IV. עָרוֹב
Exodus, 8:20-24
And Jehovah saith unto Moses, ‘Rise early in the morning, and station thyself before Pharaoh, lo,
he is going out to the waters, and thou hast said unto him, Thus said Jehovah, Send My people away, and they serve Me; for, if thou art not sending My people away, lo, I am sending against thee, and against thy servants, and against thy people, and against thy houses, the beetle, and the houses of the Egyptians have been full of the beetle, and also the ground on which they are.
‘And I have separated in that day the land of Goshen, in which My people are staying, that the beetle is not there, so that thou knowest that I am Jehovah in the midst of the land, 23and I have put a division between My people and thy people: to-morrow is this sign.’ And Jehovah doth so, and the grievous beetle entereth the house of Pharaoh, and the house of his servants, and in all the land of Egypt the land is corrupted from the presence of the beetle.
Dermestidae
The Predator
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6.30.24
A skin beetle, except it doesn't wait for a target to die before eating them. Sometimes I can hear it skittering around when I go for groceries, or in the backwoods a couple miles from me.
For the longest time I couldn't even really see what it was, and looking back the body it was using had to have been too mangled for the creature to be able to use it effectively at all. Of course, that was the last thing that came to mind to me in the moment. At the time, I had resigned myself to death. I'm journaling this now because a noise upstairs woke me up and I started overthinking. I always need to write when that happens.
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It's not just one of them, either, by the way. That one that calls herself Kinim, The Mother of Gnats. She is everywhere. Her children are watching at every corner and they're so small you can't even see them. Flies on the wall. They're monitoring you and me. Like they're waiting for something. You'd be right to sleep with that knife under your pillow.
