Farm Manager in a Farm of Eerie Creatures

After ten years as an idol, Xuenor was physically and emotionally exhausted.

To treat his chronic insomnia and anxiety, he came to recuperate at a remote farm by a lake.

·

The farm had beautiful scenery and fresh air.

Life far from the secular world did wonders for his wounded heart.

·

But those cute, harmless, fluffy farm animals...

There seemed to be something subtly wrong with them.

·

The long-haired stray dog he'd taken in seemed to grow far too large overnight. When it knocked him to the ground, a strange tingling sensation spread across the back of his neck.

His favorite little black lamb loved curling up in his arms. Its soft, warm breath brushed his chest as it bleated, waiting for him to feed it milk.

The gentle, polite butler sometimes vanished without warning, then hurried back with his coat on, emerging from a corner of the farmhouse that had been empty a moment before.

"I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

His fingers brushed the back of Xuenor's neck, almost imperceptibly.

The butler smiled, his pupils glittering with strange, layered compound eyes.

"Or is..."

"Your visual hallucinations getting worse?"

·

But this didn't seem like a hallucination.

Sometimes Xuenor struggled awake from his dreams.

The damp sheets beneath him were tainted with the scent of dark lake water.

·

"Mommy!"

They called to him affectionately.

·

Entangled, sticky, repulsive, spiderweb-like gazes.

They wound tightly around him.

·

"Please lay eggs for me, "

·

"Don't be afraid."

At the crucial moment, his boyfriend rescued him.

·

Xuenor found a brief moment of peace in his arms.

All night, his boyfriend held his trembling hand, kissing the back of his neck again and again, sucking the bothersome honey-like fluid that kept oozing out.

·

Until one rainy night...

Xuenor awoke from a feverish dream to find his boyfriend, who should have been fast asleep, pressing an ear against his swollen belly.

·

"Shh..."

His boyfriend put a finger to his lips and spoke to Xuenor's belly.

·

"Don't wake Mommy."

·

[Reader Advisory]

1. Content warning: nesting periods, spider silk, egg-laying, and extensive descriptions of arthropods.

2. The pairing is one-on-one for parts of the story.

3. Set in a fictional, alternate world, unrelated to reality. Please don't draw parallels to real life.

4. This is the modern-day part of the author's other story, I Am the Insect Swarm. Some elements carry over.

Premise: We have never been apart.