Winners of A.B.F.M. Magazine® Six-Sentence Horror Stories 2021.
Winner: Tash Lewington/Photographer and Writer
Gasping awake, I silence the piercing clock radio alarm with a firm-fisted thud and clutch at the memory of that same horrific nightmare I’d been having for weeks; hairy, deformed, octo-legged terrors clambering through web-strewn teeth... My web-strewn teeth… eurgh.
I grab at air instead of my glasses, surmise they’ve been knocked under the bed, and continue to drag my foggy-eyed 7 am form into the adjoined bathroom where I click on the light and mildly blindly roam my hands around the counter, grab and flip open the toothpaste tube and begin to squeeze.
I frown confusedly as I hear the tube excreting mini pops of air, a few seconds apart, as if tiny marbles were being pushed from the tube and onto my toothbrush...
I assume the tube is a dud and push the brush against my teeth, mindlessly scraping back and forth until a cold wave of fear slows my hand to a stop and I realize that my mouth is filling with far too much long, stringy paste...
I force my tongue through and out of the sticky mess of web that has formed between my teeth, hurriedly move my face an inch from the mirror and see in my reflection hundreds of tiny, torn-open sacks tumbling from my mouth and those same hairy, deformed, octo-legged terrors from my nightmare scurrying through my saliva...
A guttural scream resonates through the webs but to my utter horror, the sound only shows my new inhabitants that there is a second exit from my mouth... I choke on thousands of clambering legs scurrying down my throat as my consciousness collapses and I slump to the cold bathroom floor.
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