Figment Daily Theme: Bugs
Today's Theme:
It wasn't that the bugs had never been there. They'd always been there. Maybe they always would be there.
Behind the wall. Behind the paint. Eating, chewing. Growing. Dying. The cockroaches and the mealworms, blindly questing for warmth and wetness until an accident brought them to light, revealed the squirming, spilling mass of them to human sight. Frankly, a place they were unworthy to be.
I held the broken piece of sheetrock in my hand, unconsciously raised as if to become a weapon against the wriggling mess. The bugs, for their part, did nothing new except for a few, more insightful ones, which almost seemed to blink and skitter more as if aggrieved, some diving back into the gently undulating bodies of their friends and home, some braver souls taking the opportunity to break for freedom elsewhere in the room.
The similarity with all life tickled in my brain as I crushed the few with the insect stupidity to move toward my feet on the floor. "The Deity of Insect Devotion," I mused, thinking about the way I must block out the only light these things had ever seen, halo'd, rugose, cyclopean. I carried the skin of their world so easily in one grasping claw. I killed without mercy. I had long allowed them to live in ignorance and darkness, after all.
The near-silent, worshipful congregation stared with ten-thousand eyes as I dropped the sheetrock and it settled down to kill a few more of their number with lazy indifference. Of course I was indifferent; I was their god. The stairs provided a descent, necessary to the rest of the psychodrama. The tools of enlightenment came to hand easily. The congregation must be taught, they must learn.
When the firemen came, they threw a blanket over my shoulders and checked the dilation of my pupils. I must've seemed lost to them, and perhaps I was. There were the inevitable questions.
I answered them thus:
"They worshipped unwisely and unwell. I cast them into Hell. That's what I'm supposed to do, right? Right?"
The flames that still flickered seemed to be insufficient. They felt insufficient. Hell needed more flames for the offense.
Tell this story
Write a short story based off of the most recent dream that you can remember.
Use these lines as inspiration for a short story or poem.
It wasn't that the bugs had never been there. They'd always been there. Maybe they always would be there.Behind the wall. Behind the paint. Eating, chewing. Growing. Dying. The cockroaches and the mealworms, blindly questing for warmth and wetness until an accident brought them to light, revealed the squirming, spilling mass of them to human sight. Frankly, a place they were unworthy to be.
I held the broken piece of sheetrock in my hand, unconsciously raised as if to become a weapon against the wriggling mess. The bugs, for their part, did nothing new except for a few, more insightful ones, which almost seemed to blink and skitter more as if aggrieved, some diving back into the gently undulating bodies of their friends and home, some braver souls taking the opportunity to break for freedom elsewhere in the room.
The similarity with all life tickled in my brain as I crushed the few with the insect stupidity to move toward my feet on the floor. "The Deity of Insect Devotion," I mused, thinking about the way I must block out the only light these things had ever seen, halo'd, rugose, cyclopean. I carried the skin of their world so easily in one grasping claw. I killed without mercy. I had long allowed them to live in ignorance and darkness, after all.
The near-silent, worshipful congregation stared with ten-thousand eyes as I dropped the sheetrock and it settled down to kill a few more of their number with lazy indifference. Of course I was indifferent; I was their god. The stairs provided a descent, necessary to the rest of the psychodrama. The tools of enlightenment came to hand easily. The congregation must be taught, they must learn.
When the firemen came, they threw a blanket over my shoulders and checked the dilation of my pupils. I must've seemed lost to them, and perhaps I was. There were the inevitable questions.
I answered them thus:
"They worshipped unwisely and unwell. I cast them into Hell. That's what I'm supposed to do, right? Right?"
The flames that still flickered seemed to be insufficient. They felt insufficient. Hell needed more flames for the offense.
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