The Uninvited Guest Living Beneath My Skin

Sarah noticed the bump on her arm after returning from her rainforest volunteer trip. Just a mosquito bite, she thought.

But it grew. And moved.

She watched in horror as something shifted beneath her skin, a ripple of movement that made her stomach lurch. At the clinic, Dr. Patel’s face remained calm as he examined it.

“Botfly larvae,” he said gently. “You’re not the first. The fly lays eggs on mosquitoes, and when they bite you…”

Sarah felt faint. “There’s something living in me?”

“We’ll remove it today. It’s actually quite common in tropical regions.”

The extraction was quick. Dr. Patel covered the wound, forcing the larva to surface for air, then carefully pulled it free with tweezers. Sarah couldn’t look.

“All done,” he said, showing her the small, white maggot in a specimen jar. “You’ll heal perfectly.”

That night, Sarah researched obsessively. She learned about the phenomenon, about travelers’ experiences, about the larvae’s life cycle. Knowledge replaced horror with fascination.

Still, she checked her skin every morning for months, unable to forget that strange, crawling sensation—the memory of being someone else’s home.