It starts small.
Always small.
A flicker in the chest.
A skipped beat.
A thought too sharp to swallow.
And then
it comes.
The hundred-mouthed thing.
No eyes.
No ears.
No face at all.
Just mouths-
mouths stacked on mouths,
mouths where no mouths should be,
chattering teeth
never in unison,
like bones in a bag,
like clocks breaking time.
And every mouth speaks:
You’re weak.
You’re failing.
They see you shaking.
They’re laughing.
You can’t breathe.
You can’t breathe.
You can’t breathe.
The words pile up,
fold in on each other-
not loud,
but constant-
a swarm chewing my thoughts
down to bone.
Then the ringing starts.
High.
Sharp.
A shriek in my ears
so loud it eats silence alive.
The world folds behind it.
All I hear
is teeth,
and ringing,
and blood rushing through me
like it’s trying to escape.
I drag for air.
Shallow.
Too shallow.
Each breath a stone in my chest.
Hands shake.
Legs give.
The ground tilts,
the walls bend,
vision collapsing
to a single tunnel of light.
And at the end of that tunnel
it waits.
The hundred-mouthed thing
leans close,
skin gray and thin,
lips trembling,
teeth clattering like knives on tile.
I feel its breath,
hot and wet on my neck.
The mouths snap open and spill:
Pathetic.
Embarrassment.
Waste of air.
This is how it ends.
This is how it ends.
This is how it ends.
I drop.
Knees hit the floor.
My heart hammers my throat.
My hands claw my chest,
my ribs,
as if I could tear the panic out,
dig the Thing free.
The mouths laugh-
some whisper,
some scream-
all gnawing inside my skull.
Then it whispers my name
through a hundred stolen mouths.
Each voice sounds familiar,
a lie I once told,
a promise I couldn’t keep.
I try to scream
and feel the others moving inside me.
Before the noise swallows everything,
I realize
it’s my body they’ve been building.
The hundred-mouthed thing
has learned
to speak as me.
The ringing drills deeper-
a blade in the ear,
a fire in the brain-
and I press my palms against my head,
but nothing blocks it.
Because it isn’t outside.
It’s inside.
It’s always been inside.
The Thing doesn’t chase me.
It doesn’t need to.
It sits heavy on my chest,
its hundred mouths
gnashing down my breath,
its words sealing my throat.
Time breaks.
Minutes.
Hours.
I don’t know.
All I know is fear-
pure, endless-
stretching until I think I’ll burst.
Then slowly,
the grip loosens.
The mouths quiet,
teeth still moving,
but softer now.
The ringing dims
to a dull hum.
Air drips back into me,
thin, trembling.
I shake.
I sweat.
I survive.
The silence doesn’t feel like peace.
But the hundred-mouthed thing
doesn’t vanish.
It never does.
It lingers in the corner,
always in the corner,
its mouths still muttering,
still gnashing,
still waiting-
waiting for the next crack in me,
the next silence,
the next flicker in my chest.
Because it knows,
and I know,
it will come back.
And when it does,
it will bring
all one hundred mouths
to devour me again.
