She heard the collective shrill from the trees above, breaking the early morning birdsong. Somehow, she knew what was coming because she hunched her back and closed her eyes. Her skin knew, too; gooseflesh formed all over. And then they fell from the tree, a horde of them—red, hard, segmented bodies, two inches long, with stingers at their asses, antennas on either side of their heads.
They fell from a long height but landed as one unit; like a blanket, they covered her back, and as soon as their legs straightened, they bolted, scattered, and ran down her outstretched arms, around to her belly, down her legs, across her chest. She screamed, and some of them entered her mouth.
She pulled at her lips, fell to the dew-covered grass, on her side, and coughed purposely. Her eyes still squeezed shut; she had to get them out of her mouth, so she dug for them in a panic, and pulled a few of them out, but not before they had buried their rigid stingers into her soft, fleshy cheeks, in between her teeth, along the gumline, three spots on her drying tongue, one on the roof of her mouth. Cough, cough, fingers in her mouth, digging, grabbing, pulling the bugs from inside her face. Some still had their stingers and when she caught them, they stung her fingers. Felt like nails going in through to her bones.
She couldn't get them all, so she thought, Screw it, and chomped down, eating them, their hard bodies so very crunchy, not tasting like anything. That's when she noticed the pain.
Hot pain. So much pain. In her mouth. She imagined being bitten by a snake inside her mouth.
Hot pain. All over her back, her arms, her legs, her crotch. She then realized she'd been rolling from side to side in the wet grass, the movements not saving her from being bitten by these insects that seemed to have an agenda—cause as much pain as possible to this human being.
But what had she done to deserve this? Nothing. Just stood in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The insects that had jammed their stingers into her flesh had run off into the grass. The rest still dashed along her skin, their stingers still intact.
The hot, burning pain beneath each stinger was still erect in her skin, and there must have been hundreds of such sites; she wondered if poison accompanied the pain, and if so, what was the poison going to do to her?
Not too many bugs left. She swatted at the ones that still crawled on her. Then she tried to stand. She managed to rise onto all fours, her sweaty hair dangling down, the ends touching the indented grass. With heavy breaths, she spat out the crunchy bits of dead insects.
Suddenly, her feet fused together.
She screamed and looked back as her flesh became black and lobster-shell hard and pointed...like a stinger.
About the author
Laura Shell has been published in NUNUM, Maudlin House, Citron Review, and many others. Her first anthology of paranormal stories, The Canine Collection, was released this year, and she is currently working on her second anthology. You can find out more about her at https://laurashellhorror.wordpress.com.
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