Diary of a Maggot E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A murder victim makes a tasty feast for a family of flesh-eating maggots. But when the maggots become the murderer's next targets, their gruesome banquet turns into a killing field. Can a single courageous worm with a vision inspire the survivors to fight back? Perhaps a brilliant, twisted trick will bring down the monster and serve up the meat for a bloody new feast. And the maggots' moment of glory might give way to the dark fulfillment of their deepest, wildest secret. Don't miss this twisted horror tale with a difference. Welcome to the latest shocker from award-winning storyteller Robert Jeschonek, a master of mind-bending horror and dark fantasy.

Leseprobe

Diary of a Maggot

A Horror Story

Robert Jeschonek

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Diary of a Maggot

About the Author

Special Preview: Bloodliner

DIARY OF A MAGGOT

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

http://bobscribe.com/

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.blastoffbooks.net

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Diary of a Maggot

Did you ever wonder what maggots are singing about as we squirm through a swath of rancid meat?  As we nibble the steaming feast, growing fatter with each delicious bite?

It's a secret.

All I'm allowed to tell you is that it's the same song we've sung since the beginning of maggots.  The same beautiful tune that has lilted through countless trash dumps, graves, fields, marshes, and homes throughout the countless eons.

And we're singing it again tonight as we comb through this bag of rotten refuse.  As I and my hundreds of brothers, freshly hatched from Mother's eggs, devour the precious food we need to thrive.

This is paradise.  The air inside the plastic bag is rank and humid.  We move in absolute darkness, the only sound our twitching and nibbling.

And singing.

Here we are, side by side, working hard for a common purpose.  Working to eat and grow and change and become mothers and fathers ourselves.  Can there be any more perfect happiness?

I'm writing my own song about it as I feed, composing it in my mind.  A song about the Good Work At Hand and the Dream of Flight. That one thing I long for above all others:  to lift off, to soar. Soon, I will have it, we all will.  We were born to take flight.

And eating is the only way to reach that reward.  That's why I wriggle my tiny white body over the rough skin of the carcass, nibbling off pungent mouthfuls en route.  Working my way up to the face, I make a bull's-eye for the tender, juicy eyeballs. When I squirm under the lid of one eye for a taste, the lid sticks to my body and moves with me--up as I move forward, then down as I back out.  If one of his fellow people could see him right now, they'd think the dead man was winking at them, back from the dead.

Suddenly, my meal is interrupted.  Someone whistles a warning from afar.  One of the lookouts. Danger!  Danger!

We all freeze at once.  We lie still in the sweet rotting meat, listening for a sign, wondering if the alarm is false.

It isn't.  Heavy thuds resound above us, crossing overhead.  We hear them descend, coming closer, clomping toward us.

Suddenly, bright light flares through the thin plastic shell of the bag.  Night becomes day in our sticky, sweet paradise.

Panic flickers through our family like lightning.  A united, keening cry rises inside the bag from my brothers and sisters:  Mother, help us!

Even thought we all know Mother isn't coming back.  That she's flown away forever.

The thudding sounds come ever closer.  I shiver and whimper a little myself, feeling chills of fear ripple through me.

And then I change my tune.  I gather myself up and prepare for what's coming, whatever that might be.  I'm determined not to let anything stand between me and my destiny, my dreamed-of soaring.

Boom boom boom.  The thudding comes closer than ever and stops.  I sense movement beyond the bag, and I know instantly what it is.

The movement of living meat.  Something not-dead come to pay us a call.

The tiniest maggot of the litter, barely half my size, scoots up and crushes her body against mine.  She's shaking uncontrollably, her chirping whistle fluttering with terror. I hum a little tune, comforting her as best I can.

We hear the thudding sounds again.  Boom boom boom.  Coming closer.  BOOM BOOM BOOM.  We feel the vibrations as they crash down outside the bag.

And stop.  Stop right there beside us.

Everyone freezes.  The tiniest maggot is a block of stone against me.

Then, I sense that movement of not-dead meat again...and the bag jolts upward.  My brothers and sisters wail as the heavy load shifts.

I hear thunderous sounds outside--some kind of language?--but I don't understand.  "Time to get rid of you, old man."

The bag lurches up again and swings backward.  Thrown from my perch on the skin, tossed away from the tiniest maggot, I roll down through the splintered bones of the carcass and land in a pool of coppery ooze.  I get a mouthful and drink it down instantly--salty, metallic, bloody.

Just as I'm slithering toward the ragged, meaty shore, everything suddenly drops.  The bag gives way, and our little world of sweet ferment falls straight down like a rock.

Everything goes at once--meat, bones, blood, and maggots.  We hit a hard surface below with a jarring impact and a splat.

I black out for an instant.  Then, the shrill wailing of my hundreds of brothers and sisters wakes me from the darkness.

I'm no longer inside the carcass.  The fall shook me off, throwing me onto a cold, gray plain.

Looking up, I get my first glimpse of the Beast that has torn my world apart.  The nightmare that rises over me into astronomical heights.

Though it's the same variety of creature we were just eating in the bag, it looks far more horrifying in a not-dead state, towering over us.  I recognize the same body parts I've been devouring on the corpse, only now, on the Beast, they're animated and intimidating. Capable of great destruction.

His two mammoth legs stretch upward, then merge into a broad trunk.  Further up, enormous arms frame a vast barrel chest; the chest bursts out from under a ribbed white shirt that leaves his arms and giant shoulders mostly bare.  In the middle of those shoulders, rising up on a veiny stump of a neck, is his huge head. Glittering bloodshot eyes bulge from a mane of bushy red hair, sticking out in all directions from the top of his head to the blunt stub of his chin.

The Beast looks right at me, and I freeze.  His face crinkles, lips curling up to reveal gleaming yellow teeth.

Then, he snarls out more incomprehensible sounds.  "Damn maggots!  Can't even leave a body alone in a basement for a few days, can you?"

I gaze up at this shaggy, towering Beast, this rack of living meat, and I wonder what he'll do next.  Is there a chance he might just gather us up with the pile of rotting flesh and put us in another bag to resume our pleasant feeding?

Not a chance.  "Cheap-ass garbage bags!"  Howling, he chucks the remains of the shredded bag to the gray plain with the rest of the mess.

Many of my brothers and sisters head for the fallen bag.  Instinctively seeking shelter, dozens of them zip across the gray plain toward the mound of black plastic.

"Get away!"  The great Beast belts out more gibberish as he hauls back a booted foot and gives the bag a kick.  The bag sticks to his booted toe, and he shakes it loose, sending it fluttering away.

Which is when my brothers and sisters make a fatal mistake.  With the bag gone, dozens of them race toward the nearest cover.

But the nearest cover is under the Beast's giant boots.