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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/mcb983 on 2023-08-10 22:42:57.
So, I feel like last story I posted didn’t really fit the title I’ve decided to give to my series: “I live in a town of eldritch beings”. Tommy was the only apocalyptic eldritch nightmare in that one, and he didn’t really do much. And the scope of Tommy’s abilities is fairly unknown, even to the team of scientists assigned to researching him, so despite an insanely high kill count and the ability to harm even other special residents, I don’t really have a whole lot to tell you about him, except you guys really don’t have to feel bad that he’s stuck in a cell. I would estimate half the graves in the town cemetery owe their existence to him, and that is me being conservative.
So I’ve decided to tell you guys about an incident that happened a couple months ago, regarding one of my least favorite special residents, both because he’s icky and because I was failing his class in high school. I hold grudges, okay? My old trigonometry teacher, Mr. Swanson, an evil, reprehensible, despicable being, even before he got transformed.
Martha had knocked on my door that February morning with an unusual request.
“I need you to come with me to the morgue,” she said, “They’re conducting an autopsy, and I think we’re gonna need you to sit in on it.”
I stared at her. She stared at me back, buff arms crossed over her chest. It crossed my mind, as it had several times before, that I should ask her about her workout routine. But I had more pressing concerns at the moment. Usually Martha shows up to tell me I have to wrangle something back, or track something down, or anything presumably more dangerous than observe an autopsy.
“An autopsy?” I asked incredulously, “That’s it?”
“It’s a facility security guard,” she said, “He went nuts yesterday and shot up the gas station. Cops shot him seven times, but he wouldn’t go down. Sam had to take care of him. Something’s clearly up, and we need to find out what.”
That got my attention. Sam, the gas station clerk, hates using his abilities for stuff like this. It’s the only reason he’s not locked up with the rest of them. And the facility guards are all no-nonsense, combat-trained dudes chosen from the Armed Forces for their prowess. Something was definitely wrong.
“Okay, yeah, let’s go,” I said
And we drove off in Martha’s minivan to the morgue. The two of us, along with the pathologist, donned airtight Hazmat suits—you can’t be too careful when dealing with the unknown—and the procedure began. It only took the pathologist’s first incision for me to realize exactly what had happened.
No sooner had the doctor began to slice open the guard’s chest than it erupted in a squirming, crawling mass. We all shrieked and jumped back.
Centipedes.
Martha and I shared a look. Thank God for the Hazmat suits.
The corpse had to be burned and the room sterilized completely, and then Martha and I drove off to the facility. We knew who was responsible. We just didn’t know how. And we had no idea what he was planning on doing next.
Martha led me to the hallway where his room was and gestured for me to go forward.
“You’re not coming with me?” I asked, not thrilled about being left alone with him.
“This is your job, Jack,” she said, patting me on the back before turning to leave, “Update me on what you find out.”
I sighed. Fuck. I stared down at the hallway, and it felt like it was staring back at me. I found myself tip-toeing as I made my way to his cell.
“Mr. Swanson?” I asked hesitantly. My voice cracked, and I cringed.
“You’re an adult now, Jack. You can call me Rick.”
It always feels a little illegal to call your old teachers by their first name, even if they’re not horrific demonic beings. I swallowed desperately.
“Rick,” I croaked out.
“Come closer,” he said, “I can’t hear you all the way over there.”
A shiver of fear slid its way up my spine. My feet felt glued to the floor, but I forced them to move, step by step, until I was right in front of his cell.
“Come on now, Jack. Don’t look at the floor. For God’s sake, it’s been decades, and still, nobody’s taught you how to respect your betters.”
My heart pounded in my ribcage. I slid my eyes up to meet his face, and my eyelids strained with the effort of not shutting them, not blocking out the sight in front of me. Mr. Swanson smiled down at me, centipedes crawling in and out of his teeth, over his face, over his eyes and under his eyelids. Wherever they crawled, they left a viscous fluid in their trace, leaking out of Mr. Swanson’s eyes and mouth like tears and spit.
“There you go.”
I steeled myself. I came here for answers, and I needed to get them and get the hell out of here.
“Mr. Swanson—“
“Jack, I just told you to call me Rick,” he sighed, shutting his eyes in exasperation, severing several of the centipedes that had been crawling over his pupils in half and spraying slime over the glass in front of him, “You’ve got no brains up there, I’ve always said it. That’s why you’re still here, in the same town you grew up in, doing nothing with your life—“
“Okay, you’re fucking terrifying, so I can’t think!” I snapped, my teenage self who hated the guy resurfacing.
THUD.
I screamed and stumbled backwards. Mr. Swanson’s face was pressed against the glass. Dozens of centipedes banged their little heads against it, as if they were trying to get out. I knew, logically, the glass wouldn’t break, but I still crawled further backwards, trying subconsciously to get away from their wriggling little legs.
“Language,” he said, his long neck retracting back onto his shoulders, carrying his head with it.
“Now, I know why you’re here, of course,” he said, “You got my message.”
“M-message?” I stammered.
“The security guard. Sam Henrick killed him, you were there for the autopsy, now you’re here.”
His voice was becoming more animated, and the centipedes were multiplying at an alarming rate. As he spoke, he bit some of them in half, spraying thick liquid over his lips. I nodded shakily. I didn’t trust myself not to start screaming if I opened my mouth again.
“I know exactly what you came to ask me,” his smile stretched furiously, the skin at the edges of his mouth ripping. More centipedes rushed out of the wounds.
“How many people did I manage to get my eggs into?”
Yes. The dreaded question.
I remember clear as day the morning Mr. Swanson walked into our trigonometry class, no longer himself, one of the first to turn. I had been wondering why Jolene was absent, when he walked in, something no longer human. Before any of us could do anything, even react to the horror of his new appearance, he’d grabbed Suzanne Waters, pried her mouth open with his . . . arms? Appendages? And vomited something directly down her throat. I had screamed, everyone had screamed. People attempted to flee, but he caught all of them and vomited that same substance into their mouths.
And I had sat there, paralyzed in horror, unable to do anything but watch.
Once he was done, Mr. Swanson turned to me and said, “You’d better get out of here.”
And I didn’t need any more prompting. I ran.
A day after this occurred, all 25 of my trig classmates went on a killing rampage. Bullets did nothing to them, and the newly-hatched centipedes inside of them infected more and more and more people. I should’ve been one of those people. I never figured out why he spared me.
Back to the present, I found my voice again. Maybe 16 year old me was really furious at the fact that I was now scared of the guy.
“Actually, I was gonna ask how you got any of your gross fucking eggs out of your cell on the first place,” I spat, “It’s a weird fucking kink you have.”
I immediately regretted my words. Mr. Swanson’s lips pressed into a thin line, but before he could ream me out, I heard an alarm upstairs and a crash. Like a switch, his eyes filled with glee again.
“You should tell your friends my cell isn’t so well secured,” he said, “And you should go see what all the commotion’s about, don’t you think?”
He started laughing, loud and raucous. Tiny chittering noises erupted from his skin, as if the centipedes were laughing too as they burst through his flesh, tearing it to shreds.
I hightailed it out of there.
I sprinted up the stairs and nearly ran face first into a security guard. His skin stretched and wriggled as if something was alive underneath, and his eyes bulged out of his skull until one exploded into a mess of viscera and crawling centipedes. I shrieked, leaping backwards before any of them could land on me. The man’s jaw unhinged with a sick cracking noise.
“This one makes two,” Mr. Swanson’s disembodied voice echoed out of his throat, “How high can you count, Jack?”
I sprinted away from him. The only saving grace when it comes to Mr. Swanson’s centipedes is that while they inhabit and control a body, they are also actively feeding on it, drastically slowing down the body’s ability to move and respond. So it didn’t take much for me to run away from it.
“MARTHA!” I screamed as I ran, alarms blaring around me, “WHERE ARE YOU?”
“HERE!” She called back to me, and I turned the corner to see her sprinting out of an arms room with a flamethrower.
“Take this,” she said, handing it to me, “Torch any you see. We’ve got guards on every floor doing the same, and I’m locking down the building.”
I nodded and turned to run in …
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