Lightning came, a brilliant shock of white in the graphite sky, forking silently to the unsuspecting ground - the thunderous boom always calling its warning too late.

I nearly jumped out of my skin from the boom. I grabbed the milk out of the refrigerator and poured some in a glass. Another rip of lightning tore through the sky. This was some storm.

“Sammy! Make sure all the windows are closed. This is some hell of a storm.” I heard my mom say from inside of the bathroom.

She was about to take a shower and I warned her not to. Call me paranoid, but there have been reports of people getting electrocuted in the tub/shower during a lightning storm. My mom doesn’t care. She says it’s unlikely to happen.

Anyways, 10 minutes pass when I heard her scream. At the same time there was a shock of lightning in the near distance followed by a roaring thunder that lasted seconds. The house even shook a little and the lights turned off. Everything happened so fast. I ran in the kitchen for the emergency flashlight then went upstairs to the bathroom.

The door was locked and my mom stopped screaming. I was scared and my heart was racing. I kicked open the door, which took me a few attempts since I wasn’t the strongest 17 year old. When the door was open, I shone the light in to see my mom sprawled out on the floor with the shower curtain covering her waist all the way down to her ankles.

“Mom!” I screamed out. No answer. Her body was so red and I could see her veins turning dark blue.

I quickly grabbed my phone out of my pocket and called 911.

***
The lightning strike didn’t kill my mother, but it left her bruised, death, and blind. I almost forgot, she couldn’t speak either.

My father died when I was 4 months years old and my grandparents were too old, so I didn’t have anyone to help me take care of my mother. This was going to be difficult. I didn’t know how to cook, clean, or anything! Now I’d be doing everything. Cleaning, walking my mom places, taking her to the bathroom, feeding her, and working.

The first week with my mom was very difficult. There was a nurse who would check on her time to time and tell me about the medicine she’d be taking. There was a lot that I had to remember. You get the point right? This was going to be one hell of a hardship. But that wasn’t the worse to happen to her.

***
It was the sixth week when the events started happening. After driving my mom home from the pharmacy, I helped her out of the car. She had a wheelchair now because lately her feet were swelling. It looked horrible. They were so plump and red with streaks of purple veins. The nurse advised me to use the wheelchair.

Now, back to the car. As I took her out of the car and sat her wheelchair, she started making a humming sound. It sounded like she wanted to say something. I told her that it’s okay, and we’re just heading inside.

As I pushed the wheelchair towards the house, the lights inside of the house started to buzz. They flickered on and off and I heard the buzzing all the way from outside.

My mom’s humming got louder. It was like she was screaming inside of her throat. She thrusted her head back and forth. She started moving her arms and legs and pushing out her hands, almost like she was trying to pushing someone away. I quickly got her in the house and took off her jacket. I looked up at the lights that kept dimming. My mom was humming louder than the first time and this time it was so intense that it turned into a scream. Her neck moved back and forth intensely. The lights flickered on and off. It was too much to fathom!

Once again, I got out my phone and dialed the nurse’s number.

I turned around for a second. I swear, it was only one second. When I turned back around, my mother and the wheelchair was gone…

“Hello?” The nurse said.

My phone was already on the floor. I was frozen and my hand was still next to my ear as if I was still on the phone.

The lights then turned off and it was dark in the house again. I ran to the living room light and turned it on. I was about to run back to the phone but someone was sitting on the couch. The wheelchair was on the floor and my mom sat right up on the couch. She had both hands on her head and was moaning.

“Uhhhh….”

I walked towards her. “Mom?”

“Something’s wrong…” She whispered.

Let me tell you how creeped out I was to hear her talking after the doctors told me she wouldn’t be able to talk again. I stopped walking. I felt my knees buckle beneath me and my breathing was faint.

My mom slowly moved her hands from over her head revealing a bald patch of hair. As I walked closer, I saw the black bump on it. No bigger than a small rubber ball. It looked so soft, like if you touched it, it would burst.

Something fell on her neck. At first I thought it was another patch of hair maybe but then it began moving like a worm. I quickly removed it from her and threw it across the room. Right where I threw the worm was the silhouette of a tall figure. The silhouette picked up the worm and stuffed it in his ear. It’s white eyes opened. I heard the squishing disgusting sound of something else coming from his ear. Before I could scream the lights went off. I was surrounded by nothing but darkness. I held my mother’s shoulders but as I did, I felt things falling on my hand then crawling up my arms. I shook, wiping them off.

A voice like iron nails dragged over rock flooded the room. It rose and fell, never once making the words audible. Then the eyes that had been as white as the naked body turned  black and the mouth stretched wide in an eternal scream.

The scream was so loud and vexed I felt a cringe in my stomach. Crouching down to the floor, I tried my best to look at the thing. The lights buzzed and I could see a bit. The silhouette’s body was covered in long black worms that fell off of him then crawled back onto him. It had a pair of two wings that looked like weak green waxed paper. The wings didn’t move, they just hung down to the floor.

The worms started to crawl off of his body and towards me. I quickly got up but the worms were too fast. They covered me up to my neck and I felt them sucking on my skin. The sounds they made were the same humming sounds my mom made.

The creature was now nothing but a paper thin skinless skeleton. Not like our skeleton, this one had bones in the wrong places and the bones weren’t thick at all. It walked over to my mom slowly. It’s face was now gone. Just a pair of eyes white as lightning.

I couldn’t move, so I could only watch as it stuck it’s boney fingers in the black bump my mom had on her head. I could hear my mom trying to scream in the process.

Using both hands, the creature pushed it’s fingers inside my mother’s head. I saw the blood and heard the sickening sounds of skin separating. My mom’s scream filled the house and so did mine. I stopped screaming when I saw it. An eye. A moving eye looking right at me.

My mom’s body started to shake rapidly. An arm stretched itself through my mom’s stomach and a foot through her waist. Her body stood up on it’s own then fell back on the floor out of my sight. My mom’s screams turned to heavy whimpers that then turned to another sound unknown to mankind.
The worms left me and disappeared along with the creature. I ran to my mother then stopped when I saw the face of something smiling right at me.