They are coming. The airborne winged bevy, the flock, the herd, the horde. Their hideous skin-wings, the revolting ***** of sinew. The cerci come for me, when I try to retire. My torpor perpetually interrupted, never completed. I have not slept in days.
The wicga want to lay their young in me. I’ve seen them do it! To the others!
The ****** spine-tailed hell spawn. I cannot sleep. I want to sleep. They will burrow in my flesh if I do not run. I need to run. I must run.
I hear the clouds, the living far-off black mist. I am warned by their distant revving, their humming. Warming their wings off in the distance. The far-off burn-up, thousands working as one. They are coming. They will find me.
Every night I am conscious at dusk; twilight sentience. I am chased every night until first light.
The swarm; my body their incubator. I am forced. I will sustain their young. The nymphs, the pupae. The larvae.
Ectoparisitoids.
I can hear them. Closer. I run.
Run, trip, run, Run. Run.
Run through this disgusting and hideous rotten silva.
Light fading.
The dark is here now. Murk, gloom, pestilence. This place; iniquity incarnate.
The miasma of decomposition.
The fetor.
This rotting place.
They are closer. The swarm. I do not want their brood!
I trip again. My ankle twists and shatters.
I drag myself, through the slime and decay.
I feel the stings. I am seized.
The burning. The buzzing. The biting.
The paralysis begins at my feet. Creeping through my legs, hips, and torso. I cannot move.
I feel new stings. Eggs injected now. Hundreds.
Pennate *******.
I feel them give me life. Their life. They fill my body with their offspring. My flesh will sustain their young.
Where the ectozoons will grow, consume. My body, a living nursery.
I shut my eyes tight. They force open my lids, many mandibles prying.
I feel the stings. I see them chewing. Everything blurs. I see them crawl in. They push through. They enter my oculi. I feel them fill to burst, their eggs many.
My world goes black.
= = = =
I awake. I feel the warmth of them all. The children in my derma. Hundreds.
Oviparity is nearly complete.
I can barely move, my dermis husked with them all. The young.
I feel my face. The sockets where my eyes used to be, a rind covering both. A stringy membrane tightly seals the unborn. I cannot see. My world is black.
I lie there trying to count, trying to fathom the number of nearly born within me. The many bumps and blisters covering me whole. Every orifice filled with oothecae.
Then I feel. I feel them kick, I feel them poke.
Birth!
I feel my belly split open with life.
They ooze out. My ears begin ringing with their pitter patter. Echoing. Thousands. My skin crawls. Pores sweat the fetid embryonic sap of life. Their life.
They wriggle and wiggle out; hundreds.
Every inch of my body bursts with birth.
My eyes hatch last. The pods split. I feel them. I help birth the spiked young, I pull them from the embryonic mephitic discharge.
The many legged, my anatomy their first meal.
My babies. My children. Eat ‘till you are strong.
My body is your communion.
How did this make you feel?
