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.
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:
