In an unremarkable bedroom in an unremarkable apartment in an unremarkable city, a young man was sound asleep in his unremarkable bedroom. He wasn’t quite as young as he looked, but he was young all the same, only through his first year of high school. His hair was red and curly, and the spray of freckles on his pale face was hidden by his pillow. He slept shirtless and with his thin blankets pushed down to his hips in an attempt to remain comfortable in the late summer heat with the air conditioning broken. The slight sheen of sweat on his exposed skin suggested that, as measures go, it wasn’t very effective.

Down the hall, in another unremarkable bedroom slept a woman with the same red hair as the young man, though her smile lines and frown lines, along with the faint traces of grey at her temples, showed that she was well out of her teens and into adulthood. Unlike her son, she was bundled under her thick blankets as though she were trying to keep warm. Sweat soaked into her pillow, leaving it damp. alongside the drool from her open mouth, leaving it even damper, and her own freckles were on full display across her nose and cheeks.

The boy’s name was Jubal Carter. His mother was Mary Carter. They were the only people in the small apartment and they had no pets. So far, this hot summer night was just like every other hot summer night that came before it in the unremarkable apartment in the unremarkable city.

That changed when a hole opened in reality directly over Jubal’s bed and a fist-sized lump of...something... fell out of it and onto the mattress next to him. It changed even more dramatically when, shortly after the hole in reality closed, Jubal rolled over.

Normally, rolling over onto something unexpected wakes you right up. Jubal, a teenaged boy who had been up late playing video games, snored on. Normally, if a lump of alien matter sears its way into your skin and, from there, through the rest of your body, you wake up screaming. Jubal, an incredibly deep sleeper with what could be described as a truly ridiculous level of pain tolerance, mumbled a little and rolled back over onto his belly, before going back to snoring softly. Normally, you wake up when you’re hungry enough for it to hurt.

Several hours after he should have woken up, Jubal woke up, feeling like his stomach had been replaced by a cavernous pit, and staggered down the hall into the small kitchen to make himself something to eat. As he walked, he absently noticed a handful of dull pains in his abdomen, legs, and throat, but he was too hungry to care about that. He turned at the end of the short hall, wobbled into the kitchen, still half asleep, and set about making himself a peanut butter sandwich more by muscle memory than conscious choice.

It would have been peanut butter and jelly, but there was no jelly in the kitchen, so plain peanut butter it was. He started eating without bothering to close the jar, leaving the butter knife sticking up out of it, and picked up the pen next to the grocery list. Jubal clicked the pen one-handed and, without pausing in demolishing his sandwich, added “jelly” to the list in careful, tidy letters. As he clicked the pen again and set it down, Jubal realized that the sandwich was gone and he was even hungrier than he had been when he made it.

Jubal picked up the rest of the bread, carried it over to the table, and set about making himself another sandwich. As he pressed the slices of bread together around the thick, creamy peanut butter, Jubal realized that he really needed a glass of milk with this. So he got himself a glass and poured some milk from the half gallon bottle in the refrigerator. Impulsively, Jubal put the bottle on the table next to the peanut butter and bread, still open, with the cap next to it.

Stolen novel; please report.

He was right. Peanut butter sandwiches washed down with milk were heavenly. It hardly felt like any time had passed before the bread was gone and Jubal was scraping the inside of the peanut butter jar with a spoon. He sat back to enjoy being full, with a slight cringe at the thought of the stomach ache that would inevitably come from overeating like that.

There was an ache in his stomach alright. He was still hungry.

He walked back to the pantry and pulled out a box of cereal. From the cupboard, Jubal retrieved the bowl with the least chips in its rim. He poured himself a bowl of cereal, picked up his spoon, and began to eat.

When the bowl was empty, Jubal poured himself another helping. Even though he ate slowly to let his stomach figure out when it was full, he finished the entire box and drank all of the milk before that happened. Something else happened, though. The barely noticeable pain in his body became a sharp burning sensation that took his breath away and made the kitchen blur and wobble.

No matter how hungry he still felt, this was much more important. Jubal stood up and promptly fell down when his knees buckled with a new wave of pain. He landed on the kitchen floor with a crash and a whimper, hardly registering the pain from landing on his knees. Unfortunately, his mother was a deep sleeper, and it was — he glanced at the clock — three in the morning. He was either going to have to go to her, make enough noise to wake her (or a neighbor, who would be more likely to make a complaint than to help), or wait on the floor to either feel better or for her to find him on her own.

He tried to get up, leaning on a chair, and produced an even louder crash when he fell and it landed on top of him. Standing up was out, then. Trying to call out for help failed as well, when Jubal was only able to produce a croaking gurgle from his burning throat and mouth. It felt like the inside of his throat was rearranging itself, and was no longer able to make the sounds he needed to talk.

Another wave of pain came, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to wait for his mother to find him whenever she woke up. He wasn’t even able to scream, and by the time she found him, he might not even be alive any more. Jubal reached out and began to crawl. The cold tiles of the kitchen floor scraped along his arms and legs as he dragged himself out of the room, providing a bit of welcome relief from the burning sensation.

The hall was carpeted, and dusty. So close to the floor, it was easy to see that it had been too long since the last time it was vacuumed. Jubal found himself dragging his flagging, aching body along it, dust and grit clinging to his skin and making him even more uncomfortable. It felt like his mother’s bedroom door was impossibly far away, even though it was normally a matter of seconds to reach it.

Eventually, he got there, and faced the challenge of opening the door. It was good that the door opened inward; it meant that he could crawl up it with his hands like a toddler, lean against it, and turn the handle to get it open.

This approach also meant that he fell into the room, crashed against the bed with an enormous THUNK, and landed with a whimper. Fortunately, the racket woke his mother.

“Whazzat?” She mumbled. “Jubal, is that you?”

Jubal tried to talk, said something that sounded like “gllargbbm”, reached up, and knocked on the baseboard of the bed. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

The bedside lamp clicked on, and a pair of bare feet with chipped blue polish on the toenails slid to the ground.

“Jubal, if this is a — yawn — joke, it isn’t a funny one.”

She realized that it wasn’t a joke when she stepped on him and he made a choking, gurgling noise. His mother took in a sharp breath and knelt down, hard and fast, knees slamming into the floor near his head.

“Can you breathe?” She asked.

Jubal nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

“Can you get up?”

He shook his head.

“Are you in pain?”

Vigorous nodding.

“Right. I’ll call for help. Bang on the bed if you get worse.”

Jubal gave his mother another thumbs up and tried to relax as she walked away. If she wasn’t panicking, then he didn’t need to, either. He still hurt, though.