Betty Lou’s Treasure Trove: Mannequin Horror Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 6
We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to continue our summer story saga… Sit back, relax and enjoy the tale, game reviews will resume again next month.
Last time on Betty Lou’s Treasure Trove…
When Pauline awoke, she was in a small dark room. She was sitting motionless on a large old desk with an unkempt melanine top. A clip lamp illuminated metal shelving along the wall, with rows of arms and legs and mannequin parts that could barely be deduced at the periphery of her vision. Pauline’s gaze fixated on a shelf on a bin of glass eyes and could not be refocused. Everything was chilly, but not uncomfortably cold.
The world around her was clammy and metallic. The seemingly thin air enveloped her in a pervasive musk that was uniquely disorienting and seemed to permeate her flesh. The odor, if it could even be called such, slithered all over and throughout her skin. It was an indescribably odd sensation almost like tiny centipedes crawling all over her numb body like the tingle of being positioned poorly for too long and having part of oneself fall asleep to wake to pin and needle nerves twitching. Except that this was her whole being, not just an arm or a foot. Other than that, Pauline couldn’t feel anything. She couldn’t feel her limbs at all. Her only real consciousness was a sort of detached, reserved stiffness that rested at the root of her mind and held her in a rigid formal stare. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t turn her neck. She couldn’t avert her gaze. She just looked silently forward, unmoving, unblinking, unfocused.
There was a long tube extended down Pauline’s throat but she couldn’t sense it, and so she was completely unaware of its presence. The tube ended in a rusted out orange bucket and was extracting a thick reddish liquid from somewhere deep within her chest. The hollow cavity left behind in her bosom congealed and hardened to a resin-like consistency. She was unaware that she was only a torso, a framework upon which a full figure could be built, her arms and legs no longer a part of what was left of her body. She couldn’t see them on the metal shelves along the facing wall and, even if she could have, she certainly wouldn’t have recognized them as her own.
Off to the side, Pauline could hear a door open. A few moments later, a gaunt greying wire-haired man with deep black eyes strolled into her field of vision and stood before her… Chester. He pulled a nondescript wooden stool out from its nook under the table, sat down on it in one fluid motion, and studied Pauline intently through a pair of thick black-rimmed magnifying glasses pushed down on his nose. She tried to lash out or scream, focusing all of her energy into the effort, but she remained rigid and trapped in her postured pose. All that came out was a small worn whimper that Chester either didn’t hear or simply ignored.
He removed the tube from her throat and forced her mouth closed. A long sigh escaped as he pushed her lips together in a slightly smirking Mona Lisa smile. Despite whatever sound she had mustered forth, Chester just continued working, pulling a roll of blue painter’s tape out of his pocket to temporarily clamp her jaw in place while he waited for it to set. Pauline could feel her neck and mouth stiffening as they dried out.
Chester applied thick ruby paint to Pauline’s lips to gloss them a more sensual color and began touching up her blush to accentuate her high cheekbones in a stark retro-1980s fashion. He added smoky eyeshadow with powdery paints for a glamorous brooding effect. He super-glued a thick set of faux black feather eyelashes atop Pauline’s eyelids, curling them carefully to enhance the vampish vixen look. He carefully trimmed Pauline’s black bangs in a sweeping even motion and pulled the rest of her raven hair back, securing it in place with wig pins and a deep red satin bow. Pauline felt nothing, no gentle caress of her hair across her shoulders, no pinpoint pricking in her scalp, no head pinching from the fabric hair band… She stared straight ahead with distant eyes, blurring in and out of time and place.
Chester smiled at his handiwork, rose from his stool, and turned off the lamp, leaving Pauline to mewl voicelessly at the darkness as it engulfed her. She heard his footsteps creep up the stairs and echo overhead, joined by Betty Lou’s hobbled cane stride before being followed by a faint bell as they exited out the front door for the night.
I thought about featuring some sort of Father Nature bit for Father’s Day, but having already explored Perilous Parenting I decided to focus on more creepy insects instead. Because we love creepy insects here at Haunted MTL. Thus, I present Assassin Fashion, featuring the Assassin Bug…
Fashion Plates
Now I don’t know about you, but my first thought after snagging my prey and slurping out their dissolved innards is that I totally want to wear the dried up husk of their now lifeless body. Like that necklace made of nothing but shrunken heads. That is some first-rate fashion right there, and no one would dare to say otherwise lest they want to become a part of the dead-flesh coat… And this is exactly what the Assassin Bug does. Like a spider, it stabs its unsuspecting prey, turns it into a giant protein shake inside of its insectoid shell-glass, sips it out, and then attaches the corpse’s carapace to its ever growing collection atop its back.
Aside from being totally badass, these nightmarish embellishments serve a number of additional functions. They help the Assassin Bug blend in among its prey, masking its own odor and helping it to appear as a mass of insects that belong in or near the nest (especially among those more social networking creepy crawlies like ants and termites). In fact, it may even draw the attention of those clean up crews seeking to bury their dead, luring them in to become part of the body snatched horde. And the horrifying additions also act as a sort of armor and potential decoy for other predators like lizards and birds, who can end up with a mouth full of dead bug bodies rather than a bite of juicy Assassin Bug.
Kissing Sucks
And Assassin Bugs don’t just carry around one or two dead bodies, they may totally pile them up, as well as use other insects’ and plants’ secretions to their own advantage. Here’s a cool video from Deep Look that shows a partnership some Assassin Bugs have with Tarweed, keeping moth caterpillars from eating all of its flowers so that it can itself reproduce and spread.
Fortunately humans are too big to be susceptible… Or are we? There are also parasitic Assassin Bugs known as Kissing Bugs or Vampire Bugs that feed on mammal’s blood at night; they even act as a vector for other parasites that can cause disease years after feeding, which are associated with Chagas disease and are transmitted to mammalian hosts when the Assassin Bug poops while feeding and the host animal smears the poop into the bite when itching it.
So here’s a pencil drawing I did of a dead bug I found (I had a whole series of these back in the day). I hadn’t at the time known what it was, but it turns out to be an Assassin Bug. I wonder what its fashion sense was like…
So remember, if you want to be at the forefront of creepy horrific fashion, just look to the Assassin Bug for inspiration. If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
This time on Nightmarish Nature we will again explore some of the more fetid fungi and plants, this time focusing on those that imitate rotten flesh in order to attract flies. Among the best known of these are the Stinkhorn and the Corpse Lily or Corpse Flower. The Language of Flowers be damned, literally…
Fungi
Many of the fungi in the Stinkhorn family erupt in mushrooms that reek of rotten flesh and sprout from a white sort of egg sac in various forms, the common type being a phallus like structure with a white body and olive head. The Beefsteak fungus resembles, well, a cut of beef oozing blood. And some mushroom bodies of the Clathrus genus bloom in elaborate lattice structures or devil’s tooth and devil’s fingers that resemble terrifying alien beings. These odoriferous fetid fungi grow in decaying wood material and use their stinky attributes to attract flies and other insects which will then spread the spores from their fruiting bodies. They truly look like something out of an outer space or aquatic nightmare.
Plants
Some plants also utilize pungent putrid odors to attract flies and other insects, in part to aid in the pollination and dissemination but also to attract insect matter for their own needs, to absorb the insects for valuable nutrients that they cannot otherwise obtain. The largest flowers in the world bear many of these characteristics, also being among the stinkiest. And some pitcher plants mimic rotten flesh to attract flies upon which they “feed”.
The Titan Arum of Sumatra and Indonesia is a plant that over time produces a huge flower somewhat resembling a calla lily but larger as the plant body stores enough energy to do so. While Calla Lilies are often used to symbolize rebirth and resurrection and can be associated with death, often in a funerary setting, the huge Titan Arum does more than that, strongly mimicking decaying flesh in order to attract flies. These flowers can grow to almost 8-feet tall and bloom for only about three days before wilting; they are a huge draw at botanic gardens when flowering because of the rare nature of the event and the remarkable presence that the flower has, in both size and smell. The US. Botanic Gardens has a page devoted to this plant here, where you can even track previous blooms.
Another noteworthy flowering plant is Rafflesia, a parasitic flower native to Indonesia and Malaysia that feeds on the liana vine and grows from a sprouting body bud into a huge flower over the course of five years. Its flowers, once finally formed, can grow to almost a meter across and resembles something out of a horror film. These too smell of death and decay to attract flies in order to cross-pollinate. You can learn more about these unusual plants on this video from Real Science here.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
So, as you may have noticed, we have a special fondness for spiders here on Nightmarish Nature. Well, they are kind of the spokes-critters for horrifying animalia, perhaps because they are so freakishly different from us. Or maybe it’s because I find them a little disconcerting for all that I try to take the “you mind your business, I’ll mind mine” approach, at least if they stay outdoors. Or just because I really like to draw spiders for all that I prefer not to find them sharing my home (though I’ll gladly take spiders over other bugs or mice or larger critters who didn’t get an invite).
Anyway, this segment is devoted to the largest Giants Among Spiders, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about already. And the top place is contested based upon body mass or leg length. Most of these are tarantulas, which globally take top place among the large arachnids.
Goliath Birdeater Tarantula
The Goliath Birdeater Tarantula of South America is the biggest brute of spiderdom, weighing in at over 6 ounces. They build funnel burrows and are known to eat birds (although rarely), mice, lizards, frogs, and snakes, but largely any big insects including other species of spiders. They have urticating barbed hairs that they fling at would-be attackers as an irritant to escape. And people even eat them after they singe the bristles off. Here’s a National Geographic video showing this spider in action, in case you wanted to see a giant spider take out a mouse.
Giant Huntsman Spider
And with the longest legs, we have the Giant Huntsman Spider of Laos, with a leg-span of 12 inches. Their legs have twisted joints and they move in a crab-like manner, which furthers their impressive appearance. ‘Cause they’ve got legs, and know how to use ’em. They prefer to live in underbrush and cave entrances. These are like the big relatives of their Australian cousins, which we’ve all seen online and developed a healthy aversion to.
Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater & Brazilian Giant Tawny Red Tarantulas
Next we have two more South American species: the Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater, which boasts one-inch fangs, and the Brazilian Giant Tawny Red, believed to be the longest-lived spider with a lifespan of up to thirty years. Both are in the tarantula family and have urticating hairs, a word you probably never read much before today unless you are in the hobby. So apparently South America is not the best travel destination for you if you struggle with arachnophobia, though I suspect you’d figured that out already. (I wouldn’t recommend Australia or Southeast Asia either.)
Face Size Tarantula
And finally the Face Size Tarantula, which has a very terror-inducing name reminiscent of the Face Huggers of Alien-glory. Anyway, these spiders have an 8-inch leg-span and live in India and Sri Lanka. They look kind of like big hairy wolf spiders with stripey legs, sometimes with pink and daffodil coloring.
If you enjoyed this eight-legged segment of Nightmarish Nature on Giants Among Spiders and their larger than life kin, please check out past segments:
