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…”
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.
