CONTEST: Finalist for vacation horror stories – The eye, the rat & the parasite

Here’s one of the three finalists for vacation horror stories. Do you like it? To vote, scroll to the bottom of the story. Check out the prize!

THE EYE, THE RAT AND THE PARASITE

By Earline Feldman of Roswell

My husband booked a trip for us to the beautiful Caribbean Island of Dutch St. Maartin for a week. Everything on the flight from Atlanta was uneventful until we landed. When we exited the plane down an open staircase onto the tarmac in St. Maartin, a small cinder blew into my eye.

It was painful, but I waited until we got into our hotel to do anything about it. So as soon as we entered our luxury hotel suite, I immediately washed my eye out with the tap water from our hotel sink. It wasn’t until the next morning that the next major problem began. I awoke in serious pain with my eye swollen shut.
Rushing into the lobby, the hotel concierge directed my husband and I to an eye doctor in Philipsburg. When we got there, to my shock, the doctor advised me that a tiny local parasite had gotten into my eye from the hotel tap water. Our fabulous trip was now on hold for two days of antibiotic treatment until the swelling had gone down and I no longer had to wear a very large and obvious an eye patch over my right eye.

The third day of our vacation started out fine on the beach lathered up in coconut smelling suntan oils for some sun and fun, but that night, my husband and I were just settling down when I felt something touch my leg. My husband said it was nothing. Then he notice something touching his foot and asked if it was me. It wasn’t!

Suddenly he turned on the light and found a massive wharf rat jumping from the bed and heading toward our large spa-like bathroom. Immediately, he slammed the bathroom door shut and
called the front desk. It was late, but the hotel dispatched a security gentleman up with a long pole twice as large as a baseball bat. The man said that the coconut suntan oil on our skin probably drew in the rat from
our open balcony off one of the adjacent Palm trees.

My husband quickly explained the situation to him and showed him the secure bathroom door. Once the door was closed behind him, all of a sudden the man began screaming in the bathroom, banging the walls and apparently beating the big rat with the pole.

The author and her husband, Mel. The injured eye is covered by the sunglasses.

Just after midnight the man came out of the bathroom covered in blood with the massive rat (now dead), the toilet and the bidet covered in blood as well. At last, the night housekeeping crew was summoned to clean up the mess and dispose of the rat.

But that wasn’t it for me. I packed my bags and sat on the side of the bed all night, a nervous wreck. I was dressed and urgently waiting for daylight to get out of this place and back to Atlanta on the very next Flight. Our tickets were nonrefundable, so we had to pay quite a bit to get a flight back to Atlanta.

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