“Can you believe that every person eats an average of eight spiders in their sleep each year –”
knock, knock
Franz was laying on a shag carpet on the floor of his apartment, twisting the dark orange, dreadlike fibers between his fingers and listening to a podcast about bugs. Normally he would not show this much affection to his rug, but, considering he was filled to the brim with MDMA and LSD, he was feeling a bit randy. The knock on his door interrupted his liaison with the carpet. Its faint, tepid tenor disturbed him. He fixed his gaze on the door.
Franz quietly whispered to himself, “Maybe they’ll go awa –”
knock, knock, knock
“Shit, okay,” Franz mumbled. He wheezed as he stood up and paused the podcast playing from his phone.
After he undid the deadbolt but not the chain lock, his grossly dilated pupils peered through the crack in the door.
“Hello?” Franz asked. Only the sound of plodding raindrops responded from the menacing void. Paranoia loomed large as his eyes darted from the empty pathway to the moths fluttering around the dull, yellow porch light and then back to the leering darkness.
knock, scratch, knock, scratch, knock
This time the pounding had a raspiness to it. It was like the sound of a dog pitifully pawing at a door, but there was no dog. His drug addled mind led him back inside and onto his comfy lime green bean bag. He started deep breathing exercises and was soon relaxed by the idea the sounds were more than likely an auditory hallucination. He smiled and had a good laugh at his own expense.
KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK
His eyes shot open and he scrambled to his feet as his fight or flight response kicked in. Although, he didn’t know where to flee or who to fight. He frantically ran his hands over and over his balding head while pacing back and forth. His gaze returned to the door.
“What the fuck! Okay, okay, okay just think… Just think… Just –”
CLICK, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, CLICK
The faint clicking was overlaid with harsh clawing like nails on concrete. Through the primordial combination of fear and drugs, he upended the apartment like an animal. Behind every door, cabinet and picture frame he triple checked for his mysterious terrorizer to no avail.
He retrieved a stethoscope from a doctor themed halloween costume that he had worn last October, as if being unable to hear the knocking was the problem, and started listening intently to the walls. When there was a spot where he imagined the knocking was particularly loud or abrasive, he bashed it open with a claw hammer.
An hour later, Franz sat on his bean bag feeling defeated and surrounded by dusty, white rubble from the drywall. Thankfully, there were no neighbors left in his building to disturb. Everyone else had temporarily moved out of the apartment building so they could spray for bugs.
Franz had decided to stay in order to receive a $400 credit towards his next rent payment. The free money was nice, but more importantly, Franz had never seen a bug in his apartment, not a single one, since he moved in. He used to feel pretty lucky because of that.
KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK
As his body sank further into his bean bag, he felt increasingly unlucky. The search history on his phone included: “tinnitus harsh scratching“, “tinnitus knocking“, “Are there other forms of tinnitus besides a ringing sound?” and “tinnitus cure“.
He soon resigned himself once again to the belief that it had to be an exceptionally caustic auditory hallucination, however this resignation did not allow him to sleep peacefully. A handful of Ambien were laid out in the shape of a smiling face before he swallowed all six, one by one.
The sleep was long, steady and uninterrupted like death.
KNOCK, SCRATCH, SQUIRM, KNOCK, CLICK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SQUIRM, SCRATCH, CLICK, KNOCK
His eyelids opened. The knocking was deafening and had morphed into a slimy, dragging sound. Then his bed started moving underneath him. Or, more accurately, it started squirming.
A writhing blanket of spiders, worms, cockroaches, millipedes, termites, cicadas, grasshoppers and beetles slowly began engulfing him from below. It was as if they were waiting for him to wake up. He felt their little legs dragging, squirming and clawing over every inch of his skin. The stomach churning smell of crushed bugs filled his nostrils. He opened his mouth to scream but a cockroach quickly fluttered in to fill the void.
He spat it out and shot out of bed. The floor underneath his bare feet crunched as he looked down and saw that it was also covered in an assortment of insects. His mind was too terrified to make sense of the situation so he ran to the bathroom to clean himself.
CLICK, KNOCK, SCRATCH, SQUIRM, KNOCK, SCRATCH, CLICK, KNOCK, SCRATCH, KNOCK, SQUIRM, SCRATCH, KNOCK
This time there was no mistaking the source of the sounds. They were coming from inside of his own head. A sharp pain in his left ear caused him to wince. With the right side of his head turned towards the mirror, he examined the shaded ear canal. A small pair of antennae peeked from the hole before the rest of the cockroach scurried out.
Instead of screams, a torrent of bugs streamed from his gaping mouth. His fingernails scraped against his scalp as he wallowed in helpless terror. One by one, his eyeballs popped out with a splat when they landed on a tangled ball of worms. Out of the two new holes in his head more bugs flowed.
Franz’ body started to morph and shrink as if he was deflating. The color of his skin turned to a sickly, jaundiced yellow. The bugs flowed like water and Franz continued to collapse until he was nothing but a pile of hollowed skin.
Several months later, when the landlord eventually came to evict Franz for not paying his rent, he was sick. The thick blanket of bugs had seemingly grown and multiplied into a wriggling, waist high sea. Bugs spilled onto the doorstep before the landlord slammed the door shut. It was never opened again.
When the apartment building was condemned and burned a few weeks later, the bugs scurried away to find a new home. Franz’ skin suit, whose warped, pus colored face was frozen with an aghast look, melted into a rotten puddle.
Millerwiller 