Alexia began screaming, then dying, then mutating. Worms shot out from her chest as they had Gary's, quickly poising to attack Olivia and Sunny. Vines flooded from every orifice in her head. Vines the size of hairworms came out of her pores, whereas greater, bigger vines erupted from her nose, her mouth, her ears, even her eyes, wrapping around her flesh and strangling her. Within seconds, the girl's head bloated like a beachball. What was once her head transformed into a bulbous orb. Wriggling came from inside that orb. Once the orb had reached its full size, dozens of tiny cape sundew-like worms wriggled their way out of it. Some of the worms went off out of sight, but some of them began forming together. Dozens of these tiny sundew worms began building a copy of the dead patient's head, one that screamed in agony as dozens of warts formed in her new worm-skin, shaped like her head and intubated with plant tentacles like some doctor's operation from hell. The Alexia-heads who weren't gagged were screaming in unimaginable pain, begging Olivia to help her, pleading with her, screaming that it hurt. The clones of Alexia screamed for her mom and dad, apologizing for letting the worm-things take them, for not looking harder to find them and save their lives. Some of them begged tearfully, saying, "Liv, where are you? Help me, Liv. Help me, I'm having a bad dream and I can't wake up!"
"Olivia!" Sunny demanded, "Get up!" Olivia just stood there, hypnotized with horror and bereavement. How can you be bereaved, Sunny thought, distantly, if the person you've lost can never die? The sundew worms stood there, poised and ready to strike like a cobra towering above a mouse.
"Olivia! Come on, man! We gotta go!" Sunny tried to pull her up as she was seemingly magnetized to the floor. The worms, like charmed snakes, moved back and forth, but unlike charmed snakes, did not move with any seeming rhythm. They moved this way and that, examining their prey with whatever they used to process visual information and however they delivered that information to their primitive brains not that dissimilar to the very insects they preyed upon.Sunny noticed they all seemed to be... No, that wouldn't make any sense... Why were they only pointing at Olivia?
One of the worms began slithering around Sunny and Olivia. That could only mean one thing, Sunny noticed: behind them was the door to this room—their only escape. Sunny became desperate, not liking what he was about to do, but not knowing how else to get her attention.
"Olivia? Hello? I think your brother's death is funny! The only thing he did right was dying, because he was such a burden!" Sunny noticed how much he actually agreed with what he just said, was wracked with shame, then refocused on the situation at hand. At last, Olivia snapped out of it, an angry look in her eye that quickly dissolved into fear when she saw the worms around them. The worm that was aiming to cut off their escape had only got it closer. Could they make it past the thing without getting infected? The worm was now right about to cut off their access to the doorway, so there wasn't time to guess. Sunny pulled Alexia through the doorway, heard Olivia yelp like an animal, and slammed the door behind them, immediately shifting gear into hauling ass.
"Come on!" Sunny said, removing the hand Olivia had pressed to her ankle, feeling a warm trickle on his hand as he clasped her palm, then yanked her into a full-on sprint. Alongside the screaming of what Sunny thought to be Gary and Alexia, a cacophony of sucking noises emanated from the air ducts. Sunny noticed how the effort of running, especially on his empty stomach, only made him even hungrier—a hunger that made him want to scream from how he simply wanted to eat, but was being denied even that. He just wanted to eat, even as he was running down the hall fleeing the worms.
Eat, Sunny thought, or, was it his thought and not someone else's voice? Must eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.
The sucking noises became more pronounced when the door was finally splintered open after the worms had bashed into it multiple times. They rocketed down the hallway like a Blackhawk trying to get within firing range of an enemy marine who's hauling ass through the desert in a Jeep.
Phytoid tentacles sliced through the air, Sunny had seen all of this in the three seconds he'd looked behind him. He never even noticed what had tripped him until he was already on the ground. A fetus, beat-red, covered in shit, and with the head of a Cephalotus, had punched through the floor. Thankfully, it had only grabbed his gown. He shunned any thought that he might've been... Might have been... Inf-
"PA...... PA......" The thing croaked, smiling to reveal a mouth full of plant root-like tentacles, slithering and slimy, desperate to feel something—to latch on and never let go.
"Pa.... pa..." Sunny thought at the exact same time the abomination spoke. No, no, it couldn't have been true. Sunny tried to yank himself free...
YOU ARE READING
Sundew
Horror*Placeholder teSunny Swanson has had a rough go in life. A drifter and a heroin addict, he waits one night for a bus to skip town. However, after surviving an accidental overdose while waiting for his ride, he wakes up in a hospital bed. Sunny plots...
