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From the Sink

Short Story

By Jake CourtneyPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
1

He came to the bathroom early that morning, not realizing at first why he felt such a strong urge to relieve himself. Then, as his feet made contact with the floor tiles of his small apartment, something very strange occurred. The tiles began to shake violently beneath his bare feet. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew something was wrong, so he hurried into his bathroom and shut the door behind him.

As soon as the door closed behind him, the tiles stopped shaking and immediately fell silent. With some concern, he peered down into the sink where just a few light bulbs hung from the ceiling. There in the center of the sink, something strange was happening. Spiders had emerged from its dark depths and were crawling the surface and were now crawling up his arm in every direction before he could even comprehend the need to be terrified.

The panic prevented his body from yelling out. There wasn’t much time to think before the adrenaline took over his body and froze his thoughts in fear. He stared in horror at the black mass, which had formed a tight cluster at the base of the sink and was spreading out with surreal speed. He backed up and took a step away from the sink, but he was too late. They were already making the death march up his arms, and he could do nothing to stop them now.

He turned to face the mirror above the sink. In it, he could see thousands upon thousands of tiny black bodies swarming up onto the top of his head. As he watched, more and more of them rose up out of the drain in the sink and climbed up onto his body, all the while forming intricate webs around his body like strands of thin, silken cobwebs. He could feel them crawl all over him, which was both alarming and extremely unnerving.

Then suddenly they began to bite his exposed flesh, which brought him great pain. He yelled out for help, but the spiders seemed to be everywhere at once. They were biting his eyes, his ears, his genitals, his face, his neck, his arms, his legs, and every part of his body. Each second that passed seemed to intensify the swarm until his entire body was covered with thousands of them. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t do anything but make poor attempts at swiping them off; he cried out in agony as the spiders continued to bite him all over his body.

He screamed, “No!” several times, but it didn’t help him at all. The spiders just kept biting him all over and crawling up onto every inch of his flesh. His screams grew louder and louder as they did.

He couldn’t stand it anymore, and he started thrashing his arms back and forth in an attempt to fend them off. It didn’t work, though. There was no escaping their swarming bites. He was panicking now, but he knew from the moment they came out of the sink that something dreadful was happening.

Then the spiders started jumping up into his hair, and he had to pull his head down in order to stop them from biting him there. As soon as they stopped, dozens more crawled up onto his head and took their place.

Finally, he could take no more. He pulled his hands free and started ripping his clothes off, flinging them away with desperate abandon. It was becoming clear that the spiders in his bathroom now were not merely biting him; they were attempting to eat him alive.

He ripped his shirt off, then his pants. Then he threw them all aside and stood there in his underwear. Finally, he gave up trying to do anything with his clothes and went back to the frantic flailing of arms, screaming out in terror as the tiny spiders continued biting him.

But it wasn’t enough; they wouldn’t leave him alone, and they continued to bite him despite his futile attempts to sweep them off. He would wipe away one arm just for it to be rapidly replaced with the never-ending legion of skittering bodies. The sound of their collective legs working together made his stomach retch and turn.

Finally, he looked down at himself and saw that the spiders had surrounded him on all sides and were still driving their tiny fangs into his flesh. They had swarmed him as if they were made for that purpose and were biting every bit of his exposed flesh, his eyes, and even his ears and nose.

He was screaming now, but the spiders wouldn’t let him continue for long. It felt as though the screaming was the rallying cry that made every one of the spiders stop their movements and bite all at once and drove him to the brink of insanity as he made his last few dying screams and cried out for help.

The spiders continued biting him and eating him alive all over his body while he did so. He could barely see but for a few seconds at a time as the spiders danced across his eyelids. All the while, he could hear hundreds of thousands of them chittering, which made him feel very sick, almost as though something else was taking control of him.

He felt his head growing cold and numb, and then he started feeling extremely dizzy. The spiders still wouldn’t let up their assault and more and more they crawled onto him. The goosebumps and the retched stomach sickness were now cemented in his mind right next to painful agony.

He still made poor efforts to reach up and brush them off, but he couldn’t move his arms in any meaningful way. Then he noticed that his hands were covered in tiny holes where the spiders had bitten him, slowly spreading across his entire body.

He was screaming at the top of his lungs now. He tried to push them away, but he couldn’t. They bit him again, and again, over and over. He pulled his head down and opened his mouth, hoping to catch them in his mouth and spit them out, but they kept coming. A few would be expelled, but many would remain and a few would catch their hairy legs on his lips and pull themselves back into his mouth before he could close it again.

Then he opened his mouth wider this time and tried to force them out with his teeth, but the tiny creatures continued to bite him in his throat as he did so. The feeling of their minuscule legs on the soft bits of his mouth sent his adrenaline surging. The disgusting texture of hundreds of stiff legs and the sheer number of chewed-up bits left a disgusting taste of ground-up guts in his mouth.

Soon he began to shake uncontrollably, and he was no longer aware of where he was or who he was. His cries for help were becoming faint and weak, as though he were being choked out by a ball gag made of insect parts.

He wanted to scream out but no sounds would leave him except for the gurgling sound of his own throat choking on lifeless half-chew creepy-crawlies. They continued to bite him all over his body. Then he felt a chill go down his spine and he felt the dread of his life force leaving his body.

He collapsed to the ground and felt himself going in and out of awareness as the spiders continued eating him alive. Finally, the spiders stopped biting him and began feasting on his flesh as though it were a feast that would last forever. He lay on the floor unmoving as he screamed internally as the pain became too much for him to bear.

He realized that he was losing consciousness slowly, and everything was going dark, but he heard something as he lay motionless. He thought perhaps someone had come to rescue him after hearing his terrible screams, but he soon discovered that the voice belonged to the spiders themselves. They spoke to each other in a language he couldn’t comprehend, but somehow they communicated.

Their voices sounded like little insects buzzing about, yet he understood every word perfectly. It was like listening to an insect’s mating call or the buzz of millions of flies in a summer field. Their conversation filled his mind with dread, and he wondered how he could possibly survive another second without losing his sanity altogether. He followed the fading light and it went black for him.

Eventually, he woke up from a horrible nightmare. He found himself lying in bed half-naked next to his wife. She smiled at him lovingly and said, “I’m glad you’re awake.”

“What happened? What time is it?” he asked, confused.

“It’s late. You had a bad dream from the looks of it,” she replied. “Do you want to tell me about it? I think maybe it will help to talk about it.” She normally wouldn’t have felt the need to discuss a bad dream but the paleness of her husband's face was forcing her hand.

“Yes, can we? It was really messed up,” he answered.

She listened intently and held back her disgust as he explained his nightmare to her, which was quite vivid.

After he was finished explaining the nightmare to her, she held his hand and told him he was safe now and that he was okay. It was just a dream he thought to himself, but he still felt uneasy and disgusted even now that he was awake. It had felt so vivid for him that he still had the goosebumps and the flushed face to prove it.

She assured him that nothing like that could ever happen because that kind of thing just didn’t happen in real life. But then she reminded him that nightmares like that were sometimes the most frightening things that could ever occur to anyone. She jokingly reassured him that she had just used the bathroom and there was not a bug to be seen.

As the night progressed, his anxiety was calmed, and he slept peacefully with no more nightmares. That was until he was ripped awake by the feeling of something moving across his face…

fiction
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About the Creator

Jake Courtney

Writer of Words.

Shepherd of Cats.

“The only thing that matters to me is whether it’s true and honest; if there are no lies in what you’re saying then the reader will feel something real.”

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  • Kaitlyn Gilpin2 years ago

    Gonna be itchy all day from reading this. Interesting read!

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