Buzz
It was the
buzzing that first attracted my attention. An angry vibration that
should have served as a warning to stay away. Instead, like a fool, I
sought out the source of the noise.
I crashed through
the woods, pushing foliage aside as I went. The noise grew louder. I
followed my ears, and then my nose as I picked up a sickly sweet
stench.
When I found the
source of the buzzing I wish I hadn’t.
It was a corpse,
all bloated and green. The scent I’d picked up was that of decay as
the poor soul’s insides rotted and turned to slime. I was almost
sick.
Insects were
crawling all over the body, strange wasp-like things I’d never seen
before. They were everywhere, crawling in and out of the dead
person’s nose, ears and eye sockets. Every orifice that I could see
was filled with a mass of angry buzzing creatures, bright yellow and
glistening in the dappled sunlight.
Whether they were
coming or going I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to
know.
My instincts
screamed at me to get out of there, to call someone, anyone, so they
could do something. But there was part of me, the part concerned with
morbid curiosity, that told me to stay put. To drink my fill of the
macabre sight, to memorise the sickening sounds and smells and the
taste of decay on my tongue. I couldn’t move.
The pitch of the
buzzing changed, and knew the insects were aware of me.
Bile rose in the
back of my throat and a voice in my mind screamed at me to run.
The first insect
lifted off from the corpse and flew towards me. My paralysis broke.
I ran.
The swarm came
after me, a malevolent cloud of hatred and buzzing chasing me through
the woods.
Suddenly I knew
the sick truth; the wasps had been leaving the bloated corpse that
had been their incubator. And now they were searching for a new
victim, a home for their own eggs.
Me.
The first sting
felt like I’d been hit in the back of the neck by a golf ball. My
neck immediately went numb and I stumbled in surprise. The second
sting felt exactly the same, and the third.
I couldn’t keep
running.
I crashed to the
forest floor, unable to keep up with the number of stings. The pain
was immense, intense, followed by a seductive cool numbness that
called to me. I fought it as long as I could but the will of the
swarm was inevitable.
I could feel the
wasps crawling over my skin but I couldn’t move my limbs to do
anything about it. I wanted—needed—to scream but nothing would
come out. I couldn’t open my mouth.
Panic blossomed
in my chest like bile as a single wasp crawled over my chin. It was
soon followed by another, and another, the delicate whisper of their
legs like the rush of water.
Something nipped
at my lips, sharp and bright and painful. I choked back vomit as a
realised what was happening; they were chewing their way inside me.
Perhaps choking
to death on my own sick wasn’t such a terrible fate after all.
I watched in
growing horror as a single wasp crested my cheek and looked me in the
eye. Unbidden the ruined eye sockets of the other corpse sprang to
mind and I knew what was to come.
I slammed my eyes
shut. My fate might be an inevitability but that didn’t mean I
wasn’t going to fight it with every breath I had left.
The pressure of
an unvoiced scream grew inside my chest until I thought I would
explode. They were inside my nose now, my ears. Crawling around like
my insides were home. My lips tasted of blood as they buzzed against
my teeth. I couldn’t breathe.
The last thing I
felt before I passed out was the first nip of insect jaws at my
eyelids. After that the darkness was a mercy.
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