It starts as an itch behind your eyes that nothing quite scratches. It spreads to a gummy feeling in your ears that dulls your hearing, a cough that never quite catches and then the tears begin. They're perfectly normal at first, just another symptom of the cold you obviously must have until it proves you wrong.
The tears turn to a cloudy discharge that clings to your cheeks, your chin, your hands when you try to wipe them away until you find yourself cocooned. At this stage it only takes a few hours before the webbing turns acidic enough to burrow back underneath the skin but by then you're already at the hospital and panicking and screaming from the searing pain and you don't even realise what's happening to you.
Any noise the host makes only serves to further disturb the larvae nestled in the mucus membrane along the roof of their mouth. They then make their way along the scar-tissue pathways caused by the webbing until they reach either the eyes or the heart (depending on subspecies, of course).
A good doctor does their research before touching a potentially contagious patient, a frightened one takes all the samples they can get their hands on. A frightened doctor makes just enough mistakes for the larvae to find a new host.
All it takes is a stray drop of blood, skin-to-skin contact and the larvae jump. A few days later and the hosts will be compelled to meet each other again and they will begin to form a fully fledged web that renders them blind, deaf and utterly immobile.
Once the larvae have matured they will consume both host and web, leaving no evidence that they were ever there aside from their host's clothing which will be found by an unsuspecting jogger within a week. By then new eggs will have been laid and will find their way to another host to begin the cycle again, cutting humanity down slowly but surely.
The tears turn to a cloudy discharge that clings to your cheeks, your chin, your hands when you try to wipe them away until you find yourself cocooned. At this stage it only takes a few hours before the webbing turns acidic enough to burrow back underneath the skin but by then you're already at the hospital and panicking and screaming from the searing pain and you don't even realise what's happening to you.
Any noise the host makes only serves to further disturb the larvae nestled in the mucus membrane along the roof of their mouth. They then make their way along the scar-tissue pathways caused by the webbing until they reach either the eyes or the heart (depending on subspecies, of course).
A good doctor does their research before touching a potentially contagious patient, a frightened one takes all the samples they can get their hands on. A frightened doctor makes just enough mistakes for the larvae to find a new host.
All it takes is a stray drop of blood, skin-to-skin contact and the larvae jump. A few days later and the hosts will be compelled to meet each other again and they will begin to form a fully fledged web that renders them blind, deaf and utterly immobile.
Once the larvae have matured they will consume both host and web, leaving no evidence that they were ever there aside from their host's clothing which will be found by an unsuspecting jogger within a week. By then new eggs will have been laid and will find their way to another host to begin the cycle again, cutting humanity down slowly but surely.
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