Prompt Twelve in Write of B+

I don't recall exactly when I became aware of the bugs crawling around inside of me, exactly. Perhaps it was my birth, when each brick was painstakingly stack at the hands of the slaves, the crack of whips and the splash of sweat and blood marring my limestone bones. Even that, I don't really recall. Instead, my earliest memories are that of the bugs, crawling around inside of me, touching and marring me from within while I was paralyzed to stop them. Sometimes I'd feel the burn of their touch, their flames, sometimes it was nothing more than a tickle. I wish I could have seen what they were doing to me. I screamed a lot, but if they heard they showed no mercy.

It went on for years, the putrid smell of sour flesh rotting me from inside as they molested the very core of my soul with their filth and their dirt. I tried to shake them from inside me, their buzzing and humming driving me to distraction but I was firmly adhered to the ground, unable to move so much as an inch in any direction.

Sometimes, their smallest larva would tumble about near my mouth, tickling me as they tried to gain purchase. These creatures, I didn't mind so much. There was something sweet and pure about them. The older ones, pressing themselves up against me when I tried to sleep, the sobs of too young falling to the hands of older and wiser. Many times I tried to reach out, to comfort and care, but they were never to be reached by me.

As I reached the prime of my life, as I yearned to celebrate, I was fed clay jars of putrid flesh and dry linens, tears dropped on me like the all too infrequent rains of the Giza. I glanced to the sky yet could see no cloud. I felt them climb inside of me, deep where my very soul lay. What they left behind, I never knew, but I could feel the long weight of it, heavy in me, and I couldn't help but think of the violated virgins who'd been filled against their will, too.

I tried one last time to shudder, to protest this invasion from the bugs that crawled with in, but instead of a moan or sigh, no sound but the scream of rock on rock as they covered my mouth and began to smother me alive. With each painfully slow day, I died a little more, with this foreign cylinder embedded deep within me, heavy on my soul. I braced against the wind in silence, the moon in fright, carrying within me this dark shame, never to be free, until the sands covered me and took me from this world, burying me still holding him deep inside.