When Jerome Molker tapped his way up the sidewalk to the restaurant where he was to be eatting dinner that night, he was all in knots with a bad toothache and in general not at in the mood for Jacob. Not that he was a bad person; he held great culinary talent and owned the establishment Jerome was now stepping into. But Jacob often talked much while saying little and always refused paid his share when dining with friends. "Any food he did not prepare could never please his meticulously trained palate," Jerome bit his lip before stuffing the thought away. "I mustn't be so bitter. He means no harm; has never hurt anyone." He was the first patron in the little cafe that night and a red vested waiter with deformed ears, as if the resistance of the womb had been too much for them, scurried to let down a chair for him. "Good evening, Mr. Molker" and he smiled a smile Jerome had seen on a hundred other strangers. He sat in the severe wooden chair and watched as the waiter worked unflipping the others at his table. "Is Jacob around?"
"Well, yes..." The waiter's face crinkled as if the question carried great gravity. "Yes, but he is quite busy. He said he'd come out and talk to you during dinner, when the evening help comes in." Deep inside the kitchen, Jacob stirred and called for the waiter. "Julian” and he left without a word. Jerome rubbed a thumb in his open mouth and prodded his aching molar, hoping to wear the pain out by aggravating it. Spotting a few shadows hovering outside the door, he quickly folded his hands in his lap and wiped all emotion from his face. These were his dinner dates; his manager and his manager's niece.
"Good evening, Jerome."
"Good evening." The young blonde niece had eyes as wide as sky from the moment she walked in. Jerome gave her his intense look; they got wider. He had practiced this look in the mirror.
"Oh, Mr. Molker!" Jerome pulled a chair out for her and commented on the beauty of her dress. She blushed.
"Betsy saw you sing at the Lear last month. She had been begging to see you for the longest time and then she started begging to meet you. I decided to give in early this time."
"It was wonderful! Your voice was wonderful, the songs you sang were wonderful, the club was wonderful, the band was wonderful!" Jerome was happy to hear that everything was wonderful. The doors to their right started flapping and Julian was produced from within them. "Your order?" Betsy decided on a mispronounced fill-et mig-non, her uncle went with some seafood dish, while our Jerome, his tooth not in any shape to tear at meat or tiny tall trees of broccoli, ordered broth.
"Goodness, you mustn't eat like a prisoner!" squeaked Betsy, "Please get something solid."
"Oh, his life isn't all elegance and glamour, my dear. Besides, he's never been much of an eater." Jerome's eyes darted towards his manager, but did not, in their annoyance, see the man's gaudy wink.
"Prisoners do not eat so well," is all he could manage to reply and tapped the waiter on the leg. "Is Jacob coming out soon?" he whispered into Julian's crimped ear.
"Soon, sir. After he is finished preparing your meals." After his mental battery against his poor friend, Jerome now felt especially compelled to see him, to speak kind words and flatter him. He grew nervous and rubbed his knees together, his new slacks shiny with never-been-washed. He paid no attention to the conversation and instead concentrated on gradually applying the backs of his fingers to Betsy's shin. Once there, he wiggled them over her stockings up and down and then, when ready, wrapped his palm about her knee. Every inch it moved, Betsy's voice broke a little more as she spoke to her uncle about shoes and her sloppy roommate. "You'd just have to ssss-eee it for yourself. Her clo-thes...all over the floor." By the time the meal arrived, he had reached the top of her stocking  and was swirling the skin of her inner thigh like cream. She did not look at him while eating, but would have beheld a soft, caring, predatory smile in his eyes had she managed to. Their plates empty and the evening finished, Jerome called on the waiter once again.
"We do not know where he has gotten to."
Before he could reply, his manager was at his shoulder. "I've got to hit the road. Kalagan's tomorrow. Betsy lives a couple blocks up from you; think you can walk her home?"
"It would be my pleasure. C'mon, miss" and he took her hand in his.

Luckily, Jerome did not have to fend off rapists and other night crawlers as would be expected. They reached the halfway point without incident and he remarked that the building they were now in front of was where he lived.
"Oh, but its so plain!"
"Just because I'm on the covers of a couple of magazines doesn't made me rich." This silenced her and they both stood, biting their lips and shifting their weight for a good minute or so. "You look cold..." he said and waited, but she did not pick it up.” You look cold and could do with a drink. Please come up to my room with me, as I could use one, too." She smiled and they started up the stairs and as they climbed, he could feel that she had picked up his momentary wavelengths, his innuendo station and that she was now feeling as excited as he. Upon reaching apartment 4C, he turned the key, shakily and let her in. Switching on the lamps, he saw she had settled on the bed, curled about with her knees under her, her skirts unsmoothed, her shoes off. He stepped towards her.
"I don't what a drink," she said. Her voice was experienced. Jerome placed his hand under her chin and directed her face towards his. He looked; he needn't wait a minute longer. They mingled effortlessly, his hands seeking out the choicest places on her body like the prongs of a diving rod. Suddenly, thought, he felt pain spread deep within him and sprang up.
"Oh."
He studied her for anything that could have prodded him and caused such pain, but finding nothing, continued in his work. No sooner had he touched his lips to her, he felt it again, worse. He could locate it now; it was centered in his stomach and seemed to originate from within rather than externally. "Oh!" he moaned again and Betsy studied him with those same wide eyes.
"What is it, honey?" she cooed and he stopped in his movements, hotly frozen.
"Nothing, nothing. Just indigestion, probably. I'm prone to it." Her eyes did not yield and her mouth slipped into melted, soft concern. He shivered.
"Will you be okay?" She ran her hands up his chest once more, but he denied them and retired to the opposite end of the bed.
"I'm sorry. Perhaps..." Her expression did not change. "No...no...I fell quite ill. Do you...wish me to walk you home?" Still in her concern, she finally stood up.
"No...I will be fine. You rest. Your business," she said, stroking his hand, "depends on your health."  
"Goodnight, Betsy." He dismissed her.
She spoke and moved in android tones. "Good-night" and stiffly bended her way to the door. Jerome, switching down the lamps, did not feel so very ill. The pain was real, but it was more the look in her eyes than the clawing at his stomach that extinguished him. He was sick and sad of seeing all the naive plans of marriage in young women's eyes when ever he just wanted to touch them. He contented himself to sit alone, in the warm dark, sucking on one salve covered finger.

The next morning, his toothache had vanished, but the pain in his abdomen was worse. It did not relent for a minute and left him tangled in his bedclothes, soaked in sweat and moaning behind his hand in bed. Despite his efforts, his landlady still heard signs of his discomfort.
"Mr. Molker, do you have that dog in there again?" Jerome eyed the young male collie at the foot of his bed and gave him a kick. The dog retreated to the kitchen and buried himself deep in the bottom cabinets, as he was trained. "How many times have I told you there are to be no pets in the building?"
"That's no dog, Maria; it's me. I'm in dreadful pain."
"Are you hurt? Have you fallen?"
"No, no, just call a doctor, please. I think I'm very ill" He was sincere this time; he had never felt such a pain in his life and had frightfully realized that blood was beginning to well in the back of his throat, sweet and salty. Something was surely wrong. "Oh, help!" but Maria had already gone.

Jerome's doctor's name was Swenson and he was a large, loud man who smelled of cigar smoke and thought all his patients were stubborn, stubborn whiners. He drug a pine chair across the room to his patient's bed and Jerome winced as the doctor sat heavily and nosily upon it. It had belonged to his mother, like almost everything else in his flat.
"So, its your stomach again, is it?"
"Yes, but different this time."
"Have you been taking those pills I gave you for stress?" The doctor wasn't listening; he was convinced it was just the young man's nervous stomach again and nothing more.
"Sometimes. They made me awfully tired though; I can't take them before performances or I'm too drowsy to sing. But it's different this time. No vomiting or sickness. Just this awful...pain."
"Oh, you've probably given yourself an ulcer with all your worrying. Let's take a look." He pushed the ends of Jerome's jacket aside and unbuttoned his vest. "Do you always sleep in your clothes like this? It's not healthy; you need to be able to move about freely in your sleep." His patient could not reply to his nagging; the poor man's muscles were knotted in agony and all he could manage was a tight, forced little sound, like air being pushed from a sealed tin. Dr. Swenson placed his cold, rough hands on Jerome's bare stomach and routinely felt for any lumps or disfigurement. Passing over the pocket were his ribs swept into a V, the doctor felt something that made him pause. "Hmmm-mmm..." He pushed down, not too gently, into the young man's stomach and touched upon something odd; it sat irregular, squirming, out of reach. "There is something here..."
"What? What?"
"I'm not sure yet." A scowling placidness fell over the doctor. The young man could have a tumor; his body might have been quietly and slowly devouring itself for months. The doctor began to prepare himself to tell this quivering, sweating form next to him that it could be dying.
"Check," the dying form gargled.
"What?"
"Can't you check to see what it is?" The doctor fumbled to draw his stethoscope around his ears and placed the disk upon the hollow in the young white naked belly before him.
And something most peculiar happened.
"Mother of Christ!"
"What? Is it bad?"
"I'm not altogether sure! Listen!" He pressed his instrument upon his patient and Jerome did as he was told.
A voice issued from the tube, hysterical: "LET ME OUT OF HERE! DO YOU HEAR ME? OU-" Jerome pulled the scope from his ears and flung it across the room!
"What the hell was that?!" he shrieked, spiting and cracking.
"What did you hear?" The doctor was not acting quite shocked enough for Jerome's taste.
"Well, a voice! A man's voice!" Doctor and patient stared gawk-eyed at one another. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing." And they were silent and staring once more. They were not making much progress. The doctor slowly shuffled and groaned to pick up the stethoscope, brushing the dust from it on his way back to the bed. "Take another listen," he said to his patient. So he did.
"Jerome? Jer-ome? Can you hear me?"
"It knows my name! It's saying my name!"
"Well, wea-do you recognize him?" panted the doctor. Jerome squinted to listen.
"Of course I know your name! It's Jacob! Jacob Comley!"
"Jacob?!" exclaimed Jerome.
"Jacob?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, Jacob," the little voice confirmed
"But how did Jacob get in my stomach, doctor? How did he shrink to such a size to fit?"
"I don't know. There must have been some sort of...accident." Well, neither of them knew quite how to feel. But Jacob did know how to feel and he felt it quite strongly.
"I want to get out!" he screamed, "It's horrible in here!" He started thrashing about, which caused Jerome no little pain.
"Ooh!"
"All right, all right. We'll get you out" the doctor said and so he began his treatments. He gave Jerome a large glass of milk of magnesia, but after half an hour squatting over a kitchen basin and some messy prodding, Jacob was nowhere to be found.
"Jacob, are you still in there?" asked the doctor.
"I'm not going down there!" he replied. So the doctor mixed a glob of mustard in to a cup of water and gave it to Jerome to drink. Jerome hacked and heaved and turned himself inside outside, but spit up nothing but the blood from Jacob's tantrums. "I can feel him holding on," he said, rather weakly and again held the scope to his stomach. "I thought you wanted to come out, Jacob."
"I scared," came the reply, "I'm scared."   

The doctor left, claimed that Jacob's demand of removal by surgery was too dangerous and sent his bill a week later. Jerome, by then, had gotten a bit more used to his live-in roommate. They communicated by way of Jerome's mother's old ear horn, Jerome curling to press the bell to his stomach in a pose recalling self- fellatio. It seemed that Jacob could hear his host when ever he spoke and there were no problems on that end, except the Jerome became nervous that he could perhaps hear his thoughts, too, but this was unfounded.
"How did you get in there, anyway?" he asked one day.
"The soup. I hope you enjoyed it" Jacob replied, bitterly.
"I did" and Jacob began to scratch at Jerome's stomach lining again, causing him to fall in fits of agony. At first, Jacob only did this went Jerome offended him but soon enjoyed employing such technique at inopportune times, like during Jerome's conversations and performances. This began happening five, six, seven times a night during Jerome's concerts and soon, his manager took notice.
"Say, you don't look so good." Jerome really didn't. "Why don't you take a week off, huh? Get some rest?" His manager had never offered him sick leave before and Jerome was glad to take it.
Three days later he discovered the manager had replaced him.

"This [i]again[/i]?"
"Listen, Jacob," coughed Jerome, "all I can afford is-"
"I know, I know, all you can afford is carrots. Carrots. You eat carrots, I eat carrots."
"Exactly."
"Can't you get another job? Afford more than carrots? There's got to be something else-"
"Nothing else."
"But-" Jerome removed the horn and continued his meal. Soon or later, Jacob began to scratch again. And this time he spit the carrots into the wounds.

Jerome was dying. All the scratching, pickings, bitings and kickings inside him had become infected and had begun to ooze. Jacob told him that. "It's rancid in here!" He could afford next to nothing to eat now and Jacob ate everything that he swallowed and sometimes ate Jerome, too. But Jerome listened to Jacob in weeks; the horn lay in pieces on the bedroom floor, as did Jerome. He still did talk to him, though.
"It all went so fast." He felt Jacob stir within him, perhaps felling pity, perhaps feeling pain, perhaps feeling bored. "At least after I lost all my friends...and my fans, the world don't care about me anymore...at least after all that, I was never alone, huh? Never, ever alone." A bit of pitying sunshine fell on Jerome's drawn face and he turned his neck to take it all in. "I guess...I guess this is passing away. But I hope that there is more to it than that. I'd really like...a bit more direction...force." He felt the filaments of his eyes flash, snap and burn out and even in this blackness, he was still there, could still feel and wanted to feel, as he has always. And Jacob began scratching at him again.