Stomach People
Originally published in Maudlin House

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They first knocked on Tuesday, softly, like fingernails on Tupperware.
Marta was hunched over her kitchen table eating cold oatmeal with a chipped spoon. She thought it was gas at first, some leftover reflux from the freezer-burned salmon she ate the night before. But the sensation returned the next day, then again. Rhythmic. Intentional.
By Friday, she pressed a stethoscope to her belly. Nothing medical, just one of those plastic toy ones from her niece’s old vet kit. But it worked. She heard them. Tiny voices, shifting, like mice sweeping crumbs.
She laid flat on the floor and whispered, “Hello?”
From then on, she stopped eating meat and breads, no fruit bigger than a pebble. No more danger of accidentally crushing anyone. She switched to soft things, like banana paste and unsweetened yogurt, room temperature applesauce. It was easier on their village.
She called them the Stomach People. Not “parasites,” like the doctor had muttered, not “hallucinations,” like her therapist scribbled behind thick glasses. Stomach People, that was all.
They were small, of course, no bigger than tiny cocktail shrimp, though she hated comparing them to something so edible. Marta thought their skin was translucent, like wet rice paper, and that they might have shimmered faintly under bile-light. She thought they might be bioluminescent, but only when they were happy.
Their arms were long and delicate, perfect for crafting or combing each other’s tiny hair. She was sure they had hair, but it was closer to whispery moss. They wore makeshift tunics sewn from shed stomach lining, how resourceful! Their voices were high and insectile, but kind. They chirped like polite crickets. Sometimes, when Marta hummed, they harmonized in falsetto.
She believed there was a leader named Davin. He had a dent in his head and carried the thimble she swallowed as a child like a crown. The others followed him reverently. They were building something in there, she was certain. A city, maybe, or an opera house.
She quit her job at the call center after a manager suggested her “body odor had taken a turn.” She didn’t mind. It gave her more time for the blog. Gut Village got thirty-two followers in its first week. People wrote in:
“Do they like mango?”
“Can they read?”
“Are you a prophet?”
Marta answered every message. She posted a video of herself pressing her ear to her belly, whispering lullabies. A reader from Piqua, Ohio commented he could hear them too, though he thought they sounded sad. One woman sent Marta a homemade, probiotic blend in a mason jar labeled FOR THE COMMUNITY. A man named Jerome claimed he had kidney people, but Marta didn’t believe him. The kidneys were a bad neighborhood, everybody knew that.
It happened on a Monday. A sharp pain cleaved her side while she was microwaving a mug of bone broth. She doubled over, holding her belly like a balloon about to pop.
“Davin,” she gasped. “Davin, please.”
For two days she didn’t eat. Just water, sipped carefully. She placed a tea towel over her stomach to keep them warm. No knocking. No songs. No movement. She panicked. Had the bone broth been poisoned? Did the probiotic jar woman mean them harm? She burned her gut with peppermint oil in penance. Slept on her side so they’d feel cradled. Started writing them letters, folded into tiny boats and swallowed.
“Stay strong,” she wrote. “I will never abandon you.”
By the third week, she was all clavicle and skin. Her hip bones hurt when she sat. The fridge was nearly empty, not from poverty, but devotion. A neighbor knocked once, but she didn’t answer. The light beneath her door stayed off. Trash piled in bags by the kitchen sink. The air grew humid, sour.
She kept to the floor mostly, curled like a comma. Listened for Davin. Waited for chirps. When the knocking came again, real knocking, wood-on-wood this time, she didn’t have the energy to get up.
The lock clicked. Footsteps followed. “Marta?” It was Mrs. Escalante from 3B.
Marta blinked slowly, her pupils waxy. “Shh,” she whispered, one palm pressed gently to her stomach. “You’ll wake them.”
The EMT said ulcer. Malnutrition. Possibly hallucinations from dehydration.
Marta didn’t argue. She stared at the ceiling of the ambulance, felt the sway of motion, and smiled faintly.
“They’re rebuilding,” she said. “I can feel them again.”
The paramedic made a small note on her clipboard but didn’t look up.