Tactile

Tactile
READ THE DESCRIPTION BEFORE YOU READ PLEASE

It had nestled under the crook of her ear while she slept. Small, like a delicate piece of jewelry, it clung to the warmth of her cartilage. While its mind lay dormant, its body was ever active, legs twitching as it ran from some imagined predator.
It fled the blankets when she stirred, nestling itself in the dimple of her left shoulder. It dodged a bra strap, soap, steam, and scrub, running into that nest of sweet-smelling blonde hair on her head. Wrapped in downy softness, it felt accepted and comfortably compressed.
After days, no, years of fleeing, being thrown aside, hearing the shrill screams of its companions, it wasn’t in favor of letting its guard down.
Many surfaces had been traversed, many fluids and foods had been tasted. Time and seed had been wasted. On the verge of collapse, as it tumbled from a brownstone window, a single leg had caught on a sill a few stories below. Terror seized up its joints, and, with urgency previously unsensed, it had scrambled into the heated apartment.
Colors had assaulted its eyes. The city lights flooded into the open window, casting tiny stars all over her slender frame. It struggled to tell the colors of the sheets, the girl, the lights, apart. It was too much effort, and its legs began to collapse beneath it as it thought. Time was wasting. Time was of the essence. It was time to explore. Time to feed. Both could be done at once if it found a source of water.
A shining bathtub proved to be the answer. Ecstatic, it allowed its legs to spread, its antennae to savor the sugary nectar of life. The water gave it a good look at itself. It was beginning to gray, but not quite. There were still a few days for the mission to be completed. It could see something else as well: the delicate, silky strands of a competitor. An intruder.
The intruder leaped upon it, legs straddling its back and fangs preparing a paralyzing serum. It smelled of roasting animal and the victim began a dance of terror. The sensation of smallness confused its enemy, and it quickly seized the opponent’s body. The soft underbelly was just within the grasp of its teeth. With a spurt, it had sustenance for another hour. There were so many textures within its foe, so many different functions in its body. All organs served but one purpose now: to be liquefied and consumed by the victor, to be smeared across the winner’s many legs as a mark of superiority.
With a renewed vigor, it had claimed its place in the woman’s bed, bloated and full of prey. Its air cavities expanded and contracted with a relative urgency. However, the true work was to be done later. Tomorrow. If it managed to wake up at all.
It watched from a nest of hair as she applied her makeup, looking at herself with disdain. It did not understand why she was altering her form. There was nothing to hunt and nothing to hide from. If anything, the pastes and powders made her stand out more in her natural environment.
What most disturbed were the horrid shoes that she was placing on her feet. How was she to escape a predator? It tried to imagine how it could run if its many legs were impaired in such a way, and the resulting footage disturbed it. It rolled onto its stomach to calm down, which sent it tumbling onto her shoulder. It froze. Any twitch, any movement, and she would know of its presence. This last attempt would be futile. Her skin smelled of chemicals, chemicals used to kill things like it. Unfortunately for her, it had built up quite a tolerance for the fumes and sprays that mankind tried to use against it. It scurried away, struggling to be light on its feet. With a contraction of its air cavities, it reached its favorite place wrapped around her ear.
Then it attached into her flesh and began to suck.
They traversed the streets, surely hunting for something. It could hear the other humans chirping when she passed by, a derogatory sound. Though she was occupied with her own survival processes, it had plenty of time to notice these things between frenzied meals.
Hatchlings were beginning to point at her, but their mothers pulled them away. It felt a form of exasperation. This was why other species abandoned their hatchlings. So that the ones who deserved to die stayed out of the parents’ way. They would be killed, and the respectful ones would survive. For a while longer, anyway.
She enters a building and writes her name, then takes an elevator. It can feel the other occupants stare. Shuffle their feet. If it had vocal chords, it would laugh. The other occupants were too afraid that it would touch them to intervene, even when it was obviously drawing blood. Said blood was dripping down her neck, making a lovely crimson line.
One of the other occupants activated its gag reflex.
“Are you ok?” She asked.
The other occupant nodded shakily.
“I don’t think so. Let me get you to the staff nurse.” She took hold of the occupant as they exited the elevator. Despite this display of kindness, the other occupant averted its eyes, and shook her off when they arrived at the correct door.
It felt expanded with hot, liquid sustenance, almost too large for its body. Thus, as the woman sat in front of her computer, it began to molt. More air was needed for expansion, so it took a break from its constant feeding and filled its air sacs to capacity, until it could feel its old skin beginning to detach from its soft parts.
More people passed by, some retching at the sight.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. A look of slight distress crossed her face, and she sighed.
It could not be helped. This prey needed to be isolated, unloved, or its mission would fail. In a way, it felt that it was doing the woman some good. After another comfortable night’s sleep, having fully realized how worthless she was to the rest of her species, her misery would end in a pleasurable fever dream. Numbing fluids would course through her veins. She would feel nothing but the presence of another living being. Even if she opened her eyes and beheld it, her fear response would not trigger. She wouldn’t escape because she wouldn’t want to.
Even if she did escape, or harm it, its life in that form would no longer be needed. This gave it some peace. Living was difficult and it could still remember the liquid embrace of its last death, as something much smaller and weaker.
She stood up, and the wet carcass rolled off of her shoulder, into the shadows under her desk. It was time to return to feeding, before the wound it created dried. She appeared to be reporting to her superior, a well-dressed male nestled in a comfortable part of the hive.
The male appraised her sexually, consuming her body with his eyes. Whatever the male was saying did not matter. His pheromones were thick in the air, but she did not seem to be accepting them. The scent of her shame and fear filled its nostrils. She stumbled out of the uncomfortable space. The shoes on her feet failed her, and she almost collapsed on the way to the elevator as well.
At that point, the entire floor of the hive had been informed of her condition. Snickers, chirps, and faces of disgust followed her out of the building. It was larger and more noticeable now. Its weight bent her ear a bit.
She arrived at her dwelling and began to consume intoxicating fluids. They smelled sweet, musty, just as most poisons did. The odors reminded it of the poison that had killed it the last time; it had been small, delivering what it thought was food to its queen. When the food was delivered and distributed, it had watched its companions die slowly, the smell of death filling the entire hole that they lived in. It had not consumed the food, but, without a leader, it wandered. As the sun touched the morning dew, fangs had sunk sugary fluid into its neck, and the last sight it had seen greatly mimicked the form it was using now.
The fluids made her struggle more to walk, and she went to bed with her work uniform on and a bottle by her side. It took one last, overwhelming gulp of piping hot blood. Feeding was done, and it had molted many more times by then, wrapping around her entire face.
With an expansion of its air sacs, it gurgled a variety of fluids into the sore it had created. The correct balance of chemicals was key. The woman’s body lurched once, before stilling. A soft smile was on her face. Perhaps she was dreaming of castrating her superior.
The eggs were next, filling the sore almost to capacity. As soon as they touched liquid, they expanded and burrowed. She giggled in her sleep. The chemicals had been correctly administered. It could finally curl up beside her, put its many legs up, and let nature release it from this cell. It would most likely awaken in the center of one of its eggs, at least, that was what it hoped.
The woman’s face was swelling, and her eyes flew open. It turned to behold what was happening, curious. She stared at its dying body, and touched her strange new features. Then she laughed. As her air cavities filled with egg after egg, the laughing turned to choking, all while a content expression remained on her face. It did not have enough time to watch the entire procedure; the airs of death were scratching at its consciousness even now. With a last contraction of air, it was sucked into the emptiness. Energies of any sort passed it by, including the spider that it had killed. It reached out for the familiar wavelength, and they both awakened wrapped in chunks of still twitching flesh.