One day, upon the most kind and wholesome little old lady spawned the evilest, most ill-intentioned pair of dust mites. On her cheek. Next to a brown mole the size of a skittle. The mites fed on her skin and built huts from her wispy white mustache hair. They bound the hairs together with a clump of oatmeal that had lived on her chin for a week.
The two mites were named Bert and Cinda. They were brother and sister. Bert was a foul-mouthed pervert. In his early teens he neglected the maintenance of his hut and instead spent half the day masturbating. When he wasn't playing with himself he explored the twin caves in the old woman's face that were her nostrils. He painted obscene depictions of orgies and disgusting sex acts with the ample mucus that hung from her great nose hairs. His sister Cinda was more attentive to her hut but had gotten lazy as of late and had begun cannibalizing her brother's hut to fortify her own. She was not a friendly creature, not even for a mite. She resented anyone who was successful or happy in any regard and took pleasure in watching people suffer and fail and wallow in misery.
Cinda was a large dust mite, but not overly large. But her arms were short and she could not reach her own genitalia to masturbate. Therefore she resented her brother's continual enjoyment of his own genitalia and would leap at every opportunity to stifle his enjoyment. She enacted most of her cruelty towards Bert while he slept. She destroyed his sex paintings in the caves and cannibalized his hut and disturbed his sleep by tickling one of the old woman's long nose hairs, provoking a sneeze. But Bert was content to hurl a few obscenities at his sister for these abuses and left it at that. Fucking bitch. Tiny-armed whale-hoe. Rotund witch tit. These kinds of insults.
So Cinda broke into Bert's hut and stepped on his cock and balls while he was asleep.
"Bitch tits of a whore!" he squealed and writhed in his bed of the old lady's skin flakes.
"Whoops, my bad, so sorry brother. I thought this was my hut."
"Shitful hoe you did that on purpose," he moaned. He rubbed his crotch and rolled side to side.
"Did not. Hey, did you notice the roof of your hut has a hole in it.
Bert backed himself in a corner, covering his genitals. "Go away."
"Or what?"
You see, Bert was about half the size of Cinda. Cinda was a little bit bigger and he was a little bit smaller, but neither were beyond what a dust mite scientist would consider "within the normal range". But viewing the siblings from afar, you might think Cinda was the brother and Bert was the sister, but this is an illusion born from their relative size difference. Despite her small arms, Bert knew that his sister could overpower her with her superior weight. It burned him to think she'd always bullied him, even when they were young. In fact, this was the reason Cinda was bigger and Bert was smaller, because Cinda would steal food from Bert when he was just tiniest little dust mite and he would go hungry for hours at a time (months for mites), depriving him of nutrition when he needed it most. It burned Bert to think she probably enjoyed watching him cry and writhe with hunger pains.
So of course she took great pleasure in stepping on her brother's dick and balls and did it multiple times. So often that Bert moved his hut onto the old woman's other cheek and fortified his door with a gob of dried pudding he found on her upper lip. Even so he would have nightmares about his sister breaking into his fortified quarters and smashing his genitals to smithereens. He woke up frequently, screaming with his hands clutching his little mite member and balls.
Let's go back to the kind and wholesome lady. Her name was Margie. She was 192. And wasn't doing so bad for her age. Sure, she had her knees and hips and shoulders replaced. Her heart and lungs pumped with stem cells. Her bowels flushed every five or so years and rejuvenated with gut bugs of the young and healthy. But at 190, she fell for an investment scam and lost all her savings. The fucker who swindled her lived in Brazil now, and took regular trips to the Moon and Mars.
Margie lived in Charity Wing A of The Golden Laurel Retirement Zone. Her brain had shrunk to the size of an organic plum (see produce aisle at your nearest grocery store for reference) and she hadn't a clue where she was or even who she was. That was because people her age needed special stem cells injected into their brain at this age or it would shrink and shrink. The charity wings did not provide this kind of service. They provided only hospice care. Still, she was sooooo nice. Like hella nice. Everyone she met (and immediately forgot) she greeted with a smile. She asked how their day is going. She asked what year it was. When they told her (and they lied, skimming a few decades from the actual year), she said, "Oh my goodness. God must have big plans for me."
Cinda couldn't stand Margie's politeness. Nor her predilection for talking about God. She resented Margie's happy mood and comfort about her fate after death. Heaven. If only. But Cinda was a cynic and an atheist and knew there was nothing but pain and death and emptiness in this universe.
One day, a robot delivered Margie's lunch and apologized that there would be no oatmeal today.
Margie smiled and asked the robot how their day was going.
The robot, programmed to pretend to be human when they are engaged like one, said they had got a flat tire on their way to work, but they also found a five dollar bill in the parking lot, so some bad, some good.
"Oh wow! What a lovely surprise! You could buy a delicious treat with that!"
But this was simply not true. A five-dollar bill was the smallest unit of currency now, and would be like finding a penny on the ground in the early 21st century. Many just threw them away. In fact, that is what the robot would have done had it not been pretending to find money.
"I know! I'm going to get a Starbucks Carmel-Frappechino after work!"
"Sounds yummy. Thank you for lunch!"
"Are you sure it's okay that there's no oatmeal?"
"It's more than okay. I'm grateful for what you've provided. Take care, mister."
The robot was genderless but said nothing. And it wasn't really worried whether or not the old lady got oatmeal or not. It simply inquired as a means of garnering satisfaction, which its algorithms said the statement was guaranteed to do. It left the room and returned to its charging port at the far end of Charity Wing A.
"Jesus... I bet this bitch would be grateful if they waterboarded her," Cinda said.
Bert might have replied, but he was all the way on the other side of Margie's face. Out of earshot. But Cinda took no notice. She never listened to her brother anyway.
Margie held a spoon of pudding in mid-air. She thought she heard a tiny voice, but she couldn't be sure.
"Go on, fucking eat already you old bag."
"Old... bag?"
"Yeah, that's right, take your fucking spoon and–" Cinda stopped. She was flabbergasted. Never in dust mite history had a host (someone like Margie) made contact with the the occupants on their face (mostly mites like Bert and Cinda).
"And what, my dear?"
"And... smear the pudding on your head."
Margie did as she was told. "Oooh, this is interesting. It feels cold and refreshing on my scalp. Thank you."
"Now stand up."
Margie rocked back and forth in her recliner, attempting to stand. Her legs were extremely weak, because she hardly ever walked. Typically the facility put alarms on the chairs of people like Margie, but she was not one to get up and wander about, and also, this was a charity wing. Eventually she got to her feet.
"Now what?" Margie asked.
"Now let's go for a walk."
Here's something to know about dust mites before we go any further. They are very, very small. They have small bodies and small eyes (even Cinda) and cannot see things much larger than them. Like imagine you are standing at the foot of Mt. Everest. This is how it is for a dust mite looking at a human. I'm telling you this so you understand why Cinda kept asking what Margie was seeing.
"Go where?"
"Describe where you are now." Cinda ordered.
"It looks like a bedroom, but I don't recognize it. Oh look, there's my quilt on the bed. And my stuffed dinosaur. I got that for myself on my 150th birthday. It looks like it needs a wash. Oh and pretty curtains they put up in here, pink and purple with–"
"I don't give a shit about that, Margie," Cinda interrupted.
"Oh goodness!" Margie replied.
"There must be a door. Go to the door and open it and go outside.
"Sure, okay. Um, may I ask a question?"
"Make it quick," Cinda barked.
"Who are you? I hear you but I can't see you."
"I'm an invisible angel, Margie. Now that's enough questions. Go find the door."
Margie found the door and went out into the hall. She described a white hall, quite dirty, littered with trash and empty cardboard boxes. Along the ceiling several of the lights were out and a few panels were stained from water damage or cracked from some kind of impact. But this was a charity wing after all. Down at the end of the hall she spotted a water fountain and next to it the "man" (robot) she'd talked to earlier, that provided her with lunch.
"Go down to that robot and see if it is on," Cinda said.
"You mean the man?"
"It's not a fucking man, Margie. It's a robot. Get your eyes checked."
Margie went down the hall and waved her wrinkled hand in front of the robot's face. Out of the top of its head sprouted a thick black cord that plugged into the wall.
"Gee I guess you're right. Silly me!" Margie said.
"Listen close if you want to get to heaven," Cinda began.
"I'm all ears."
"Find a bucket and fill it with water."
Margie looked around and saw no buckets.
"Fine, take off your shirt."
"Oh goodness, I couldn't!"
"For fuck's sake, Margie! Do you want to go to heaven or not?"
"Well, I–"
"Or would you rather be raped and tortured by the devil?"
Margie started to peel the white sweater off her body. Cinda ordered her to soak it under the water fountain then ring it out over the power outlet connected to the robot.
"Oh my goodness, why do such a thing?!"
"Goddamnit Margie, you want to go to hell, don't you? How dare you challenge HIS authority. This robot is a servant of satan. Need I say more?"
Margie shook her head and wrung the soaking wet shirt over the outlet. Sparks crackled from the wall and smoke appeared. The robot woke up and unplugged itself from the wall.
"Margie, what are you trying to do, kill me?!" the robot shrieked. It wasn't actually alarmed, it was programmed to pretend to be alarmed. The robot could have been on the brink of death and would have felt nothing, because robots don't have feelings, and thank goodness for that.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I don't know what came over me!" Margie squealed.
The robot ushered her back to her room and applied an alarm to her recliner.
"Finish your lunch before it gets cold," it said, and left before she could reply.
"I just don't understand!" Margie cried.
"What's there to understand? You failed and so you're going to hell," Cinda said.
The old woman began crying and great balls of salt water flowed from her eyes, down her cheeks, annihilating the dust mites' huts and drowning Bert and Cinda before either could retreat from up the bridge of her nose.
"Why would you say such a thing?" Cinda asked.
There was no answer and there would be no answer.
Five or so minutes passed and Margie touched her eyes and realized they were wet. But she didn't know why. She couldn't remember being upset by anything. In her lap was her lunch, breaded chicken, mashed potatoes, and vanilla pudding. There was no oatmeal, but that was okay. She couldn't remember the nice fellow from earlier apologizing for not bringing her any. She was just grateful to have a lunch. And to see the sun shining. She didn't realize it wasn't a real sun and that it was actually midnight and that she was living underground.
She was in the charity wing, after all.
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