Feeding Frenzy: Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 6
Last time on Feeding Frenzy…
The whole of the flea market was coated in a thick layer of fine soot. Nothing looked as if it had been shifted or moved within it for years. There was a wall of farm implements, a few buckets of nails and screws and random bits and pieces of things that were unidentifiable under the dirt, and several tables of maybe housewares and maybe toys. Lucille studied the wall, taking inventory of a decent sized sickle and a small hand axe. A sign next to one of the buckets proclaimed “NAILS $1 PER POUND”.
A low raspy cough sounded from behind a small crevice near the door in which an old desk and even older cash register sat. Smoke billowed from behind the register in wispy trails, pregnant with the strong scent of cloves. A hoarse voice breathed hushed words into the stale air, “Can I help ya?”
A short older, lean hunchbacked balding man peered out from behind the ancient register with his small glasses pushed as far up towards his eyes as his nose would allow. His flesh was arsenic white and his diminutive hand was stained yellow from years of smoking and nicotine abuse. Unsurprisingly, he held aloft a smoldering clove cigarette. His cubby was piled high with ashtrays full of old stale cigarette butts smoked down to the thick and snuffed out into small scrunched sculptures that resembled their creator.
Lucille recognized him as the last of the shadowy figures and hoped that she had now encountered all of the town’s remaining inhabitants. She suspected that this Nightshade couldn’t sustain any more lifeless listlessness than the five inhabitants she had witnessed in the motel parking lot and had now met the last of.
“Can I help ya?” the man echoed, pushing his glasses again up his long nose as his nostrils flared and his beady black eyes fixated upon her.
“I collect farm tools,” Lucille lied through her teeth. “How much are these?” she inquired as she lifted the sickle and the axe from their hooks on the wall, hefting them slightly as she did so in order to feel their weight and solidity in her hand before setting them down on the counter.
“Aww, y’all can have ‘em for $5 total,” he stammered as his eyes bore into her further as if to discern her true intent.
Abruptly, Lucille reached into her purse and removed a rumpled $5 bill from her billfold. Best not to push it, she thought as she considered purchasing a pound of nails for $1, fretting over whether he could see through her ruse or not. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with the nails anyway.
“I gots more farm ‘quipment fer sale,” the balding man exclaimed, gesturing to two more walls of larger implements, plows, scythes, horse harnesses and such.
“Thank you, but I need things I can fit in my luggage,” Lucille spat out, “I have to get them on a plane once I get to Portland.” Why can’t I ever think up better excuses on the fly? she thought.
“Um ‘kay,” he rasped and took a hit off of his cigarette.
Lucille decided to change the subject. She formed her words carefully, “Interesting place you’ve got here, this Nightshade. Tom says no one comes by much nowadays. He says maybe because of the casino, that you used to be a tavern town.”
“Tavern burnt down,” the little man drawled, glancing out the window across the street. “Been almost decade ‘go now. Town’s dried up since…”
Something about the way he spoke was distinctly unnerving. There was definitely more to this history than Lucille cared to know, and she felt uneasy, like she had asked too much already. “That’s too bad,” she backpeddled before quickly changing the subject again to leave. “Thank you so much. I won’t take any more of your time.”
The little man folded the sickle and axe into a moldy brown-black paper sack and slid it over the counter towards Lucille. She took the bag hesitantly in the manner of someone who has been handed something that one doesn’t want to touch for fear it might be contagious. The bag crumpled to dust at the edges but remained remarkably intact, concealing its contents perfectly.
Lucille exited the building and started towards the gas station, well aware of the black beady eyes boring holes in her from behind, peering out from beyond the register in the creviced nook in the wall and through the nicotine stained door of the more-flea-than-market.
The street seemed quiet enough, too quiet really. A wispy breeze drifted by lazily but otherwise there were no signs of life except for the scraggly grasses and scrubby plants that had overgrown much of the derelict ruins and the empty lot that stood between her and the gas station, and even those weeds didn’t seem so much living as simply waiting to die.
Tom was sitting in a sunken rust stained chair behind the desk watching a rerun of some unfamiliar 1950s era sitcom glowing forth from on a small television set in the corner of the room. He turned towards the front as Lucille entered, the bell attached to the door awakening the room to her presence.
“I’d like to go back to the motel,” Lucille quipped. “I think I’d like to sort through my luggage before dinner, since I’m not going to make it to the wedding now.”
“Mmm’kay, jus lemme get my keys,” Tom replied as he stretched, leaned forward, and rolled his neck back and forth to pop his jaw a couple of times. He pressed a button on the cash register and the drawer tongued open. Tom groped about within it to extract a Ford pickup key, and slammed it shut with a quick clang. He rounded the counter to head towards the front door.
“D’ya find somethin’ at da flea markt?” Tom asked as he nodded towards the bag Lucille clutched in her arms.
“Yeah, I collect farm tools,” Lucille said matter-of-factly in a voice that suggested not to ask any more questions because the answers didn’t matter and weren’t that interesting anyway.
“Good-deal. Dat’s def’nately da place fer dat,” Tom smiled. “Told ya ts worth da trip…” He held the door and gestured for Lucille to exit, not in a gentlemanly manner but with the air of someone who needed to clear the room before he locked up afterwards. As Lucille snuck past him in the tight quarters she was acutely aware of how he deeply inhaled the air that she passed through right beneath his nose and how his eyes brightened a bit when he did so. She hurriedly headed to the passenger side of the truck, noting that he left the building unlocked despite acting as if he was going to secure it.
Tom climbed into the driver’s side and opened the passenger door from within, beckoning her to join him. She carefully slid onto the seat and they started down the road back to the motel. Neither said a word; the trek back seemed to take twice as long as coming.
The white Cadillac still sat motionless and untouched by the front office.
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:
