Infestation

Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of illness, body horror, hallucination, and self-harm.

The old architect had fingers like twisted roots, knuckles swollen from decades of clutching pencils too tightly. He’d lean over his drafting table in the university’s studio, lips moving silently as he sketched, as if whispering secrets to the lines taking shape under his hand. Adrien watched him sometimes from the back of the room, the way the man’s shoulders hunched forward like a question mark, like his spine had given up trying to hold him upright against the weight of all the buildings he’d drawn but never built.

"Too much thinking," the architect muttered once, catching Adrien staring. He tapped his temple with the blunt end of his pencil. "That’s where they get you. You spend your life making rooms in your head, and then one day you realize-" He paused, squinting at the smudged edge of his blueprint. "Ah, never mind. Go measure something."

Adrien did. He measured doorframes in the library, the span of stairwells, the exact depth of windowsills where students left half-finished coffees to go cold. He liked the precision of numbers, the way they locked reality into something manageable. If you could reduce a room to its dimensions, you could hold it in your hand. You could control it.

But the hospital hallway was different. Too bright, too long, swallowing sound so that even his footsteps vanished before they reached the walls. He kept his hands in his pockets, fingers curled around the folded paper the doctor had given him, edges gone soft from how many times he’d refolded it. The words hadn’t changed. He checked anyway.

The paper resisted when he tried to unfold it again, the creases worn white and fibrous, like something healing wrong. Adrien pressed his thumb against the edge- just enough to feel the threat of it splitting- then stopped. He knew the numbers by now. Knew them in the way a man knows the countdown of a bomb he can’t defuse.

Outside, rain streaked the hospital windows, turning the parking lot into a smeared watercolour of taillights and asphalt. Someone had left a coffee cup on the sill. Adrien stared at the dark ring it had left on the laminate, the way the condensation clung to the sides in trembling beads. A fly landed on the rim, legs testing the surface before it took off again, circling lazily. His skin prickled.

He walked faster, past the nurses’ station where a radio played tinny pop music, past the vending machine humming like a faulty refrigerator. The elevator doors opened with a sigh, and he stepped inside, pressing the button for the ground floor with a knuckle. When the doors closed, he caught his reflection in the polished metal- pale, sharp angles, dark circles under his eyes. Something moved beneath his jawline.

Adrien jerked his head to the side, but the sensation slithered away, leaving only the ghost of its passage. Nerves, he told himself. Just nerves. Phantom itching. Stress. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open to the lobby, where people moved in slow, distracted orbits around the reception desk.

The lobby smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee- not the rich earthy scent of fresh grounds. A woman pushed past him, her elbow brushing his sleeve, and for a fraction of a second, he felt it- the skittering, the faintest vibration beneath his skin, like the hum of a phone set to silent. His breath hitched. The woman was already gone, absorbed into the crowd, but the sensation lingered, settling somewhere behind his ribs. He pressed a hand to his chest, as if he could trap it there, smother it. It pulsed once, defiant, then went quiet.

Outside, the rain had eased to a fine mist, the kind that clung to your clothes without ever quite feeling wet. Adrien hesitated under the hospital awning, watching the cars slide past, their headlights smeared across the wet pavement. His phone buzzed in his pocket- probably his roommate, wondering when he'd be back- but he ignored it. Instead, he counted the cracks in the sidewalk, the way they branched like veins.

A bus hissed to a stop at the curb, its doors folding open with a mechanical sigh. Adrien climbed on, swiping his card without looking at the driver. The seats were nearly empty, save for an elderly man dozing near the back. Adrien slid into a seat by the window, pressing his forehead to the cool glass. The city blurred past, buildings reduced to streaks of grey and brown, their windows flickering like distant stars.

A fly landed on the windowpane with a soft tap, its wings folding neatly as it faced him- as if it had something to say. Raindrops slid past it, distorting the world beyond into smears of light and shadow, but the fly held fast. Adrien stared back, his breath fogging the glass. For a moment, it was just the two of them- the fly, and the thing inside him that had begun to twitch in response.

Then it came: a surge of movement beneath his sternum, a sudden, writhing pressure that swelled upward like a tide. His throat constricted. He clawed at his collar, fingers digging into his neck as if he could pry open the passageway, let whatever was thrashing inside him out. The fly on the window watched, unmoved. His vision swam- not with tears, but with something worse, something physical, a pressure behind his eyes that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Something was pushing against the backs of his eyeballs, probing, testing the thin membrane that separated his insides from the world. His nostrils flared, desperate for air, but his breath hitched against the thing crowding his windpipe. He could feel it- the hum of wings, the skitter of legs- inside his sinuses.

"Son?" A hand touched his shoulder, dry and papery. The old man from the back of the bus leaned over him. "You alright?"

Adrien tried to speak, but his tongue was a lead weight. The pressure behind his eyes crested, then- just as suddenly- subsided, retreating back into the cavern of his chest. He gasped, his lungs flooding with stale bus air. The old man's frown deepened, his fingers tightening slightly. "You look like you seen a ghost."

Adrien swallowed hard, his throat raw as if he'd been screaming. "Fine," he managed, forcing a smile that felt like cracked plaster. The old man hesitated, then nodded and shuffled back to his seat, casting one last glance over his shoulder. Adrien turned his face to the window again, but the fly was gone- only the smeared imprint of its body remained, a dark smudge against the glass.

The bus lurched around a corner. Adrien’s reflection fractured into jagged pieces. For a split second, he saw not himself but a hundred versions- some younger, some older, some hollowed out. Then the glass cleared, and it was just him again. Pale. Sharp. Wrong.

He got off two blocks from his apartment. The air clung thick and damp, pressing against his skin like wet gauze. His keys jangled in his hand- a sound that usually grounded him- but today it felt flimsy. What good was a lock when the threat was already in?

Inside, the apartment smelled of stale coffee and turpentine from the miniature cityscape his roommate had left drying on the table. Adrien toed off his shoes. The fly landed on the back of his hand as he pulled away. He froze, watching its proboscis dip toward his skin like a needle seeking a vein. It lifted its wings- once, twice- then took off, vanishing into the kitchen.

The paper bag from the pharmacy crackled as Adrien tipped its contents onto the counter- a single orange bottle. He unscrewed the cap with shaking hands. Take one daily with food, the label said. He dry-swallowed two.

His stomach lurched. The refrigerator’s hum faltered. The blueprints pinned to the wall fluttered in a draft he couldn’t feel. A fly landed on one, tracing the curve of an archway with eerie precision.

Adrien reached out, hand hovering above it. The insect's wings glinted under the kitchen's fluorescent light, veins running through them like fault lines in glass. His pulse hammered in his fingertips- one wrong twitch and he could end it. Crush the thing into the blueprint. The fly's antennae twitched, sensing the heat of his skin.

He pressed down.

A convulsion tore through his wrist, sudden and violent, as if his tendons had been yanked by invisible strings. His finger slammed onto the fly with a wet pop. The force reverberated up his arm, jolting his teeth together. For one dizzying second, the pressure wasn't just in his hand- it was everywhere, a thousand tiny points of resistance flaring beneath his skin, pushing back against his bones like prisoners testing the bars of their cells. His breath snagged in his throat. The fly's corpse stuck to his fingertip, legs curled inward, one wing torn at the base where it had tried- and failed- to escape.

Something inside him rippled in response.

Adrien stumbled back from the counter, knocking over the pill bottle. White tablets skittered across the tile like dropped teeth. His reflection in the microwave door warped and bulged, the glass breathing outward as if something pressed against it from within. He clutched his stomach, fingers digging into the soft hollow below his ribs. A sound escaped him- not a scream, not a whimper, but something raw and guttural, the noise a body makes when language fails. The apartment walls seemed to lean in, the ceiling dipping lower, the blueprint's pencil lines stretching toward him like accusatory fingers.

The fly's broken wing detached, floating to the floor in a slow spiral. Adrien watched it land- a translucent scrap no bigger than an eyelash

He fled to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. The sensation slithered beneath his scapula, branching outward- fine threads of movement spidering across his shoulders. He clawed at his shirt collar, tearing fabric. The mirror showed nothing but unbroken skin. But he felt them. A colony. A murmuration. Their wings brushing the underside of his epidermis with every shallow breath, their legs testing the boundaries of his flesh like tenants pacing a rented room.

He didn’t sleep.

Morning light slanted through the studio windows, cutting dust motes into glittering blades. Adrien blinked awake at his drafting table, cheek stinging where it had been pressed against the wood. The architect’s pencil snapped. Adrien jolted upright.

“Dreaming of flying?” the old man muttered.

Adrien swallowed. His throat felt raw. He flexed his fingers under the table. Nothing moved beneath them. Not now.

The architect’s gaze flicked upward, lingering on the dark crescents under Adrien’s eyes. “Out with it,” he said. “You’ve been hovering behind me like a bad draft.”

Adrien opened his mouth- to apologize, to deflect- but what came out was: “Does it ever get easier? Building things. Knowing they’ll outlast you.”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” the old man said. A fly crawled across the blueprint. Neither moved to shoo it away. “It’s not about ease. It’s about the weight.”

Adrien’s hands twitched. The thing beneath his sternum uncoiled. “What if the weight- what if it’s inside you?” His voice cracked. “What if you’re the thing that won’t last?”

The architect set his coffee cup down. Something moved behind his teeth- not words, but a slow, rhythmic grinding. Adrien caught a glimpse of it when the old man’s lips parted: a dark shape wedged between his molars, writhing. Too many legs.

“Kid,” the architect rasped, tongue pushing the thing deeper into his cheek, “you think too much about permanence.”

He rummaged in his drawer and handed Adrien a folded sheet. “Firm downtown’s looking for a detailer.”

Adrien accepted it with hollow hands. The pressure inside him shifted, unfurling like a moth testing its cocoon.

“You eat today?” the architect asked.

Adrien shook his head and fled.

The hallway outside the studio was empty. His footsteps echoed too loud. He shouldered into the men’s room. The mirror showed him fractured- pupils blown wide, skin too pale. His hands shook as he fumbled for the pill bottle. The cap resisted. He wrenched it open. Two tablets rattled into his palm. He dry-swallowed them.

A drip from the faucet hit the basin. The pills lodged somewhere below his collarbones. The pressure beneath his skin pulsed in response.

Adrien’s left eye twitched- once, twice- then wrenched open wider than anatomy should allow. The mirror showed it clearly: the slick, segmented curve of a fly’s foreleg pressing against the underside of his cornea from within, distending the eyelid like a latex glove stretched over a fist.

The first punch landed with a wet crunch. Pain exploded across his cheekbone. The mirror's reflection fractured further, but he saw it- the way his eyeball bulged unnaturally for half a second and then settled back. He hit himself again. His vision swam with static, but the pressure behind his eye lessened, the fly's limb retracting like a proboscis from rotten fruit. A third punch. His teeth cut into his lip. Copper flooded his mouth.

The fourth strike never landed. His wrist seized mid-air, tendons locking as if something had cinched them tight. Adrien's reflection stared back at him, one eye swollen shut, the other wide and bloodshot- and beneath the skin of his forehead, a dozen pinprick movements rippled like pebbles dropped into still water. He gagged, bracing against the sink as his stomach convulsed. A cluster of flies spilled from his mouth, dropping into the sink in a pattering cascade, their wings beating weakly against the porcelain.

The bathroom door creaked open. Footsteps.