Beginning [II]

Even though Cassian's neck had snapped like a dry twig, he didn't die.

He should've.

He felt it, that awful, final crunch. The blinding, searing pain.

Pain assaulted him like a second heartbeat, pounding beneath his skin, pulsing with every breath. Like his body remembered death, but refused to accept it.

He started to wonder, what if this was just a dream?

A bad one. A nightmare conjured by exhaustion.

'Yeah…that's it. Just a dream. It has to be. Nothing this messed up could be real.'

His thoughts were frantic, desperate, grasping for logic in a world that had suddenly twisted sideways. How else could he explain things happening to him right now?

But then the pain came again.

Blinding. Unforgiving. Like knives grinding through bone.

His eyeballs shook from the pain, because they were the only things he could move, tears welling in his eyes, half from the pain, and half from the creeping realization.

'No dream hurts like this…' Cassian thought, his mind scrambling for answers. 'Then what the hell is this?'

His thoughts weren't clear, more like jagged fragments scraping against each other in panic. Pain had a way of making everything surreal, but this…this felt too real.

Before he could even begin to mourn or cry over his condition or try to make sense of how he was still alive despite the unbearable pain, he heard it.

Something was coming.

A slow, slick slither, dragging itself across the floor. Every inch it moved seemed to scrape against something deep in his instincts, something that screamed to run.

But he couldn't move.

He couldn't even see it. He was lying flat on his back. Yet his face…his face was twisted unnaturally toward the back wall of the bed, as if his neck had been grotesquely broken and spun around.

Then something touched his toes.

Every hair on his body stood on end, prickling like needles, as if his skin itself was trying to scream.

It's here. It's dangerous. It's going to kill you.

But what could Cassian even do?

He couldn't move. Couldn't twist, flinch, or even lift a finger. His body was paralyzed, his limbs like stone. And even if he could move, what then? His neck was snapped grotesquely backward, his face twisted toward the back wall of the bed like a puppet with broken strings. He shouldn't even be alive.

And yet, he was. Somehow.

A fresh wave of terror swept over him, but it didn't matter anymore. Fear couldn't scream louder than the helplessness clawing through him.

He felt so small.

So weak.

The pain that had once tormented him so vividly had dulled, not because it lessened, but because the looming presence, whatever it was, had overtaken everything else. Compared to it, the agony was just…background noise. A grim lullaby humming under the surface of something worse.

He couldn't breathe.

He couldn't fight.

He could only wait, hoping that all of it was just a dream, even though the truth was far from it.

'Wake up... please... just wake up…' he thought, over and over, like a broken prayer stuck on repeat.

Then, as if mocking that fragile hope, something touched his toes.

Just a prick. Almost like a needle. Then another. And another. Three. Four. Five…

Cassian couldn't see them. But he felt them. Tiny legs skittering across his skin, jaws pinching and tearing. The pain began small, sharp, localized, but it was the kind that spreads, crawling under the skin, gnawing up his nerves. And the numbers…they just kept growing.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.

A living tide of unseen, skittering horror devoured his legs, and all he could do was lie there, facing the wall, body twisted like a broken puppet, neck grotesquely snapped backward, somehow still alive.

He wanted to scream. God, he tried to scream.

But only silent sobs escaped, if they could even be called that, since he was paralyzed.

At first, he cried in silence.

Then, he cried blood.

The insects climbed higher. His waist, his chest. Into his ears. Beneath his skin. Every bite now felt like it was being delivered straight into his bones, burning like acid. Tearing him open from the inside out.

'Make it stop… please, anyone, please…' Cassian thought, the words trembling in his mind like a prayer no one would hear.

When they reached his cheeks, his blurred eyes finally caught a glimpse of one.

And before he could even process what he saw, his own eyes burst. With a sickening pop, darkness swallowed him.

As though it were an invitation, they entered. 

A stream of them poured into his eyes, the insects forced their way through them, chewing through the eyeball, the optic nerves, tapping on the back of the orbs like they were knocking to be let in, some entered his mouth, sharp, twitching legs forcing his jaws wider as they clawed their way in. They scraped his tongue, shredded his gums, and burrowed down his throat. He couldn't gag, he couldn't choke, couldn't spit, couldn't bite, couldn't even breathe.

They pushed into his nostrils next, tearing the fragile membranes as they climbed upward, writhing toward his brain like they knew the way. They scratched behind his eyes, clattered through his sinuses, and his skull rang like a hollow drum.

But it wasn't over.

Cassian could feel their slick bodies wriggling into his ears, his fingernails, beneath his skin. They pushed past the sockets of his joints, nested in his groin, crawled up the insides of his thighs, every nerve ending a raw, screaming thing.

Cassian could no longer cry. No longer plead. No longer hope.

There was only pain.

Pain so complete it didn't even feel like pain anymore, it became a state of being. His body was no longer his. It was a nest. A vessel. Something else was making its home inside him now.

And still, he lived.

Because dying?

Dying would've been kind.

And as though food time was over, his body vanished beneath the swarm.

No screaming now.

No breathing.

No blood.

Nothing remained of Cassian. Not a smear. Not a piece of flesh. Not even a bone.

And the insects? If they even were insects, because Cassian couldn't even perceive any of them.

They vanished. As though they had never been there to begin with.

The silence that followed was thick.

And then,

Near the doorway, someone stood motionless, just before the bed. 

Then he/she/it, whatever it was, smiled.

A slow, crooked grin that tore across its face like a wound.

And then it laughed.

"Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha"

Low at first. Hinged and trembling. Then rising, scraping and rattling through the silence like rusted chains dragged across stone.

It wasn't just madness.

It's smile was too wide. Too human. And yet…not quite.