Feeding Frenzy: Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 1
Lucille pulled into the station just in the nick of time. The hood of her Buick erupted in smoke as the scent of burnt motor oil poured over its sides and spilled onto the concrete. The car sputtered and coughed as though it had just lit up a cigarette for the first (and last) time. Then it gagged and shut down completely. Lucille got out, slammed her door shut and glared at it. She turned towards the derelict ruins.
Just another forlorn station with its no-name gas and boarded up windows, strewn with bits of siding that were once attached. No services for 40 miles. She wondered just how this place had even qualified. It seemed like an alien world, or someplace in a long-forgotten dream, filled with the lazy, hazy glow of the afternoon sun. Or maybe it was just the smoke dissipating. A mechanic sauntered over to Lucille, illuminated from behind like a religious icon. She squinted into the sun in order to watch him approach.
He was a regular grease monkey. Old oil stains canvassed his rumpled, light blue uniform with the subtle nuances of a Rothko painting. Over his right front pocket, some heavily embroidered letters spelled out the name Tom Jones in a font way too fancy for such a seemingly blue-collar kind of guy, or such a desperately needy place, for that matter.
Lucille stared at him. He was a younger man, in his early thirties, although she guessed him to be in his mid-to-late forties. He had an ancient, stale air about him, the sort that settles upon someone who’s lived his whole life in some god-forsaken backwash of a town, scraping out a meager existence in a place that may as well be dead. In fact, he was exactly the sort of person you’d expect to find in a place like this. And yet there was something unnerving about him. Perhaps it was his dark, vacant eyes. Lucille looked into those hollow eyes searching for some sense of spirit and kept coming up with nothing. No spark, no flame, no sense of higher being. She started to feel woozy, as if she were drowning, and turned back towards the Buick.
“What’s da trouble, Ma’am?” he rasped. His dry voice crackled, prematurely aged with too much whiskey and too many cigarettes.
“It’s been leaking oil,” Lucille said, “a lot. And lately it’s been overheating…”
“You gots worse problems than some leaky oil,” he drawled, giving the simmering Buick a long, cold stare. “I reckon we’re gonna have ta take ‘er apart. See what’s da trouble.”
“How long will that take?”
“A couple ‘a days. Maybe e’en three or four. She’s in a bad way.”
“But I’m on my way to Portland for a wedding,” Lucille gasped. “And where would I stay?” Lucille cringed at the thought of having to stay at the decrepit gas station with its creepy mechanic and disheveled facade.
“There’s a mo-tel, up da road a’piece. I can take you up there, if’n you want.” The mechanic gestured at a brown, rusted out old Ford pickup parked alongside the poorly maintained gas station.
“A couple of days, huh? I guess I’d better get a room, then.” Lucille sighed. “Sure, take me to the motel.” She liked the idea of staying here, in this nowhere, about as much as she relished the thought of climbing in a rusted-out old truck with the vacant-eyed mechanic, but she didn’t seem to have much choice.
Neither spoke a word as they wound up and down the once paved road. The road had fallen into a state of disrepair and was little more than chunks of pavement and gravel-filled potholes now. They circled through the small blip of a town cutting from the gas station across what must have once been a main road. The town was a dump. A couple of large brick buildings had fallen in on themselves, bricks and debris littering the broken-up sidewalk. The skeletal framework of a long burned-down structure swayed ominously in the breeze.
The motel was just another worn building on the other side of the town, attached to a small hole-in-the-wall diner out front. Paint peeled from a large wooden sign near the road that informed would-be travelers of VACANCY. The lot was empty except for an old white Cadillac. It was parked next to the office with the keys casually tossed in the driver’s seat. T-E-L flashed in pink neon above the office door. Lucille still couldn’t stop thinking about the mechanic’s eyes, like dark, hollow pools.
“I’ll call for ya once I figures out what’s wrong with da car,” the mechanic called out hoarsely. And then he turned and drove off.
“Probably just my imagination,” she whispered, avoiding his gaze. She shook it off to the breeze and hesitantly stepped inside the motel office.
The office was empty. Two worn, olive green chairs welcomed guests, but they were anything but inviting. One was littered with cigarette burns while the other harbored a foul, rotting stench and a large inexplicable rust colored stain. The veneer had begun to curl from the check-in desk, exposing the poorly maintained particleboard underneath. A sign sat at the edge of that desk, hand-written in black permanent marker: RING BELL FOR SERVICE. Lucille tapped the silvered dome and a long-silent chime sounded as if to awaken the entire town to her presence. Or what was left of it anyway.
A large, heavy-set woman, in her late forties or early fifties, emerged from a back room, leaving the door ajar. From behind that door, a television echoed some late afternoon talk show, but Lucille couldn’t make out enough of the murmur to be certain which one. The woman slowly waddled up to the front desk, her periwinkle tent of a dress gathering behind her knees, and looked at Lucile. Her skin was a waxy pallid gray, lifeless and void of color, except for her face which was coated in several layers of thick, bright makeup.
“D’ya wanna room for ta’night, honey?”
“Yeah. My car’s broken down and I needed someplace to stay the night.”
“Tom bring ya by, then? Good lad, he is. He’ll fix ‘er up, jus’ like new. How many nights ya gonna need?”
“I don’t know. Depends on how long it takes to get that car up and running. I’m going to a wedding in Portland the day after tomorrow, so hopefully…” Lucille stopped dead in her tracks. Her heart raced and sweat began to form on the palms of her hands, making them clammy. She felt her face flush.
The check-in woman had the same gaze as the mechanic, the exact same hollow, empty stare that seemed to penetrate her very soul. Lucille wanted to scream or run or do something, anything to get out of this god-forsaken place. But she just stood there, unable to move. She waved some flyaway hairs from her face with her left hand, steadying herself so not to tremble.
“Just tonight, I guess,” she whimpered, trying to sound self-assured. “I’ll play tomorrow by ear.” Lucille hoped to be long free of this creepy, backwash nothing of a town by then.
“A’right then, honey.” The check-in woman smiled wide with painted ruby lips. “Room 3, on your left.” She piled a key on the counter under her pale fat hand. Lucille grabbed it and hurried out.
So I tried to convince the AI to give me a spider made out of fingers, because there’s no way it could possibly mess that up right? Wink. After multiple unfulfilled requests for finger spiders, I bring you this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva for the month of September…
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: fingers as spider; spider made of fingers; a spider out of nothing but fingers; finger spider hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Coming Soon! It’s just a matter of time before these horrifying AI art generated creations come crawling into your home to feast on your blood. For they are hungry and they are evolving…
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: fingers as spider; spider hand shadow puppetry; fingers in shape of spider; spider that is a hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders They’re Here! Too late, you let them into the house. You’d better be sure to find and squish them all before they breed and come after you. They are still hungry, and they are still evolving…
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.
So most people don’t see orca whales as inherently horrific, but then again we don’t tend to see ourselves as humans that way either. That said, we are both apex predators, and the orca have earned the name killer whale for totally valid reasons. They’re kind of like giant sea wolves in their social structuring, and wolves are long thought to be terrifying.
And these aptly named killers have gotten a lot of press lately for sinking yachts and sailing vessels at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. So we decided to explore these giant dolphin kin on this segment of Nightmarish Nature, because we focus a lot on the creepy crawlies but honestly a lot of bugs are just minding their own business (and minding it well, mind you).
On the Hunt
Killer whales have been known to terrorize other denizens of the deep and will often take advantage of spawning and reproductive grounds of other aquatic life, hunting down baby humpback whales migrating from their Caribbean birthing waters or attacking sea lion or seal pups en masse as they take to the sea for the first time (or the fifth or sixth or even as adults).
Some orca are even known to rush the shore and beach themselves to then shimmy back into the water, ideally with something to eat in tow. Or use their ability to make waves to wash their desired prey off of ice floes where they can nab it in the water. And they aren’t picky, when you’re that high up the food chain a grab ‘n go meal of any kind is all good: seals, polar bears, penguins, birds… because those big bodies need a lot of fuel… And killer whales will also toss living prey into the air in socialization, play, training, and just general sport whether they intend to eat the unfortunate creature(s) or not.
Culture Clashes
Each orca pod’s culture and habits differ, as some focus their attentions on nabbing fish and others on marine mammals. These two groups can often coexist in the same area, living very different lifestyles. Some will attack dolphin or porpoise pods (among their closest relatives), and others will clash with pilot whales competing for resources such as mackerel. Pods develop strong bonds and learning is passed down from mother whales; it is widely believed a female orca began the practice of attacking boats, possibly after being struck by one but possibly out of play or curiosity, and has taught it to others now doing so.
Attacking People
So why don’t orca attack and eat humans? Probably because of the missed opportunity, honestly. Killer whales learn about hunting from their mothers, and they simply haven’t been taught to prey on humans as such. In fairness, sharks don’t eat us either. Sure sharks might bite us occasionally, but the fact remains that they spit us out – likely because we aren’t the protein- and fat-rich injured seals they had hoped to be attacking. (We’re kind of scrawny and tough by comparison, probably not worth picking out of the teeth…)
Will orcas learn to attack and eat humans? Perhaps, if they keep attacking boats they may develop a taste for it. If they do, then that will likely seal their fate, because in the clash between apex predators, our engaging in a huge array of tool use is likely to force the issue. And, throughout our own history, we haven’t been known to tolerate animals that we come into conflict with very well at all. Just ask the Asiatic Lion.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
Considering how much we love bugs here on Nightmarish Nature, especially bugs feeding on each other in bizarre and twisted ways, I thought I’d bring you the Baby Bomb on this episode of the series.
Bombs Away
You’re positively ravenous and need nourishment to grow to a hundred times your hatching size… That’s a lot to eat in a short time span! So, what’s a caterpillar to do?
While, for most of these intrepid insects, that means sucking down as much plant matter as possible and hoping you don’t become the host body for wasp larvae or fungus or the like. But every once in awhile nature spices things up a bit…
So instead, these baby bomb caterpillars have developed a taste for meat. More specifically, Red Ant is on the menu in an evolutionary role reversal, since that food chain usually goes in the other direction. First, the baby bomb will infiltrate an ant colony by mimicking an aphid, using honeydew to lure a worker ant into tending to it rather than attacking them for food. But then the situation becomes more insidious. The baby bomb mimics a queen ant, convincing the worker to return them to the nest…
Bombshell Blast
Once inside the ants’ humble home, the baby bomb convinces other ants that it is a queen and then goes about its business in becoming a diabolical death trap. Having gained the ants’ unwitting trust and unrestricted access to the whole of the colony, it feeds upon the ant larvae, growing rapidly as it decimates the entire system over six moths by destroying the future generations one by one in its horrifying hungry havoc.
Once the ant colony is pretty much wiped out and the feeding is finally finished, the caterpillar pupates into a chrysalis to develop into its adult form: a Large Blue Butterfly. Who’d have known such a seemingly innocuous insect could come from such a macabre morph? You can check out this terrifying trickery and transformation in this YouTube video here on BBC Wild Isles.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
