Nestlings

by Nat Cassidy

Someone was pressing up against the glass of the window, looking in. A face. Moon-pale and hungry against the blackness beyond. It was such a shock that the impossibility of it didn’t register until a few moments after. Adrenaline and terror sizzled through her. She had to blink, squeeze her eyes shut for a second, just to test whether she really saw something, or whether maybe she was still asleep, next to her husband in the bed where sanity and her former life, the one she lived before this horrible vision, were. When her eyes opened, the face was still there. Pressed so close to the glass that it was visible with horrid clarity. It was almost human. Almost. But with a puggish nose, flat and, and … bat-like, she thought feverishly. The thing’s lips quivered in a grin, revealing gnarled, dirty teeth. But something was wrong with its mouth. Its lips … rippled, moving the way the legs of a centipede move. Like its lips marched in place in an insectile circuit around the lower half of its face. She could have sworn she heard its lips scratching against the glass with tiny little tickety-taps.