Coleoptera - SCP Foundation

Coleoptera

By: CanOfSoup

Published on 29 Mar 2021 18:05

Forum » Bug/Insects Related Stories » Coleoptera

CartneyStar 6/25/2021 (Fri) 21:34:07 #61295191

When I was in middle school, there was this kid I knew named Sam.

Sam was your stereotypical nerd: blonde hair, big glasses, skinny and nonathletic, and very smart. We weren't really friends in the sense that we were "best buds" and invited each other to play at our homes. Most of the time we just sat at the same table and talked about comics, or video games.

From what I could gather, from his very few words about it, his father was a drunk, and his mother had left when he was five or six. While I don't think there was any physical abuse, there was almost definitely some negligence. One time, I had seen his father passed out on the street.

As for the insect bites, that was something I never understood either. The windows and doors and garage in his house were always closed, and Sam was never the type of person to venture outside.

But I was fourteen, so I didn't think much of it. After the end of the school-year, I never really saw much of Sam, except for the occasional glance where he'd be coming home with a jug of milk or some grocery bags, while I was out on my bicycle. I'd wave, he'd wave back, and that was the end of our interactions for a few months.

Then came the fifteenth of August. I was in the sitting room playing on a Nintendo-64 when the doorbell rang. Outside was Sam, with more bites than ever- at this point it looked like he had terrible acne. He was completely out of breath

I invited him inside and he sat down on the couch, staring at his feet. I was pretty confused, but my mother had taught me manners so I got him a glass of water and sat down opposite him. He downed the glass and started talking about how his father had been in the woods for three days, and just five minutes ago a note had appeared on his doorstep saying: "Come to the shack."

He asked me if I wanted to go and help him find his father. I was already apprehensive; I was willing to do a lot of stupid things, but traipsing into the woods looking for a drunk grown man was not really something I wanted to do. But he looked so helpless and afraid, so I agreed.

The forest.

It was night when we finally left- because it was rapidly approaching darkness, we had to scrounge around for some flashlights. I told my mom and dad I was sleeping over at my friends house, and then we set off down the road.

About twenty minutes later we arrived at the border of the forest, and at this point Sam was growing quieter and quieter, his face paler; the bug bites were a lot more noticeable. He walked inside the dark forest with no hesitation, and I followed.

Sam seemed to know where he was going: He walked quickly, his face set in a grim line. The flashlights were so noticeable in the dark, I was sure that if anyone was in the forest they'd see us coming from a mile away. But I was too far deep in to chicken out, and something in Sam's face was oddly scary.

Roughly thirty minutes later, Sam stopped. He adjusted his bulky glasses and turned to me. He told me we have to turn the flashlights off: they were getting close. I remember asking, "What is getting close?" But he ignored me and continued on into the darkness.

I was very tempted to leave, but I couldn't remember the way back, and I didn't like the thought of wandering in the forest for the next few hours, so I switched off the light and followed him. The forest floor was covered with leaves and twigs- at least, I thought it was leaves and twigs, based off of the brittle crunching sound; it was too dark to see.

I could hear an odd sound, now. Almost like a bee buzzing. The uncomfortable sound seemed to grew closer as we seemed to approach the shack. Through the little moonlight that was barely enough to cover tree branches, I could see beetles and flies scurrying on the wood.

After a few minutes- or hours, I wasn't sure -Sam turned around, his pale face shining in the darkness. "We're almost there, don't make any sound." My heart was beating a heavy tattoo against my throat as I walked forward.

Suddenly, there was this blinding light. I squinted and I saw Sam and his father standing next to this old wooden shack, with moss and rotting wood adorning it. The buzzing sound was so much more louder, and when I fully opened my eyes I saw a massive grid of lights in front of me.

I remember turning to Sam, who was now staring at me impassively, zero emotion in his face. His father looked like a mess, though. His beard and hair were unkempt, his clothes in rags. Dirt and trash covered his skin, and a scent of feces and trash exuded from him.

Most noticeably, however, were the numerous amounts of bug bites on him, which seemed to have grown tenfold from when I last saw him. His teeth were yellow and blackened when he smiled, and I remember him saying, "Good job," to Sam, and clapping him on the shoulder.

When I looked behind me, the leaves and twigs I thought I was stepping on weren't leaves: they were bones. A human skull was looking at me, its eyes wide and hollow, the skull cracked open. More bones surrounded it. Looking back, those were probably the people that disappeared.

I remember him raising his hands as though he were conducting a band, and he started some kind of odd chant in a weird guttural language. It sounded more like grunting than anything, but at this point I had tried to run away. But he caught me by the neck of my shirt and threw me to the ground.

He started moving around me in a circle, and that horrible buzzing sound grew louder, and suddenly I could see the source.

Millions of bugs, in massive dark clouds had come from the forest and into the small clearing. The droning of it grew louder still, and the horrible smell became more pronounced. More bugs came, surrounding me, and then they began to crawl onto me.

Beetles, some six inches long, began to eat my arm. Huge mosquitoes sucked blood out of me. I couldn't breathe, because whenever I tried, I inhaled dozens of bugs, and I choked on them until I coughed them up.

Everything went black after that, and I remember waking up on the pavement across from my house. After what had happened, I heard that Sam and his father had disappeared. The bug bites on my skin were big and red, so I wore long-sleeved shirts and pants every where I went.

After a few months, the bites have mostly faded away. There's still one on my arm, though. Now, I'm in high-school, and everyone I've talked to said that they don't know a "Sam". I've even gone to several therapists, and they've said that I dreamt it up. When I showed the bite mark, they say that they don't see anything, and that I was some kind of liar.

But I know that isn't true, because yesterday, a beetle came out of my bite mark.