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The Reconstructivist by Emma Parrella

I take a step out the door, and my foot sinks about an inch into the grass. We’ve had night and day rain for the past week, but a man’s still got to do chores— I can already hear Bessie mooing. I pull my jacket tight around me and trudge around back to the shed. Pulling open the tall red door, I grimace at the sight in front of me.

            “Oh, Bess, you’ve fallen down again,” I rush over to her, “now just stay still, and we’ll have you right back up.” Bessie’s been a bit ill as of late, so I’ve rigged up a jack with a sort of platform that helps me put her right whenever she falls. She’s certainly a bit too heavy for me to lift on my own (though she’s been losing weight as of late) so I just thank the Lord for simple machines.  I prop her against the side of her stall, so she might have a bit of assistance for her weak legs. We used to keep her outside before she got sick, but now I’ve outfitted a stall all nice for her, hay and water and nice and warm. There’s a smell I can’t seem to do anything about, but cows don’t mind smell much. It’s hardly worth trying, but I pull out a milking stool and bucket next. As expected, Bess is bone-dry— she hasn’t given milk for a long time. She’s an old cow, though, and certainly far out of her heyday, so it’s no surprise to me. I pat her flank and smile. “Sorry ‘bout that, Bessie. Bye now.” I squelch my way over to the chicken coop, and climb inside. We’re twelve chickens strong, and they’re all fast asleep this morning. It’s funny, actually— I was sure I heard clucking, but perhaps one woke up and then fell right back asleep. I carefully pick up the first hen to check for eggs. Nothing. The next eleven hens sadly yield the same result. I nuzzle each one as I pick them up— I’ve heard that that can help them lay, and besides, I’m just much more sentimental than any self-respecting farmer ought to be. I’m not sure they’ll ever lay again, though. Truth be told, I’m beginning to suspect that whatever keeps Bess from producing is the same thing that keeps the hens from laying. Even might be what effects that terrible weakness in Fannie and the kids. Speaking of Fannie and the kids, I realize suddenly that the sun’s rather high in the sky— I must’ve spent a bit too long helping Bessie up this morning. I pull my hood over my head and slide through the mud back to the house, making sure to wipe my feet before I walk in— Fannie’d kill me if I tracked mud in.

            I pull off my work boots, and then head upstairs to wake Fannie first. She’s beautiful when she sleeps. I stand for a second, watching her, and then walk over and press my lips to her forehead.

            “Mornin’ darling,” I whisper. I lightly brush her eyes open. Fannie and the kids, like I mentioned, have been awful ill lately, and greatly weak. I have to do practically everything for them.

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            “Morning, pumpkin,” she responds, and I feel just terribly sad for her— she’s so weak her lips barely even move. I help her dress, and then I pick her up bridal style to carry her down to the kitchen for breakfast. Her head falls against my chest and her eyes drop shut. I laugh.

            “C’mon, now Fannie, you’ve got to wake up!” She doesn’t move, but instead softly sighs. We reach the kitchen, and I carefully put lay her in a chair. She sags to one side, and I dive to catch her before she falls and right her.

            “Thanks, hon,” she says quietly. Fannie’s always quiet, now, ever since she got sick. It’s a wonder that I’m such a picture of health while they’re all so afflicted. Though, I think it quite possible that the Lord left me be so I could care for them. Which, of course reminds me I must be getting the kids up too now. Jack greets me with “Morning, dad!”, and his voice so bright reminds me of when he used to run around the farm with the other local boys. Fannie used to have to holler for fifteen minutes at least to get him to come in for supper. It’s sad to see him like this, even more than the others. I carry him down too, and set him next to his ma, and leave them to talk while I wake Beth.

She just groans when I wake her— sick or no, she’s a teenage girl. I carry her down, too, and then set myself to making breakfast. It’s a shame, Fannie used to make eggs like nobody else could, but her household duties fell to me when she fell sick. Doesn’t matter, anyway— there’ve been no eggs from our hens, and the general store’s been abandoned, so there’s no chance of eggs there. Luckily, no illness could make the crops stop growing, so I start water boiling to boil some potatoes. I carry on with Fanny for a couple minutes while the potatoes cook, as she seems to think I should’ve sliced and fried them. Frying isn’t good without butter, though, and even if Bessie was giving milk, I barely have time for all I have to do without churning butter as well.

The breakfast is as good as any, although you wouldn’t think it from the potatoes left on the rest of their plates. Beth has always been picky, and lately she’s just been a bit too good for boiled vegetables. Fannie’s told me she’s much too frail to eat, although I think she just doesn’t much like my cooking. Jack, I’ve no explanation for except the affliction. It’s terrible sad to see a boy so weak. When I was his age, I ate no less than four eggs for breakfast each morning, and he can’t even stomach a bit of a potato. It’s no worse than normal, though, so I set them each in their typical spots.

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I carefully lift Fannie and take her to her favorite chair. It faces a window, so she can look out and see Jack play. She loves to watch out of windows. She’s always been quiet-like. Part of why I love her. I set her down gently, and then pick up Beth the same way and set her next to her mother. They’re thick as thieves– like to gossip about the other villagefolk and gad on and such. I pull out an embroidery hoop for each of them and carefully place them in their hands. Well, least, I’m careful with Fannie. Perhaps Beth is feeling a bit more frail today, or mayhaps I was a bit too harsh with her, because as I bend her wrist to give her her embroidery, her wrist snaps clean, and I’m left with three hands and her with one. She shrieks, and I go to get our medical kit.

Pulling out bandages, I reposition her wrist and pull a needle and thread from the kit. She squeals as I begin to stitch, but I steadily continue and soon the job’s done. Her blood’s dry from affliction, so it’s fairly clean. I’ve been getting better with stitches. Beth always shrieks and squirms when I have to sew her up– but then, she’s been calling me to kill spiders since she was six, so I s’pose a bit of squeamishness isn’t surprising. I wrap it with bandages to prevent infection, and then kiss her forehead and let her be.

I’ve been improving my mending. The first day of the ailment, I was terrible. I was down in the storm cellar, putting away some cured meats for the winter, when I heard a horrible commotion upstairs. I ran up, but I’d locked myself in by accident. By the time I was up, it was all quiet. I came up to the house almost levelled. I believe a whirlwind must’ve stormed through while I was down there. And there they were, all so sick. Fannie was in the kitchen, lying as if dead. Peaceful like, but a big gash on her forehead that slowly dripped red. I mended her up first. Frantically. I knew I couldn’t lose her. I dug through rubble for the medical kit. Pulling up beams, I found Beth, probably the sickest of them all. She was just red, red, red, too red to see where the injuries were. I scooped her up too, and set her by her mother, and then I stitched, big uneven stitches straight into Fannie’s forehead. The bleeding stopped, but she was sick for good. Then Beth. I ran to get water, to try and wash her off, and there was Jack. He was pinned down by a big wooden beam that’d fallen from the house. He almost looked asleep, but he was the first one to talk to me. I saw him, and I called out his name. I can still hear it, crystal clear.

“Pa! Come help!” I reckoned he’d been running in to tell his ma about the tornado when it hit the house, from the way he was facing. I lugged the beam off him, hauled some water, and then brought him in. It took hours to fix them up. I wasn’t much handy at it at first, and they were badly sick then. I put them back together, though.

I’m thinking about all of this as I pick up Jack. I always take him out to his spot last. He likes to sit on the front stoop and whittle. I always sit a couple minutes with him and whittle. I’ve rebuilt our whole home from the ground up, and I made sure to put in a good stoop for sitting and whittling. I gather knives for us both, and find two sturdy bits of wood, and start carving a whistle. He just looks at his wood. Sometimes, he tells me, he’s a bit of trouble starting a carving.

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Sometimes, we talk while we sit. Other times, we just sit like this, quiet. Today’s a quiet day. I look out on rolling fields, the road that leads to a town decimated then abandoned. I look at my son. A mop of blonde, lazy blue eyes, and a wound stretching ear to forehead looking as fresh as the day he got it. It hurt him, surely, but I like it. It reminds me of the family I reconstructed from the brink of death. The blacksmith couldn’t save his family from the affliction, and neither could the cooper. But here I sit, whittling with my son, alive and well.

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Hello! My name is Emma Parrella. I’m a senior in high school and I’m submitting a short story I’ve written for publishing. I’m from New Jersey, I like to read and knit, and I also like writing. I typically write fantasy and some horror, specifically short stories. I’m also not sure what else goes in a biographical statement. I hope you like my story!

Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Horrifying Humans

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So we’re going out on a limb here in this segment of Nightmarish Nature and exploring one of the most terrifying, most dangerous, most impactful species to walk this planet. I’m talking about us of course. Sure, as humans, we may not seem all that horrific to ourselves, but to many other creatures we have been a force of nightmares.

Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

Why are we terrifying?

Humans are among those species that engage in massive modifications to our environment to serve our needs, like beavers who dam rivers, elephants who eat all of the new growth scrub to keep the savannahs tree-free, and so on. Yeah, all creatures have some impact on their surroundings, but some take it up a notch, and we do so at an order of magnitude higher still. And we have gotten so good at it that we have managed to exist and thrive in places that would otherwise be inhospitable. We are outwardly adaptive and opportunistic to the point of being exploitative. We are the apex predators now.

Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

We have forced many creatures into extinction, intentionally and not, and have sped up these effects enormously. The National Audobon Society chose the egret as its symbol after it made a comeback from being hunted to near extinction, and it was one of the lucky ones. Many weren’t so lucky, especially if they came in direct conflict with humans, such as wolves and the big cats who were in direct competition, or those who were really specialized in really specific niche circumstances that we pushed out of the way. And this is in only a very very limited scope of our earth’s history, and has since been even more ramped up with industrialization.

Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

But humans aren’t all bad are we?

Depends on who you ask… We have created all sorts of incredible opportunities for some species too. Take mice for example. And coyotes. And kudzu. And a whole host of animals whom we’ve domesticated, some of whom wouldn’t have continued to exist otherwise or certainly wouldn’t exist in anything resembling their current forms. And the most massive extinctions occurred long before our arrival, when the earth was still forming and underwent rapid catastrophic changes and swings, decimating critters as they were trying to get a foothold. Nothing is constant except for change; that has always been true.

Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel

So it isn’t my goal to get all eco-con​scious and environmentalist here. Just that I feel if we are going to explore some of the more terrifying aspects of nature, we need to look in the mirror. Because if a consensus were taken right here, right now of all living beings globally as to what is among the most terrifying creatures among us, I’m sure we’d appear on that list.

If you enjoyed this closer-than-kissing-cousins segment of Nightmarish Nature on Horrifying Humans, please check out past segments:

Vampires Among Us

Perilous Parenting

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Freaky Fungus

Worrisome Wasps

Cannibalism

Terrifying Tardigrades

Reindeer Give Pause

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Komodo Dragons

Zombie Snails

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Original Creations

Werewolf-ing It Well, Part 3 by Jennifer Weigel

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Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous two St. Patrick’s Days… Here are Part 1 from 2022 and Part 2 from 2023 if you want to catch up.


Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

So apparently it really was my lucky day at that suburban gas mart last St. Patrick’s Day. I got the mother lode of all Scratchers. I hit it big time. I had no real idea of what that meant, but it looked promising. Maybe I could get a Cadillac to tour Route 66 AND a cabin in the woods… But who was gonna drive?

Now apparently you can’t just cash these things in at the register. You have to mail them in or something. Why does life have to be so complicated? Anything involving those good for nothing mailmen has to be rigged or part of some larger conspiracy, I’m sure. But I pocketed my prize and made some plans. I couldn’t rely on old Sal not to just pocket my prize for himself; he wasn’t the sort that would let me have my dream. Or even understood that I had dreams beyond just chasing rabbits (though those are the best).

The next full moon I whined and howled at Sal to take me in to work with him. Sal just patted me on the head. Didn’t even offer a treat or nothing. Seriously, I had to get out of there, this suburban situation was the pits. I couldn’t do another year of it, watching my life tick away. So, when that didn’t work, I gently grabbed my Scratchers ticket like I was retrieving a very important slipper and slunk over and hid in his truck under that ratty blanket he kept in the back.

I managed to creep into the junkyard office and hide there while Sal was sleeping on the job. Those mastiffs nearly ratted me out, but fortunately they were chained up, and they weren’t all that bright anyway. Just growled a string of profanities at my cur form, like I hadn’t heard that before. Anyway, I waited it out and before long I heard Monty’s car pull up, rattling like the dilapidated Honda Civic held together with duct tape that it was. Sal’s truck pulled off, spitting gravel and exhaust in its wake as always.

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Dusk was setting in and I could feel the change starting. Nothing to do for it, guess I’d just have to run with it then. Monty had settled in as usual, watching bad porn and staring off into nothing. He still smelled like day old jelly donuts (the kind you can get a whole bag for $1) and coffee, as usual. Good boy Monty, how I’ve missed you and the occasional stale donut, even if it wasn’t a cookie. I approached him from behind and coughed.

Monty nearly leapt out of his skin. He blanched as if he’d seen a ghost before he managed to find his voice. “Shit, that wasn’t a dream,” he stammered, pointing. As he realized I meant him no harm, he regained his composure and even offered me a day-old jelly donut, which I accepted gratefully. I think he could tell that my tail would have been wagging if I’d still had one at that time.

“Lucky, what in all of hell are you doing here?” he asked, eyes still wide as saucers. “And for Christ’s sake, put on some pants.” He offered up the spare uniform that still just hung from the hook behind the door. I guess in my fervor to talk to him I’d forgotten to dress. Oops.

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

“Monty, old friend, I need a favor,” I barked. I handed him the Scratchers. His eyes grew wider.

“Shit, where’d you get this?” That’s a lot of money,” Monty exclaimed. “They’ve been looking for the winner of this one…”

“I’d stashed it in my hidey spot under the place where the carpet peels up after I got it… It’s our ticket out of here,” I retorted. “You don’t think I want to spend the rest of my days laying around suburbia with tightwad treat-skimping Sal do you?”

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“I suppose not,” Monty quipped. “But what’d you have in mind?”

“You and me, we could get a cabin in the woods, live off the land. Get out of this shit-hole. Hell, you could even get a real car, one of those big-boat Cadillacs with the wide tongue-lolling windows…”

“Um, you could do a lot more than that with this, but I catch your drift. And I want out of this hellhole too. But, like…? I mean, you aren’t gonna bite me or anything, or get all weird.” Monty fidgeted like he did when he was nervous. “I guess I knew but didn’t want to admit it – dude you’re a freak show.”

“Gee thanks. Trust me, being a dog is better any day except that you can’t drive or get your own treats and crap,” I retorted. “And if was gonna bite you I’d have done so a long time ago. It doesn’t work that way, anyway. Seriously, you don’t believe all that werewolf mumbo jumbo on Netflix too, do you?”

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

Monty shook his head tentatively. “I don’t really know what to believe. I mean, I guess I always knew you were like this, but I didn’t let it sink in.”

“Well, get over it and help me get my dream cabin,” I snipped. “Seriously don’t just stand there gawking all night; I put on clothes and everything. I only have tonight.”

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“You mean before you turn back into a dog?” Monty asked.

I nodded, still licking the jelly off my lips.

“But I thought werewolf changes happened every full moon,” Monty asked.

“I do, but these Scratchers change like the wind. We gotta cash in quick,” I growled. “And if you try to turn on me, I’ll hunt you down. That’s OUR ticket outta here.”

“No, no, I get it,” Monty said. “I’ll make good on it, I promise. I can follow up on the ticket first thing tomorrow; it says to mail it in or go to the courthouse or something. I’ll figure it out… I guess you can stay with me until we get it sorted, but you have to be really quiet about it. I’m not supposed to have pets in that crap apartment for all that a little dog hair would be an improvement.”

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Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

Check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s writing here at Jennifer Weigel Words.

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Lighter than Dark

LTD: The Firing Squad

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So you’ve just gotten the pink slip.

Work is letting you go. Amidst all of the layoffs, you just didn’t make the cut. Well, I’m sorry to say, but it behooves you to go quietly. And quickly. Because you don’t want to stick around for the Firing Squad…

In fact, if your HR department is outsourced to one of those Eldritch contractors like so many are nowadays, get outta dodge NOW. Like seriously. Leave the lunch you brought in the fridge; leave the personal items in and on and around your desk. Hell, leave your coat and purse if you are not near them. You can get new ones. Maybe one of your ex-coworkers can help you retrieve your stuff later. Because you need to get out while the getting is still good.

The Firing Squad is coming.

And if they so much as see a pink slip anywhere in your immediate vicinity, it is complete and total annihilation…

Ready Aim Fire...  The Firing Squad appears digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Ready Aim Fire… The Firing Squad appears
Wing Shot...  The Firing Squad takes aim digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Wing Shot… The Firing Squad takes aim
Sharp Shooter...  You're a goner! digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Sharp Shooter… You’re a goner!

I warned you… Those Eldritch contractor HR departments mean business… It’s like going to the Library. Or making Jell-O.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

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