Creative Submission: Adam Cesare’s Horror Infestation

Danny ran his finger along the spines of his father’s books. Some of them had been his mother’s too. Thick medical text books, with a smattering of trashy crime paperbacks. The books were all dusty except for the one his father was currently reading: A History of Mental Illness and its Treatments.

The chapter on lobotomy had diagrams and illustrations. The captions touted the ease and speed with which the process could be administered. The pictures seemed so inclusive that Danny didn’t bother with the text.

Grandmother’s smallest gauge of knitting needle substituted well for an ice pick and Dylan kept a small hammer in the kitchen drawer for repairs.

Properly equipped Danny set to work.

He tucked a towel around her neck, threw the lever on her chair and prepared himself an instant operating table.

Putting the tip of the needle above her left eye, Danny lifted the hammer. Quick, strong taps, said the caption.

He paused took a deep breath and whispered, “Just like mom.” As he took his first swing, squinting his eyes and missing the needle altogether, he didn’t notice the flies in Grandma’s mouth.

His second swing sent the needle all the way in, had he not been holding the end with his thumb and forefinger he may have lost it.

There was no blood.

The next diagram showed the ice pick moving back and forth like a windshield wiper. Danny followed suit. But instead of the needle hole remaining small the hole above his Grandma’s eye opened wider.

The skin that connected her eyelid to her brow began to tear like tissue paper. Danny panicked. Not only because he had caused such damage to his grandmother but because there was something under the thin skin. Something moving.

He heard the flies before he saw them, hundreds of them bubbling from her mouth and wound. They were a black mass that made his grandmother into a bearded lady.

The boy’s screams drove the flies to take to the air. A deafening buzz surrounded Danny as the small apartment filled with the insects.

*

Dylan heard the hum from the vestibule. Loud air conditioner, he thought as he tried to work his key loose from the lock. As he approached the apartment he knew something was wrong.

“Danny” he shouted and hurried to work the door open. The door was vibrating.

Undoing the lock the door exploded open. The black cloud knocked Dylan to the ground.

“Danny” he made the mistake of screaming for the boy again and his mouth filled with flies. Hairy bodies and squirming wings buzzed under his tongue.

With the added room the open door afforded the flies spread out into the hallway.

Dylan spit, careful not to open his mouth again, as he rushed inside.

The boy laid, arms sprawled, on the floor.

No no no no.

His father hoisted him up and rushed for the door, almost not finding it in the black room.

On the street outside he wept as he started compressions.

One. Two. Three.

The way she taught you.

Danny was motionless. His father swept the flies from his face, gave him a breath and tried once more.

This time a fountain of flies burst from the child’s mouth as he coughed. Flies, some dead some alive, cascaded from his lips as he turned onto his side.

“Thank You,” Dylan said and patted the boy’s back as he gagged.

*

On the first night they were settled into their new apartment Dylan put Danny to sleep and then vomited up some maggots: something he had been doing for a while.

You can learn more about Adam Cesare on his website, brain-tremors.com.

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