But that's what flash fiction is about anyway - push your limits and see how far it will take you.
THESE DAMNED INSECTS
Velvet Madrid © 2016
He couldn’t understand where they were coming from, waking him up from a deep sleep filled with dark dreams. But they were coming out anyway. Out of their cracked shells, their cocoons or whatever else people called them. He couldn’t remember the simple words, his head too wrapped in sleep still, still caught up in his dark dreams of blackness coming to life.
Co-coon, he said out loud, his mouth so dry he had to swallow just to get his salivary glands going again, yet feeling something scratching against the back of his throat. What did that even mean, he wondered as another insect burrowed out of its case, falling onto the pillow next to him.
God, they were so annoying. How did this happen anyway? One day he was going about his own business, doing his thing with the homeless idiots standing outside his building, and then the next, he was watching all these damn insects hatching out of their shells, some of them flying, buzzing about his head, driving him insane.
Wait! Was he going insane? That was it! He was going insane! Nah, couldn’t be. He was sane - that he knew. Maybe he was still dreaming. Maybe he hadn’t woken up yet. That’s why there was an insect wriggling on his pillowcase, joined by another, and another, each one getting bigger than the last. A dream! What else could it be?
Fuck, now his head itched, strands of his hair seeming to move on its own accord, like something was caught in his hair. He sat up, scratching his head as hard as he could, his fingers pulling things, wriggly, moving things clinging to his scalp. Eh, you got crabs, dontcha? But crabs didn’t burrow in one’s hair, they lived in pubes; these had to be lice, only they were bigger, with a pair of hooks for mouths and hairy bodies. Gross!
Something buzzed against his ears and he covered them with his hands, shaking his head from side to side as if doing so would silence them. But they just kept on buzzing, like they were coming from inside his head.
Wake up! Wake up, you dolt! It’s a nightmare, that’s it! Just a nightmare!
You’ll wake up and these damn insects will be gone - and your pillow will be spotless, no squirming insects, bugs, whatever else they’re called. Oh, there’s a beetle! Why were they on his bed now, spilling from his pillow to his bed, under the covers, over the covers, buzzing, moving, squirming about, making the covers undulate.
He blinked, feeling something moving on his eyelashes. Abandoning his ears, he brought his hands to his face, rubbing the pesky insects clinging to his eyelashes. He’d read somewhere that good bacteria lived in eyelashes - what were they called? - he couldn’t remember now, but they did. But if they did, they’d somehow grown bigger, clinging now and dancing on his eyelashes, strumming each eye lash with their claws like guitar strings.
He opened his mouth wide in a scream but something flew right in. Or did it fly right out? What the hell was happening? Wake up! Wake up, you idiot! Wake up from this nightmare and be done with it! You shouldn’t have cursed that old man standing under the stoop last night. He was only seeking shelter from the storm, wasn’t he? But no, you had to insult him, call him names because you were too fucking drunk to care.
What did the old man say? He couldn’t remember now, instead imagining hearing a curse, just like the ones he’d read in books when he was a little boy - before the drugs and booze took hold of him and made him the way he was now.
Black heart, black soul, one day the darkness will eat you whole.
That’s it! That’s what the old man muttered as he lay on the pavement, clutching at his belly. But he’d laughed at the old man, kicking him again in the stomach, hearing the crunch of ribs against his boot.
Black soul eating me whole, my ass, he’d laughed. Like this is some fucking fairy tale. Get out of my stoop and find someplace else to hang out, alright?
The buzzing growing louder inside the room, the bed littered with damn insects that squirmed and wriggled and flew about him, and he began to weep. His windows were shut but they were coming from somewhere - had to! He began to wail, and when he did, he felt the flutter of paper-thin wings brushing against the inside of his cheek, and out of his mouth emerged the ugliest things he’d ever seen in his life. They filled the air before him with a fluttering blackness.
His skin began to burn, and he pulled his shirt up, exposing his belly, the skin bubbling from the inside as if something trapped within was dying to get out. Then pop! The once-tiny pores of his skin gaped open slowly as an insect made its way out, and then another, and another, some of them wriggling and squirming, some of them unfurling wings of paper and smoke. He’d lost count how many emerged, filling his room with a buzzing that now rose to a crescendo. He could barely hear his own screams but he screamed anyway, barely registering the insects emerging from inside his throat, working their way out, each one growing bigger against the lining of his esophagus, gagging him, choking him till he was on his knees on the floor, vomiting more wriggly, deadly things.
Black things.
Serves him right. Well done.
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