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"Bugged Up"

How do you feel about bugs? Do they make your skin crawl? Does the idea of touching them make your skin feel itchy? What if they knew how you felt, and only longed to make you suffer more?

    I awoke with a yawn, stretching my arms as I reached to the sides with balled fists. The sun shown brightly through the window curtains. What time was it? I glanced over at my phone. It was a little after ten. Not too bad of a time to wake up, I thought.
    Crawling out of bed, I slipped my slippers on and walked to the kitchen. I brewed some coffee before grabbing some food from the freezer and throwing it in the microwave. I didn't really feel like cooking anything, as I was still struggling to wake myself up.
    The coffee machine beeped and I filled up my mug, mixing in the sugar and all the fixings. I took a sip. It delicious. And the scalding heat from the drink seemed to wake me up a bit. I grabbed the food from the microwave and plopped it onto a paper plate before heading to the couch in my living room and sitting down. Food in one hand and my phone in the other.
    There wasn't much to see, just a couple of 20 second videos to rot my brain.
    Before I knew it, I had finished my food and decided I needed to hop in the shower. My hair didn't feel as smooth as I'd like and my face felt somewhat dirty.
    I made my way to the bedroom, grabbed some clothes, and onto the shower I went.
    The water was a little warm against my skin as I felt it wash over me. I rinsed my hair and let the water run down my back and chest. It felt almost relaxing. I began shampooing my hair when I first felt it. Something touched my hand. It felt like a spider or something. I rinsed the shampoo from my hair and felt something moving, shifting around on top of my head. Something big.
    I frantically swatted at the top of my head and felt nothing. Nothing but my dampened hair that was a little knotted from the scrubbing. I still felt the crawling, so I ran my head under the water again for longer. I wanted to drown out whatever was up there. I still felt a slight shift under the pressure of the water pouring down.
    Once again, I reached up to the top of my head and I felt it. Crawling. It crawled onto my hand and I screamed, flinging my hand to get the thing off. I heard a heavy thump as something big and brown slapped against the shower wall and landed on the ground, inches from my feet. I jumped out of the shower, dodging the shower curtain. I grabbed the shower head and tried drowning the gross creature.
    As I looked down at it, I wasn't even sure what it was. Its body was long, almost like a worm or a millipede, but it was bigger and hairier, like a tarantula. Just looking at it made my skin crawl. And the idea that it had somehow crawled into my hair, nesting in it. That thought made me want to vomit, but I held back. I needed to get rid of that thing.
    I continued to spray it down but it still crawled as if the water didn't bother it. It crawled toward me, over the edge of the tub. I leaped back and darted out of the bathroom, grabbing a towel as quick as I could to throw it around me.
    I darted to the kitchen to grab a skillet. I returned to the kitchen, nearly slipping on the hard-wood flooring. But when I got to the bathroom, it was nowhere to be seen.
***
    That night it was next to impossible to sleep. In the silence of the night, ever sound I heard and every slight touch against my skin made me jump. Was it that gross creature returning? I decided to throw the blanket over my head and sleep under it, tucking myself into it tightly. I didn't want to risk anything.
    As night turned to day and the rest in my eyes left me struggling to open them, I felt at peace. Like yesterday was some kind of a twisted nightmare.
    I wiped the sleep from my eyes and walked to the bathroom to wipe my face. As I looked back up at myself in the mirror, I stared in horror at the thing in my hair, tangled in it. And it looked like it wasn't alone...

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