By: Carmen Scales
A dazzling speck caught the woman’s attention from the corner of her eye. She turned from her work to face a small beetle on the edge of her desk. The beetle had a dark, iridescent carapace and when it moved in and out of the light, it shone teal and blue. The woman, although startled at first, couldn’t help but to admire the insect’s beauty; that was until it spread its wings and landed on her hand. Instinctually, she clapped her left hand against the back of her right and dreaded the splattered residue on her hands. She carefully lifted her hand up and miraculously, the beetle was still alive, but barely. One of its wings was bent and it could only waddle spastically. She took a deep breath, guilt bubbling, took a Post-It note and pinched the beetle off of her hand. The residual crunch formed a small damp spot on the paper. Instead of crumpling the note, she delicately folded it and placed it in the wastebasket, instead of throwing it in.
About an hour later, another similar looking beetle appeared on her desk in the same spot as the first one. Her eyes glanced to the wastebin to her left; a familiar pink square was still there. The woman took another Post-It note and plucked it off the wall and chucked that note into the garbage. Paranoia began to chew at her concentration. Every other page, her eyes darted to the same spot on her desk. A slight fluttering on the ceiling made her shoulders lurch before she realized it was just a cobweb. This quickly became every other sentence and then every other word. She remembered something her father had told her about bug infestations: for every one you see, there’s ten you don’t. She closed her laptop and packed away her notebook. When she lifted her bag to place by the door to prepare for the next morning, there were three of the same beetles underneath. A shoe was snatched from an unseen place and she loudly swore as she smashed them into the floor. She went to the kitchen to grab a wet paper towel to clean up the carnage. When she turned on the faucet, no water came out. Something in the drain gurgled. Something in the faucet creaked. She went for the handle again, but right before her fingers grazed the metal, a cascade of silverfish burst from the spout. She yanked the handle all the way to the center, attempting to summon the water needed to drown and drain them from the sink. More of the bugs poured out of the faucet, adding to the writhing, silver mass in the sink. She turned the handle the other way. The woman grabbed the liquid soap to trap them and hopefully suffocate them. After expelling all of the soap, she flung a dish towel over the basin of the sink and ran back into her living room.
She itched all over. Red arms rubbed raw; burning, chalky striations dragged up from the ankle to the knee matching the ones in a ring around her jaw and neck; bloody spots oozed on her scalp. What itched the worst was her eyes. No matter how much she rubbed them, it felt like something behind them was moving. She staggered to the bathroom mirror and inspected her eyes more closely. Both of her eyelash lines were puffy and inflamed, but her eyelashes themselves looked unusual. Some of the hairs were thick and blonde with dark brown horizontal stripes–her hair was black. Even stranger, the light-colored hairs were bent perpendicularly. She tried to pluck one of them out.
It twitched.
She committed to yanking it out in its entirety. A small house centipede scuttled down her cheek before falling into the drain. Hysterical shrieks tore themselves from her throat as she tore at her eyelashes and eyebrows. The sink filled with little, black hairs, but the occasional sound of a heavier weight did not go unnoticed and made her rip the hairs out more ferociously. Once her voice was too hoarse to scream anymore, she opened her eyes. The upper half of her face was flushed and pricked bloody, but that was to be expected. The sink below her only contained her own hairs. The woman pulled at her face, shaking off nerves, shaking off madness. She hesitated to rinse her face with cold water, but after a quiet prayer to herself, she mustered up the courage to turn on the water. A jet stream of crisp, cold water shot out, she laughed deliriously. The icy water was a respite. The tingling of hot and cold created a pleasant numb sensation, she almost forgot why she was doing this in the first place. She looked at her reflection once again and sighed. Hair will grow back and cuts will heal, her tears will dry and her scars will fade.
She exited the bathroom and the wall in front of her was black. She turned back into the main living space and all of the walls were black. Her finger went to wipe whatever it was off the wall, but brushed up against a firm substance. The walls chattered and buzzed, and went silent again. She took a closer look at the wall in front of her. Houseflies. Clumped together as an amorphous mass, the walls were completely covered. She remembered when she painted the walls a pale pink. Instead of confronting the flies, she opted to leave the building and hope the problem resolved itself, but the door was gone, consumed by flies. A voice spoke from below. A dozen dozen carpenter ants formed a disgustingly precise diamond shape on the carpet, arranged like an army.
“Your size and strength are immaterial. As a unit, we are far more imposing. You destroy unnecessarily, we destroy what is necessary. Our kind has defeated greater threats than you,” they said.
“Is this because I killed those beetles? The first one was an accident, I’m sorry. But, insects kill other insects all the time. What does it matter that I killed a few? I’m sure you can’t say you’ve never killed a beetle or two,” she replied. She was shaking with exhaustion. Her fear was suspended in paradox, unsure if what was happening was real and unsure if any fear at all is justified.
“You have no place and no say in our battles. We predate you by mega-anna and will outlive you by the same. Humans smother and are smothered by dysfunction in your tumultuous societies perpetually on the brink of self-destruction. We have harnessed perfection, but you look down on anything you deem weaker. You are blind to invisible threats that lurk inside and around you.”
Unbeknownst to the ants, the flies or the woman was a small spider on the ceiling, building a new home around the stem of the light fixture. As she dangled and rappelled downwards, a large shadow was cast on the floor below.
Behind the Writing
“I was inspired by how common insect and arachnid-based phobias are and our tendency to harm others out of fear, even if we don’t have any malicious intent. I was also inspired by David Attenborough documentaries about insects, especially the one about the “kung fu” praying mantis.”
Carmen Scales
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 