300 Days of Writing
Day 29 Dancing:
It was a room full of grey hair and suspenders.
Charlie was stoned, like he always was, and gripped onto his girlfriend’s hands a little too tight because he was paranoid someone would find out.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. The room was turning blue, and he shook his head because weed never did this to him. It calmed him, soothed him. But never made him think that the people around him were sprouting antenna.
Now they were.
Swing band music played out of the community center’s hand-me-down speakers as the adults around Charlie transformed from grannies and gramps to insect-human cross breeds. Hard shells sprouted over their backs, antenna burst through their balding heads, their glasses fell off and were replaced with huge, multi-lensed eyes.
“Baby, what’s going on?” he asked his girlfriend. She was mid-turn, her black hair brushed against his wrist. He slipped his hand around her waist and drew her towards him, completing the turn only to realize that her face was replaced with an ant’s.
Clicking mandibles scratched out what he thought sounded like English.
“What’s wrong, Charlie?”
Like a hive mind, they all turned to him, speaking in unison.
“What’s wrong, Charlie?”
“Nothing!” he said, letting go of his girlfriend’s once soft waist, now hardened with a freshly formed exoskeleton. She fell onto all fours, a new set of limbs sprouting from her sides as she scurried towards him.
“What’s wrong, Charlie?”
He ran for the door, which was locked from the outside. The soft jazz continued to play from the Ella and Louis soundtrack. He shook the blue doors as the insect-humans cornered him.
Сайхан Бичээрэй!
H