The scream started everything.
It was sharp, jagged, and full of a wet gurgle that cut off suddenly, like someone had clamped their hand around the sound and crushed it.
Evan froze in the middle of the cracked sidewalk, clutching his sister Kendra’s arm.
“What the hell was that?” he whispered, his breath visible in the cooling night air.
Kendra didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed at the far end of the street, where something hunched under the flickering streetlight. At first, it looked like a man bent over, maybe hurt. But then the light stuttered, and Evan saw it—really saw it.
Something alive was clinging to the back of his neck.
The insect was the size of a clenched fist, its black carapace glistening wetly, legs hooked deep into skin. Its abdomen pulsed, fat and swollen, every throb sending dark veins crawling outward beneath the man’s flesh. The skin around it had split open like rotten fruit, thick, tar-colored fluid oozing out.
The man’s head lolled, jerking to the side in unnatural spasms, like his neck was broken but still moving. Then, with a sound that was more bone than voice, he spoke.
“You… should… run.” His voice dripped wet, every syllable bubbling, as though something inside him was struggling to form the words. “It’s so… hungry.”
Kendra clamped her hands over her mouth, muffling a sob.
The man’s body convulsed. His arms snapped backward, bones cracking, his jaw unhinging far too wide as saliva streamed down. But it wasn’t pain that twisted his face—it was a grin, grotesque and stretched too far across his skin.
The bug on his neck hissed. And suddenly, he surged forward, his limbs jerking as though yanked on invisible strings.
“Run!” Evan grabbed his sister’s wrist, pulling her between houses, their sneakers scraping against loose gravel.
But more figures appeared. At the edge of the street, six—no, seven—shambling toward them. Their movements were wrong. Their heads twitched, eyes rolled white, and every one of them bore the parasite: hooked to their spines, pulsing in time with their heartbeats.
A woman in a sundress stained with dried blood staggered forward, her insect’s mandibles visibly gnawing deeper into the meat of her neck. Her lips trembled, and a chorus of voices spilled from her throat—not just hers, but something older, layered and sick.
“We are many. We are hungry. The spine is the doorway.”
The insect twitched, and her head snapped violently side to side, like a broken marionette. Her tongue spilled too far from her mouth, muscles writhing like the bug had rewired her body to better suit its needs.
Kendra whispered, trembling, “They can… still talk.”
“They’re not talking,” Evan hissed, pulling her down a side alley. “The bugs are using them.”
Behind them, the chorus grew. Wet footsteps, cracking bones, hissing mandibles.
Another figure appeared at the alley’s mouth—a man with half his jaw missing, his tongue flapping uselessly as he rasped, “Join… usss.” Dark fluid bubbled and spat from the ruined cavity.
The bug on his back suddenly detached, its hooked legs snapping free with wet pops. The creature’s wings split open, jagged and translucent, spraying mucus as it screeched.
Before Evan could move, it launched at him.
It hit his leg, scuttling up with nightmarish speed. He slapped, clawed, tried to rip it off, but the thing shredded through his jeans, its claws digging for skin.
“Evan!” Kendra shrieked. She snatched up a loose brick from the ground and smashed it down. The bug’s shell cracked, spraying oily ichor that smelled of burning rot. It screeched, legs thrashing, until the second blow pulped it into a black smear across Evan’s thigh.
But the ichor burned. Smoke rose where it touched his flesh, eating into his skin with a sizzling hiss. Evan howled, staggering against the alley wall.
The hosts reacted instantly. Every parasite twitched in unison, glowing veins bulging across their victims’ necks. Their voices combined into one guttural chorus:
“Kill them. Spread. Feed.”
The last streetlight flickered and died, plunging everything into black.
They ran. Through backyards, over rusted fences, tearing their clothes on nails and broken wood. Behind them, the horde followed—their cries a mixture of human screams and insect shrieks.
Kendra dragged her brother into an abandoned shed at the edge of the woods. They slammed the door shut and braced it with an overturned shelf. The dark inside smelled of mildew and rust.
Evan collapsed to the ground, clutching his thigh where the ichor still smoked. His skin had bubbled and split, a ragged crater exposing the raw muscle beneath.
“It’s in me,” he gasped, eyes wide and wild. “I can feel it. Something’s moving under the skin.”
Kendra pressed a hand over his wound, tears running down her face. “No. No, we killed it. You’re gonna be fine.”
But she could feel it too. A faint twitch beneath the flesh. Like worms shifting just under the surface.
Evan’s breath came in ragged sobs. “Kendra… if it takes me, you kill me. Don’t let it ride me like them.”
She shook her head violently. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.”
Something slammed against the shed door. The wood shuddered. Then another hit. Wet fists pounding, nails clawing. The hosts had found them.
From outside, voices spilled in overlapping layers.
“Open. Join. The spine is the doorway.”
Evan clutched Kendra’s arm, his eyes wide. “They don’t stop. You saw it—they don’t stop until…” His voice broke. He gagged suddenly, vomiting a stream of black bile that hissed as it hit the dirt floor.
Kendra stumbled back, horrified. “Oh my God.”
Evan’s body convulsed. His spine arched violently, bones cracking as something bulged beneath his skin, moving upward. His scream was strangled, gurgling, as the black veins spread up his neck.
“Kendra—kill me—now!” he begged, his voice warping, overlapping with another tone—raspy, insectile. “Do it!”
She grabbed the brick still slick with bug ichor. Her hands shook so hard she could barely hold it.
But Evan looked at her, his eyes bloodshot, black liquid trickling from the corners. His lips twisted into a grotesque grin not his own.
“You’re too late,” he said, his voice no longer his. “We’re already inside.”
His back split open. A writhing cluster of legs and mandibles tore free, spraying blood across the walls. The parasite that had gestated inside him crawled upward, its carapace glistening with his innards, and hissed.
The shed door gave way. Figures poured in, their broken limbs dragging, their insects shrieking in triumph.
Kendra screamed as they surged forward, their chorus filling the night:
“The spine is the doorway. Feed. Spread.”
The brick fell from her hand.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The infection didn’t stay in the shed. It couldn’t.
By the time the first neighbors heard the shrieking and came to investigate, it was already too late. They found only Evan’s hollowed husk slumped against the wall, his spine split open like a rotten log. The thing that had burst from him was gone, skittering through shadows, seeking new warmth, new flesh.
Kendra was gone too. Whether she escaped, or was taken, no one could say.
What mattered was the spread.
Two nights later, the town was unrecognizable.
Houses stood hollow, their windows black with silence. Cars sat abandoned at odd angles, doors hanging open, streaked with trails of blood and dark slime. The air reeked of rot, burning flesh, and a strange chemical tang that clung to the back of the throat.
And everywhere, there were hosts.
They moved in jerks and spasms, shambling through streets, slamming their heads against doors until wood splintered. The bugs had grown bold, detaching from their spent husks and taking flight, hunting in swarms. They came through bedroom windows, tearing through glass in the night. They slid beneath blankets, clicking and chittering as they found the warmth of sleeping flesh.
The first bite paralyzed. The second anchored. By the third, the victim’s body was no longer theirs.
A survivor named Holt learned that the hard way.
He’d been hiding in the library basement with a dozen others, rationing canned food by candlelight. On the fifth day, one of their own started twitching.
It was the kid, Daniel—the youngest of them. He’d been scratched two nights ago, but swore he was fine. When his eyes rolled back and his voice doubled in tone, it was too late. The bug inside his spine had grown fat and strong, feasting.
They watched in horror as his chest swelled, skin cracking, and something crawled beneath his ribs. His scream turned to gurgling laughter, and then he was ripping his own nails off, clawing his throat bloody as the parasite inside him shuddered in ecstasy.
The group panicked. They tried to run, but Daniel wasn’t Daniel anymore. His parasite used his body like a ragdoll, snapping his spine in half so he bent backward at impossible angles. He scuttled on all fours, his head dangling upside down, blood pouring from his grin.
One by one, Holt’s group was overrun. The bugs leapt from Daniel’s split spine, scattering like a plague into the screaming crowd.
Holt alone crawled free, his arm shattered, his mind breaking.
By the second week, the infection had spread far beyond the town. The highways were clogged with abandoned cars, doors clawed from the inside. Military checkpoints fell in hours—their rifles did little when the first host soldiers began turning on their own, parasites bursting from beneath helmets, latching onto their comrades before they could scream.
The news tried to explain it at first. A parasite. A new species. Government experiments gone wrong. But soon the broadcasts were just static, punctuated with wet sounds, and whispers that weren’t human.
Survivors swore they heard the bugs speaking through the airwaves, their chittering layered with stolen human voices.
We are many. The spine is the doorway. Feed. Spread.
The cities became hives.
At night, whole skyscrapers pulsed with a faint glow from within, as thousands of hosts moved in unison, their parasites clicking in chorus. From rooftops, swollen insect queens—monstrous things born from the largest of hosts—spread their wings and released spores into the air. Those who inhaled it coughed black until their lungs filled, the parasites crawling down their throats to claim them.
In the streets, broken bodies dragged themselves along, begging for help even as their voices warped into the insects’ call.
“Help… me. Feed. Hungry. Join.”
Children wandered with faces hollowed out, their parasites wearing their small bodies like costumes. They knocked on doors, crying in perfect mimicry until someone opened up—then the bugs inside their necks hissed as they leapt.
The world was dying, street by street, house by house, throat by throat.
And Kendra?
She survived, at least for a while. She ran with a band of other survivors across the countryside, avoiding cities, burning any bug they found with gasoline and fire. She dreamed of Evan every night—his face split open, that awful grin, his voice begging her to kill him.
But sometimes in her dreams, he wasn’t begging anymore.
Sometimes, he was calling to her.
Kendra. Don’t run. The spine is the doorway.
She woke screaming more often than not. The others began to look at her with suspicion, whispering when they thought she wasn’t listening. They wondered if maybe Evan’s parasite had touched her after all.
She swore she was fine. She swore she wasn’t infected.
But when she was alone, she felt the faintest itch at the base of her neck. A twitch just beneath the skin, like something shifting.
And sometimes, in the silence, she could swear she heard faint clicking—coming from inside her own skull.
No one knows how far the infection reached.
Cities fell. States vanished. Broadcasts turned to whispers. Survivors fled into forests and mountains, hoping the bugs wouldn’t follow. But they always did.
The parasites were patient. They had time. They only needed to find the warmth of a spine.
And as the world darkened, one truth spread with them, whispered in countless stolen voices across the globe:
“The spine is the doorway. We are many. We are hungry. And you are next.”
(…Continue?)
Plot🫀Pulse | Short Stories & Blog 
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