#mortwrites

The Dogs at Duskfall is finally out, and I wanted to draw something to celebrate the release! It's such a fun, sexy romp, and I got to pay tribute to a host of my favourite pulp genres while writing for @ohcorny's philandering folklorist Roger Crenshaw. This is the first lengthy piece of fiction I've published in about ten years, and I really really really hope people enjoy it.

A free horror story based around extracts from r/nosleep that were popularised on tumblr for being too silly to be scary.

I was still relatively new. We’d only moved here a month before, and I’d only been attending classes for a week or two. The first time one of those insects crawled across the back of my fingers while I was standing at my locker, I thought it must have flown in from the yard. I’ve never liked wasps. They have narrow faces like ants and the way their feet tickle is like they’re daring you to react. Like they want you to flinch and bat them away so that you’re the one to blame when they sink their stinger in.

When I was a kid once a wasp landed on my face. I had been eating an orange popsicle, the kind in the paper packet that you push up with your fingers until the sticky syrup leaks from the bottom and the paper comes unrolled at the top. I could feel the wasp crawling across my cheek and I started screaming, afraid it was going to sting me. My mom told me to stand perfectly still so it didn’t get mad. I stood there while it crawled over the corner of my mouth and tickled my chin. I didn’t move even though I wanted to cry so bad my eyes were burning up and my nose started to run. She told me to stand perfectly still. She said it was more scared of me than I was of it. I don’t think that’s true. I stood there and it began to crawl across my lips. I couldn’t breathe, I was so scared. I could feel it scratchingscratching at my lower lip, licking up the syrup. Wasps have sharp little tongues, like needles. I thought it was stinging me so I began to cry but I couldn’t open my mouth. I was afraid I would breathe it in and it would sting my tongue or it would fly down my throat. I had nightmares for a long time after that, about insects crawling on my face, over my mouth and into my nose.

Anyway....I don’t like wasps. When I felt that one crawl across my fingers at my locker I went still. Some people scream and try to get away, but I stand still. If you don’t upset them, eventually, they go away.

While I was standing there, the girl with the locker beside me came to collect her books. I was holding my breath hoping she wouldn’t see the wasp. Girls tend to scream and run around and rile them up, you know. I hoped she would just collect her books and wouldn’t notice anything. But she looked right at me and right at the wasp crawling along my knuckles. She looked right at it but she didn’t say a thing. She didn’t even look surprised. She just took her books and left.

I was going to tell you about the ‘Wasp Room’. I found out later, that’s where the wasp came from. Sometimes when you walk down the corridor past the lockers on the way to the woodwork and design work shops, if there’s not too many people around, you hear the humming. It’s kind of like an airconditioner or you know how the violins play softly near the beginning of a horror movie. Like a chord far away. That’s what I thought it was at first, an old airconditioner or band practise from the floor above. It’s a warm sound like the warm smell of woodshavings from the work shops. It sounds like the smell would sound. Does that make sense?

Wasps nests are made out of wood. They scrape it up with their mouths and chew it into pulp. So I guess wasps nests are wood pulp and spit. A whole colony of wasps will work together to build the nest, bigger and bigger, one tiny sharp little mouth at a time. I guess maybe that’s why I associate the hum with the smell of the work shops. Wasps and wood go together. That smell and that hum. Maybe it’s one of those instincts people have, even if you don’t know why.

Some times a wasp would get out, like the one at the lockers. I started to notice them more and more. We had moved pretty late in the summer so that I wouldn’t miss too much of the fall semester. It was that time of year when you start to see wasps come inside, when the weather gets a little cooler. My mom said they get hungry in the fall. They go looking for food and they start to get more aggressive. Have you ever had a wasp hover around you that just won’t leave? It’s like that. That’s how the wasps in my highschool are. When they get out they go looking for food, and they follow the students and land on their clothes. Everyone ignores them.

I didn’t think a lot of it at first. Like the girl at the locker beside me, I figured every one here must be used to them. When a wasp would get out no body would flap their hands or scream or even pay it any attention at all. They would just keep on doing whatever they were doing while the wasp floated from one student to another. It wasn’t until about a month after I had started here that I started to think something was...a little off.

It was in the woodworking shops at first. That was always where you would see them the most. There would always be a wasp or two bumping off the frosted windows or hovering around the work benches. Then there would be three or four and then it was usual to see half a dozen wasps floating over the class room. I didn’t even think a lot of that. I don’t know. You get used to things. It was the students, not the wasps, that seemed strange first. They were used to it like I said. They ignored the wasps flying around and crawling over the work benches. They ignored them even when they crawled across their workbooks or landed on their clothes. I know you stand still when a wasp comes near, but even I started to get a little creeped out. I don’t know how to explain it. One time I saw a girl writing in her workbook and a wasp was sitting on her hand. On her hand that held the pen, it was crawling over her skin. There was another one on the collar of her shirt. She had long hair and the wasp was almost caught up in it. She didn’t seem to care. It was so close to her neck, it made my throat feel tight. I called out to her...and when she looked up at me there was a wasp just crawling over her cheek.

I tried to avoid them. I would turn up the collar of my shirt and wear long sleeves even while it was hot out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there were swarms of them in the corridors or anything. They were just always around. Always one or two, or more of them near that room with the hum. The ‘Wasp Room’.

I told you already that we don’t have detention here. To be honest, we don’t really need it. It’s not a rowdy school. There are only just over 300 students here so the class sizes are small and no body really misbehaves. It’s not like my old school where everything came down to who you were friends with, what music you liked, how you dressed. There aren’t cliques like that here. Every body gets along, pretty much. There isn’t a big social side to the school in general. Every body minds their business. If there are friendship groups, they exist outside of school hours. At least that’s the impression I get. It could be that I haven’t got the hang of that part yet.

The point is, it was late in the fall semester before I saw it happen for the first time. I didn’t think about the fact I had never seen some body get detention. No body misbehaved, so no body got detention. It didn’t stand out. It was after the wasps had started to die off, so I had sort of forgotten about them too. In the work shops where there used to be five or six wasps always floating around our heads, now there were dozens of curled up little insect bodies littering the window sills and the corners of the room. There was a boy in my mathclass I had spoken to a couple of times. He was pale with a bad hair cut that was too short for his face but he would lend me his graphing calculator sometimes since I still didn’t have one. This particular day I think maybe he was sick or some thing. He kept getting up from his seat. I don’t know sharpening a pencil or something and walking around the room like he was agitated. The teacher told him to sit down. He got up again. She told him again. He got up again. You get the picture. It doesn’t take a lot to be acting out when every one is so subdued most of the time. Every one else could see it too. The class room was always quiet but it felt tense this time. Every one was watching him. He was taking a sheet of paper from the stack on the window sill. Every one was holding their breath. I thought he was chewing gum. It was so quiet I could hear it.

“Spit that out,” the teacher said. He ignored her. She kicked the trashcan and it was so loud my heart stopped. “Spit that out,” she said again. “I won’t tell you twice.” She just did I thought, but it would have been a bad time to say anything. “You just did,” he said, and now every one had stopped writing. Every one was sitting dead still. When she opened her deskdrawer I expected to see a detention slip. That would be normal wouldn’t it? Instead she took out a glassjar. It was empty.

“Spit it out,” she said, and held up the jar. He was standing still. His eyes looked red. I thought he would talk back again but he didn’t. He leaned forward, and out of his mouth he spat...I don’t know. It was a long string of something gray and soft. It looked like phlegm or something at first but it was much too thick. It was more like...ectoplasm. Like the stuff you see in old unexplained mystery books in black and white photos that have been copied over and over again until you can’t tell what it is you’re looking at. It collected in the bottom of the jar and he smacked his lips. My throat spasmed like I was going to retch. But no body else reacted.

“Mark...I have no choice,” the teacher said. She was looking right at him. She screwed the lid onto the jar. “You know the punishment. You are to go to the ‘Wasp Room’ at once.”

“NO!” he screamed. I jumped in alarm, staring as he fell to his knees on the floor. He clasped together his hands- “PLEASE, PLEASE NO!”

He was screaming. It was so loud after the quiet I clapped my hands over my ears. He was screaming over and over again. It was...surreal. It didn’t sound like him. It didn’t sound like any one from this school. He was bentover on his knees infront of the teacher, he looked like he was praying. My heart was racing even though I did not know why. My throat hurt, my ears hurt. He was on allfours with his face pressed to the scratchy nylon carpet, there were tears running from his face, he was dribbling and drooling as he screamed. I wanted to help him but I wanted to kick him and shut him up. I wanted this strange situation to stop but all I could do was sit there frozen with every one else.

He cried for a longtime. When he had gone more quiet I took my hands off from my ears and looked around. Every one else had gone back to their work. He was whining and moaning. As I watched, one of my class mates leaned over to the next desk and picked up an eraser. It was normal. It was what would be happening if a boy wasn’t howling himself sick on the floor at the teacher’s feet. I still can not say if I was more frightened by him or by my class mates at that moment. When I looked back he was sitting up on his knees and his face was puffy and swollen, covered in indentations from the carpet. The teacher had pushed the jar into his hands and he was holding it in shock. He stood up and he walked out of the room.

I didn’t see him again for days. When he came back to class...he was normal.

It took me a long time to settle in here. It is more difficult when the school doesn’t have much social life. There was no body I could ask about the things that were new to me. There are so many differences you don’t expect when you move schools. There is a different culture, the classes are different, the seasons feel different. I felt very out of place that fall, trying to figure it all out on my own. I still don’t like wasps.

The ‘Wasp Room’, yes. You don’t need me to explain to you what that is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. That room with the hum, it’s what we have instead of detention. I have never been stung by one. I’m sure that some people have, but the trick is to stand completely still. It makes my skin crawl when they walk across me in shopclass. When they land on my head and tickle in my hair I want to scream or break down crying like I did when I was a kid. They’re not scared of us at all. Why would they be? One wasp is too small to be afraid of some thing they can’t comprehend. Every piece of them is sharp. Every piece of me is soft. I just stand still and I hold my breath and eventually they leave.

Some times I wake up at night and I think that I can feel a wasp crawling on my skin. May be it rode home with me from school in the hood of my coat or in my hair or it crawled inside my bag. May be it chewed up my math book and it will begin to spit bitter paper in the corner of my closet and build a nest to hum inside. I lie still and I hold my breath. So far it is only my imagination.

The ‘Wasp Room’. I didn’t notice it for a long time. There are doors you don’t think about. Every day I walked along the corridor between my locker and the work shops and I heard the far away hum and I walked right past the door. It has no window. It looks like a closet and I never had to think what was behind it. When you go in, it isn’t locked. The handle is stiff but it is always open. You open the door and the hum changes. Angry violins. It breathes as they fly about. Each nest is like a lung and the wasps swarm in and out, but you can’t see them yet.

You climb three chewedup wooden steps and there is a heavy, heavy curtain. I think that once this was the stage. We don’t have an auditorium. This must be where it was before. The curtain stinks in a way I can’t describe. It smells like old velvet and mulch and some other yellow rancid scent. It smells like an old un washed over coat covered with dust. There is a slit in the middle if you push through. And then you are in the ‘Wasp Room’.

The hum is so loud. Inside the curtain it’s dark but the hum roars all around you. You musn’t take a step because the nests cover the floor. They hang above you and all around you and they are paper fragile and alive with insects. You musn’t lift your feet. You slide forward with your left foot first. Go very slowly. Wasps crawl across the floor too and when a wasp is killed it releases a pheromone that signals to the rest of the swarm that they are being attacked and then they will attack you. You must not kill a single wasp. You must not damage the nests. Slide your left foot along the boards very slowly. Slide your right foot along the boards behind it. Stand like you are on a tightrope and stay calm.

When you are inside, close your mouth and breathe slowly through your nose. You can’t see them yet but the air is thick with swarming insects. They will start to land on you, and the trick is to stay still. Close your eyes, otherwise they will adjust to the dark and then you will see the size of the nests that have taken over the room. You mustn’t allow yourself to feel afraid. You mustn’t move or flail your arms. You mustn’t inhale too deep. You will feel them crawling up your arms, inside your sleeves and up your legs, down the back of your neck and in your hair. They will crawl on your face and you must keep your eyes closed but you mustn’t scrunch them. You mustn’t furrow your brow or curl your lip. They might lick and scrape around your mouth or tear ducts. They might crawl inside your ears and fill your head with the tickle and hum of their wings. Just stand completely still.

Sooner or later, you will get used to it.

not just any body tho…. the body of the shooter. like okay.

and what does this asshole win? nothing! because they’re an asshole!

🤔 I’m sittin’ here like, ya got nothin’ left in ya but slurs, you seethin’ in your chair, ain’t ya? Poor kid

@binxrps​ @not-heard replied to your post: @not-heard ...

bro get a life !!! do u just literally look for people to bother??? go back to ur blog

im sorry u have to deal with this fool q

Tbh, it ain’t even a thing, it wasn’t even a thing from the start? You’re right like???????? Who are you even???? Just another tiny dick feeling victimised by “political correctness”, get on outta here, my guy 😂

Whatcha tryna do at this point, son? You gonna fight me ‘cause I said guys ain’t shit? Hold on.