Dead Bugs

Ever seen dead bugs on a windowsill? Of course you have, it’s quite common, especially in the countryside. A still ladybug, a pile of flies, or maybe a spider curled up in a ball, it doesn’t matter. You can see them anywhere. You knew that. But here’s something you didn’t know: whenever you see dead insects or arachnids of any kind on the window sill, it’s a sign. It means you will have many restless nights, full of nightmares. It may not happen immediately, it may even takes months or years before it starts, but it will happen. You will know when it starts because all of the nightmares involve dead bugs in some way. There are many kinds of these nightmares, all of which are thoroughly unpleasant, whether or not you’re afraid of these deceased insects. Perhaps you’ll have a nightmare about the dead black widow. You’ll awaken in your bed, looking upwards at your ceiling. You won’t be able to move. You can only watch as a large, lifeless black widow (the size of which almost covers your ceiling) slowly, and I mean very slowly, float downwards towards your face, hanging by some unseen thread. It’s motionless face will be to yours the entire time, until it finally touches you. It’ll rub against your cheeks, and gravitate towards your open mouth. You can’t close your mouth. You can’t move. You can’t scream. Only watch as that dead spider crunches and squishes into your gaping mouth, choking you.

Alternatively, you may have the dream about the moths. You’ll awaken in a dark chamber. It’s cold, wet, and you can’t see anything. You’ll feel something crunch and shift underneath you. Suddenly, the lights will weakly flicker on, exposing what’s covering the ground: dead moths. Hundreds and hundreds of dead moths. They cover the whole ground, the ceiling, and the walls. As you desperately try to find a way to escape the revolting prison, you will hear a whirring sound. It gets louder and louder…and then, the walls will begin to close in on you. The ceiling will move downwards. The ground will move upwards, and the walls will move towards you from the sides. Moths are getting crushed as the walls move toward you. The chamber will get tighter and tighter until you are crushed in a box full of finely ground up moths.

Lastly, you may have the dream about the dead cicada and the dead praying mantis. In this dream, you’ll awaken in an old, rundown house, far from civilization. You’ll first be in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet. It’s an unnecessarily large bathroom, with a white tiled floor caked with dirt and dust. While you sit on the toilet, you will notice, to your left, is a giant cicada. It’s as large as cow, and dead of course, but it’ll be facing your direction, motionless. It’s dulled red eyes will be staring at you. As you get up and try to leave the bathroom, you’ll notice, to your horror, that the cicada moves every time you’re not looking at it. When your back is to it, you can hear it move: but since it’s dead, it doesn’t move in a natural way. You’ll hear its legs drag across the ground, frozen in place and unable to bend and move. It’s a like a moving statue…only, you know, different. In order to escape the cicada, you’ll have to stare at it. Every time you turn away from it, even if you’re in a completely different room in the house, the cicada will instantly be in the same room as you. If you turn away from it, and immediately look back at it, the cicada will have moved a foot closer to you. You’ll have to give the dead bug your undivided attention. Unfortunately, that’s not the worst part. Every minute you spend looking at the dead cicada is another minute the giant, dead mantis moves towards you. It’s even bigger than the cicada, and menacingly tall. It will come from behind, again, like some macabre statue. Its arms will be outstretched, and its grayed eyes will stare at you. In order to stop the mantis, you’ll have to look at it. But, when you’re not looking at the cicada, it will get closer while you stare at the mantis, and…yeah. You get the idea. Eventually, despite your best efforts, you’ll be caught right between two lifeless, skeletal monstrosities.

There are many other dreams besides the ones I listed. Raining dead dragonflies, flowing rivers of crushed grasshoppers, mountains of dead horse-flies, the list goes on and on. Once the dreams start, they’ll never stop. You’ll have them every night for the rest of your life. What causes these dreams? Does it really matter? You can’t do anything about it, so why bother knowing? The only way you can prevent yourself from getting these dreams is not looking at the dead bugs in windows. Unfortunately, that’s not really possible, since anyone that has a window will eventually have to look at it. People have been driven insane by these dreams, and have died from sleep deprivation, a side-effect of their efforts to stay awake. Try as you might, you can’t stop it. It will happen to you. Maybe not now, maybe not in a couple of years, but it will happen. Just wait. You’ll be sleeping with blankets made up of dead mosquitoes soon enough…