Dealing with the Devil: October Series by Jennifer Weigel, Part 3
Returning to our October story, Dealing with the Devil, we were onstage with Jonathan Menkhir and Satan as they delved deeper into Jonathan’s beloved wife Chloe’s history as he tried to win her freedom from Purgatory. Let’s see what happens next.
The devil never mentioned the box, nor did I. I could still feel its weight in my pocket as the curtain drew wide to reveal the bedroom set from Fiddler where we had enacted the nightmare scene together. The devil began to blather on about how this was the bedroom set we had picked out together, but it was not – I recognized it as the one from the stage production, and a lousy facsimile at that.
Everything about this setup felt less and less substantial as time wore on. Chloe began to look even flatter and further away, just a fading photograph of a memory depicted as one of those life-size cardboard cutouts. The scene that surrounded me was sloppily finished chipboard and nothing more, painted too quickly in a bad last minute attempt at deception. The more that I stared at it the less real it became, all just caricatures of my life. The chipboard began to erode away to cardboard, the corrugated surface subtly showing from behind the façade. The decadent velvet draperies were nothing more than flimsy sheets of paper. I pulled the ring box out of my pocket. The box itself was made of folded cardstock; the ring inside just a circle of wire with a pink sequin in place of the rose quartz. It was all an illusion, and the production value was terrible.
Satan continued pontificating on the bedroom set. He droned on like a sleazy car salesman, the kind that would sell you a lemon of a junker by trying to convince you it was first rate, who would move decals to a beater car in order to convince unsuspecting and naive buyers that the car was a genuine Rolls from back in the day. At any minute, I expected him to hold open his white silk suit jacket and try to sell me a fake luxury watch.
“Lies, all lies,” I called out. “Just what do you take me for?”
The devil stopped suddenly, fire rising in his amber eyes. “Aw, Johnny Boy, you have to believe. You cannot lose faith in your love for Chloe. She is waiting for you to make the right decision, and we’ve barely even started.”
“This has nothing to do with Chloe, leave her out of this,” I retorted as a sudden gust of wind knocked over the cardboard cutout standing in the middle of the stage. “I was right at the start – you never had a grip on her. This is not Purgatory or a game, it’s just a cheap knockoff to connive me into your clutches. I’m not buying in.”
The devil began fuming, heat and smoke rising from the collar of his ill-fitting white suit, which was starting to look like as if it were made of rice paper rather than silk and was now slightly smoldering. A shrill whine echoed forth from his yellow teeth, “Now, Now, Johnny Boy. You simply MUST believe. You can choose the outcome but you must choose wisely.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. There are no choices here that hold any meaning: a cheap replica of our sweetheart ring or the prop setup from Fiddler? None of that matters now. What is done is done, Chloe is gone and I am alone and that is how it is. You have nothing to offer me.”
The wind that had knocked over the cardboard cutout pretending to be my beloved bride was picking up. The cardboard and crinkled paper stage eroded around us into nothing more than brittle dry chaff. What was left of the paper dream morphed into mere leaves as my yard again came into clarity, the piles I had been painstakingly raking now scattered again.
“So you’ve made your choice then, Johnny Boy. And to think, you two could have been so happy together,” Satan cackled, “my dear, Jonathan Menkhir, you have chosen… poorly.” Satan’s head rolled back on his neck as he erupted in a fit of laughter. As he cackled to himself, a grating squeal bellowed forth from the depths of the cavernous pit of his gaping maw. He seemed to turn inside out, doubling back and swallowing himself as he reverted to the form of a gaunt man picking up a pile of dog poop from where his Westmoreland Terrier had so fervently buried it. The dog turned towards me, smiled a wide yellow-toothed grin and winked before it trotted along with the dog-walker in tow.
I reached into my pocket and fingered a small box. As I took it out to examine it, I realized it was the exact box that the genuine sweetheart ring had been kept in before it had been lost. The burgundy velvet case was still intact and was the real deal, not a poor facsimile. Sure enough, when I opened it, the actual ring was there, gleaming at me as sunlight danced across the faceted rose quartz. The devil dog was nowhere to be found, but I could still hear him chuckling on the passing breeze.
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.
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:
