Feeding Frenzy: Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 5
Last time on Feeding Frenzy…
Lucille woke to a rap on the door. “Hey’derr.” Tom’s voice echoed from the other side of her sanctuary. “Jus’ wanted ta let’ya know, ‘dat part’s takin’ longer than I’daspected. It’ll be’in-n abouts a week…”
Lucille groaned. There was no way she was staying in this ghastly nightmarish town that long. Especially not after what she had seen the night before, and the night before that. She began to suspect there was no part or no order for a part and that she was being led on to stay put. Head throbbing, she emerged from the bathroom to find the room as she’d left it, the light still on, the TV snowing static, and the chair still propped against the door.
“I broughts’a yer luggage,” Tom’s voice bellowed.
“I’ll be right there,” Lucille called to the closed door.
She composed herself, straightened herself up a bit, and crept forward slowly and methodically. Just one foot in front of the other… She hefted the chair out of the way and cracked open the door. Tom had apparently taken off, perhaps to the diner, and left her suitcase outside of the door.
Lucille cracked the door just enough to grab the suitcase and retreat inside. She took inventory of its contents. Nothing was amiss, and it appeared not to have been opened. Thank goodness. She gathered up some fresh clothes, loose-fitting and light summer travel-wear (shorts and a t-shirt), and she retreated to the bathroom to take a desperately sought shower. The warm water enveloped her like a much-needed hug and her headache receded. She emerged, toweled off and got dressed, feeling a bit more human again. It was time to plot her escape.
Deciding it was best not to let on to her plans or to withdraw wholly into her room, Lucille decided to brave the diner again. She figured it would give her a chance to observe her surroundings and secretly consider how to leave. Tom’s rusted out truck was stationed by the diner where she remembered him parking prior, almost as if he hadn’t left for days. She wondered if he’d had her luggage stashed in it this whole time but tried to push the thought from her mind.
She also noticed that the white Cadillac hadn’t budged from its sentry by the office. As she neared it to head towards the diner door, she made a mental note that the tires seemed solid enough, and the keys were still casually flung on the driver’s seat. Bingo.
She passed by the office, opened the door to the diner, and strolled through. The desk clerk smiled widely, bright white teeth glimmering slightly through her parted ruby lips. “Welcom’y’all back, hon,” she cooed.
Lucille took a seat at the near end of the bar. She requested a cup of coffee and an order of flapjacks to minimize conversation. She ate very consciously, taking note of her surroundings with every bite. The flapjacks were still doughy beyond what any amount of syrup could reconcile, but they were food anyway and seemed harmless enough.
The bearded man sat with the taller older man at the far end of the bar. They glanced up at her briefly and then shot their black eyes back down to what appeared to be a newspaper splayed between them. The vein in the taller man’s head throbbed less than the previous morning, receding into his flesh to be consumed by his wan face, and the bearded man’s facial hair was matted and crusted up with what appeared to be maybe thick jam or maybe old blood.
Tom stood from where he’d been sitting next to them as before. He sauntered over to Lucille, eyeing her over. “Glad ta’see ya gots yer luggage,” he said. “I’s sorry dat parts on backorder. Seems it’ll be a couple’a more days ‘fore it gets’in…”
“It’s okay,” Lucille murmured. “The wedding was today anyway. No hurry now, I already missed it.” She glanced up at him and forced a small smile. “Thank you for bringing me my suitcase.”
“’Twas da least I could-do,” he replied.
“Do you think you could take me into town?” Lucille asked. “I may as well look around a bit while I’m here. Is there anything to see?”
“Sure, I’ll drop’n ya off on‘m way ta da shop. Dere’s da l’il flea markt,” Tom considered, “It gots all sorta odds’n’ends.”
Lucille looked at the desk clerk. “Can you just add this to my tab?” she asked, “And can I take a coffee to go?”
“Sho’thing, hon,” she sang as she poured some coffee into a to-go cup.
Lucille pretended not to notice that all eyes were upon her as she and Tom left for his pickup. She just focused ahead. One foot in front of the other…
“So where am I anyway?” she asked. “I’m sorry but I hadn’t noticed where I’d gotten off the highway and I don’t get cell phone reception out here.” Crap, too much information, she thought.
“”Nightssshade,” Tom answered, the words spilling out of his mouth in a drawled out hiss. “Use ta be quite da tavern town, but not much here nowadays.”
“Why not? How far off the highway is it?” Lucille led the conversation, taking mental note of each answer as if her life depended on it, which she considered it very well might.
“Only a couple’a miles,” Tom shook his head. “Dunno why no one stops by now. Reckon it could be da casino up’n da road apiece.” Bingo again, Lucille thought.
“Dere’s da flea markt.” Tom pulled over. The town was a shabby and derelict mix of ruined and barely-standing old brick buildings, some toppled over and spilling what was left of their facades in haphazard piles on the sidewalk. The burnt skeleton framework of a building stood sentry across the street. The flea market was a ramshackle structure cobbled together with bits of old weathered wood and siding. It appeared to be more fleas than market, but nonetheless Lucille got out and wandered towards it.
“I be at da shop,” Tom gestured two fallout-ruin buildings over past a vacant lot overgrown with yellow weeds. Lucille recognized the boarded up gas station at the end of the row. She hadn’t realized straining to see through the smoke that it was so close to this semi-civilation when she’d stopped there before. “Jus let’n me know when ya wants ta go back to da mo-tel…”
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Yeah yeah, the insects tend to get ALL the attention here on Nightmarish Nature. But honestly, this one takes the beefcake. It’s the New World Screwworm Fly, and it’s as terrifying as the name suggests. And they aren’t limited to the Americas, there is an Old World version as well, as they can be found pretty much anywhere tropical or seasonably suited.
Revolting Little Buggers
The Screwworm Fly is a parasitic fly larvae that burrows into its host to feed, named because it seems to screw deeper and deeper into the flesh over time. This process is called myiasis and do NOT look it up online, you WILL regret it. They blur those images out for very valid reasons, trust me (and not because of pornographic content). And these maggots will continue to burrow en masse, rather than staying put as a botfly larvae would.
Do Not Do an Image Search on Screwworm Myiasis, Like Seriously – You Will NEVER Unsee That
The female Screwworm fly lays her eggs on an open wound or orifice of her chosen host… And not just one egg or a couple of eggs, no – hundreds, even thousands of them. Let’s let that sink in a bit, shall we? Or screw in as it were. Although any warm-blooded animal is a prime target, cattle are a fly favorite, costing millions of head of cattle to this sick and disgusting horror annually. And if beef isn’t on the menu, Fido or even yourself might be.
The Great American Worm Wall
In fact, this particular feature here on Nightmarish Nature is so terrifying that the United States has made agreements with all of Central America, even including countries that do not generally share its interests, in order to create a “Great American Worm Wall” to prevent them from spreading back into the United States. I’m not going to go into all of the creepy and juicy details of this bizarre science fiction freak fact, you’ll just have to watch it here on Half As Interesting’s YouTube channel.
Essentially, the Worm Wall is a complicated byproduct of scientists studying radioactivity on the flies’ maturity as well as the flies’ sexual lives and using this information against them to nearly eradicate the species and banish it from much of its former range. So, Peter Parker, if you thought everyone was messing with your love life before, be glad you weren’t bitten by a radioactive Screwworm.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
You’ve almost made it to the end of the finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September… In case you missed out, here are the other parts of this series:
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: hand that is a spider; spider legs as fingers; fingers becoming spider; spider all fingers.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Keep Trying! Yeah, I’m sure you don’t remember being bitten. Because of the ways they warp time and space, and the natural chemical reactions involved, the AI art generated finger spiders’ bite isn’t typically felt. They are still attached to you, feeding… You have to get them off… Keep trying!
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: spider leg fingers; spider made out of hand fingers; hand spider picking banjo; fingers as spider playing banjo.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders That’s All Folks! Well, I guess that’s that then. It’s been nice knowing you. Enjoy your new form. Nothing left for it but to play the banjo…
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.
We just can’t get enough of spiders here on Nightmarish Nature… so here are some more creepy spider facts for you to consider, outside of the giants, eating and mating habits, and wasp predation as previously mentioned in this series. Plus the finger spiders have taken over the whole of the month of September, so strap in because they’re here too – no goofy drawings this month just more terror unleashed in the form of AI art, courtesy of NightCafe.
Spiders Are Baby Mama Machines!
Spiders can lay hundreds and thousands of eggs in their egg sacs at a time. And when they hatch, all those tiny baby spiders can balloon, flying to new homes on airborne strands of silk as if raining from the sky… So if you suffer from trypophobia and are weirded out by large quantities of clustered small and tiny objects (especially when they are alive and moving) you may want to steer clear of these little bug bombs.
Spiders Are Athletic Archdukes!
Jumping spiders can leap as far as 40 times their body length. And wolf spiders can run up to 2 feet per second. In movement, spiders have four feet on the ground and four in the air at all times. And they have six knees on each leg for a total of 48 knees – that’s a lot of potential kneecapping, I’d try to take them down a different way if I were you…
Other Interesting Factoids
Spiders are on every continent except Antarctica and there are over 40,000 identified species of them. All spiders produce silk for all that they don’t all make webs, since some prefer to live on the move or ambush from hidey holes. There is a known species of herbivorous spider, the Bagheera Kiplingi, but most are carnivorous or omnivorous. And the longest lived spiders can survive for 40+ years.
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