It Creeps!(Charles E.J. Moulton) He knew as well as I this public display had its full attention directed toward me. Pauline’s looks turned heads. My friends Kimberley and Sarah always said she did more than that. Patrick deliberately devoured her, kissed her, fondled her — like he had equally devoured four other girls this spring just to get back at me for breaking up with him.
I stood close to the burgers and fries in the lunch room, waiting for my turn. I had broken up with this guy on New Year’s Eve, for crying out loud. I mean, four months is a heck of a long time. After I found him in bed with that girl Conny, I just had to break up with him just to save my pride.
Still, his looks and suave style, even now, drew me toward him like steel toward a magnet. When I looked back toward him for the fifth time, Principal Dwight Masters stood adjacent to the couple, reprimanding them. His bald head slowly received its steady red glow as he spoke. Patrick’s grin widened. He liked this, the creep.
“Patrick, Pauline,” Masters shouted, pointing his finger at them. “I don’t care what you do in your free time or what your parents say about it. But in this school, that kind of sexual display is beyond reprimand. I ask you to stop it and just use your lunch break to eat.”
Patrick gave the principal a half-smile, grabbing his new girl’s buttocks behind the principal.
The old man took a step back, crossed his arms, now looking like a tomato.
Patrick took a step toward the big boss, grinning. “I don’t think your wife allows you to bump her enough.”
Dwight Masters raised his hand and gave the kid a very strong slap across the left cheek. Patrick cowered, falling into Pauline’s arms. Principal Masters pointed toward the food line with a long, trembling finger:
“You are gonna have a long day in here!”
I didn’t know it at the time, but everything had come to a standstill. Even the woman handing out the food to the students had stopped working.
I felt like a nervous butterfly about to be eaten by a chameleon. Looking around for help, I saw Kimberley and Sarah walking to their tables.
“What’ll it be, Josie?” Mrs. Price asked me.
“Cheeseburger and fries,” I told her.
The chubby woman smiled, dishing up the food.
I felt her inquisitive gaze fixed on my face.
“Quite a scene over there, huh?” she said, handing me the plate.
I shrugged, shyly. “Too weird for me.”
She leaned over and smiled. “Glad you’re not with him no more, girl.”
I grinned from ear to ear, feeling really good about how nice that woman was to me.
“Don’t need that.”
I strolled over to the soda fountain and grabbed myself a coke. Feeling disturbed about all this, I walked over to the table by the window and sat down. I began munching on my food. I chewed like an old man, not like the young girl I was.
My eyes drifted for a while and eventually met Sarah’s. I looked at her, saw the icy chill she oozed, smiled at her anyway and tried to keep eating without displaying too many digested cucumbers.
Sarah threw in the remainder of her dessert and tucked her brown hair behind her ear.
I looked over toward the counter. Patrick was actually hitting on yet another girl now, just two seconds after he'd gotten slapped for fondling the first one.
“Still can’t get enough of that creep, huh?”
I looked up at Kimberley, penetrated her with my stare.
The long pause had volumes written in its gaze.
“Come on, Josie,” Sarah said, leaning forward. “It’s obvious.”
“Do something,” Kimberley filled in. “Even if it’s wrong.”
I threw in a couple of fries into my mouth, angrily. I then gave them a nod. “What are you suggesting?”
Kimberley and Sarah leaned back into their chairs. They looked out at the green trees swaying in the wind. They looked back at me and smiled. “Bugs.”
“Huh? What do you want me to do? Dress up like a wabbit?”
My girlfriends laughed. Sarah took a long sip of her drink and then leaned forward again, this time closer. She gestured for me to approach her. I did.
“My Uncle Frank owns a beetle farm,” she whispered. “They’re bred in Uganda and extremely unusual. They multiply.”
“That sounds dangerous, girls,” I filled in. “Forget it.”
“Apparently, they die out as fast as they multiply,” Sarah said.
“Look,” I interrupted. “I won’t experiment with this crap. So let’s just forget about Patrick, okay? Please?”
She gestured toward the boy, who now had his jacket turned inside out with Pauline standing on it and calling him bad names.
“Patrick has a band,” Kimberley continued. “You know where they practice.”
I nodded. “I sang in that band. So?”
Sarah gave me a dull grin and eyed heavenward. “He goes there alone on Saturdays to play his instruments. You plant the bugs there tonight and the place will be lice-ridden by tomorrow morning.”
I raised my hands and gave Sarah’s nose a peck. “He’s not really bothering me.”
Kimberley nodded ironically, giving herself an ugly double-chin. “Calling you a bitch, spreading rumors about you in home-room, and putting old bread in your underwear?”
“Deliberately fondling other chicks when you walk by,” Sarah chided, annoyed. She raised her eyebrows and stared at me. She stood there so emphatically, I just had to laugh. But there was no response. The two girls took their trays and left, leaving me sitting there with a stupid grin on my face.
I watched them go away, gazing at me over their shoulders and giving me very evil double-whammies. I sat there, searching my left-over fries for some answers, just like a medium would search the coffee grains for miracles.
“Hi, Josie.”
I looked up. Patrick stood there, sucking up my air like a vacuum cleaner.
“Can I join you?”
I half-closed my eyes, pursing my lips. I knew that lower lip of mine trembled, just like it always did when he was around me. He saw it, too.
“You fondled two other girls just now,” I said, standing up. “Aren’t they enough?”
Patrick gave me a grin. “You’re my lucky third.”
“Then grab your johns and try humping a blanket,” I spat.
“Hey, bitch,” he shouted, “I broke up with you, remember? This was a freebee.”
Out of nowhere, Principal Masters came running up, his heels skidding on the surface linoleum. His head had the color of a cherry. He grabbed Patrick by his ears and pulled him out of the cafeteria.
Later on, before Kimberley and Sarah came in, I had been sitting there in the Trigonometry room alone for fifteen minutes. I needed to stop this dance.
I raised one index finger and shook it at them.
“But you gotta leave with me if I chicken out?”
Kimberley and Sarah smiled so mischievously that it scared me.
“Patrick is gonna be creepier that you think on Saturday.”
I looked down in my lap that night, sitting in a creepy yard on some stupid wall. Beetles in the darkness, evening time break-in, just eight hours after my ex-boyfriend called me a bitch. My lucky, cuddly bear lay there in my lap with his cute button nose and his soft synthetic fur. He smiled at me, but I didn’t feel like smiling back.
This cold April evening gave me shivers right down to my bone. My mom and dad sat in front of the TV right now about a mile away, watching my favorite movie with Tom Hanks.
Instead, I sat here in this crummy side street, shivering my cute ass off with two bitchy witches who pretended to be my friends. As Kimberley fiddled with the lock, Sarah leaned over toward me like a kindergarten teacher patronizing a three year old.
“Get away from me, Sarah,” I spat. “You suck eggs.”
She grinned. “Nah, beetles. Yummy.”
I stood up and walked a few paces.
The wind made a few noises that sounded ominous. Sarah seemed to me far creepier than the wind, certainly because she held a plastic container of those darned Ugandan beetles in her lap. I had gone nuts. Why was I here, anyway? Revenge? Sorry, not my cup of tea.
“Hah,” I heard Kimberley say. She turned toward us with a victorious expression. I just barely bothered to look over my shoulder. I held on to the bear like a soldier held to his gun. “Told you that having had an affair with an ex-con would come in handy.”
I ran up to Kimberley and grabbed her by her blouse. I threw her against the opened door, slamming it shut.
There were spider webs hanging from the window.
Any other time, I would’ve cared.
“Seventeen and you sleep with criminals? You are such a loser.”
Kimberley shoved me aside and slapped me on my stomach.
“I was fourteen, you slut,” she answered, adjusting her clothes with an angry pull, “and he never thought I would break into houses.”
“What the heck did he think you were gonna do with it? Play blind man’s buff?”
“It’s in the middle of the friggin’ night,” she said. “We have to do this now and split. What do you think’ll happen if we get caught?”
I turned to Sarah. “Then let’s not friggin’ do it, girl.”
Sarah held a medium-sized plastic box up to my nose.
“Do you wanna know what these are?”
Inside the box, I saw about a hundred little bugs crawling about. It looked like a beehive in there. They ran about, wiggling their little feet and spreading their tentacles.
I winced and withdrew.
“No,” I spat.
“Ugandan beetles.”
“Who are you people? You scare the shit out of me.”
“They breed in record time,” Sarah said.
I shook my head and started walking away.
“Josie,” Kimberley screamed. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” I answered. “I am going home to my safe parents, who won’t spill Ugandan beetles on my ex-boyfriend. I’m holding onto my bear.”
“Then make him your boyfriend,” Kimberley cackled.
“Buh-bye,” I shouted, running away from the yard, from the sordid night, from the bugs. I hated these girls. Crying, I cuddled my bear. My only friend, I crooned unhappily.
Suddenly, I heard running steps creeping up behind me. At first, they were soft. Then they grew louder and louder. I turned around and saw my two ‘supposed’ friends stopping two inches away from my face. Sarah held up her beetles.
“Are you in or out?”
I grinned at Sarah, half-closing my eyes, giving her the finger.
“You go and dump the beetles on Patrick’s guitars,” I whined sardonically. “I’m going home. When the cops ask me if I know how that guy’s practice room got infested with bugs, I can tell them with a clear conscience that I have nothing to do with it.”
I turned my back on them and left and I kept on walking.
They waited, but eventually I heard their shuffles disappearing. I knew what they were about to do and it scared me. I think I walked about a hundred yards when I turned around again, ever so slowly.
First, I heard nothing. The wind, the chill, the night, the silence. So ominous.
Then, I heard shrieks of laughter and a slamming door.
This couldn’t be real. It felt like a splatter movie.
I stood there, watching and waiting. Way off in the distance, two bicycles took off and sped off onto the main road. I heard some plastic holder being dropped onto the pavement. After that, the silence that followed worried me.
Holding on to my bear, I began walking back. They had actually planted the bugs in Patrick’s practice room. Those expensive guitars would all be ruined. Not to mention those breeding beetles eating the rest of the stuff in there. How fast could a beetle like that breed? A week? A few days? Overnight?
The sound of my sneakers shuffling closer to the practice room gave me the creeps. What if some creep came jumping out from the shadows? Why had I left my bicycle there by the practice room? Me being so distraught gave me a good reason, I guess.
I arrived at the practice room and found my bike still there.
I raised one polished hand up to my face and dried a tear off my cheek. The tear tasted salty and the cool evening breeze gave me a chill. I wanted a future, a husband, an education. Instead, I found myself here in this goddamn corner of creation.
Unlocking my bike, the temptation in me still arose to check the practice room one last time. So I did. Locking the bike, I found myself up the hill in the yard. The spider crawled up and down the window toward the still, after many weeks, un-emptied trashcan, I supposed.
The voice of reason came talking to me. It told me that I had agreed in planting the bugs here. Unwillingly, yes. But I had agreed. My mess, my clean-up, I thought to myself.
Of course, I didn’t see anything. Darkness, that’s what I saw.
Something resembling a guitar waited in the corner. A couple of Marshall amps, a drum set. Dunno what else resided there in the darkness. This creepy place could definitely turn mean. I don’t know why I had put on my pink blouse and white jacket. Hell, I had even given myself pigtails and put on my favorite skirt. For what? To plant bugs in Pat’s rock room? Was I nuts?
Totally cool, I gazed and found only a feeble hell. Hell? It was. In there, beetles procreated. I could almost hear them copulating and frigging up a storm. I wondered if these beetles actually bred as quickly as these supposed girlfriends of mine had claimed they would.
No louder sound than a couple of sneakered feet on the gravel attracted my attention. I turned around and saw a male figure standing with the lights from the street shining from up behind him. From here, he looked like the boogeyman. I felt my heart skyrocketing up from my chest up into my mouth. My heart felt like a bouncing ball as I backed up toward the wall, giving out a small, high, terrified shriek.
I felt a proverbial steel weight upon my head.
In my worst nightmare, I could read The Glendale Gazette headlines in the morning:
Girl raped in dark street corner as molester is eaten by bugs.
My breath grew shallow and fast.
Drooling from the side of my mouth, I trembled and cried.
“Who ... who are you?”
My stutter met no response. Only psychotic silence followed.
The young man standing there was my age, wasn’t he? But who would actually come here at nine o’clock in the evening? Patrick? Maybe. I cocked my head in order to find out who this creep was.
“Josie?” A familiar voice crooned.
No macho attitude. No vulgar screams. No hatred.
“Patrick?”
“Yeah.”
His voice seemed distant, contemplative, depressed.
“What are you doing here, Josie?”
“Uhmm,” I said, wondering what the heck I was gonna say. I could hardly say: Well, I was here with my friends trying to plant bugs in your rehearsal room, okay? But that was the truth, right? I had been here. But I had ran away from them, hadn’t I? I so wanted to stop them from doing it. Why hadn’t I? I escaped instead of calling the cops. Josie, the yellow turd.
“You missed me?” Patrick said with the sexual innuendo he was so famous for. He turned on many a slut in school with that tone of voice. Didn’t do anything for me. I had to say something, though, standing there in the darkness. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I heard a distinct buzzing behind me disturbing the silence. That couldn’t be, could it? Beetles don’t multiply that quickly, do they?
“I came to talk to you,” I lied. “About your problems in school.”
Patrick laughed, angrily. “I handle my own shit.”
I shook my head.
“You got slapped today. Suspension is just around the corner.”
Patrick’s sniff came out as a tired, sardonic laugh. “My dad told me that if I don’t shape up, he’s gonna disown me and give everything to my brother. I gotta do something. Even if it’s wrong.”
I looked at his silhouette in the darkness. The part in me that had fallen desperately in love with Patrick again thrived inside me.
“You have a future as a musician, if nothing else. But that won’t happen if you don’t shape up.”
I saw Patrick nod. I didn’t see what he did or what face he made, but I felt the vibes emanting from his persona. He remembered his own success. “We had a great gig at the prom last year.”
I caressed his shoulder.
“Get your diploma, go study music, mingle with the right kind of people. Don’t get into trouble.”
For one single moment before hell began, Patrick and myself were back in romance heaven. I could not see him smile, although I knew he was smiling.
The silence between us spoke of regret.
“I miss you, Josie,” he whispered. “I’ve been such an asshole.”
I sighed. My lower lip began trembling again. “I have something to tell you, Pat.”
Patrick reached out and touched my cheek. “What?”
“Oh, God,” I stuttered. “I can’t.”
I trembled. These emotions tore me to pieces. A guy I had hated this morning was now acting like a saint. I had conspired to plant bugs in his rehearsal room.
“You can’t what?” he mused.
“When I saw you flirting with the other girls in the cafeteria, I hated you.”
Patrick walked away a few steps, kicking the ground with his foot as if ashamed. “So? We broke up.”
The truth that hung inside me waited to get out.
It sizzled on my tongue.
“I did something terrible,” I added.
“Come on, Josie,” he growled. “Quit stalling and tell me, girl.”
A sound. There was a sound. That buzzing, it had gotten stronger. Much stronger. More aggressive.
I turned around and faced the door.
I heard Patrick turn around, as well.
Behind the window, the darkness had changed. Now, it sizzled just like the words had on my tongue. The darkness jumped, hopped, crawled, nibbled on wood like they soon would on flesh. The darkness moved. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of bugs behind that spider-infested window ... moved.
I couldn’t call what I felt ‘fear.’
Repulsion. Terror.
And I remembered Sarah’s words.
“They breed in record time.”
The terror bounced up from my toes and penetrated my heart.
A nightmare that once had plagued me came alive again. In it, I was caught inside a hedge. The bush itself was alive in the dream, festered with buzzing ants, moving so quickly they became one. An evil slow-motion-dance of death. All I could hear was the buzzing. I felt that nightmare right now dancing a death-waltz in my brain. The icky perverted feeling of having to throw up in slow-motion.
The buzz lived, thrived, throbbed, killed me.
“What the hell happened here, Josie?”
Patrick’s whisper seemed distant, terrified.
“I swear to you,” I responded. “I tried to talk them out of it.”
I cried as I looked at him.
“Talk who out of what?”
“I’m sorry, Pat,” I cried.
Patrick pushed me aside and peeked through the window, somehow afraid to open the door, although the key was in his hand.
The insects now spread across that room in there. I could see them from out here, nibbling on the fresh, well-manufactured wooden guitars.
He turned and gestured with one angry hand toward the door.
“What is this, Josie?”
“Sarah was responsible for the bugs. Multiplying bugs from Sarah’s uncle’s beetle farm. Kimblerley broke the lock.”
Patrick knocked me down, slamming a fist into my stomach. It happened so fast that I had no time to think. Suddenly, I was on the ground, my belly in shambles, my knee open and bleeding.
I grabbed it, screaming, feeling the blood oozing out.
“You hurt me!” I shouted. I held the knee up to my face, kissing the blood. “I’m in pain.”
Patrick stamped his foot on the ground.
“You broke into my practice room, you stupid bitch!”
The stamping sound of his foot sounded like a carton landing on a brick wall.
“Screw your knee,” he hollered. “The equiptment in there is worth ten thousand dollars. How’s gonna pay for that? Sarah?”
“Ugandan beetles,” I said, “an extremely rare, multiplying breed. They will.”
“What?” Patrick shouted.
“Beetles, bred by her uncle,” I responded, trying to stand up. “They’re in there. This kind, according to Google, is carniverous!”
Patrick, surprisingly, held out his hand to me. Shaking and very apprehensive, I took it.
I noticed how gravel mixed into the wound.
It felt like fire.
I stood up, holding on to the wall, crying. “I hated you. When the girls talked to me about revenge, I jumped at the chance!”
“Shut up!” he yelled.
“It was their idea,” I screamed, my head glowing in five colors. “You would never bother me again, they said.”
Patrick started shaking his head, waving his arms about and running in circles, digesting the information.
He looked like a scared horse, escaping a forest fire.
“Bother you?” he screamed. “When have I ever bothered you?”
“Should I list the names you’ve called me,” I shouted back. “Bitch? Slut? Bimbo? Whore?”
“Don’t bother,” he cackled. “You foulmouthed me for years.”
“You haven’t changed,” I yelled.
He leapt at me again. I managed to jump away as he rushed across the yard and landed on his knees. I did my best to escape, but somehow I found myself by the house. He tried again.
This time, my back faced the door, the bugs behind me. Patrick jumped at me one more time. This time I ducked. Now, his fist was aimed at me. As he aimed, missing my ducking face, his fist hit the glass. It shattered and the bugs were set free, producing a mixture of blood and insects. The sight made him scream. Not only the repulsion of seeing the bugs crawling across his body caused convulsions in my stomach. His screaming mouth, his tongue dangling out, made it worse. Blood trickled out of his hand. The muffled buzz turned into an ear-deafening click-clacking of small feet and a trip-trapping of mandibles. Patrick’s screams escalated into a wild high E minor, worthy of any opera tenor.
I panicked, afraid of seeing these things eat my ex-boyfriend.
I could no longer think of anything else but the high pitch of Patrick’s girlish wail. I don’t know how I was able to see all this in that darkness. All I knew was that these damn bugs ate him alive.
And now, they were aiming for me.
“Help me,” Patrick said, leaping at me again.
I started pacing back and forth, trying my best to grab his arm or find a spot not festered. I felt like a squirrel trying to dance on a hot plate. The bugs started jumping up on me. My own wound didn’t bother me. Neither did the chill. I saw my mom sitting on her couch and I saw myself standing in a crummy corner, chased by eating bugs.
I ran. Ran. Man, how I ran.
My whole body shivered and made little mambo-jumps, trying to get rid of eventual beetles. I took out my phone, dialed 9-1-1.
Turning around again, I saw the damn bugs fleeing the house and sweeping across the street by the multitudes.
“Sarah, you bitch,” I cried. “You’re the one responsible for this.”
I held my phone to my ear, all the time the roach-looking bugs infesting the streets.
9-1-1 is busy drinking coffee, I thought to myself.
“Pick up, you lazy morons,” I screamed, jumping at every sound or feeling of pain I felt. Bugs in my skirt? “Pick up, goddamn you!”
I looked back. The bugs had slowly worked themselves down the street. Was Patrick dead?
“9-1-1, how many I help you?”
I started rambling, the words coming out so quickly that I lost control, sobbing like a baby. “I’m in Glendale on Pennsylvania Avenue 2232. Man, we have a bug epidemic here. A bug scare. They’re everywhere. You have to help me. The city is being swarmed by these things.”
“Take it easy, miss,” the woman said. “Are these creatures on the loose as we speak?”
“Yes?”
“Who planted those bugs over there?”
“My friend Sarah,” I blurted out in a sad guffaw. “It was her idea to get back at my ex-boyfriend by planting the bugs in his practice room.”
“We’ll notify the police. The ambulance and the insect exterminators will be on their way.”
“Yes,” I shouted. “My ex-boyfriend is dead, too. I think. The bugs killed him. I don’t know. Gee wiz, I am scared. Help me.”
I started running back toward the practice room, my knee hurting now like crazy.
“What’s your name?”
“Josephine Schaffer.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes.”
I hung up and searched for Sarah’s number.
My hands shook so much that I dropped the phone.
Catching it with my left hand, I saw Patrick returning down the road with bugs now all over his body. His speech unclear and his face all infected, he stood a few feet away from me, trying to speak with a dead tongue, half of his body a mash of blood, his mouth in shambles. The wound, the cold night, the beetles, the living nightmare arrived and I played the main part. I wanted to get away from here, go back home and sit on the couch and watch a movie with my mom.
My instinct told me to go back to the house. Jumping up and down and to and fro between dead and living insects, I saw the whole house filled with bugs now, looking like a scene from my most dreaded horror flick.
Patrick now came running up behind me, screaming. The look on his face turned from disbelief to absolute horror. He ran aimlessly running into the wall. He fell to the ground, his body making a wet splattering sound as he dropped.
I ran, just as a saw the bugs chewing on his remains.
And I now saw the real terror. The beetles had never gone back into the house. The buggers were everywhere. On me, in me, crawling into my mouth, chewing on my feet.
As I ran, I dialed Sarah’s number.
When she answered, I hollared like a crazy person.
“Damn it, Sarah,” I spat, big blobs of bug-mixed spit oozing out of my mouth. “You are responsible for a complete calamity.”
“I know,” she cried, confounded.
“The bugs are everywhere! Glendale is gone. You are to blame.”
A long choking silence followed. Fear and hopelessness thrived in that silence.
“I am here with my Uncle Frank. He’s hitting me,” Sarah said, full of shame. “A medicine man in Africa gave him those bugs, if he promised not to let them loose. He said that might be responsible for a nationwide bug scare. I am so sorry.”
“Sorry?”
I dropped the phone, out of fright and disbelief.
I suddenly realized that I had dropped something else. My bear.
“Bear?” I cried.
Nowhere to be found. My heart vanished, as my forgotten bear appeared in my mind. He must have fallen out of my hands by the house. I took a step forward to go back and find it, but now the bugs were crawling into my underpants. Screaming, I fell down on the ground and hurt my other knee. Now, I saw that people were running back and forth down the street like me.
There was no end in sight.
I saw people leaving their homes, screaming. Bugs entered their homes, eating their pets, blackening the street. Dead people littered the street, people’s limbs eaten off.
Suddenly, I saw it, gliding down the avenue.
The ambulance I had called five minutes ago arrived and the crispy sound of a car driving over living beetles brought out my supper on to the pavement. I threw up, but managed to get back on my feet before the car drove off. Waving my arms about like a crazy lady, the car stopped.
“Where are the cops?” I shouted.
“I don’t know,” the man inside the car yelled back. “Just get in.”
I jumped into the car, crying.
A young blonde man yelled at me to close the door.
Unfortunately, the beetles were faster than me.
I saw the mountainside above us crumbling. The bugs started chewing on the windows of the Pest Car, inside and out. My thoughts started spinning and I remembered.
Patrick, the scene in the cafeteria, the bugs…
In my mind now, I saw my mother sitting in front of the television. Had the bugs arrived at our house, as well? Little mandibles penetrated my toes, leaving nothing but stumps. And as I looked over at the driver, I saw that his face had been eaten off. In its place festered a red hole, contaminated by a clump of bugs.
Before my eyes, the man’s head fell off and then I screamed.
But it won’t be long before the bugs arrive on my head, as well. I can hear them eating my skull, mad with psychotic joy. I feel them multiplying in my brain, I can taste them on my tongue, and no one can help me as the zombie beetles began to feast...

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