By some miracle, I'm afloat. On my back in the pool, my small body is still as I stare upward.

There's no ceiling. I don't think there's a sky either. Whatever darkness rises to infinity above me is alive. Though I can't see as much as a pinprick in it, I know it's moving. It hums as it does, not the mechanical whirl of overheated laptop fans or cheap refrigerators but the rush of millions upon millions of wasps.

Two or three fly low enough to catch the blue light glowing from an unidentified source.

They won't hurt me. They're more afraid of me than I am of them.

One lands on my cheek and then I'm definitely more afraid. Don't flinch. Don't flinch. Don't flinch.

Don't move.

I can't swim. Somehow, I know that whatever magic keeps me afloat will break if I move. And I don't know how to swim.

If I move a muscle, I'll drown.

The wasp climbs towards my eye, a slow and meandering path though I feel each step. A second descends onto my lip and blackness above smudges from my glaze of tears. With as little movement as I can, I seal my mouth shut so the wasp can't crawl into it and sting my tongue and my throat and my stomach–

Breathe.

They won't attack if I don't trigger them. They're more afraid of me than I am of them. They're more afraid of me than I am of them. Breathe. They're more afraid–

A third wasp settles onto the bridge of my nose. The first is so close to the corner of my eye now (DON'T MOVE DON'T MOVE DON'T MOVE) that I can only hope it might be deterred by the tears collected there. The second wasp travels the crease of my clamped lips in search of a vent to enter through. The third doesn't move. I can make out a dark splotch where it stands.

I close my eyes. Breathe. They're–

A fourth lands on my throat and I lose. My hand emerges from the water to swat and immediately they sting. I cover my face.

Then I plummet.

Struggling to keep my face above water, I thrash. I've seen people swim in films. I can mimic the way their arms ladle their bodies forward. But I'm not moving anywhere. The walls of the pool stretch out for miles now and my arms are already tired.

I'll drown I'll drown I'll drown I'll drown I'll drown I'll drown I'll drown I'll–

–be locked in forever.

Something moves. Way out in the distance. Far far away wherever the end of the pool is. There are silhouettes lining the edge and hope rushes through me. I try to scream but no sound comes out. Why won't any of them help me? They stand still as statues, move only to blink. Eyes glowing red.

Then they start to chant. Let us pray.

They tried to warn me, the beetles. They tried to warn me to run but it's too late now. The water starts to sting, burn. Not with chlorine but with creed. There is evil within me. They will tear it out.

The only trinity I've ever known is red, blue, black. And–

–trinity of things to break:

Bone, Skin, Home.

Trinity of things that bite:

Dog, Flea, Hope.

Trinity of things that leave:

Mother, Father, Brother.

Trinity of things you lack:

Home, Sanity, Safety.

I only need to stay afloat. I can... I can! But each gasp for air pierces a new ring nail through my trachea. My skin is full of holes and holes and holes in holes and the water gets in. Stings. Burns!

"–Lord Jesus Christ, after calming the storms and freeing the possessed, you gave us a sign of your mercy–"

Either my brain bloats or my skull shrinks. My teeth might fall out. There are holes in my bones now, chlorine corroding cavities. I only need to stay afloat. Stay afloat until... someone will help me. Someone will.

Something grips my shoulders.

Hurts! It hurts! The hold tightens. It yanks me under the surface. Pulls me to the bottom of the pool until it can heave me through it and out of the water where the praying figures stand much closer. They reach for me. Dozens and dozens of hands.

In the reflection of the water in the font, I'm fourteen and beewolf, the size of a regular wasp, stands on my cheek. Its wings clack with excitement.

Are you tough yet?

My eyes snap open.

My clothes cling to me, drenched. No pool nor font, just sweat. And tears. They've crusted trails down my temples and seeped into my hair, collected into icicles at the helixes of my ears. I rub them off.

Or I try. My arm won't move. And when I go to inspect it, I find my neck equally paralysed. All I'm able to do is shove my pupils to the base of my eye sockets and peer through the dark.

A black hole opens at the centre of my chest to swallow my scream before it reaches my teeth.

The darkness that swallows the carpet I've slept on swarms. There's none left, every fibre ingested into the mouth of a maggot. And now they writhe in hot anger as they seek summat else to consume. Thousands of mouths.

They're chewing away my hands.

They peel all the flesh from my fingers and all that remain are pale bones that glow in the dark. They won't get through my bones. They can't. I won't have owt left.

But my bones are full of holes. Brittle. They'll eat those too, even the stolen ones.

Tarsal claws pierce through my t-shirt. Draw blood. Beewolf stands on my chest, now nearly two feet long and heavy as a megalith. Under its weight, my lungs can't expand a fraction. It's baiting me, it knows I have sharp objects hidden where Nicolás can't find them and it knows it's standing right above my heart.

Do it, if you're not a coward. You think you're so–

–tough. So do it.

Wake up! This is a dream. I know it is because I can hear Diwa's breathing from the bed and smell the combination of sweat and paint that fills my room. Just wake up.

The walls are bleeding. Larvae exude from rips in the plaster. Oozes from the ceiling panel. Splats to the floor. The maggots under the bed and the termites in the walls eat and eat. Insatiable.

I should've drowned. I should've died when I had the option.

Logically thinking, I should eventually fill up. All containers have a set volume when the source is either shut off or the solvent overflows. But I'm the exception, a scientific miracle that defies the laws of physics. Each time I think it can't possibly get worse, I'm full, I can't contain more dread, I'm proved wrong. ‎

My skin is elastic. There will always be space for more fear.

If only it would rip.

If my skin would reach a point where it could no longer contain everything forced into it and burst. I would crumble into dislodged veins and strings of torn muscle. Blood would surge across the floor and crash into the walls to stamp permanent stains. The fear would be gone. It would seep into the crevices behind the skirting board. I'd be free of it.

But my skin stubbornly retains elasticity. It stretches on, forever.

The weight vanishes. The humming mutes. The room is empty of larvae and wrath, the walls don't bleed.

I don't gasp for breath like a child saved from drowning, like a child held under for purification. Instead, I keep my inhales shallow and move only to check it's possible.

Everything is fine. Everything is... fine.

Excluding the terror.

When we still lived with our parents, before we got separated, and I had nightmares I used to wake Nicolás up. We shared a room so it weren't a long way, though those seconds between our beds always felt like the moments before my death.

I toy with the idea of doing that now, of sneaking into his room and prodding him until he lets me curl up under his duvet. He'd brush my hair out of my face, rub the tears from my cheeks, and press a kiss to my temple. He would wait for me to fall back asleep before he allows himself to.

But I don't.

Last time I woke up him in the middle of the night, it were with a knife two inches deep in my thigh, telling him I probably need to go to hospital. He'll have a panic attack if he sees me by the side of his bed again.

Besides, I'm never alone. I've got as good friends as any: Burn, Bruise, Beewolf.