My friend hasn't spoken in days. I wish I never found out why!!

My friend hasn't spoken in days. I wish I never found out why!!

I live in a pretty rural area. It takes a little over an hour to drive to the nearest town, but I'm not completely isolated. My good friend Rob and his wife, Irina, are a ten-minute walk from my house, and our friend Anton owns a farm that's a twenty-minute walk down the road.

I was talking with Anton at my house last night when Irina knocked on the door. She looked like she hadn't gotten much sleep in a while.

"Is everything alright?" we asked her near-simultaneously.

"Robby's not well, I think. He hasn't talked since he fell. I'm really worried about him." she blurted out.

"Robby fell? When?"

"Let me start again. Two days ago, Robby told me he was going hunting with Ivan, so I took a nap on the couch. Ivan, our dog, woke me up by barking at me. I also heard gunshots in the woods. I followed Ivan outside and he took me to a pit just as Robby climbed out. He looked out of it, he was very pale, so I nearly had to drag him home, but he wouldn't tell me a thing about what happened. He just stared blankly at me."

"And he hasn't talked since?" Anton asked.

"No. He hasn't even eaten around me, but half of the fridge was empty this morning, and I doubt it was Ivan."

"Let's go see him. Maybe he'll be more talkative with some friends around."

So we walked to his house and he was sitting at the table, exactly as Irina had described. Staring blankly ahead, pale as a ghost.

"What's the matter, Rob? Irina says you haven't been talking much lately?" I asked carefully.

"Are you giving her the silent treatment to get on her nerves?" Anton joked. "Apparently you haven't eaten in a while, now that'd be a first."

Anton laughed and slapped Rob on the back, when suddenly Rob leaned forward and started to retch.

"Oh, crap! You alright there, Rob?"

Rob hacked out a large red bug onto the kitchen table. Then a dozen smaller red bugs crawled out of his mouth and down his face before suddenly he vomited a torrent of writhing red insects across his kitchen.

Anton and I started yelling and stomping any bug that got close whilst Irina stood in horrified silence. A horde of smaller bugs began amassing directly in front of me, but I grabbed the kettle and emptied its contents onto the squirming mass.

By now the vomiting had stopped and Rob had fallen backwards out of the chair, his eyes rolled back in his head. The smaller bugs scuttled out of the doors and windows and all of the larger ones had been stomped into a maroon pulp.

"What in the hell was that?" whispered Anton.

"Only one way to find out." I responded. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, Irina, but can you lead us to the pit you found Rob climbing out of?"

Once we got there, I shone a flashlight in and saw a few animal bones. After a few minutes, a sickly-looking rabbit with patches of fur missing hopped towards the pit. As soon as it fell in, more of those red bugs swarmed out of its mouth and deeper into the cave.

Irina flinched at the sight of this.

"Irina, go home and call someone to tell them that Rob is dead. Anton and I will deal with this."

Anton and I went to his house and gathered what we needed. Gasoline. And a lot of it. Once we returned, we drenched the bottom of the pit with it and threw a match in. It lit up immediately, and it was hugely cathartic to see those bugs go up in flames after what happened to poor Rob. Anton managed to craft some kind of improvised explosive and sealed off the pit afterwards.

We drove to town after that. Anton is trying to explain that Rob died in some sort of hunting accident while I dropped Irina at her sister's house in town. The poor woman, having to that happen to her husband. She must be traumatized, because she hasn't spoken since last night.