C-2747 Logbook, as found
Logbook Entry 1: 20.12.25, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. Arrived at research location in loosely wrapped gift box, promptly shredded any evidence of my instructions on the wrapping. Began exploration of interior. There are many individual rooms that are interconnected to form a whole space. Seems to have fuzzy yarn floor covering throughout much of the layout except in the room where food comes from and the room where the humans deal with their excrement. My return pod, disguised as a leopard-print sleeping tent, is in the room that I entered into the location in, along with a large evergreen tree covered in shiny baubles that resemble H-com devices. This warrants further study since the humans are not thought to be this technologically advanced and thusly we may not be the only outsiders with interests here. The humans have offered me a plastic domed pod for my waste in a side room off of the room in which they deal with their excrement. Most of the rooms with the floor covering have high jumping ledges. I don’t yet know what is kept up there.
Logbook Entry 2: 20.12.26, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. The humans reprimanded me for climbing the large evergreen tree and took it away. I did not get a chance to examine the shiny baubles more closely to see if they were in fact H-com holographic communication devices as they appeared to be. I’ve discovered that I spend an inordinate time napping here, although it actually seems that much of my day is spent downloading while casually napping. Just what is taking the Mother Ship so long?
Logbook Entry 6: 20.12.30, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. Was alone most of the day. Have not yet determined where the humans go for hours on end. Perhaps to another similar habitat that requires the traveling room by which they first brought me here in the loosely wrapped box. Will try to follow up on this when I am able. I am keeping these logbook entries short to try to maximize transference with the Mother Ship, since contact is so spotty.
Logbook Entry 7: 20.12.31, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. One of the humans found me on one of the high jumping ledges looking around. They made a huge commotion waving their arms and shouting “No!” before ungraciously scooping me up and dropping me back on the floor. There must be something important and top secret up there, I shall have to continue my explorations while they are asleep or away.
Logbook Entry 10: 21.01.03, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. I have not heard from the Mother Ship for several days. So I am working on training the humans. Making mournful cries and staring at the sustenance bowl has not resulted in more kibble dispensation. Instead, they shake the kibble down to fill in the hole to the bottom that I have meticulously unearthed. I will have to make a more concerted effort to ensure that they follow through on actually filling the bowl in the future. I shall continue to test and hone my whining capabilities in this.
Logbook Entry 13: 21.01.06, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. One of the humans was up for much of the night and has spent an inordinate time in bed. They may be sick. I stayed with them to observe them for signs of further distress. They seemed mildly perturbed that I set up a vigil by their head staring at them but allowed me to remain there anyway. At one point they tried to grab me and enfold me in their arms but I shook myself free and moved a little further away to stare from a safe distance.
Logbook Entry 15: 21.01.08, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. The humans and I have discovered the most wonderful interactive game in which they wave a wand with a string and ribbons attached to make them flutter. It has provided opportunity to bond and to sharpen my hunting skills. I am working to train them to engage in this activity more often, further developing my whining capabilities.
Logbook Entry 16: 21.01.09, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. Why is contact with the Mother Ship so intermittent? The Mother Ship dropped off for several hours today in the middle of a download. One of the humans caught me with my motor running but shrugged it off. They said it was “cute”. Uncertain what exactly that means – will have to look into this further. I shall try to be more diligent so as to not be discovered in the future.
Logbook Entry 19:21.01.12, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. One of the humans rose unannounced in the middle of the night to use their excrement room. Thankfully they didn’t see me exploring one of the high ledges or notice as the aperture of my vision sensors refocused with the new light levels. They do not seem entirely aware or capable in the night; I shall have to utilize this knowledge to further advantage later. The high ledges have nothing of note upon them, just little figurines and knickknacks that would make a great clamor as they broke into hundreds of tiny pieces should they be knocked off the ledge… This is very tempting, but not when I’m trying to remain hidden…
Logbook Entry 22: 21.01.15, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. I am losing sight of the Mission. What exactly was I supposed to be learning from this exercise? I find that I am more and more drawn to sitting beside the humans and have continued to express my desire to play with the ribbon wand and for them to fill the sustenance bowl with more kibble. They are easily trained but don’t always follow through on their training well.
Logbook Entry 27: 21.01.19, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. The Mission has been extended without further instructions. Awaiting download from the Mother Ship for more clarification. Other agents have stopped by on the other side of the external glass to offer their criticisms of my approach, but they do not offer any more guidance and I continue to be steadfast in my duty to observe my research environment.
Logbook Entry 31: 21.01.23, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. I have finally heard from the Mother Ship! Having observed the humans and logged their activities over the past month, I have been instructed to smother them in their sleep as they have been deemed dangerous and oafish creatures that are incapable of greater awareness than younglings for all that this has not been my full impression as they are somewhat trainable and are well-intentioned. Nonetheless, I am practicing my assigned task by sleeping on their faces in the middle of the night.
Logbook Entry 34: 21.01.26, 07.00 hours
C-2747 reporting. I announce finalization of my Mission. I am awaiting return to the Mother Ship. I will be resting peacefully in my Pod at 08.00 hours awaiting intermolecular transport.
Side note: Although C-2747 reported having completed their objective, C-2747 didn’t actually follow through on smothering the humans in their sleep. The humans awoke late that morning to find their beloved new housecat and its leopard print sleeping tent missing. Countless LOST flyers yielded no response. The cat was simply gone.
The gorse bush seemed taken aback. It bristled and exclaimed, “A bush!”
“I am so very sorry, my Lord, I can explain,” the goblin cleric bowed in reverence, eyes glued to the ground. Everything about his body language was submissive and nervous.
“Of all the useless… How is it that I got reincarnated as a bush?!” The shrubbery prickled, growing more and more agitated. “I should have come back as a great King, or an Angel, or a Demon, or a dragon, or something even grander… Hell, I’d have settled for returning as the undead Lich King Tyrant Boss-Man you all came to know and love and revere. But no, that wasn’t in the dice. And now here I am, A Bush!” The spiky leaves trembled and rustled as they spoke, both emphasizing and decrying their verdant stature.
“Well, we were in a rush to revive you, after that run in with the goody-two-shoes 20th level adventurers and the awkward retreat,” the goblin knelt before the bramble-vine. “All of our best clerics, necromancers, and acolytes were tapped for spells or had perished in the great battle. Those of us who got out of the caves were lucky to escape with our lives and make it to this little clearing on the mountainside. And we desperately needed your guidance. We still do…”
“That doesn’t explain why I’m a bush now,” the gorse stretched to its full height, about two-and-a-half feet of thorny rage. “And a Gorse Bush at that! Before too long I’ll have a stand of satyrs piping along with a centaur drum circle, all strumming up some fertility ritual at my feet… er, roots…”
“Well, I’m multi-disciplinary you know.” The goblin spell-caster muttered and meekly shifted to his other foot, bracing for the inevitable, “Sometimes I get the cleric and druid magics confused a little.”
“Confused a little?” the bush growled, “Confused A Little?!” The bush’s rage turned to magic as it burst into flames. “I’m A BUSH!!! That’s not just some modest little cleric-druid spell translation issue!”
The goblin shrunk from the blaze, “But my Lord, you are a mighty bush. The greatest bush, really terrific… The gorsiest, bushiest bush in all of shrub-dom… Other bushes? Losers! We all agree, your Lordship.” The trembling goblin horde in the scrubland shadows at the edge of the small clearing nodded emphatically in response, fearing their bushy leader’s wrath. And rightfully so…
A tongue of flame erupted like a lightning bolt from the gorse and zapped the goblin cleric-druid where he stood, leaving nothing but a smattering of ashes drifting towards the ground. The flame erupted through the goblin horde in a huge explosion that engulfed everything in its wake, leaving a circle of scorched earth covered in a fine layer of sooty ash, smelling a bit like cordite.
The bush sighed and took note of its surroundings, sulking. It waited for some would-be adventurer to wander up the mountainside to find it there, where they could revel in its awkward awesomeness. Seasons came and went, and time seemed to stand still for nigh eternity as the gorse bush seethed beneath its crown of thorny brambles. Perhaps it should have convinced the goblin cleric to transplant it to a more trafficked location first.
If you enjoyed that bit of snarky fantasy, check out Ppppffffttt my previous Poised Potion Poison Potential story.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
You’ve almost made it to the end of the finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September… In case you missed out, here are the other parts of this series:
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: hand that is a spider; spider legs as fingers; fingers becoming spider; spider all fingers.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Keep Trying! Yeah, I’m sure you don’t remember being bitten. Because of the ways they warp time and space, and the natural chemical reactions involved, the AI art generated finger spiders’ bite isn’t typically felt. They are still attached to you, feeding… You have to get them off… Keep trying!
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider leg fingers; spider made out of hand fingers; hand spider picking banjo; fingers as spider playing banjo.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders That’s All Folks! Well, I guess that’s that then. It’s been nice knowing you. Enjoy your new form. Nothing left for it but to play the banjo…
All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
We just can’t get enough of spiders here on Nightmarish Nature… so here are some more creepy spider facts for you to consider, outside of the giants, eating and mating habits, and wasp predation as previously mentioned in this series. Plus the finger spiders have taken over the whole of the month of September, so strap in because they’re here too – no goofy drawings this month just more terror unleashed in the form of AI art, courtesy of NightCafe.
Spiders Are Baby Mama Machines!
Spiders can lay hundreds and thousands of eggs in their egg sacs at a time. And when they hatch, all those tiny baby spiders can balloon, flying to new homes on airborne strands of silk as if raining from the sky… So if you suffer from trypophobia and are weirded out by large quantities of clustered small and tiny objects (especially when they are alive and moving) you may want to steer clear of these little bug bombs.
Spiders Are Athletic Archdukes!
Jumping spiders can leap as far as 40 times their body length. And wolf spiders can run up to 2 feet per second. In movement, spiders have four feet on the ground and four in the air at all times. And they have six knees on each leg for a total of 48 knees – that’s a lot of potential kneecapping, I’d try to take them down a different way if I were you…
Other Interesting Factoids
Spiders are on every continent except Antarctica and there are over 40,000 identified species of them. All spiders produce silk for all that they don’t all make webs, since some prefer to live on the move or ambush from hidey holes. There is a known species of herbivorous spider, the Bagheera Kiplingi, but most are carnivorous or omnivorous. And the longest lived spiders can survive for 40+ years.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
