You feel queasy.

8 years ago

Gentle’s mother was very sick. This was obvious to most people who interacted with her. It could be felt in the cadence of her voice as well as the body language that she wielded to manipulate people into doing anything she wanted. Her daughter was especially susceptible to this gaslighting and took the majority of the abuse. She was the only one who could truly understand the depth to which this sickness had inflicted her mother. The other people she interacted with could notice a twitch in her face or maybe even a strange buzzing sound that rattled in the back of her vocal cords, but only Gentle, as far as she could tell, could see the nest of insects that was embedded in her mother's head.

It was a subtle change at first. Her jittery movements became startling and strangely articulate. She would  constantly consume candy and sugary treats, which soon became the only thing she would eat. It eventually led her to consume unflavored packages of sugar, the wrappers of which were left in piles around the house. The highest concentration was in her bedroom, where she stayed isolated for long periods of time.

The other changes, the ones that only Gentle could see, were insects. She could see them crawling inside her mouth and around the surface of her eyes. She would find them flying around the house and getting into the food. The infestation grew with intensity, matching the decline of her mother's mental state. Nobody believed Gentle when she talked about this because nobody else could see them.

On long summer nights when the air was humid, Gentle could hear a wild angry buzzing that rattled behind her mother's bedroom door. She never opened it when this occurred, fearing the angry swarm would eat her alive. She would stuff towels underneath the door frame to prevent them from crawling through to the other side, but one or two would escape occasionally. She had never seen this happen but had figured so because of the red bite marks she would wake up with.

The din of buzzing gave her horrible dreams. They consisted of running around her house at night in a panic, trying to lock all the doors and windows. There was a sense of doom that wracked her body, like some kind of natural disaster was approaching and she needed to seal everything up before she was eaten alive.