Black Mantis
an excerpt

It was the nonce-time of morning, and Eleanor Chatsfield was not asleep.

She was not breathing either, though she was dreaming while awake, paralyzed, constricted in her body’s own vigor. Limbs are a terrible prison to the sleeper. Her eyes flickering across the silvery stream of light filtering through her dorm window’s curtains, the fear on her frozen face was evident (if anyone had been awake to notice). Her neck trembled with some futile effort towards movement, and sweat matted her rough brown hair.

Sliding, dripping down the moonbeams was a swarm of ants, enormous and impossible, skittering across the light as though it had turned to glowing marble. This her gaze locked on in complete horror and incomprehension, it was wrong, wrong, she knew insects and they do not walk on air. Umbrageous shapes tempted the peripherals of her unmoving eyes and the overwhelming desire to scream, to move, to do something compelled her to push against that unbearable tightening in her muscles, but the more she pushed the tighter and tighter the pressure on her chest increased. God, god, god, please, somebody, she strained to peer over at her roommate but the ants, those incredible ants were advancing, they had reached her bed where a cold shaft of light crashed next to her foot.

The ants were whispering to her.