Writhing Mass
When I was very small, we had to move out of our house for a couple of weeks and live in a strange house on the other side of Hackney. The house was on a main road above some shops, and so as is the case on streets such as these the black bags get left on the curb next to bins and lampposts to be collected in the morning.

It was the height of summer. One morning, we all left the house and started to walk up the street when my mum spotted a bin bag that had been ripped open and recoiled with disgust. The others looked over and then stepped back. Glancing over briefly I quickly knelt down right up near the bag, exclaiming:

"Ooh, I like caterpillars!"

Maggots - a whole, writhing mass of maggots, as maggoty as the eye could see, squirming over one another. I'd never seen maggots before. The concept was the same as caterpillars, but they were somehow...different...wrong, there was something very very wrong about being a couple of centimetres from this roiling bag of fleshiness.

"I...I don't like these ones" I stammered. And then I ran away.
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:30, Reply)