managed to get things unbuttoned. I dropped in time to seat myself and let loose. Didn’t even shut the fucking stall door. It was one of the smelliest dumps I’ve ever taken. I started gagging and nearly heaved. It also felt endless, alternating between a constipation shit and the Hershey squirts. Every time I thought I was finished my stomach gurgled and I had to sit back down again. I flushed multiple times, only to feel the rising shit brush against my ass. Finally, mercifully, my bowels quieted and I started to feel normal. I used up nearly a whole roll of toilet paper getting myself cleaned up. And afterward I stole glances at my, well, you know, what practically filled the toilet, and it was pitch black.

Great, I thought to myself. Not only do I have something living in my panties but I’ve also got fucking cancer.

“No, you don’t have cancer,” a voice said.

I scrambled to shut and latch the stall door. “Little courtesy!” I hollered “Not a good time for a conversation.”

“Relax, you’re alone,” the voice said.

“Like fucking hell. Who are you? Better yet, where are you?”

“Just your new BFF. I’m inside you.”

The previous evening came back, and it dawned on me. “You mean...”

“Yeah, that. I was so fucking hungry I couldn’t contain myself any more. He was tasty.”

Now, you see I’m comfortable with my companion, but that wasn’t always the case. In that moment I was more than a little incredulous. “You don’t say?” I asked, caution in my voice.

“Yes, I do say,” it replied with surprising authority. “Let me lay this relationship out for you. You know what symbiosis is?”

I’ve played along at Jeopardy! enough to know a lot of shit. I had this. “I scratch your back and you scratch mine?”

The voice chuckled, deep and bassy. “Yeah, that’s about right. You feed me every now and again, and I protect you and nourish you. Did you know that you once had herpes?”

“No. Were those the pimples I’d get around my pussy?”

“And the sores around your mouth. Notice I used the word ‘had’? The herpes are gone, courtesy of me.”

“Um, thanks?”

“You’re welcome. And another thing. That shit from hell you just left here is one of the side effects of this association. After I feed and disperse nourishment, you have to get rid of the excess. It’s shitty work.”

“I’ll say.”

“But you’ll be surprised how much better you feel. Already you are stronger and healthier.”

I heard footsteps enter the restroom. A pair of work boots passed by and clomped into the stall to my left. I clammed up.

I flushed quickly, then went back to cleaning myself up.

When I finally felt like I wasn’t lugging around any dingleberries, I flushed one last time and let myself out of the stall. I made for a sink and had just started soaping my hands when someone grabbed me from behind. I had a time for a quick glance in the mirror and saw a backward trucker cap over greasy salt-and-pepper hair and a tan coat. The guy threw me on the floor facing the door and yanked down my jeans. He got my panties down to my knees and grabbed me by the hair.

“Saddle up, bitch. That door is locked and there’s an out-of-order sign on it. It’s just the two of us, so you might as well relax and enjoy it. It’ll be your last good time cuz we’re both going out with a bang.”

I could feel something moist rubbing on my inner thighs. Three fingers dug in to my available holes—his thumb in my ass and two rubbing the folds of my pussy. I felt the digits enter me. I shuddered.

And then came the scream.

Trucker-cap-guy released me and I skittered away and turned to see what was happening. His hand, minus three fingers, was spewing blood in his face. I looked between my legs and I saw it again, slowly creeping out of my pussy. The opening on its head seemed to be chewing something. It swallowed, coiled like a spring, then launched itself, full-assault, at my attacker. It latched onto his sizeable dick and engulfed the total package. I could see pseudopods extending out from the sides of its mouth. They explored his taint and slowly crept around to embrace his ass cheeks. I saw them pull the cheeks apart, and then the man screamed again as one of the pseudopods entered him and yanked him off the floor.

He dangled like some obscene marionette, screaming like the damned as it shook him like a rag doll. Bit by bit, the rag doll started losing its stuffing. I could feel the pulsations as my assailant’s innards slid down and into the length of the thing stretched from my pussy, and I started to feel full again.

This whole process took less than five minutes. All that remained of my attacker were his clothes strewn about and some blood spatter from his destroyed hand. My companion once again raised itself so we were face to face—if I can safely call its tip a face—and it bowed to me. Then it retracted.

“That’s my contribution to the symbiotic relationship,” the thing said. “I’ll protect you from ravishment. You’re safe, well fed, and maybe have a new outlook. Hell, you might even become an avenging angel.”

“I’m sorry,” I told it, talking to my crotch like a lunatic. “I’m no hero. I’m just an eighteen-year-old floozy with nothing going for her—other than,” I laughed at the absurdity, “a literal killer body and enough street smarts to maybe survive.”

“Don’t sell yourself short; here’s what I think...”

It went on, and that’s when I learned its name. Symba—at least that’s what it calls itself—pushed the idea of me becoming an antihero, someone who does good through doing bad. The way Symba put it to me, I could right a lot of wrongs by insinuating myself into the lives of bad men who do worse things. Symba had a sibling—I know, that sounds weird—that had already attached itself to a guy who busied himself with taking care of bad women. So, to maintain a balance, a woman keeping men in check was a necessary evil.

The longer Symba talked, the more sense it made. So I cast my lot with my symbiote.

And, boy, what a ride it’s been.

Getting the stripping job was easy, a low-hanging-fruit way to find deserving victims. Evil men crave situations where they think they are dominant, not realizing that I hold the power. I’m the one on stage looking down on them. I choose who earns my favor and how much he receives. The club security makes sure my customers behave themselves, and Symba protects me and carries out my new objective. I make money, get some satisfaction over seeing these sleazy fucks deflate, and the world is a slightly better place.

I made a deal with Symba that we would take care of my father and all the male relatives who had abused me. Symba agreed, just so long as we played the long game and didn’t try to wipe them out in one fell swoop.

Meanwhile, I started small, pole dancing in another state in a shithole of a biker bar. My first victim tried to ply me with meth and bragged about how he ran the trade and that we were in his territory. For two days after Symba finished him off, I was runny at both ends. It appears that mutant parasites have issue with guys who are walking recreational chemistry sets. I learned to expect a case of food poisoning from hell after we took care of drug dealers. But, as I acclimated to taking nourishment through the flesh straw that lived inside me, I soon ceased to have serious issues of the evacuation sort.

I curried a following on social media and was able to score jobs at more “quality” clubs. Eventually, I worked my way back into the proximity of my father, his brothers, and their male offspring, who once roofied me and lost their collective cherries on me in a gangbang. I looked different enough that I went unrecognized when the lot of them came to my place of business. I held back, declining table dances and private sessions, planting the hook and reeling them in.

I took my father and the youngest cousin first. I don’t need to explain why I wanted my father to become a meal for Symba, but I felt a special kind of hatred for my cousin, who once fucked every hole I have until I bled. He nearly killed me, took pictures, and used them to promote his studliness.

There was nothing special about what happened. I set the honey trap. They walked in with their eyes wide open, expecting one thing and getting surprised by another. Well, maybe for my father, that was true. My one crowning satisfaction from that transaction was the motherfucker’s—or, more aptly, daughterfucker’s—saucer-like eyes on mine, right before Symba latched on. My father recognized me in the end, I’m certain of it. Symba engulfed his head and took half of his guts with one suck.

The cousin got a special. I made him kneel on all fours and present his ass—the little fuck once told me he liked being sodomized by a woman with a strap-on. Symba narrowed itself into a thick tube the girth of a large penis and impaled him, telescoping inside him and shooting out of the dude’s mouth like a roasting spit.

That’s how I found out Symba could form mouths along its sides. It’s a wildly adaptable creature.

With those two out of the way, I finished the gig and went off to work in another state. I waited it out, picking off a couple of corporate raiders who liked slumming in lower-rent gentlemen’s’ clubs. That was my first double header, and I learned then that Symba could extend nearly infinitely. It punched through the first guy’s ass and latched onto the second one’s face, and filled me with so much waste from them that I nearly burst from the bloat. I spent the night on a hotel toilet, flushing every ten minutes, nearly asphyxiating from the smell. It was so bad that even Symba apologized.

“I’ll try not to overeat,” it said. “Even I have limits.”

“I’ll say. I wish you had a nose to smell this. I just might have to cut off my hair because I don’t think I’m gonna get the stench out.”

“Try citrus.”

Good advice.

It pretty much went like that. We took out tools and the rest of the men in my family. No one missed them much. Not a surprise. Their disappearances were written off as wanderlust or entering witness protection. There was unfortunate collateral damage. Some of them left debts, and lenders took it out of the survivors’ assets—er, asses. I considered going after the loan sharks until Symba pointed out to me that the women, for the most part, were complicit in my exploitation. I couldn’t disagree. Symba can be very convincing.

After completing my vengeance tour, I set my sights on the next objective. In that, I failed.

But this, you already know, because you’re here talking to me through a pane of reinforced glass. Still, since you want it in my own words, I’ll summarize for the record.

By then, the political climate had gone seriously sideways and the election gained us a megalomaniac and a remora who bankrolled the victory. He and his cronies immediately started looting the country in every way possible. This group of high-powered government thugs seemed a natural quarry—misogynists, liars, men generally without conscience. But there were also many more layers to negotiate. Still, I thought I’d found a window of opportunity. The gay-hating remora I went after first turned out to be closeted. I staged an elaborate ruse to convince the dude I was intersexual, sending him a sext of me with Symba, who looked like an erect penis. That sealed the deal. I actually let him put it in my ass, and that’s where he was when Symba got hold of him. He exited smooth as goose shit.

That left the now-rudderless chief executive.

To say that the loss of his vice-remora unhinged the remora-in-chief was an understatement. He couldn’t make even the simplest of decisions. And though the press never found out about it, he spent most of his Oval Office time whacking off over vile internet porn. He was prone to my type, having married and divorced former dancers before me, one of whom disappeared without being able to enjoy the profits of the tell-all book she’d written about the experience.

Oh yes, the book. I read it in my spare time. You should, too, if you can find it. When the fuck got elected he had the Secret Service confiscate all the available copies and publicly burn them. But her estate made tons during the run-up to the election, and the manuscript fell into the hands of a less-than-scrupulous international publishing house. It’s now doing a very brisk trade as an eBook. I’m one of the lucky ones—I actually have a signed physical copy. The writer and I crossed paths on the pole. Nice woman. Didn’t deserve what she went through. We were kindred spirits united by our exploiters.

But back to the story.

This exercise required another long game, a very long game. I slowly built up a relationship with him. Flattering him, sending him glamour and boudoir shots, giving him gratis access to fake extreme-porn videos that I paid to have made with the help of an effects specialist I knew. It took me a year, but the line was cast, and I snagged him in a moment of weakness.

It also turned out to be my moment of weakness. Things went so far sideways they formed a circle.

Seeing the chief executive naked was enough to make a billy goat puke. His celebrated muscularity had been manufactured with designer steroids that had shrunk his balls to the size of raisins and left him with a mass of acne scars and fresh, oozing blemishes all over his back and armpits. He smelled like body spray. And the thing he liked to refer to as “the grand impaler” was as thick as a strand of uncooked spaghetti and smaller than a shelled peanut. What little hair on his head after he took off the toupee was patchy and left a smear of slime when I ran my hand through it.

Given these conditions, I was super surprised that Symba was still down to feed. After I’d blindfolded him and ran my tongue down his naked sweaty chest toward his shaved pubes, Symba latched on. The deflation began almost immediately, and I felt remarkably little swelling, as if he had nothing inside him, nothing at all. The feeding had nearly concluded when something hit me in the back and ran several amps of electricity through me, and by extension Symba. Symba fought to stay clamped, but another dose of amps made it lose its grip and retract into me for safety. But Symba had done its job after all; the target had been sufficiently deflated, and the remora-in-chief now spends his days shitting himself uncontrollably and making sculptures with the feces before eating them.

Yes, yes. He’s still the president. No, no. The public hasn’t really noticed any change.

After that, I figured I was a goner. Left up to the Cabinet, I would have been disappeared in secret, or worse. But things took a surprising turn. DARPA—that’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but you knew that—stepped in. After much discussion about what to do with me, the DARPA scientists won, and that’s how I came to be here today.

It’s ironic that my prison is a peep show in so many ways. You’re talking to me through the protective glass. There’s some kind of monitoring system that lets them look inside me whenever they want. Symba’s feeding time is particularly popular. They put me to work executing terrorists, citizen enemies of the state, and violent criminals. I’ve tried to talk Symba into resisting, but I’m not persuasive enough to overcome the instinct for self-preservation. I take small comfort in the fact that Symba has chowed down on the body parts of some of the scientists and technicians here. It has even sampled women who have gotten too close; Symba claims that they taste better than men and if I ever get out of here I’m gonna become an equal-opportunity avenger.

But right now, I lay on a fucking lumpy divan fanning myself and trying to stay pretty. I’m denied clothing save for a pair of panties that keep Symba in check. You’ll notice that I took them off so you could get a look. Symba wants the story told as much as I do, and I hope that you quote me accurately and faithfully. The people deserve to know, and my name needs to be defined by the good I have done, as opposed to that of the word “monster.”

So that’s the story of what lives inside my panties. If you want, you can stay for feeding time. It’s a chance for me to hone my seduction chops, and for Symba to feast on some exotic nom noms since I was told I’d be chowing down on Russian food this afternoon.

It appears that lunch is here.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t bite.”

About the Author:
J. Rocky Colavito (aka Dr. Damned) writes horror of many types as he transitions into retired life after forty-plus years of college teaching. In addition to short stories appearing in collections and magazines—Grindhouse Resurrection, The Sirens Call, Madame Gray’s Poe-Pourri of Terror, The Horror Zine, the inaugural issue of Carnage House, and a host of others—he is the creator of Buck Neighkyd, former porn star turned occult investigator. Buck’s adventures can be followed in serial form in Caveman Magazine, and his origin story, Creative Control, is available from Quest Omnimedia/The Caveman Adventure Library.