The Agonizing Death of an Office Worker
Pain.
A searing, gut-wrenching agony coiled in Aya Kurose's stomach like a nest of writhing, venomous snakes, twisting, tightening, sinking its fangs into her insides.
She gasped, fingers clutching at the fabric of her blouse, knuckles white, nails digging into her own skin as if sheer willpower could force the pain away.
What the hell is happening?!
Her entire body seized, the muscles in her abdomen spasming so violently she felt like her organs were being shredded from the inside out. A strangled, wet sound—somewhere between a choke and a whimper—escaped her lips.
Her vision swam, the walls of the office around her blurring, warping, the overhead fluorescent lights buzzing with an almost mocking indifference to her suffering.
The monitor in front of her still displayed the soulless spreadsheet, a wall of meaningless numbers. She had spent hours—no, years—staring at screens just like this.
And now…
She was dying in front of one.
Her fingers clawed weakly at the edge of her desk, but her strength was fading too fast. The icy chill of the office floor seeped through her pantyhose as she collapsed to her knees, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
Her heart pounded, erratic, frantic, dying.
Her mouth opened—to scream, to call for help, to curse the universe for this cruel, meaningless death—but no sound emerged. Only a weak, wheezing rattle.
Something was burning inside her.
Poison.
The realization struck her like a hammer to the skull.
What did I eat?
Her thoughts spiraled, grasping at fragments of her last meal—the half-stale sandwich, the microwaved dumplings that had tasted like chewy cardboard, the vending machine coffee that reeked of burnt chemicals and regret.
Any of it could've done this.
But it didn't matter.
Because she was dying.
Her vision darkened at the edges, the familiar hum of office lights turning into a distant, distorted drone.
The world around her tilted, her consciousness slipping.
She tried—desperately—to move, to crawl toward her phone, but her arms refused to obey.
Her legs buckled completely, sending her crashing forward. Her cheek slammed against the smooth office tile, the impact barely registering through the haze of fading sensation.
Her fingers twitched. Her body felt weightless.
This was it.
The office lights flickered overhead—or was that her vision failing?
She had spent years drowning in the monotony of corporate slavery, sacrificing sleep, health, happiness, all for a paycheck that barely covered rent and an endless supply of instant noodles.
And for what?
To die alone, face-down on a cold office floor, from a poisoned meal worth less than the change in her pocket?
Her thoughts blurred, reality slipping away, her mind spiraling into a void of nothingness.
And then—
Out of the corner of her failing vision, she saw it.
A single, tiny ant, scurrying across the pristine surface of her desk.
Its tiny legs moved with purpose, marching forward as if it had somewhere important to be.
Aya's lips twitched, her expression curling into something that was not quite a smile, but more a bitter, soul-deep resignation.
That ant has more purpose in life than I ever did.
How pathetic.
How utterly, soul-crushingly pathetic.
The cold embrace of death curled around her like a shroud, swallowing her whole.
Her last thought, a furious, dying spark of resentment and disbelief before the darkness took her?
"This is bullshit."
And then, Aya Kurose ceased to exist.
The Silent Cage
Aya existed.
She wasn't sure how, but she did.
There was no pain. No exhaustion. No body.
There was only darkness.
An endless, suffocating void, stretching infinitely in all directions. No warmth. No cold. No sense of up or down.
Her thoughts drifted, disconnected, like they belonged to someone else.
So, I really died...
The realization carried no weight. It simply was.
She had half-expected something more dramatic—a tunnel of light, the booming voice of a god, maybe even a celestial courtroom where she could beg for a second chance.
Instead, she was here.
Wherever "here" was.
A liminal space, empty and unmoving.
Was this hell?
Or worse—was this it?
Would she simply exist in this nothingness forever?
Time lost all meaning. Had it been seconds? Hours? Years? Her thoughts drifted in a sluggish haze, neither asleep nor awake, existing in a state of endless, passive awareness.
Until she felt it.
A presence.
A pressure.
Aya's world wasn't truly empty—it was small.
Something pressed against her, enclosing her in a space that was smooth, yet damp.
Her pulse—or the phantom memory of one—spiked.
She tried to breathe, to gasp, but—nothing.
No air.
No lungs.
No mouth?
Panic coiled through her like a tightening noose.
She tried to move, to lift a hand, but her body—if it could even be called that—twitched in an alien, unfamiliar way.
Something was wrong.
This wasn't a human body.
The realization sent a spine-chilling shudder through her, a primal terror she couldn't rationalize.
Aya pushed, straining against the unseen walls of her prison.
The damp surface resisted at first—unyielding, suffocating—before something shifted.
A tiny fracture.
A crack.
The sound was sharp, fragile, like thin glass splitting under pressure.
Then—
Drip.
Something warm and sticky oozed around her, trickling down her unseen form. It smelled—wrong. A scent Aya couldn't place, thick and organic, yet utterly foreign.
Her pulse pounded. Instinct screamed at her.
Escape. Escape. ESCAPE.
Aya thrashed, pushing harder.
Another crack.
And another.
The walls around her trembled.
She clawed forward—no, not claws—something sharper. A set of small, jagged limbs.
Her mandibles snapped instinctively, her body working on primal instinct, biting, tearing through the fleshy enclosure.
More cracks. More oozing warmth.
The cage around her splintered, the resistance giving way to the force of her desperate struggle.
Then—
Light.
Blinding. Seeping. Crawling in through the cracks.
Aya's world ruptured as her fragile form lurched forward, tumbling out of the broken prison.
She landed in something wet, slick, her tiny limbs trembling against the unfamiliar surface.
The air was thick, filled with a scent that was overwhelming—raw, earthy, damp.
Her vision swam, blurred and unfamiliar, adjusting to the dim glow around her.
Shapes loomed—dark, shifting shadows in a cavernous space, walls slick with moisture.
She blinked—if she even had eyelids—her body trembling as the world finally began to make sense.
And then—
Aya saw them.
Bodies.
Dozens of them.
Eggs.
Shattered, broken husks littered the damp earth around her, pale, glistening shells split open, oozing with the same thick fluid that still clung to her own form.
And emerging from them—
Things.
Legs. Segmented bodies. Crawling. Skittering. Moving.
Her blood ran cold.
She was not alone.
She was never alone.
She was one of them.
And they were hungry.
The Nightmare Reality of an Ant
Aya blinked. Or at least—she tried to.
Her vision didn't work right.
Everything was warped, a dizzying mix of blurred shapes and distorted movement. The world was wrong, shifting in brownish hues and murky grays, like an old, water-damaged film reel flickering out of sync.
Her breath hitched—but she had no lungs.
Her heart pounded—but she had no heartbeat.
Aya tried to lift her hand—tried to see her fingers. But—
What the hell is this?!
Her body—oh god, her body—
She felt light, disturbingly weightless, yet foreignly rigid, as if every movement came from something not her own.
And then she saw it.
Her legs.
Not two. Not four.
Six.
Six, spindly, twitching legs, moving at her command in horribly unnatural synchronization.
The realization hit like a gut punch.
Her body was long, segmented, an alien construction of tiny, jointed pieces, each movement flowing with an eerie precision. A sharp, chitinous exoskeleton encased her too-small frame, bending and flexing with a brittle, unnatural smoothness.
And then—the worst part.
She felt them.
Mandibles.
Her mandibles.
A horrific clicking sound echoed in her ears as the strange, jagged appendages near her mouth snapped open and shut.
Aya froze, her entire body locking in horror.
Panic surged in her chest, desperate and suffocating. She tried to scream, to cry, to let out any sound that resembled a human voice.
But instead—
Chkkk-chk-chk-chk—!
The noise that escaped was wrong—an unnatural, insectoid chittering, high-pitched and eerie, like the sound of brittle bones scraping together.
Aya's entire soul convulsed in disgust.
No. NO.
This couldn't be real.
This was a nightmare—a hallucination. She'd wake up soon. She had to. She'd open her eyes and—
And—
She turned.
And she saw them.
Hundreds of them.
The nightmare deepened.
The damp, pulsing cavern around her was filled with them—hatchlings, just like her, writhing and emerging from broken eggshells.
Their fragile, translucent bodies were coated in the same thick, sickly birth fluids that still clung to her own form. Twitching antennae, spindly legs, bulbous, black eyes that reflected nothing but darkness.
A sea of freshly born monsters—and she was one of them.
Aya's mind snapped like brittle glass.
I—I'm one of them?!
The horror was indescribable, a full-bodied revulsion that ripped through her very sense of self.
These things—these scuttling, twitching creatures—they weren't supposed to be her family. They weren't supposed to be her.
Yet she knew—deep in the darkest part of her gut—
They were.
Her siblings.
Her kind.
And they were so, so hideous.
Bulging compound eyes stared in every direction, glossy and depthless, their twitching antennae constantly probing the air. Their bodies were frail, but their legs moved with an unnatural precision, skittering, crawling, piling over each other in a grotesque, writhing mass.
Aya felt sick—but she had no stomach to empty.
A surge of pure disgust coursed through her as she did the only thing her mind could process—
She tried to back away.
Her new, alien legs flailed in panic, attempting to move in a pattern she couldn't understand. Her segmented body twitched violently, struggling to escape the mass of squirming bodies around her.
But she had no control.
Her legs skittered, moving in uncoordinated spasms, slipping against the slick, damp ground.
And then—
She fell.
A sickening lurch, and suddenly—
She was on her back.
Her tiny, brittle limbs flailed uselessly in the air, wriggling like a pathetic, dying bug.
Aya screamed.
Chkkk! Chk-chk-chkkk!
The alien, chittering noises filled the cavern, not just from her, but from all around her. The other hatchlings twitched in response, their blank, alien eyes reflecting nothing but instinct.
Aya lay there, helpless, unable to flip herself over, her mind spiraling into pure, undiluted horror.
I—I can't move.
I CAN'T MOVE.
Her body was foreign, her instincts unfamiliar. She wasn't a person. She wasn't a human. She was something else.
A pathetic, flailing insect, reduced to a meaningless, struggling existence.
And the worst part?
Somewhere—deep inside this monstrous new body—she could feel it.
A whisper.
A faint, creeping instinct curling around the edges of her thoughts.
A hunger.
Something inside her knew exactly what she needed to do next.
And she hated it.
Welcome to the Colony, Worker #10284
Aya had barely processed the horrifying realization of her new, grotesque existence when something massive loomed over her.
A shadow, dark and imposing, swallowed the dim, pulsating glow of the underground chamber.
Aya's body froze.
Her new, alien instincts screamed at her.
Danger. Overwhelming. Unknown. Bigger. Predator.
Her fragile, newly hatched legs twitched uselessly against the damp ground as her bulging, black eyes locked onto the monstrous shape above.
It was huge—easily ten times her size, its body a gleaming wall of chitinous armor. Thick, segmented limbs curved like jagged blades, ending in clawed points that clacked ominously against the dirt. Its antennae—long and whip-like—twitched, sending out invisible signals Aya couldn't yet understand.
And then—
It moved.
FAST.
The hulking adult ant lunged forward and clamped its massive mandibles around Aya's tiny, fragile body.
Aya screamed.
CHKKKKKKKK! CHKK-CHKKKKK!
Her mind detonated into pure, animalistic terror.
OH GOD, I'M BEING EATEN—!
Her pathetic little legs flailed wildly, her segmented body thrashing in helpless, instinct-driven panic.
The pressure around her tightened—but it didn't crush her.
No sharp piercing pain. No tearing of her frail exoskeleton.
Aya wasn't being eaten.
She was being picked up.
What—?!
With a smooth, practiced motion, the worker ant lifted her into the air—then, as if she weighed less than nothing, plopped her back down upright.
Aya staggered, her six twitching legs scrambling to balance on the damp earth.
Her breathing—if she could even call it that—was ragged, her entire being still locked in the throes of absolute panic.
I… I wasn't eaten.
She was saved.
Or… no.
Not saved.
Corrected.
She wasn't moving fast enough—so the worker ant had simply put her in the right position.
Like a careless supervisor repositioning a new intern who didn't know where to stand.
Aya barely had a second to process this before something else hit her—
A sudden, sharp tingling sensation pulsed through her skull.
Like a shockwave, an invisible message seared into her very being.
A command.
"Move, hatchling."
Aya froze again.
What. The. Hell. Was. That.
It wasn't words exactly. It wasn't a voice. It was an impression, a feeling, a direct force of meaning shoved into her new, unprepared brain.
Aya's antennae twitched violently.
The worker ant flicked its antennae at her again—this time, impatiently.
The meaning pulsed harder.
"MOVE."
Aya stared.
Excuse me?! THAT'S IT?!
No "congratulations on your birth"?
No comforting words? No "Welcome to the colony, young one, may you thrive"?
Just—MOVE?!
Aya wanted to punch something.
But—oh wait.
She had no fists.
Only twitching, spindly legs, and horrifyingly functional mandibles.
The worker ant turned away, already uninterested in Aya's continued mental breakdown.
But it got worse.
Aya's vision was already miserable, her hearing even worse—but her sense of smell?
Absolute. Unfiltered. Hell.
The underground tunnels were drenched in scents—a thick, all-consuming wave of pheromones, dirt, body heat, and the unmistakable presence of thousands upon thousands of ants.
Every breath—if she could even call it that—was an overload of chemical information crashing into her fragile mind like a tidal wave.
Aya staggered, her antennae twitching violently as she tried to process the flood of messages.
Move here. Bring food. Protect the queen. Hatchlings emerging. Tunnel maintenance needed.
The entire colony was communicating through these suffocating layers of scent, and somehow, her newly formed instincts were actually translating it all.
But her human mind?
Overloaded. Completely fried.
Aya clutched her head—except, no. She couldn't.
She had no hands.
Instead, she just twitched aggressively like a malfunctioning cockroach.
Her tiny, pathetic antennae drooped miserably.
I can't see. I can't hear. I CAN ONLY SMELL EVERYTHING, and now I have to LIVE AS AN ANT?!
Aya wanted to curl up and die—again.
But there was no escape.
No office. No coffee. No weekends.
Only tunnels, dirt, and a suffocating, never-ending stream of orders shoved into her head through chemical messages she couldn't turn off.
And somewhere—somewhere out in the vast, unfeeling universe—
Aya just knew—
Some cruel, bastard god was laughing at her.
And she, Aya Kurose—formerly an overworked office drone, now Ant #10284—wanted nothing more than to flip the entire world off.
Except she couldn't.
Because—
No fingers.