Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #367: Millipedes

 (Male, West Virginia)

Millipedes disgust me.  They should disgust everyone.  The name comes from the root for million. I know they don’t have millions of legs, but who could ever be comfortable with something so ambulatory and unpredictable?

People keep telling me they are slow creatures, harmless creatures, that they eat only dead and decaying plants, not living and breathing humans. But it isn’t a fear of being eaten by millipedes I have. No. It is the fear of those legs. Segments upon segments of legs, crawling ad infinitum along my face and arms. Slick exoskeletons sliding into my mouth, my nose, my ears.  No orifice is safe.

Ugh.

Categories
"What We Fear" Bug du Jour Doktor Fiction

Bug du Jour: “Creepy Beetle”

ScreenBeetle

“Egmont woke from a dead sleep at the sound of a heavy thump. He bolted upright in bed. His ears hungry for sound detected just the normal night sounds of summer. Yet Egmont knew in his heart that something else lurked in the midnight. He quietly padded across the floor, switched on the flood lights, threw open the front door. A beetle the size of a dinner plate perched on the screen, hideous spots across its carapace, vicious pinchers eager for flesh worked open and closed. Egmont was overcome with emotion, but he stammered, “My Precious, you’ve finally come home!”

© 2013 James Frederick Leach

Categories
"What We Fear"

Bug du Jour: “Dead YellowJacket”

DeadBug

Nothing bespeaks the nihilistic futility of existence quite like a dead bug, its life, fleeting and insignificant though it was, snuffed out into nothingness. I found this memento mori on a window sill, its corpse warming in the morning sun.

Categories
"What We Fear"

Bug du Jour: “Art Deco Moth”

ArtDecoMoth

Given that there are eleventy-billion different kinds of moth previously identified by Science, I feel on somewhat shaky ground to claim I “discovered” this creature… but I did discover it the other day and was able to snap two photos that capture different moods. I dubbed in “Art Deco” due to the bold, high-contrast angles daubed on its wings.

ArtDecoMoth2

Categories
"What We Fear" Doktor Fears & Phobias

Bug du Jour: “Common Green Darner”

GreenDarner

Summer is the time for bugs — and bugs creep out a lot of people. I spotted this little fella on a recent walk and was struck by the coloration and the delicate structure of the wings. The InterWebs say it’s a Common Green Darner, a male, since, y’know, males tend to be the more ostentatious of the species.

Categories
Grim Gnome Nightmares

Nightmare #339: The Needle and the Conqueror Worm

Centipede2

(Male, 30’s) I was staying at someone’s summer home, a sprawling house with multple floors. It looked out on landscaped terraces leading down to a lake but there didn’t seem to be any way to get out of the place. I was trying to sleep but some one much younger than myself was practicing bass guitar in the room above so I got up and wandered the house.

On the main floor of the place was a laboratory, sort of an industrial waiting room where workers stood around waiting for the shift change. It wasn’t clear what they all did. They were bored twenty-somethings, leaning against the furniture and counters. One of them seemed to recognize me and we spoke amicably. Another worker was edgy, clearly a dangerous jerk. He carried a hypodermic needle with him that he threatened to jab into people, his thumb on the plunger. Sticking out of his upper arm were spare needles. He didn’t seem to notice or care that they were skewered into his flesh.

He tried to bully me the way thugs on a playground would. I wouldn’t have any of his stupid threats so he stabbed me four times with his hypodermic, each time injecting something into my arm near the wrist. I demanded to know what it was. He was coy. “It’s nothing yu need to worry about, old man. Just cholesterol.” I didn’t believe him. but he didn’t tell me anything more.

Then, the flesh around the holes began to swell up. The holes grew large something started to poke out of the hole. It looked like a bead, a shiny black bead but eventually, a centipede poked its head out of my arms and wriggled, trying to get free. It squirmed and squirmed and finally used its hundred of legs to pull itself out of my flesh.

It was just the first. Soon, dozens of centipedes, hairy ones with thousands of tiny legs crawled out of the wounds on my arms, one by one, dropping to the floor.
Just when the waves of insects seemed to be slowing down, another large bead appeared in the one of my arms. It was the staring black eye of a larger bug, and pushed its way out. It was larger, hairless, hard round segments and thousands of legs. They followed like the poison inside me was evolving different kinds of bugs. They streamed out of my hand and fell to the floor.

The thug with the hypodermic needles seemed to find this hilarious but I was worried what kind of creature would follow after the centipedes.

What creature would crawl out of my flesh next?

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #324 – Midnight Snack


(Male, 40’s)
A seriously twisted night of dreams.

I was inside some kind of a cabin or rustic building. There were floor to ceiling picture windows that looked out on trees and a leaf- strewn lawn. I watched a good sized baby raccoon playing in the leaves. Then I noticed that it wasn’t playing so much as clawing at them desperately.

And that’s when I noticed the spider. The spider was immense. Its body alone was at least three feet across. I saw its eyes first. Round black orbs the size of softballs surrounded by thick gray bristles. I started counting them but stopped at six. That’s when I realized it was a spider and that it was really large. The raccoon must have been playing over the spider’s nest or perhaps it camouflaged itself beneath a pile of leaves.

The baby raccoon was squealing, trying to claw its way free. The spider was so large it didn’t need to wrap the raccoon up in webs. The spider simply skewered the raccoon with its long fangs and popped it in its mouth whole. Though this spectacle was horrifying it wasn’t actually terrifying.

I wasn’t terrified until later in the dream. Many other strange and silly things had happened and I found myself outside of the cabin. I was staring at a display case that had been set inside of a tree trunk. There was marvelous but weird Christmas display of vintage toys. Then I realized that I wa standing extremely close to that very same spider’s nest. Its wasn’t large enough to swallow me at one bite but there was still be no contest whatsoever if it decided to kill me.

I began to scream, utterly terrified. I wasn’t calling for help. I wasn’t even thinking to escape. I completely fell apart and collapsed into a terrified panic. It was the most disturbing sensation, one i don’t believe I’ve ever felt. I was utterly powerless.