I’m a quadraplegic and I’m being eaten alive

3 years ago, I had an accident on the best day of my life. I had just won the lottery.

50 million dollars.

After giving my overbearing boss and abusive coworkers a piece of my mind, I drove out of that parking lot that I would thankfully never see again and tore right across a busy intersection where a 10 ton trailer truck slammed into my tiny sedan at 60 miles an hour.

When I woke up, everything was blindingly white and I couldn’t move or feel anything. I remembered the lottery, the crash, I could see the sunlight refract off of the windows onto ceiling of the hospital ward. At first I assumed it was just sleep paralysis, but a minute passed, then several minutes then an hour. A doctor came in to tell me what I already knew, I was permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

It took a year of suicidal regret and therapy but I came to terms with it, I’ve never been one to stew on my misfortune and besides, I was rich. I just needed the perfect environment to cope with my situation. My lottery payout let me build a home to suit me perfectly. It started with a staff of half a dozen. A chef, a maid, a physical therapist, a few assistants and my cat. I got rid of all the mirrors so that I’d never have to see myself and got rid of all direct internet access so that I didn’t have to see what I was missing. When everything was set up, I started to optimise. I didn’t like to see other people walking so effortlessly when I could barely turn my head. Luckily, modern smart home technology let me slowly replace every single one.

My food was ordered based on ideal nutritional requirements every day and delivered to a robot at the door. I had a swarm of roombas and cleaner bots, I could speak and control the lights, temperature and shower. And best of all, I had a custom million dollar motorized chair built that doubled as a bed, I could use it to go anywhere in the house and it massaged my limp body to make sure I didn’t develop bed sores as well as managing my waste and swapping out my clothes. The only one I kept around was my cat, Simba.

Life was okay at first, I read books, watched old movies, wrote some noir fiction with Simba faithfully on my lap keeping me company. And then I started to spot strange red stains. My chair or a roomba would leave a red streak on the carpet, faint, red paw prints where Simba has been walking, red stains in my laundry. I didn’t think much of it, perhaps some spice in a meal I had eaten recently or some mud from the garden, but then it got stranger.

I can’t look down, my chair holds up my neck and spine so I can only really describe what I think I see in my periphery and from a distance. The red streaks grew longer and redder. This was definitely not mud. On the carpet, on the hardwood floor, on the stairs, scarlet streaks that would slowly fade as the roombas scrubbed them into pink soapy water and vacuumed them up. And then everywhere else were the paw prints, on the marble counter top, on the sofas, on the tables and desks. And as Simba came up to sit on my lap, climbing up to lick my face, I could smell it on his teeth, fur and breath that it wasn’t tumeric or paprika, this was blood, fresh blood.

So I figured, maybe there’s rats that Simba is hunting, or birds, but there was never any fur or feathers, and it kept getting worse. Soon the roombas couldn’t keep up, the floor was perpetually stained pink, all surfaces were red splotches that would clot into dark maroon then fade into the background of fresh paw prints. I felt like I was living in some sort of macabre art gallery.

Then I started to feel strange, weak and light headed. My nutrition AI kept stuffing me with iron rich foods and supplements based on my health readings. What finally broke through my self imposed ignorance, the veil I had hung to keep myself sane, was noticing that the momentum I felt tugging against my neck when the chair massaged me was reducing. It’s like there was less mass to push against, almost like there was nothing beneath my knees. I knew at that point that Simba was eating me.

I have no family, I insulted everyone who knew me either when I won the lottery or when I lay in that hospital ward wishing I was dead. Nobody checks up on me because I like it that way, but now I realize that I’m going to die here. I’ve built myself a coffin and Simba is going to make sure there’s not even a corpse left. The entire home is self sustaining and all my bills are paid automatically, I have visions of this home being visited 10 or 20 years from now and all that’s around is a skeleton on a chair and an old well fed cat living off of automatic food delivery.

This morning, the roomba pushed a severed toe against the leg of the coffee table. I recognized the crescent-shaped scar on the nail. I’m typing this using my eye-tracking software, the same program I use to write my books. It syncs directly to my publisher’s cloud. They’ll probably think this is just my latest horror manuscript. By the time you’re reading this, I’m probably already dead. If that is the case, I only have one request, please take care of my cat Simba. I love him and I’m sure he didn’t mean me any harm.