Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

off her bad knee – she pulled herself up into a standing position. She saw one of the creature’s clawed hands come into view around the front of the car, and she began hopping toward the rear of the vehicle, keeping her hands on the Civic’s roof to support herself. She reached the rear quarter panel when the creature’s front head became visible. It fixed its one good eye on her, and its keening died away, replaced by an angry hiss. Now that the thing was closer, she could smell it, and she nearly vomited. She was already nauseated as a result of the crash, and the beast’s stink was like a pile of used tampons that had been baking for hours beneath a blazing sun. It was overpowering, so much so that for a moment she was overwhelmed with revulsion and unable to move.

Light washed over her, and she heard the sound of an approaching car engine. One of the Cabal coming for her, maybe the Driver himself? At this point, she’d almost welcome it if it was.

Headlight beams played over the scorpion thing, and as if realizing it might have competition for its prey, its hiss became a shriek of fury, and its hands slapped the road as it began pulling itself toward her with increased speed, its wounded limbs seemingly little impediment to forward motion. That got Lori moving again. If she could’ve run, she would have, but with her injured knee, the best she could do was hop around to the rear of her car, hands on the trunk, and continue on to the other side of the vehicle. The scorpion thing continued its angry shrieking, accompanied by the slap-slap-slap of its palms on the ground, and the heavy sound of its body being pulled along behind.

She glanced back at the approaching vehicle. The headlights loomed larger now, and their illumination dazzled her eyes. The vehicle itself was a dim shape behind those lights, their glare making it impossible to discern any details about it. She wondered if the driver would pass on by, sparing only a curious look for the naked woman fighting to survive an attack by some monstrous thing. For all she knew, on the Nightway a sight like this might be perfectly normal, of no more than fleeting interest to one of its travelers. Or maybe whoever – or whatever – was behind the wheel would turn out to be a worse threat to her than the scorpion thing. Maybe it would be best if the vehicle did continue on past her. It didn’t, though. It was close enough now that she could see it was a van, but she could make out no other details, not with its headlights shining in her eyes. The van slowed to a stop a few yards from her, and the driver got out.

He was a black man in his late thirties, of medium height, stocky, short hair, and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He wore a black T-shirt that said PEST DEFENSE in white capital letters, along with a pair of black satin shorts. Sticking out from the shorts were a pair of prosthetic legs that looked like jointed metal rods and which terminated in plastic feet inserted into a pair of red sneakers. The man started toward her with a rolling gait, swaying side to side as he moved forward. She was uncomfortably aware of her nakedness, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. Besides, what did personal modesty matter when a malformed human scorpion was trying to kill her?

The Civic rocked then, and Lori looked toward the scorpion thing and saw the monster pulling itself on top of the roof. Instead of following her around the rear of the car, the fucking thing had decided to take a shortcut. Once on top of the car it hissed at her again, and its muscles tensed as it prepared to launch itself at her.

The man – who up to this point had barely glanced at her, who’d kept his gaze focused on the scorpion thing – made no move toward the creature. He stopped walking when he was within a few feet of the car, opened his mouth wide and coughed forth a dark cloud. At first Lori thought he’d expelled some kind of gas, but then she heard the buzzing and saw the cloud was comprised of hundreds of small black beetles, all of which flew straight toward the scorpion thing. The insects engulfed the creature before it could attack Lori, and it began shrieking as beetles gathered on its pale flesh and started eating. It thrashed and swatted at the insects, and its tail stabbed downward, the head at the end of it attempting to tear masses of beetles away from its shared body. But the secondary head only succeeded in providing the beetles with easy passage down its throat and into its interior. The creature shrieked from two mouths now, and its exertions became so violent that it rolled off the Civic and fell to the glossy surface of the Nightway. It rolled violently back and forth in a desperate attempt to free itself from the beetles, but there were simply too many of them. Within seconds, they completely covered the creature, which no longer screamed from either mouth, as both were filled with ravening insects.

It was over quickly after that.

The scorpion thing’s exertions lessened before ceasing altogether. The creature lay motionless on the road while the beetles continued their work. Before long, the insects began to take flight once more, only a few at first, but more joined them until the insects’ departure became a mass exodus. The insects flew back toward their host, who once again opened his mouth wide to allow their return. Lori watched in revulsion as the beetles disappeared down the man’s throat without any seeming discomfort on his part. She turned to look at the scorpion thing and saw it had been