Waiting

No, something was crawling all over her skin.

Insects! she thought.

Thousands of them!

She struggled against her restraints.

“Swat them off me!” she begged the man. “Kill them!”

The man chuckled as he kept staring down at her through his grotesque makeup.

He made no offer to help.

He knows something, Janet thought.

He knows something I don’t know.

Then as the crawling continued, it dawned on her …

The insects …

They’re not crawling on my skin.

They’re crawling under it!

Her breathing came harder and faster, and her lungs burned as if she’d been running for a long distance. Her heart pounded even more painfully.

Her head was exploding with a host of violent emotions—fury, fear, disgust, panic, and sheer bafflement.

Had the man injected thousands, perhaps millions, of insects into her bloodstream?

How was that even possible?

In a voice that shook with both anger and self-pity, she asked …

“Why do you hate me?”

The man chuckled louder this time.

He said, “Everybody hates you.”

Janet was having trouble seeing now. Her vision wasn’t getting blurry. Instead, the scene in front of her seemed to be twitching and bouncing and jumping. She imagined she could hear her eyeballs rattling around in their sockets.

So when she saw another clown’s face, she thought she was seeing double.

But she quickly realized …

This face is different.

It was painted with the same colors, but with somewhat different shapes.

It isn’t him.

Under the paint lay familiar features.

Then it dawned her …

Me. That’s me.

The man was holding a mirror up to her face. The hideously garish face she saw was her own.

The sight of that twisted, tearful, yet mocking countenance filled her with a loathing she’d never known before.

He’s right, she thought.

Everybody hates me.

And I’m my own worst enemy.

As if sharing her disgust, the creatures under her skin scurried all about like cockroaches suddenly exposed to sunlight but with nowhere to run and hide.

The man set the mirror aside and began to stroke her face with the knife point again.

He said yet again …

“They’re going to leave you behind.”

As the knife passed over her throat, it occurred to her …

If he cuts me the insects can escape.

Of course the blade would also kill her. But that seemed a small price to pay to be free of the insects and this terror.

She hissed …

“Do it. Do it now.”

Suddenly, the air was filled with ugly and distorted laughter, as if a thousand clowns were noisily gloating in her plight.

The laughter propelled her heart to pound still harder and faster. Janet knew her heart couldn’t possibly take much more of this.

And she didn’t want it to.

She wanted it to stop as soon as possible.

She found herself trying to count the beats …

One, two … three, four, five … six …