The Insect Puppets

    Within her eyes was infinity and black, except for here and there the glimmer of shiny green and blue and yellow stripes, from which a vibrant buzzing could be heard. Her mouth was wide open with a silent scream of agony. Her pearly white teeth were strongly contrasted by the dry velvet of the opening, into which was formed a tunnel of infinity and black, except for here and there the glimmer of shiny green and blue and yellow stripes, from which a vibrant buzzing could be heard. Her cadaverous gray head slowly swayed from side to side as waves of squirming things pulsated within her neck. The boy sat Indian style on the floor, observing her with intense fascination. The insects were playing with her like a puppet, the boy thought.

    He had found her there the day before. She was in a derelict blue house tucked back in the woods. Since the boy’s mother moved them to their new home in this rural region, devoid of any playmates, the boy had taken to riding his bicycle many distances along the hilly roads of the area. Rarely did a vehicle pass him by, and very few were buildings that he passed. It was the middle of nowhere, the boy thought. During these daily bike rides, this sense of nowhere was lost to the fantastic adventures that he would form in his head. His acute daydreaming of boyish heroism and extraordinary beings could hardly be interrupted by his surroundings. That day, the sudden sight of the derelict blue house brought him out of his latest phantasy. His curiosity and ever so thirsty imagination excited him to go exploring inside.

    Upon entering, the boy was startled by the loud shuffling of a large snake that quickly slithered behind a dilapidating couch. The interior of the house was well lit by the late morning sun blazing through the windows. All of the furnishings typical of human habitation were abandoned with the house. The walls were colored with obscure graffiti and sexual caricatures by intruders of the past. Paper and photographs chewed to bits by rats were strewn all over the disintegrating mush that was once carpeting. And thick in the humidity of the place was a morbid fragrance that stung the boy’s nostrils with demonic potency. The boy was enraptured by an impression of gloom that frightened him, yet intrigued him to continue further.

    He followed the thickening of the macabre aroma to a hallway. Through the first door on the left, he discovered the girl. She sat against the wall in a violent posture. Her chest was destroyed; her viscera appeared like an alien gruesome rose that was drying out. She still had her eyeballs, then. They were milky bulges of terror that glared toward the doorway, their last sight being the one that caused her to become like this. The boy watched in horror as her head began to move, and he realized the ripples and streams of squirming things beneath her grimy black hair. Then, amid the vibrancy of the buzzing, feasting insects, he heard a terrifying noise coming from the room at the end of the hall. It sounded like the clacking of claws shambling slowly toward the doorway. It was what caused the girl to become like this! In a split second of primal instinct, the boy’s imagination was captivated by the phantasmagoric possibilities of what that thing could be. He ran out of the house, picked up the bike, and started to the road. At the road he stopped and looked through the trees at the house, feeling somewhat safer. He was curious to see what the thing was. He waited for a moment. He wanted to catch a glimpse of the creature, but then the desolation around him and an ominous wind reminded him of his mortal vulnerability, so he decided to continue away from the derelict blue house.

    He eventually decided to rest at the swing set of the playground near the school that he would soon begin attending. There he mused on his ghastly experience, wondering who that girl was, feeling deeply for her, wondering what brought her to the derelict blue house where she became what she became, because of that brutal thing that was in the room at the end of the hall. The boy’s mental image of what that awful thing could be was nothing like any monster he had imagined before. It crawled on multiple legs like a centipede and its head was a spiky abundance of bloody mandibles, he imagined. It was with those malevolent mandibles that the girl received that rosy cavity in her chest, he imagined.

    He returned home at dusk. His mother was fixed on the television when he walked in. She informed him that his dinner plate was wrapped in foil in the kitchen. He ate very little, as his appetite had been depleted by the severe disturbance of the day. He didn’t sleep that night. He couldn’t sleep for fear of the unholy existences of the world and the stimulation of his mind from the knowledge of such existences. The muted television and radio playing at low volume kept him comfortable as he anxiously waited for the sun to rise. He cautiously examined the outside from his window throughout the night, for each time fearful of seeing something that he didn’t want to see. When all there would be was the darkened field and black masses of trees, he would think of the girl being out there, beyond the field and the trees, and the crawling demon that got her. By the dreadful witching hour, when it seemed the ghouls and goblins of the world were most lethal, the boy had decided that he must be the avenger of the girl when daylight came. He knew of the pistol in his mother’s closet. He knew it was loaded, too.

    After sunrise, he pretended to sleep as his mother prepared for work and eventually left. He waited in his bed for a minute after she left. He was ready. He grabbed the pistol from his mother’s room and departed on his bike.  On the way, he almost hesitated when the atmosphere of the day was made even more sinister by the dark clouds that emerged and blocked the sun, as if the sun was there to protect him all along. He decided that he wasn’t going to let the darkness defeat him, so he went on. When he arrived at the derelict blue house, he was anxious and trembling. He contemplated his decision to face the monster and avenge the girl until it began to rain, and he knew it was time.

    This time upon entering, there were more snakes in the room, piling up on each other in the debris and mush of the floor. From the hallway he could hear the buzzing of the insects. He continued. With the pistol aimed at the doorway at the end of the hall, he slowly walked on, checking the state of the girl along the way. The alien gruesome rose of her chest was now deteriorated and brown. He was about to come face to face with what did that to her.

    He entered the room at the end of the hall, ready to fire the weapon, but not before his eyes could process the thing he saw. At first, it was that mangled head that the boy realized, almost exactly as he had imagined the creature. Then, the threat of the thing was over when the boy realized what he was actually seeing. It was a man. His head was mangled by the shotgun that rested in his lap. The clacking of the demon’s claws was actually the sound of the multiplying bugs that had made a vessel of his body like they had done with the girl. It was now clear to the boy that the man had shot the girl in the chest before blowing his own brains out. The girl’s assailant was no more, and the boy was at peace.

    He went into the room where the rotting girl lay and sat down in front of her. He watched her slowly swaying head with intense fascination. Her eyes, once frozen in terror, were no longer there. Now they were just infinity and black, except for here and there the glimmer of shiny green and blue and yellow stripes, from which a vibrant buzzing could be heard.