This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2026-05-29 23:34:45+00:00.

---

A couple of years ago, I went through a rough patch. I went through a separation with my then-fiancée after an eight-year relationship, and I was moving to South Dakota for a job opportunity. There were a lot of things breaking down at once, and I didn’t have much room to figure out what the hell I was going to do. I was crashing at a college buddy’s place for a couple of weeks while I was looking for a place of my own.

It feels strange to slow down enough to catch a glimpse of your own life. I hadn’t taken a vacation in years, and all of a sudden, I had a full month of nothing on my calendar. I took walks, talked to people I hadn’t seen in years, rediscovered some of the music I used to listen to. It felt like I was sleepwalking through someone else’s life, but I guess that’s what it feels like to breathe free after choking yourself for years.

It was a strange time in my life, and it would change me in more ways than one.

I used to take walks along the river. I’d just started to listen to audio books, and I would take the long way back to my buddy’s place just to hear more. It’s strangely comforting, listening to a story. I guess to a lot of people, it reminds them of childhood. Having a story read to us is one of the most comforting things I can think of.

I stopped to tie my shoe when I noticed this acrid smell. I took off my headphones and listened to the river, but there was something else. A weak sort of wheezing barking noise. Taking a moment to step off the path, I noticed the source – an adolescent deer.

It was lying in the river, half its body submerged and the top half weakly patting at the grass as if hoping something would pull it up. It was covered in these nickel-sized holes covering the entire side of its ribcage, and I could see something moving under its skin. It was dying, no doubt about it.

I stepped a little closer, just to see what’d happened to it. The poor thing wasn’t long for this world. It didn’t look sickly, the wounds seemed physical and inflicted. I’d never seen a parasite able to do that kind of damage.

The barks turned to screams, and the screams turned to nothing. After a while, it was just opening its mouth without making a sound. I could see its eyes searching me. It made me believe in a kind of fear I couldn’t imagine. All these things like losing your job or ending a relationship… it’s all very human experiences. But what I saw in that animal’s eyes reminded me that there was a kind of fear I’d forgotten. A comfort I’d taken for granted.

Something was eating it alive.

I stepped back as it took its last breath. There was this chill across my body, like I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to. The shadows around me grew darker. I could feel something creeping across my skin just by looking at this thing. Nickel-sized open wounds. Dozens. Blood in the water.

I walked away with this unsettling sense of dread. I figured I ought to call someone; you can’t have a sick, dead animal polluting the waterways. But more so, I didn’t know what to think of it. Should I be horrified? Scared? Thankful to be alive?

I got back to the path and put my headphones back on. I let the goosebumps on my back take over as I shuddered, shaking off whatever worries I carried with me. I raised my phone to put my story back on, when I noticed a little gray dot on my thumb. Just this tiny beetle-looking thing. Using my index finger, I flicked it off.

But my finger passed straight through, and the little beetle remained.

I shook my hands a little and continued on my way, paying no further attention to it.

Apart from that, it was a fairly uneventful day. Had a chicken salad, answered some e-mails, and looked into some apartments. I had a good lead on one, I just needed a little more time. Luckily, time was the one thing I had plenty of. I have very patient friends.

That night, as I was getting ready for bed, I remember standing in the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror. Maybe my eyes were looking a little darker, and the skin a little loose along the cheeks. They say you never look at the same you twice. Age does that to a person.

As I leaned down to spit, I felt a tickle on my right hand. Not much, but enough to make me look up. There was that little gray beetle crawling across the palm of my hand.

I turned the faucet to medium and ran my hands under it. The beetle was still there. I turned my hand back and forth, up and down, and it didn’t move an inch. After a couple of seconds, I was blasting it at max temperature, and the water passed straight through. I could see the beetle with my own eyes, but it’s like it wasn’t really there.

I put it out of my mind. I still had a story to listen to. I was gonna go look at an apartment in the morning. I had things to do, places to be – I couldn’t let my mind get preoccupied with little things that didn’t matter. I had real problems looming on the horizon, and if I kept staring at my hands I’d get nowhere.

So I went to sleep, trying not to pay attention to what I think was a faint tingle on the palm of my right hand.

I’d forgotten all about it the next morning. As I showered and shaved, I noticed a streak of blood across my cheek. Not much, just a tiny red line. I figured I’d accidentally cut myself, but on closer inspection there was nothing like that. It’d been a perfect shave. Then I looked down at my hand.

It was just a tiny little red dot on the back of my thumb. No bigger than the prick of a needle. The teeniest, tiniest little trickle of blood was running out, but it was already coagulating.

And at the edge of the wound, a little gray beetle; suckling at it like a gazelle at a watering hole.

Now, I’ve never really had a problem with bugs. I ate a worm as a kid. But that thing was messing with me. I washed my hands three times, and it was still there. I used more and more soap. I used a sponge and scrubbed until my skin felt raw. I used dish soap, a weird skin cream I found by the tub, but it did nothing. The beetle was still there, poking at the wound.

Finally, I just put a band-aid over the whole thing. It took the beetle a while to figure out. It tried to dig underneath, but the adhesive from the band-aid was blocking it. With enough effort, it probably could’ve made it through, but it had an obvious solution to this problem.

It moved out of the way and bit me. Now there was another little wound. Barely big enough to be seen, but it was there.

I figured it just wasn’t real. It wasn’t reacting to anything, so it couldn’t be real. Real things get washed off. Real things get scrubbed. Real beetles get squished and washed down the drain. Real things show up on the screen when you take pictures of it – this didn’t. Ergo, this thing couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible.

Deciding that this was the case, I made myself ready. I put on my nice shirt and pants, got my car keys, and checked the calendar. There was nothing tickling the back of my hand. There was nothing biting me. I had real problems, and this wasn’t it.

For a couple of hours, I felt nothing. I went around town, checked out an apartment, and had a long talk with my would-be boss about my upcoming move. He was flexible and could give me a couple more weeks, as long as I kept in touch and let him know the second I was available. The whole thing was a done deal, but it’s always a bit nerve-wracking when there are papers left to sign.

I went to see a guy about an apartment later that day. I got there in my fancy shirt, trying to look the part of confident buyer. I shook his hand and noticed him looking down. There was blood on his finger; he’d accidentally touched one of my wounds. He looked up at me with this one expression of absolute disgust, like I’d spat in his face. He composed himself in the blink of an eye, but for a moment, I could see what he was really thinking.

I apologized profusely and he did as well, but I could tell it really bothered him. All of a sudden he wasn’t thinking about the apartment, he was thinking whether he’d caught something from me or not. He jogged inside to wash his hands, and I knew the whole deal was gonna freefall through the floor. There was just… no way. I don’t think you’d be shocked to hear I didn’t get that apartment.

When I got back in my car, I was furious. I could see the beetle on the back of my hand, circling a little pinprick of a wound. I smacked my hand on the dashboard over and over and over, but once I turned my hand back around the beetle was still there. I brought the hand to my teeth and bit my skin. I spat, and scratched, and itched, but still – nothing. At my worst, I was using my car keys to scratch my skin like a lottery ticket, but all that did was cause more wounds.

The beetle didn’t seem to mind that.

It was an enormous source of frustration. Not only was it bothering me, but it was impacting my actual life. My buddy was asking questions about my apartment hunting, and it just got to me. We ended up agreeing that I could stay the full week, then I’d go stay at a motel. It all sounded very congenial and cordial, but I could tell he was just done with me. That’s how a lot of things in my life ended; with cordial smiles, tilted heads, and practiced lines. My eight-year relationship had died the same way. No screaming or crying, just a well-timed “we need to talk” in a public place, as to not cause a scene.

But this damn beetle was driving me mad.

I couldn’t take photos of it, so ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1trje15/a_beetle_only_i_can_see/