Assembly Required

They found Cootie at the back of a thrift store, sealed in sun-yellow plastic, smiling cartoon bugs dancing across the box like nothing had ever died screaming.

“Vintage,” Mark said. “Probably harmless.”

They were all adults. They were twenty-somethings, with beer on the table, and the lights low. They were laughing at the irony of playing a kid’s game during a blackout. The rules were simple: build your bug. Head. Body. Legs. Antennae. Roll the die. Plastic tweezers. Bright little pieces that clicked together.

The first roll landed on HEAD.

The lights flickered.

Then Mark screamed.

Something popped behind his eyes...wet, explosive, like overripe fruit crushed in a fist. His skull split with a sound like cracking lobster shell, and a thing pushed its way out. Glossy black. Segmented. Its mandibles sawed through bone as it emerged, dragging optic nerves like stringy noodles.

A perfect plastic bug head clattered onto the board.

No one could move. The die rolled by itself.

BODY.

Mark’s torso convulsed. Skin peeled back in sheets, sloughing off as if unzipped from the inside. Ribs bent outward, snapping, making room as a swollen, yellow-green thorax inflated where his chest had been. Blood sprayed the ceiling in pulsing arcs, each heartbeat pumping more gore as the bug body locked into place with a cheerful click.

The game’s spinner giggled.

“Keep playing,” the box whispered. “Everyone gets a turn.”

They tried to run.

The door slammed shut, wood rotting instantly, insects chewing through it from within. The table legs fused to the floor with a sound like sucking mud.

The die rolled again.

LEGS.

Anna fell first. Her thighs split lengthwise, femurs ripping free as jointed limbs forced their way out. Knees bent the wrong direction. Feet burst apart, toes scattering across the room like dropped candy as hooked legs punched through, skittering, testing the floor. She lived long enough to watch her own lower half detach and scuttle away, dragging intestines behind it like festive streamers.

ANTENNAE.

Eli begged. Sobbed. Promised anything.

The skin on his forehead peeled back neatly, scalp sloughing off to reveal twitching feelers that pushed out, dripping red. They tasted the air. Found fear. Wrapped around his eyes and pulled until they came free with a wet schlurp, dangling, still seeing, as the antennae locked into place.

The board was nearly full now.

Only one bug left to finish.

The game chose YOU.

Your hands moved without permission, placing the final piece. As it clicked in, the room filled with the sound of thousands of tiny wings unfolding. The completed Cootie rose from the board, life-sized now, towering, its body made of stitched-together human parts. Faces stretched across its abdomen screamed silently, mouths sewn shut by chitin.

The lid of the box closed on its own.

Everything went dark.

Morning light crept into the thrift store as an employee restocked shelves. The Cootie box sat neatly where it belonged, clean again, plastic wrap intact.

Inside, something scraped happily against cardboard.

Ready for the next game.