Many thanks to Maryann for beta reading my story!

All remaining mistakes are mine!

Eaten by Ants

"Traitors! All of you! You bloody sons of bitches! What are you going to do? Why have you left me to them?" McKay's throat was sore from screaming. He tried to get up, but he noticed – again! – that he was tied with his hands and feet to the bed.

Alone. All alone. Everyone left him. Now he lay there. Completely helpless. Bound. And then this crawling.

Crawling?

What sort of crawling?

He looked at his right hand. An ant crawled over it. He tried to shake it off, but he failed. The ant didn't let anything bother it and continued its way. As the ant wandered around his index finger and his middle finger, he was able to squash it.

The relief didn't last a long time. Once again he felt a crawling. Another ant ran over his right hand. Tiny legs padded over the back of the hand. This crawling tickled. He tried to shake this ant off, to squash it, but his attempts came to nothing. "Off with you!" he shouted desperately.

The ant ran along the arm, into his shirt, along his shoulder, over his neck, over his face. "GET OFF OF ME!" Single-mindedly the ant explored his face nearly driving him mad. Helpless. He was helpless against an ant!

Now it crawled into his nostril. McKay blew out through his nose, hoping the ant would leave. But the ant bit into his nose. A shiver ran down his spine. The ant started to nibble at the skin of his nose.

"No! Please don't!"

Screams. Useless screams. He felt the blood running down his nose.

And there it was again, this crawling. Only this time he felt it more distinctly. He looked again at his right hand. Ants. Twenty, maybe thirty ants crawled along his arm. Forty. Fifty. And more and more were coming. He couldn't shake those blasted insects off!

His right arm was covered with ants. And they were crawling and crawling. And crawling. He started panicking. "Help! You rotten swine! Please help me!"

The ants spread over his whole body. They started to bite holes into his skin. At first it felt like stitches, thousands of stitches.

More and more ants came. He wasn't able to breathe through his nose; it was blocked up with ants. They were crawling into his mouth whenever he opened it, whether to scream or to breathe. He spat them out, but he asked himself, how long he would be able to do that.

"Please! Somebody help me!"

Screams nobody heard.

He hardly dared to open his eyes. Immediately they came and crawled over his eyeballs. But he had to see what caused this pain. At first he couldn't see it. There were too many ants. And then he saw it. His arms were bleeding. His shirt was full of blood. The blanket, which covered his legs, was full of blood.

"NO!"

He heard them. He heard the noise they caused, while they were eating his skin. It sounded almost like a gurgling.

"NO! Help me! Anybody! I don't deserve this!"

Suddenly the noises sounded muffled. They now were in his ears, They'd gotten into the auditory canal. A feeling of dizziness came over him. The ants had reached the organ of equilibrium.

Tears ran down his face. The animals eagerly soaked them up, as if they grudged him his tears. "Damned beasts! Leave me alone!"

Again and again he tried to shake them off. But he was defenceless. For each ant that fell off, ten new ants came.

"Help! Help me! Please!"

The pain reached a phase beyond description. His shirt was wet. Wet because of his own blood. He looked again at his arms. There now were genuine holes in it. He didn't need much imagination to think about how the rest of his body looked.

His right hand, where it had started. He discovered that he wasn't able to move it the normal way. What was the white thing that he was looking at? "OH GOD, NO!" He saw bones, bones of his fingers. His bones. They ate his flesh down to his bones.

He screamed. Unarticulated. Because of his pain. Because of his desperation.

Then he swallowed some ants. He felt them in his oesophagus. They didn't slide into his stomach. The beasts were tough. And they began to nibble at his oesophagus.

"Kill me! Please kill me!"

Not in his worst nightmares had he ever thought, that he could be eaten alive. And now he watched how ants ate him piece for piece. Tiny pieces. Each bite caused pain. Each single bite. He hoped not to go through his end without losing consciousness, but the longed-for faint didn't come.

In the meantime only bones and some tendons were left of his right arm. His left arm didn't look any better. At least he didn't have to see the rest of his body. But he knew he had to die. It was just a matter of time. He'd never felt such hopelessness.

What remains if someone has lost all of his hope?

Screams.

Loud Screams.

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Dr Weir looked with a shiver at the screaming and writhing McKay. "Aren't you able to do anything for him?"

Dr Beckett shook his head. "My possibilities are exhausted. Now we can only wait, till his body won't demand the enzyme anymore." Sighing, Dr Beckett turned to McKay and talked to him again and again. He just hoped that the Canadian would calm down soon.