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.
This is the kickoff to a new series exploring nature that is kind of horrifying, at least in ways. Our first subject is Vampires Among Us. There are lots of animals named for vampires, sometimes due to folklore and sometimes for their appearance (like the Vampire Squid), but most of these animals don’t have blood sucking tendencies.
Bats & Birds
There are legit vampire leaf-nosed bats in Central and South America that drink blood. They feed on mammals and are often shown to feed on livestock. They’d be kinda cute if they weren’t so creepy. There are also vampiric birds: some finches in the Galapagos have developed the taste for blood of other birds, mainly seabirds that flock to the islands to raise their young.
Leeches & Lampreys & More
And then you get into leeches and lampreys and other denizens of the water that are known to attach themselves to larger creatures and drink their blood. Leeches were even believed to have medicinal value (and still are in certain circumstances). And there are also numerous plants that are known to be parasitic and feed on other plants, wrapping their roots or vines around others to steal nutrients.
Spiders
Now I’m going to drift off into the realm where this becomes truly horrific. Spiders. Now, spiders aren’t vampires per se, seeing as how they actually kill their prey – they don’t just feed off of it while it remains living and wanders about its business. But because of their structure, they cannot eat solid foods, so they have to inject their prey with enzymes to liquefy it so they can slurp it out like a protein shake. That’s sort of vampirism on steroids if you ask me, just the kind that no one is coming back from.
Bloodsucking Bugs
But let’s get back on topic. Now let’s consider mites and ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and the like. Some drink blood for their survival; others do so as part of their reproductive cycle (like mosquitoes which otherwise eat fruit and nectar but need the extra protein from blood to grow their eggs).
Ticks need to feed on blood once at every stage of their life cycle and can pick up diseases along the way (like Lyme Disease) but don’t always do so. Different ticks are more likely to come in contact with different things and often humans are not their preferred meal but they are opportunistic and will feed on whatever is available when necessary. Symptoms of illness from tick bites may take years to develop and can have really weird side effects (like the allergy associated with Lone Star Ticks which makes a person unable to consume mammalian flesh).
Anyway, here are some brief glimpses of vampirism in nature. Thank you for joining us for Nightmarish Nature and may you avoid getting bitten by any true vampires among us… And I still think spiders take first place in the creepy eating category here, even if they aren’t technically vampiric.
Well, you won’t get rid of me that easily… Ha ha, I lied about coming to the end and the afterlife in the Creepy Comics Collages segment, it was just an opportunity for rebirth. Besides, it’s World Collage Day! So having come into another comic book to rework, here we go again…
Creepy Comics Story 9: The Voice (of God or Reason or perhaps an homage to my ex)
“Come to me my children, the voice of God awaits!… Don’t let them escape!” Please beam me up out of this weird comic collage alternate reality. “God I am your hand! Lift me… to your place. I commend my spirit!” I want to go back to dreaming about starfish.
The computer programmer behind the scenes turns to face us and smiles. “Guardians! This is a place of God!… Come to the true voice of God!” “I am everything.” “Come to the voice!” And the horrific AI generated creatures abide by his every coded word.
Just like last night in the — signs posted for Nightmare, No Exit. The deer spirit faun screams in surprise, “Eeek!” “No! I defy you!” She returns to the form of a little girl with arms outspread to the open sky. “Y’know, a day like today makes all the stuff that happened last night seem just like a bad dream!” The dream seems so real…
Somewhere in the city, the computer programmer sits up at night in pensive monologue, “You try to make a difference… But it doesn’t really matter.”
Creepy Comics Story 10: The City (Metropolis becomes self-aware)
This segment is brought to you by Dead Artists and Talking Dinosaurs. No really, wait for it…
Woooooo Uhhhh Wooooooo Uhhhh… Wump! Uff! Wump! Uff! “She belongs to The City!” The Glenn Fry 1985 hit single looms ominously overhead as Metropolis becomes self-aware. “The City… will live!… The City… will breathe!” The City gasps for air, “Got to… breathe!… Got to… Breathe!“
Her breath is the wind… Her eyes are windows. Her heart pumps fluid through buried plumbing… “I’m The City!” Her mind is The City!
And we have a celebrity appearance by Rich Koz “Son of Svengoolie” WFLD 1973: “I take a nap for 10,000 years and look what happens… some-body builds a city!” Kerwyn chimes in, “Geez! Somebody’s been busy!” And we cut out to a scene of Svengoolie standing alongside his coffin.
Well, that’s all folks. Or is it? For now, any way… until I get more comic books… Duh duh DUHHHH…
If you want to see more art, check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Wow, I can’t believe you’ve stayed the course through four whole strange story posts of these creepy comics collages. But this is the final frontier, the last segment, the standing ovation as it were. So here goes…
Creepy Comics Story 7: The Grave (shallow enough for ya?)
“It should take longer, it seems to all of them. Such holy flesh should not give before a blade so easily.” “His brow is growing so cold.” “Yes it would be. He’s dying.”
“My god… I’m not dead.” Put the shovel down. “Life is a no-win situation. Besides… You’re already dead!”
“I’m not dead. I’m not dead!… Oh, Oh my god… I can’t move… What’s happened to me?” Buried alive. Or maybe not.
“Dead?” Perhaps I am actually dead. I was expecting something… I dunno… different.
“I’m not hungry, I’m dead. I’m not sure what I’m doing here, in fact.” At least I’m not a zombie. That seems a small consolation right now though. “My organs are shutting down. It is a relief.”
“Three days have already passed.” We’re just sitting here, rotting. Like Norman Bates’ Mother. At least someone was kind enough to supply a rocking chair. “Oh, one last thing before I go… You’re doing my fucking head in.”
Creepy Comics Story 8: Adrift Afterlife (why you save the best gold coins for the ferryman)
How’d we get here? “I do not stand alone. I am sat in a boat.” “.. to be millions of miles away from any care in the world.” Was that the Ferryman? “Only liberty I know.”
“He does not remember arriving here, or if he has been here before. It is not the island he grew up on, though it feels so very familiar… He has been waiting for the night tides to come in, for they will bring starfish. He has always liked watching them cling to the beach before the current pulls them back into fathoms.”
“And the ocean brings him starfish… Perhaps his father had nothing to do with this place at all.” The ferryman stands on the far shore. It makes no difference now.
“Beneath the ocean, razor-sharp coral grows and plunges towards the surface, sent by a green place that would not like to burn.” “The sand is soft between his toes and he is not ashamed of anything.” The ghosts are here, contentedly it seems.
Thank you for joining us for these creepy comics collage art stories. But here’s where we have to leave it off. Trust me, it’s best that way. Besides I’m out of creepy comics to collage with.
If you want to see more art, check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
