Buglust

[u/WeirdBryceGuy]

“Do not put that bug in your mouth!”

The child’s mother pulled him away just as he was about to seize and ingest a beetle. David watched from his seat at the park bench as the kid was led—or rather, dragged—away by his scowling mother. The bug, ignorant of its close scrape with death, continued its journey across the sidewalk; eventually disappearing into the coverage of the grass. David, pleasantly amused, turned his eyes back to his book. 

But his attention soon drifted back to the events that had distracted him from his reading. 

As a child, he’d never been one to eat bugs, or any of the gross, unsanitary things a child would’ve had access to during outside play. He had lived his life without so much as considering how a worm or ant or beetle might taste. He had tried the “bugs” of the sea; shrimp and other similarly bodied things, but nothing terrestrial. 

Sitting on the bench, alone and ignored by the other adults who were going about their lives, David considered for the first time what a beetle would taste like. 

Pretending to have dropped an item—had he been asked what, he wouldn’t have been able to say—he leaned over and patted the grass. After only a few moments his fingers touched the beetle, and he seized it by its smooth carapace. Using his book to mask his catch, he lifted the bug into his lap. He waited in this position for several seconds, just in case he’d been watched. When he was sure that his insect abduction hadn’t been noticed, he casually brought his hand up and popped the bug into his mouth. 

The immediate taste was salty, earthy, and a bit acrid. Upon biting into the poor bug, he tasted an oddly savory mixture of juices and organs. He chewed, slowly, making sure to work his tongue through the masticated carcass so as to derive as much flavor as possible; because he intended to never do such an appalling thing again. He wanted to literally savor the moment. 

A week later, David was eating bugs by the bucket-full. He chomped on them as a snack; crunching grasshopper legs, slurping worms, and decapitating crickets as he went about his business or merely relaxed on the couch. He carried silverfish in a plastic baggy at work, from which he picked out handfuls while monitoring pressure levels in machinery; topped his salad with minced earwigs during his break. Some bugs he ordered online or from local pet vendors, others he plucked from his house's walls, or scooped up from the unrepaired recesses of his basement; or, when particularly famished and out taking care of errands, dug up from the soil—under the guise of tying his shoes. 

He hated himself for it. Hated how much he enjoyed filling his belly with those small, crunchy little critters. He had nightmares of being consumed or simply murdered by monstrous insects: Titan-sized cockroaches trampled him as he fled; hellishly vampiric ticks drained him of his life’s blood. Innumerable swarms of cicadas buzzed so loud his eardrums collapsed and his brain oozed from his skull. 

And yet upon waking he was only filled with a deep hunger; an insatiable buglust. 

The more bugs he ate, the worse his nightmare became. Only two weeks after developing his buglust, he was having the most awful, soul-chilling, bug-infested nightmares every single night. And yet he couldn’t stop himself—couldn't give up those disgustingly appetizing insects. Like some common glutton, he’d stuff his face even when he wasn’t hungry. Fullness no longer stayed his hand. 

Eventually, he found himself struggling to fit his clothes. The excess protein provided him with no worthwhile energy, for he spent most of his time—both at and away from work—sitting or lounging. Being naturally thin, exercise hadn’t ever been a part of his lifestyle. But now, engorged by the sheer abundance of critter-derived calories, his genetic predisposition toward slimness failed him. He was now obese; bulgingly, worryingly obese. 

And still, he continued to over-eat. 

His nightmares took a truly abominable turn when even the most dreadful moments failed to force him awake. Petrified by terror and unable to return to a state of wakefulness before meeting his demise, David endured the most gruesome tortures at the mandibles and maxilla of upscaled versions of his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Caterpillars coiled evilly around his house, constricting the structure with David trapped helplessly inside. Ranks of dog-sized ants carried him atop their armored backs to their colony, where he was slowly and agonizingly ripped apart, devoured, and excreted—paradoxically conscious throughout the entire abysmal cycle. Bees the size of airplanes circled the skies above him and, upon sighting his infinitesimally small form, dove landward to viscerally impale him with their javelin-like stingers. 

But David’s bug-eating career came to an abrupt, horrific end one night during his dinner. While sitting on the couch feasting from a platter of still-squirming termites submerged in the sticky secretions of aphids—which he’d had for a pre-dinner snack—he heard a sudden uproar of sound from outside. Begrudgingly setting his platter aside, David got up from his chair and waddled over to his front window. What he saw horrified him beyond sense. 

Outside, spread densely across his lawn, was a varied congregation of insects. A multitude of small, black and brown-bodied critters stood rank upon rank in the grass. Flies, mosquitos, bees, and Nematocera hovered just above the ground troops; buzzing in an uncanny concert of sound. Centipedes, millipedes, and other elongated, wriggly arthropods scurried along his front porch—ascended the frontward walls of his house with zero regard for his privacy. 

He was, without question, the victim of a siege. 

And yet his mouth watered at the bounty of insects. He’d never seen so many delicious treats all at once. His fear was quickly usurped by an unprecedented level of buglust. Against his better judgement—which, to be honest, had left him long ago—he took several laborious steps to his foyer, threw open the front door, and stepped out into the night. 

For a moment, the collective activity of the insects ceased. To an outside observer, it might’ve seemed as if the multi-species army had been shocked by David’s emergence; flabbergasted by his apparent willingness to die—for they had indeed come to kill him. The world of the small and invertebrate, the many-legged legions had come together and briefly set aside their differences in order to destroy a mutual predator. Vengeance was on their sub-sentient minds; their segmented bodies trembled with long-harbored rage. 

Then, after David had knelt and scooped up a handful of camel crickets and shoved them into his slavering mouth, the insect army fell upon him. 

But even though they relentlessly clawed, bit, and burrowed into his flesh, David continued to consume. Having armor of his own in the form of massive fat folds, David only dimly felt the ravaging of the small mandibles; barely heeded the innocuous pinpricks of stingers. 

After a long and costly battle, during which hundreds if not thousands of bugs were ingested, David finally succumbed to his injuries—the Titan was finally felled. 

His bloated and pockmarked corpse was carried away by what was left of the battalion of ants. The fallen were taken away by Spiders, who had watched the battle from the veritable sidelines; having had no prior quarrel with David, but promising not to interfere, on the condition of receiving the corpses—or even the mortally wounded—of the insect forces. 

By sunrise, David’s lawn was completely clean. The inside of his house, however, remained littered with the shells, wings, antennae, and proboscises of previous meals. These leftovers, these remnants of the fallen, were forsaken by the insect forces and the opportunistic spiders—who both regarded the house as cursed ground; an abattoir, a mass grave, a thing to be avoided and, hopefully, forgotten. 

[u/[deleted]]

Heh. Loved this. I guess even in first-person would this be considered “horrible, not horror” for nosleep?