Threnody (012).

(This is a 500-word-a-day novel project.)

Their dozens of paired legs were tipped with sharp nails like tiny scythes – wallpaper sliced away in half-moon gouges with each of their steps, falling to the floor like confetti. They clambered down the wall until they reached the remains of the pantry door; the shelves were mostly bare but they rushed in anyway, squeaking with glee as they pounced on something that crunched.

Jesse eyed the breakfast nook and its broken-open patio door; she could escape while they were busy . . . but it was pointless. If they didn’t get her, something else would.

She dug her nails hard into her palms. Stop being stupid and get your ass in gear.

Admonished, she shifted position until she was on her knees and crawled towards escape. The things in the pantry were fighting, knocking their distorted shining bodies into the walls as they quarreled, their warbling clicks and clacks sounding heightened and agitated. She was about to run for freedom when something red landed in her way, something that then leapt onto her shoulder and bit. She slapped it off of her with a disgusted grunt, but the damage was done – her fingers came away from her scalp bright with blood, and the entire side of her head had gone numb.

Hot pain pierced her right calf; she screamed as one of the millipedes bit through her jeans into her calf. She grabbed it and lost strips of meat from her fingers as they squished through the thing’s shell and tore it into ruptured halves that bled black sludge. The red thing had recovered and was coming at her again, climbing up on the counter with suctioning fingertips as its tongue darted out of its mouth like a piston. She was fast enough to catch it when it attacked, but its tongue fired through the skin between her thumb and index finger, forcing her to let go; before she could grab it again it mounted her face, and with a bob of its head it punched out her left eye.

She screeched in agony as warm jelly dribbled down her cheek, yanking the creature free and strangling it until its neck broke. The remaining millipede dropped to the floor, its feelers making broad sweeps around it, and although it had no interest in her she killed it anyway, spearing it with a spike of wood until it died. There were paper towels still in the roller. She pulled free several and wrapped them around her wrists, scared at how they soaked through. Her left side was a dead zone, her vision now halved; gathering her courage, she looked at herself in the reflection of the toaster: the remaining orbital mush was seeping over her eyelid like an egg white. The top half of her ear and a strip of the scalp next to it had also been torn away and were bleeding. Tears cut tracks through the blood on her cheeks as she applied sloppy bandages to her wounds.