We are huddled in a corner, it’s a very large room and almost completely dark except for a few candles in the corner where we are. There had to be hundreds in this room, as close together as we could get, yet the other side of the room was empty. Everyone was whispering, there was one phrase that kept getting repeated, “the swarm, the swarm, the swarm”

I’m looking around, asking what they were talking about, but everyone looks dazed, almost drugged. I realize now everyone was whispering to themselves, unaware there was someone next to them.

I’m trying to move but there was so many people crammed into this corner that I couldn’t get them to budge. I tried being more forceful and it was like pushing a rock. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but I knew I needed to get out of there. The flickering lights from the candles were disorienting.

Then I heard an actual voice, deep voice talking to someone else. It was coming from the empty side of the room. Instantly I knew it meant trouble. I tried to blend in and get into the rocking sway of the people all around me, and I started whispering. I kept my eyes down as I heard the deep voices come closer.

“It’s time to move them” I heard. I tried not to panic because I felt, down to my core, that I had to get out of there before they moved us to wherever they had planned. I kept looking up for exits, a window, anything that I could run to. It was just too large and dark of room, I couldn’t see anything past all these people.

The group started shuffling forward all of a sudden, and I felt myself pushed from behind so I got into their rhythm again, keeping my head down and muttering as they were. I could tell they had us headed to the opposite side of the room, knew I couldn’t let myself get that far.

I wait until what I think is the middle of the room, and I raise my head, desperate to find an escape route. As soon as I looked I felt terror through my entire body. The room was not dark because of a lack of light, the entire side of the room where they were sending us was moving, it appeared to be an open mouth. This mouth ahead was made up of millions of tiny little moving objects; the darkness itself appeared to be moving, and I could hear now a slight buzz above the muttering. Instantly I knew what the swarm was. We were being walked to a death within the swarm.

I stopped and was instantly pushed forward by the people surrounding me. I decided action was better than surrendering, and just turned around and started climbing over the people. Onto their shoulders and over their bodies. I heard one of the deep voices yell something and just kept going back. Back was better than whatever was in front of us. I kept going, scrambling over these people, (why couldn’t they wake up??) I fell, jumped right back up, kept going and climbing over and over, yet I still felt as if I was being pushed forward to The Swarm, the deep voices were much closer to me but I kept going. Just as soon as I could see I was almost to the end of the group of people, I heard the deep voices, they seemed right on top of me… Then I felt a hard hand grab my neck, and everything went black.

© 2017 Mj Gale