Mosquito Moon

by Julie Ann Shapiro

In the full moon the mosquitoes’ eerie buzz hums in my ears. Twenty welts mar my arms and legs; heat generators, long past their bites. My body temperature is feverish.

Death by bugs is never how I thought I’d go, but the available skin without bites is shrinking. There must be forty mosquito bites now. They keep on coming like an In and Out Burger sign flashes over my head with the catch phrase, “come one, come all.”

The citronella candle, the jasmine incense, the Off Spray, nothing has worked. Even the palms of my feet and my toes bear their marks and now they are digging; roosting in my neck. From head to toe, it seems, they want to dine. I push them away and their buzzing grows louder. Angered at my attempt at swatting or maybe oblivious to it, they seek out my ear lobes. “Just not the canal,” I mutter, somewhat protective, yet scared of what they’d do as internal pests.

Surely they’d drown in my body’s fluids. The thought of their death brings me some solace, but it’s all too short lived, as they bite my earlobes. Downward they go onto my chest making hickies on my breasts and belly. I never had much of a boyfriend, I realize with a sadness that scares me more than the mosquitoes’ relentless drive.

On my belly button they congregate, some hover by it, others dive into the fleshy parts of my tummy. Scared, they won’t stop eating me; I glance around my apartment for something to swat them with, but am too weak from the loss of blood to move.

I bob my head up and down and try to move my arms. My fingers wiggle, but my arms are unresponsive. The mosquitoes work their way down my thighs. Dare I think they’ll go to my privies? Would I orgasm with their bites? If I can think it, they can bite it. I remind myself they are not psychic creatures as they move onto my buttocks. They munch away and I think of all the pain in the ass ways to die.

So weak now from their repeated meals, their buzzing grows fainter in my ears. And I pass out.

Sometime later I awake and can flex my arms. They feel so light now. I move them again and flutter above my couch, but it looks so big. I am one of them now. Into the night I fly, an insatiable hunger grips me.