The big worm gathered in the face, a creature born from beneath the skin. It wasn’t always there. At first, it had only been small — a subtle swelling, a soft pressure building deep in the pores, unnoticed. But like all things that fester in the dark, it grew.
With every passing day, the worm found more room to stretch, to coil and writhe, feeding off the tension, the stress, the silent thoughts that gnawed in the back of the mind. It wasn’t just the acne. No, the acne was the surface. The worm was the cause, an unseen parasite. The more the person hated themselves, the more pressure they put on their own soul, the more the worm thrived.
It fed on doubt, on shame, on every critical thought thrown at the mirror. It was there in the way they avoided eye contact with others, the way their hands trembled when brushing past someone, the way they couldn’t look in the mirror without seeing the worm, feeling it wriggling, creeping, growing.
At first, it was a small thing — one pimple here, another there, like tiny, innocent creatures seeking shelter. But soon, it became something more — a swelling, a pulsating force, pulling the skin tight and inflating the face until it no longer seemed like their own. The worm twisted through the pores, a living thing, calling attention to every flaw, magnifying every imperfection. No longer was it just skin — it was an infestation.
And like an infestation, it became harder to control. The more they tried to scrub it away, to smother it in creams and masks, the more the worm resisted, pushing back against their attempts to rid themselves of it. The worm thrived on the fight, growing larger with each failed effort, every time they saw their reflection and hated what they saw.
It became a cycle. The worm couldn’t be killed because it was not just a thing that lived on the surface. It lived inside, in the thoughts, the fears, the doubts. And so it grew, swelling in the face — a constant reminder that sometimes, the hardest battles are fought against things you can’t see, things that live beneath the skin.
