I woke up, struggling to breathe under the water that was filling up between the bags of trashes.

I moved my weary hands to move the bags of trashes out of the way and out into breathable air as rain poured down upon me.

My eyes scanned the alleyway I ran senselessly into; It was just before dawn where the alleyway was covered with a faint light, along with a light fog.

My breathing felt forced and painful and came out with a puff of smoke. My head swayed from left to right while sitting on top of the trash, almost as if I was balancing something on top of it.

I looked at myself and saw the red burn that covered half the side of my right arm. Rather than looking like a typical burn, the skin looked like the pickled-folded skin of a grape. I moved my other hands to touch it-- and winced in pain as the blood lightly poured from below the shriveled skin; it looked so bad that it looked like it couldn’t be fixed anymore.

I looked around me in the light fog while gripping my arms in pain; I was deeper in the city than before, that much could be easily told by all the tall buildings and skyscrapers.

But what dominated the most from the surroundings rather than the fog and buildings was the instinctive feeling that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be at.

The entire area felt alien to me. Like it wasn’t a place a human should be at, despite being surrounded by man-made structures.

I tried getting up and winced in pain again. I moved my head towards the cause; one of my feet was crushed along with the toes from one of the falling debris landing on it.

It was swollen like a balloon, and the bones in my toes, along with the pinky, looked thoroughly crushed.

Panic rose, as I feared I would be helpless to anything that was about to find me in this state. I forced my crushed foot forward and walked with a limp towards a house whose roof I could see from the alley.

The outskirts of the city which I was previously on didn’t have many residential housings in it, so I moved towards it in hopes of finding someone finally alive, or at least solving the mystery of why I was seeing no one alive.

I walked barefoot with my lame feet, while I held the shoulders of the burned hand, preventing it from moving and touching myself and hurting.

I reached the gate of the house; it looked like a modern two-story house but seemed much grander than what I was used to seeing. After resolving myself I walked inside and opened the door, and was immediately hit with the stank of death. I briefly considered walking out, but staying outside felt even more dangerous, so I walked inside, reluctantly.

The house looked empty, with no signs of life for days, but the stank increased in strength and foulness as I moved towards the living room.

I walked further inside it, into the living room, which was covered in a thick layer of rotten and pungent odor, and in the middle of it, a half-liquified dead body.

I walked closer; the stench making me gag, but with the need to know how he died. And suddenly something long and chitinous fell on me. I panicked and opened my mouth to scream, only for it to crawl into my mouth, squirming as it tried to get further inside of me.

I fell onto the floor, battling it, as it tried to wiggle its way further into my throat, I grabbed the other end of the creature and tried to pull it out of my mouth as it tried to hold its ground by clawing and biting down on my throat.

I plucked it out of my throat along with some spits of blood with great pain, and the centipede-like creature that now was out curled itself around my arms and started relentlessly attacking the arm that held it.

I forgot all my abilities, experience, and everything, turning into just a terrified human as I tried to pry it out of my hands.

In desperation, I grabbed its tail with my burned hands and grabbed its head that was coiled around my arms, biting me and pulled. even bringing my legs to its mid-section and pushing into it to tear it in half.

It stopped biting into my arms as it wiggled its head in pain as I kept pulling even as my burned skin bled and pulsed in pain, and suddenly its body gave out as both my arms smashed into the floor with half of its piece on either of them.

I stayed on the floor. Struggling to breathe with my paralyzed throat and mouth.

It felt like my throat was clogged with water, which it was, though with blood. I panicked and tried to get up but fell, as my only good arm was also paralyzed.

Eventually, I did get up, using my burned hands, and sat on a chair that was there, trying to not give myself a panic attack.

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I spit out the blood as I looked at my arm. The shriveled burned skin was peeled off, exposing all the flesh and nerves underneath. While the other arm was filled with bite marks and could not be felt anymore.

The stank of decomposed flesh was making my breathing further a burden. I looked at it. There was a sliding window to the verandah next to it. The person must have died while he was looking out of it.

I walked over to it with my lame legs and opened it. The fresh air, bringing solace to everything. I looked at the half-decomposing corpse beside me and decided to roll it towards the outside.

It was lying with its head down on the floor; I pushed it over, revealing the half-decomposed body and a big hole in its eye. And the tremors caused by this rattled the baby centipede-like creatures inside as it slithered outside of the small hole in panic.

I screamed in horror as they climbed out of the body and into all corners of the house, going over my legs doing so.

As if the body was completely hollow and only a nest to these creatures, hundreds and hundreds of these baby centipedes slithered out of its eye-hole and other orifices. There were some left that was at the mouth of the eye-hole, looking as if they were in the middle of deciding whether to stay at its nest or run along with the rest.

I instantly pushed the hollowed-out body out to the verandah, ignoring my screaming toes, and closed the sliding window.

I was struggling not to vomit, but I staggeringly ran over to the kitchen, took the knife out, and looked everywhere in paranoia.

Fuck. Fuck. I couldn’t rest properly here as well, in fear of those disgusting worms crawling up inside my body. I looked around but saw no signs or tails of the small creatures.

Eventually, my legs and body demanded rest, and I sat in the kitchen chair, holding the knife in hand.

My body was tired from the constant adrenaline and injuries but more than that... I was tired. Tired of it all.

My mind stilled as I stared into the knife for a long moment as my terror and disgust were replaced by exhaustion and other thoughts.

How many times is this now...

How many times....? Just to live.

I kept staring at the sharp knife, completely dispirited and felt I could finally understand the alien thinking of people who decided to end their life.

The regulator sound of the fridge sounded out in the background of my foreboding thoughts. I raised my head to look at it.

I got up and walked over to the fridge, ignoring my crushed toes, and opened it. It was still running, keeping the foods inside still fresh.

But I didn’t have any appetite.

I walked over to the bath mindlessly, removing my dress, and opened the valve, letting the hot shower out. The hot water stung my body along with my burns, but I didn’t bother reacting and let the water flow through me.

I walked out of the shower, feeling a semblance of mental stability, and wore a random cloth from the closet in front of the bathroom.

I dressed my legs and arms mechanically with the first aid kit and ate stale bread and orange juice in the kitchen that still stank of death.

Was Lea, okay... I thought as I ate the second stale bread. This place.... was no longer ours.

It was theirs.

We were too careless. I decided, as I recalled our actions. We took the inactivity and silence for granted and slowly didn’t bother hiding.

We got bolder day by day. Slowly forgetting why the silence was there in the first place.

I don’t know how that monster found us, but it was a miracle in itself that we weren’t found any time before and had our brief reprieve for a few days.

How long would it be... before I would have to run from this place as well? I thought as I looked at a door to the basement that had a broken handle.

I walked over and tried to open it. It was stuck, puzzlingly, even though the door handle was broken. I gave up immediately, not having any energy to bother with anything, and moved upstairs to any bed I can use.

There were 2 of them and I took the one that was at the end, which was bigger and farthest away from the rotting stench.

I closed the door and checked the room for any of the centipedes that might have crawled up inside the room, but found something better inside the drawer.

It was a small revolver!

I looked at it with shock and doubt. I didn’t know handguns were legal for ownership in this country for its normal citizens, but it looked like the real deal and weighed a lot on my hands, adding to its authenticity.

I tried tinkering with it to open the cylinder, to check whether it contained any bullets but couldn't even do that because of my nonexistent knowledge in guns.

Eventually, I gave up and climbed into the bed with the revolver in hand and kept it under the blanket next to me for a feeling of safety.

My mind flashed an image of shooting myself accidentally in my sleep, but I thought 'if that was it, then it was it'.

Sleep came to me easily as always as my tired mind and muscles could finally rest, but even more so, now that I was in a comfortable bed under a blanket and was fresh from all my dirt and sweat of the past gruesome week.

…..........

…...

..

.

I squirmed in my sleep, struggling to breathe again. It felt like something was stuck down my throat. The paralyzed muscles on my throat made it hard to breathe, even harder to swallow the spit and blood accumulated.

I opened my eyes to spit them out, only to see hundreds of centipedes on my face.

I panicked as I tried to get up, but my body was completely paralyzed, unable to move an inch. More and more of these worms slithered inside my throat as one came right above my eyes.

It prodded my eyeballs slowly, like a fruit vendor checking the quality of a fruit. Finding it satisfying, it raised its small head and dived as it pierced my eyes, slushily slithered inside my eyeballs. I screamed in my mind as I could feel it slithering through my eyes into my body to make it its new nest.

I opened my eyes in pure horror from the dream, finding it still difficult to breathe.

My two eyes that were still intact focused to see another pair of eyes right above me, staring at me intensely but without any emotions as it smothered my face with its hands.

I could feel its soft and long palms that covered half my face as it pressed it firmly over my mouth and nose, preventing me from breathing. The intense beating of my heart along with the palms' warmth and softness over my face confirming that it was indeed real.

I tried flailing, but my body was locked under its body that weighed twice as me and it held my arms with its knees, preventing them from moving an inch.

It kept staring at me completely wide-eyed with no discernable emotion but curiosity, as it watched my life flicker out.

It had found me defenseless and sleeping but instead of killing me, it decided to slowly choke me to death as it watched in enjoyment. The thought frightened me further and I flailed my body even harder, trying to get my arms free from its legs when I felt something hard on my fingertips. The gun!