JT Johnson

Then the gaping sockets, staring down at me like oozing eyeballs in their own right.

The nose came next.

Nod to the cartilage.

Then the mouth.

Lips chewed away to nothing but rubbery edges.

Yellow teeth grinning down at me like a corpse come back to life.

I saw... What I thought I saw was the thin, mangled arm of Nona fling out, a hand missing fingers and clung to by mice crashing onto Mom's face.

The rest of Nona's body spilled out of the bed after that, landing onto the floor with a wet plop that left a smear of reddish-brown underneath her.

The bugs spilled out of Nona like water from a faucet.

It was a nightmarish surge out of her mouth, her nose, even the deeper bite marks along her arms and chest.

The mice were there too, blood soaked and scrambling out from Nona's body, their squeaks frantic.

They flooded over Mom's legs, up her convulsing torso as she screamed and kicked.

Mom could only hold her mouth closed for so long before another hysterical scream tore out of her.

They moved fast then, impossibly so, surging into her gaping mouth, muffling the scream into something closer to a low hum.

Her neck began to swell and bulge as the roaches, and even a few mice, too, burrowed into her.

I could hear the delicate tearing of skin, the harsh crunch of cartilage and bone giving way to tiny teeth and even smaller pinchers.

More bugs flooded into the room, flanked by mice and rats, as if called by an invisible piper.

I ran, terrified that once they were finished with her they would move on to me, my skin crawling with the sensation of tiny legs.

I don't know when I quit screaming.

I'm sure it was sometime before the police finally arrived.