The curse of the boogie woman.

So here is a rough draft of the first short story I have written in about 3 years. Inspired by my all time favourite childhood book, "Just Disgusting" by Andy Griffiths. It needs a work over, but overall, definitely the most feral thing I have ever written. Enjoy spewing your guts out at this one kiddies. 

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As a child, one of my favorite things to do was pick my nose and eat it. Sometimes, when my nose was dry, I had to pick other kids noses. I don’t ask why, I just had a thing for boogers.

Other favorable pastimes included pest control by way of squashing cockroaches until their guts spilled all over the ground in a yellow, pussy, mushy mound of roach, and bringing home maggots to keep as pets. It’s not their fault that they need dead things to stay alive.

It was all fun and games as a child, but pretty soon, my parents became fed up with my disgusting ways. “If I find one more old sandwich in your school bag you will be sorry!” Yelled Mum one day, after finding an old tuna sandwich in my school bag at the end of the summer holidays.  I paid her no attention, and chuckled at my little prank all the way back to my room, ignoring the dry retching noises she was making, and her cries of “unladylike” and “You’re an animal.” Nonsense, I said to myself. I am hilarious.

That night as I slept soundlessly in my bed, sugar plums gone rotten, dancing in my head, something was going wrong. I woke up the next day and had a shower as normal. Brushed my teeth as normal. I put on my clothes as normal. I was just moments away from walking out the door, about to put my shoes on when I noticed my toenails. Normally, I keep my toenails trimmed and painted, but something very strange indeed had happened last night. You see, my toenails were the length of my toes themselves!  I couldn’t even fit my shoes on my feet anymore! They seemed to be growing by the minute. Long, yellowish nail with little bits of dirt stuck underneath it. They were in fact so long, that they were beginning to curl over.

I raced back upstairs and got into bed. Mum came up looking for me and I told her I was too sick for school. She curved her mouth at me, not enough to be a smile, but possible enough for a smirk and kept her brow unfurrowed . She surely knew I couldn’t really have become too sick in the last five minutes, but luckily, she let me stay in bed while she went off to work for the day. As soon as everyone had left the house, I leapt out of bed as quickly as one can when one has curling yellow toenails, and jumped onto google. I typed in “fast growing toenails cure” and medicine.com came up with the solution I had been looking for. “Cut them.”  I quickly located mums manicure set and hacked off the yellowing nails. My toes almost looked normal for a moment… but then… surely not! They began to grow! Little by little, curl by curl, my toenails continued to grow longer and longer.

I went back to google for more research. That’s when I stumbled upon it. Disgustomania. A condition, according to legend, that is a result of someone being so delighted by the idea of boogies and other such squeamish pastimes, that their bodies began to evolve accordingly. If left untreated, one would become so disgusting, that they were banished from society and left to lead a lonesome life of disgust in the deep forests, with the werewolves, vampires and cockroaches. Even as I was reading, I could feel my nose beginning to snot. And not the ordinary sickly kind, but the green lumpy boogie kind. I needed to get to a bathroom to blow my nose toot suite or else there was going to be a green snot explosion!

I made it just in the nick of time, but I knew after one blow that this wasn’t just going to go away. There was so much snot, pouring out of my nose, and so many boogies, it was beginning to fill up the toilet quicker than I could flush it! I needed something bigger. Like a bath tub. I gave up using tissues and put my head over the tub, letting the green goopy snot flow freely. I reached down with one hand to cut my toenails again, which were now so long that I could hardly stand up, and used my other hand to wipe the excess snot off my face. Even for me, this was too much.

I felt a wave of nausea, deep in my stomach. I started to feel exceptionally hot. My face was screwed up in a contorted mess and at that exact moment, my vomit reflex kicked into action and I vomited all my half digested coco pops into the bathtub.

Whats worse than a bathtub full of curly toenail clippings? A bath tub full of curly toenail clippings, that are getting stuck in the green snot, which is being diluted by the coco pop vomit. Thankfully, after what seemed like the biggest spew in the entire world, there seemed to be a break in the bodily excretions. I took a deep breath, while holding my nose, trying not to breath in the boogie and vomit fumes, and took a look at myself in the mirror. Besides being a sickly green color there seemed to be no visible change in my appearance, although my toenails were getting long again.

There was however, a small pimple in the centre of my forehead. I actually take great pleasure in squishing my pimples, so this cheered me up immensely. I squeezed as hard as I could until the yellow puss popped out. I wiped it off the mirror. Admittedly I do find other peoples pimples pretty gross, but when it comes to my own, I see them as a fine form of entertainment. I noticed however, that this was a particularly bad one. The more I seemed to squish it, the more puss that seemed to be coming out of it. It was yellow, but with a few little blood clots mixed in. “Oh no!” I thought. Phase two of disgustomania.

I returned to my snotty, vomity, toe nail filled tub and squeezed the rest of the puss out of my forehead. It left a small cavity and I thought I could see my brain through it. I had more important things to worry about though. Now I had a snotty, vomity, pussy toe nail filled bath tub.  

I sat next to the tub, trying to google the cure for disgustomania, while I tried not to think about my puss filled pimple, still oozing pussy blood clots into the tub. Strangly for me, the mere thought of it was making my stomach have what felt like minor volcanic eruptions and I began to get that clammy but not quite sweaty feeling one would associate with an imminent spew. 

The only answer I could find, to reverse disgustomania, was to drink my own poison. I looked into the bathtub. I knew what had to be done.  The problem was going to be keeping it down. I hobbled to the kitchen and retrived my most favorite Disney mug and apologized profusely to Mickey Mouse for what I was about to do. I kneeled on the tiles, next to my boogie green snotty, coco pop vomit, blood clot pussy, toenail filled brew and scooped a cupful up. I held the cups to my lips and immediately dry retched. Surely I was going to get some kind of morbid disease if I so much as touched this mess.  I knew I had to try again though. My life depended on it.

One mouthful of my bodily excrement had me vomiting all over again. I tried to avoid my tongue as I knew if I got a taste of the pus I would have no chance of finishing it. Luckily the boogies tasted good and I thanked my lucky stars that I had always had a thing for them. There was a slight crunch with the toenails but they didn’t really taste like much. Mouthful after mouthful, my face twisted itself into oblivion and I wondered whether my facials would even be recognizable after this ordeal.

I finally managed to finish it. The whole bathtub full. I noticed as I was drinking it, my toenails were shrinking back towards their original size. My nose was drying up and my pus filled pimple retreating. You could also no longer see my brain. I breathed deeply,  and rummaged through the bathroom to find some mouth wash. 

From that moment forward, I knew I would never pick another nose again.