The Fusing

by Laura Shell

She heard the collective shrill from the trees above, breaking the early morning birdsong of spring. Somehow, she knew what was coming because she hunched her back and closed her eyes. Her skin knew, too; gooseflesh formed all over. And then they fell from the tree—a horde of them: red, hard, segmented bodies with stingers at their asses and antennae on either side of their heads, between their eye sockets and ear holes. 

They fell from a significant height but landed as one unit. Like a blanket, they covered her back, and as soon as their legs straightened, they bolted, scattered and ran down her outstretched arms, around to her belly, down her legs. She screamed, and some of them entered her mouth.

She pulled at her lips, fell to the dew-covered grass, on her side, and coughed purposely. Her eyes still squeezed shut; she had to get them out of her mouth, so she dug for them and pulled a few of them out, but not before they had buried their rigid stingers into her soft, fleshy cheeks, in between her teeth, three spots on her drying tongue, one on the roof of her mouth. Cough, cough, fingers in her mouth, digging, grabbing, pulling the bugs from inside her face.

She couldn't get them all, so she thought fuck it and chomped down, their hard bodies so very crunchy, not tasting like anything. That's when she noticed the pain.

Hot pain. So much pain. In her mouth. She imagined being bitten by a snake inside her mouth.

Hot pain. All over her back, her arms, her legs, her crotch. Then she realized she'd been rolling from side to side in the wet grass, the movements not saving her from being bitten by these insects that seemed to have an agenda—cause as much pain as possible to this human being.

But what had she done to deserve this? Nothing. Just stood in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The insects that had jammed their stingers into her flesh had run off into the grass. The rest still dashed along her skin, their stingers still intact. 

The hot, burning pain beneath each stinger was still erect in her skin, and there must have been hundreds of such sites; she wondered if poison accompanied the pain, and if so, what was the poison going to do to her? 

Not too many bugs left. She swatted at the ones that still crawled on her. Then she tried to stand. She managed to rise onto all fours, her sweaty hair dangling down, the ends touching the indented grass. With heavy breaths, she spat out the crunchy bits of dead insects.

Suddenly, her feet fused together. 

She screamed and looked back as her flesh became black and lobster-shell hard and pointed... like a stinger.