The Insect

            The change started suddenly, when all was calm and quiet. She had been in her room, laying in her bed, relaxed, when she suddenly felt a ravenous hunger, as if some eternal pit had taken the place of her stomach. She raced to her refrigerator, taking out every bit of food she had in it. Raw meats, frozen vegetables, yogurts, pudding, ice cream, orange juice, milk, and more. She ate them as they were, ripping open the packages and devouring whatever was inside. She ate so fast she didn’t even taste it, the food sliding down into her stomach.

            But even still, it was not enough. She dug through her pantry and cupboards, getting her cereal, crackers, cookies, bread, chocolates. She devoured apples and bananas, oranges, anything edible that she could get her hands on. It didn’t matter that she was making a mess. It didn’t matter that she ate so much she should be sick. She just needed to eat.

            Finally, after every inch of her home was empty of anything that could provide nutrition, she lay in the middle of her room. However, the change had barely even begun.

She felt something rise up her throat. It felt slimy as it gushed out of her mouth, covering the front of her in a strange yellow fluid. She writhed and quaked as the slime poured out of her, covering her body like a cocoon. Even as the first layer hardened, more spilled out of her mouth, an undeniable flood of unknown origin. Layer after layer covered her, until a yellow mound, the size of a small car, took her place.

            Inside the cocoon, she felt her skin begin to flake off, clumps of skin and hair sliding off her. These clumps slowly melted, until she was suspended in a fluid made of pounds of flesh.

Then her body began to dissolve, slowly. Her muscles slowly became on with the secretion around her, revealing capillaries, veins, arteries, nerves, organs, and bone. Soon after, even the bone dissipated, until the only parts remaining were those necessary for her to live.

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They hung, suspended in a solution of grisly design, but then a new change began. A coalescence of off-white flesh began settling itself among the remains, tying them together and giving them the barest hints of support. Eyes grew and connected with the brain, but these eyes are not like the ones she started with. There were two multifaceted, black as the night during a new moon, and spherical in shape. Flesh grew around these as well, protecting the sensitive nerves and fibers.

            Soon, the being inside the cocoon, who was once recognizable as a woman, is now akin to an insect that was cruelly morphed into the shape of a human. Two long spindly arms lay at her sides, almost touching the thick, backwards jointed legs, which wouldn’t look out of place on a grasshopper. Between the longer arms, just above the stomach, rested two smaller limbs, that would be better compared to serrated scythes than hands. They were only a foot and a half long, but it was clear that anything that got near them would be torn to shreds.

            The true horror, however, was her head. What was once a regular human mouth, is now the mandibles of an insect. Her large, glassy black eyes are covered by off-white eyelids, and above them are two setaceous antennae, each a foot long. Her body is covered in a yellow chitinous shell, with off-white flesh peeking out in some areas, and covered with a black pattern. The pattern is on her back and resembles a shadowy skull.

            The only reason anyone might guess that she is a woman is because her figure has stayed relatively the same. Otherwise, she is a monstrous, bipedal insect, the kind that would send children running and screaming, and would cause Americans to reach for their guns.

If she were awake, she would howl in despair at what she had become. Instead, she sleeps, covered by a yellow cocoon.