No one knows where they came from.
Most people say they are aliens. That makes the most sense. After all, it would be pretty egotistical for humans to assume that they’re the only ones in the universe. Scientists have already figured out that octopuses aren’t exactly native to the planet, so aliens would be a logical conclusion.
Others think they might be government experiments – one particularly wild theory speculated that there was something in the latest round of vaccines that was created the weird insect/human hybrids that we were seeing suddenly exploding in the population.
So government experiments was one theory – but which government? The first few subjects had appeared in North America, but we were now seeing them all over the world.
Whatever they were, they were freaky as hell.
It was the first video that went viral and started the panic. The video showed a man in a business suit making his way down the street, heading for the bus stop, blending into the background of whatever the person behind the camera was actually trying to film.
Then suddenly, the man stopped. He dropped his briefcase to the ground, reached behind his head, and very casually began to peel off his skin.
The panic was immediate. Amid the screams and the chaos, somehow the cameraperson managed to hold their phone steady. The man continued to peel away his skin, revealing not blood and muscle but something just as horrifying. Something brown and glistening and insectile in form was bursting out of the covering that had been the man’s skin.
Anyone who has watched a spider or a crab molting will understand the repulsion of what happened in front of that bus stop. The insect body writhed and pulsed and worked its way free of its skin suit until the skin, clothes and all, fell in a heap on the ground, and the insect-thing – whatever it was, something between a man and a bug – was able to lurch forward on its multiple, newly-liberated legs.
People thought the video was AI at first. Why wouldn’t they? We see that kind of thing all the time now, the uncanny nightmares produced by machines that, without the ability to comprehend the human psyche, somehow know just what to create to fill us with intense and primordial terror.
But it was soon proven to be very real, and as soon as it was, the panic that was shown in the video spread through the real world. Before the panic had a chance to subside, two more cases of similar occurrences were reported across the country.
There were more and more cases each day. What had started out small was now growing exponentially. Still, the world carried on. I thought of how crazy it felt to continue with business as usual in such a situation, as I made my way to the office that Friday.
I sat down at my desk and tried to get started on work. The familiar noises of the cubicle farm – phones ringing, printers jamming, footsteps padding across the low-pile carpet – were soothing in a way, though they felt preposterously out of place in light of the current situation.
I tried to type, but found myself staring at a blank document instead, as the cursor in the upper left-hand corner blinked impatiently at me. I was startled by a sudden presence behind me, a hand landing on the back of my chair.
“How are you holding up, Stacy?” A voice behind me asked. I turned to see Anne, my friend from a few cubes down, looking me over with a worried expression.
“I’m fine,” I replied, rubbing my face, “just tired.”
“Aren’t we all,” Anne replied with a sigh, “did you see that new video on the news? The one on the subway.”
“No; I didn’t catch that one.”
“I don’t blame you,” Anne said with a shake of her head, “it’s too hard to keep up anymore. There’s just too many to keep track of now.”
“That’s for sure.”
“At least it wasn’t near us; that’s one good thing about living in the Midwest, I guess. It seems like all this craziness is happening on the coasts, for whatever reason.”
“Maybe they like the ocean.”
Anne laughed.
“Maybe,” she replied, before adding seriously, “I just wish I knew what was happening, you know? I wish someone knew what all of this meant.”
I wished I could give her an answer; but I couldn’t.
Later that day, as I climbed up my apartment steps, I couldn’t help but feel heavy. There was so much fear, so much uncertainty – and there was nothing we could do about it. I couldn’t stop what was happening any more than I could stop the rain from falling or the waves from washing onto the shore.
I dropped my purse in the hallway, and trudged into the bathroom.
I stared at myself for a long time in the bathroom mirror.
Then I reached my hand behind my head, running my fingers across my scalp until I felt the skin give way. Then slowly - taking my time as there was no one around, no cameras to capture my transformation, to see the armored body bursting from my flesh or the feelers wheeling above my eyes – I began to peel it away.