I was flying. Flying for hours.
My tiny wings buzzed with every flap, a high-pitched eeeeeee that even annoyed me. I didn't know mosquitoes could get tired, but here I was—Aedes Arno, utterly exhausted and on the verge of passing out mid-air. My compound eyes were glitching like a busted phone screen, and I had no GPS, no Google Maps, not even a mosquito instinct that told me where I was anymore.
I just wanted to bite Adolf. That was the whole plan.
My cheating ex-boyfriend, with his smug smile and his shiny hair gel, dumped me for a 19-year-old girl who still thinks "literally" means "a lot." He deserved it. He deserved my dengue kiss. The poetic justice of it all.
But now? I was lost. Somewhere between anger and midair cramps.
"Just you wait, Adolf," I wheezed. "One bite. That's all I ask. One little infected bite and even your boo won't come near you."
Then I heard it. A whoosh.
A shift in the wind.
I looked up—well, as much as a mosquito can "look" with a million fragmented lenses—and saw it.
A shadow. With wings. Large wings.
"Oh no," I murmured. "That's not Adolf. That's not even human. That's…"
A bat.
A literal, echolocating, insect-devouring bat. Like the ones your science teacher warned you about when they told you nature is balanced and terrifying.
He looked like he hadn't had dinner in days. And I looked like… dinner.
My thorax twitched. My proboscis curled in fear.
"He's coming in my direction," I whispered, and suddenly, I wasn't a vengeful mosquito. I was just a tiny, terrified flying buffet.
I darted left. The bat swooped.
I dived. He matched.
"This is karma, isn't it?" I yelled. "This is because I wanted to infect my ex! Is this mosquito hell?!"
The bat squeaked. I didn't speak bat, but I swear he said, "Yum."
Now, when you're human, you have two feet, a bit of strategy, and sometimes pepper spray. When you're a mosquito? You have wings, fear, and a soundtrack of your own buzzing.
I zipped through the air, looking for cover—leaves, twigs, a nice mosquito-sized manhole. Anything!
But just as I tried to turn midair, my left wing cramped—of course it did, I've been flying for hours—and that was the end.
Boom.
It wasn't even dramatic. It was just... chomp.
Everything went black. My mosquito life flashed before my eyes: getting wings, learning to hover, practicing stealth flight over Adolf's hairy arm.
And then, with my last breath, I whispered, "I am doomed."
And then... I woke up.
Face-down on my study table, drool stuck to my cheek like a clingy ex.
My laptop screen glared at me with a half-written Word document titled "How to Emotionally Recover Like a Girlboss."
My coffee was cold. My room was exactly as I'd left it: clothes on the floor, motivational sticky notes on the wall (all lies), and a half-eaten bag of chips judging me from the corner.
I blinked.
Was I alive?
I lifted my hand and stared at it. Five fingers. No wings. No tiny eyes. No deadly proboscis.
"I'm not a mosquito?" I said aloud.
I sniffed myself. No bat breath. No echolocation trauma.
I sat up straight.
"Was that a dream? Or did I just get drunk on three-day-old mango juice?"
The memory of the bat, the chase, the utter mosquito humiliation—it all felt too real. Like, emotionally scarring real. I could still feel the phantom wing flapping.
I shuffled to the mirror and examined myself. Yup. Human Arno. 26 years old, heartbreak survivor, and now apparently hallucinating mosquito vigilante.
My phone buzzed. A message from Adolf popped up.
Adolf: "Hey. Just checking in. Hope ur okay."
I stared at it.
After all he did—after cheating on me with a teenager who thinks Shakespeare is a fashion brand—he had the audacity to text me like he didn't destroy my heart and turn me into an airborne revenge demon.
I considered replying: "No, Adolf. I was eaten by a bat while trying to infect you with dengue. Thanks for checking in."
But I didn't.
Instead, I threw my phone on the bed, dramatically flopped back into my chair, and stared at the ceiling.
What if the dream was a warning? What if the universe was saying, "Girl, get your act together. Vengeance bites back. Also, don't mess with bats"?
I couldn't help it—I started laughing. Not a graceful giggle. The kind of laugh that bubbles out of you when you realize your life is more sitcom than success story.
"I turned into a mosquito to bite my cheating ex," I muttered. "Then I got eaten by a bat. And woke up next to an unfinished self-help document. Peak rock bottom."
Then I saw it.
A single mosquito hovering above my desk lamp.
It buzzed softly, hovering like it owned the room.
I narrowed my eyes.
"Don't even think about it," I said. "I just got back to human form."
It hovered.
I grabbed a slipper.
We stared at each other in silence.
Then it zipped out the window like it knew I'd been through enough.
One Week Later
I wrote everything down. The dream. The bat. The existential mosquito panic. It became part of a story—part revenge fantasy, part bug horror, part emotional healing.
I titled it: The Great Dumpening: Memoirs of a Mosquito Girl.
And somehow, it felt right.
I didn't need to bite Adolf. I didn't need to transform or deliver dengue. I needed to write, laugh, cry, and slap a mosquito or two.
Healing is weird.
Sometimes you eat ice cream. Sometimes you cut your hair.
And sometimes you hallucinate a mosquito dream so vivid it forces you to forgive a man who doesn't deserve it.
But never forget: bats eat mosquitoes. And karma flies fast.