Day 751

They were called "Secrets" because they laid their eggs in between windpipe and vocal chords, they were shaped in such a way that for some reason as they grew they made it harder for the host to say certain words. Commonly this lead to shortness of breath and paralysis of the voice altogether from some secreted enzyme that was only produced during the hatching process.

From there is was a matter of weeks before the Secrets would grow, consuming each other at first before they began to move further down the host's neck, their head remaining at the throat while their torso and limbs filled the chest. They'd use their circular jaw to cut a hole in the oesophagus after,of course, using their prehensile tongue to move the oesophagus beside the windpipe instead of its usual place behind.

A fully grown Secret is about three feet tall and weighs between 40-55lbs. Despite many attempts to remove them prematurely, their grip on the host's internal organs leads to multiple ruptures and (in 98% of cases) fatality. They have two main ways of extracting themselves, both resulting in the death of the host.

The first method involves them using a mixture of saliva and the host's oesophageal mucus to plug the hole that they fed from before rotating their body and cutting their way out through the stomach region of the torso, crouching under the ribs and always leaving them intact. If the host doesn't die from blood loss, the faecal matter left behind by the Secret during its gestation would have caused multiple internal infections.

The second method is lesser used but far more brutal. It seems the Secrets are capable of producing an anaesthetic with strong hallucinogenic side effects resulting in paranoia, hysteria and rapid mood swings at best. In the worst case found the young man had killed himself and the Secret, using a butter knife to hack away at himself and, according to the autopsied contents of his mouth and stomach, eaten as much of both as possible before passing away.

We still don't know how the Secrets breed. Their eggs just seem to develop, often being mistaken for cancer before the appropriate scan is done to show the minute embryos developing, eggs latched onto nearby veins like a placenta.

Anyone could have a Secret, after all they're so easy to mistake for a sore throat or persistent cough.