Spring Horror Collection: The Naming Ceremony by Jennifer Weigel
Welcome to the third story of the Spring Horror Collection for 2022, where Haunted MTL’s writers craft original tales of terror that’ll grow on you. Check with us all week for new stories.
For more original stories, check out Haunted MTL’s Original Creations.
Imagine, if you will, a world in which every individual’s name must be completely original and unique, where they cannot be repeated under any circumstances. Growing in numbers, how do you address the Naming Ceremony?…
In the Maternity Ward
Raynala gazed at the newborn cradled in her arms. What could she possibly name the little girl? This was the most stressful decision for any mother, for if she chose a name that had already been given the child would wither away, shriveling to dust instantaneously.
For no two persons could exist by the same name as it confused the Gods and was thusly forbidden. So any time this happened would result in the immediate death of the baby by divine interventions. Sure, there were safeguards in place in order to minimize the likelihood that a mother would decide upon a name that had been taken already, but even that was not a guarantee.
From a far room down the hall of the maternity ward, Raynala heard a woman shriek and then burst into a fit of uncontrollable crying. Apparently she had chosen poorly and had suffered the loss of the baby as a result. Her resounding sobs echoed throughout the corridor reminding all of the other mothers of their possible fates.
The sound of the Naming Cart grew louder as it approached from that direction, wheel squeaking as it slid across the polished tile floor. The Recorder of Names entered the room in his hooded evergreen robe pushing a metal trolley with incense and candles burning in a circle around the tome in which all persons were recorded. He rocked gently back and forth and chanted softly to appeal to the Gods to bestow a worthy name unto this young mother for her newborn child.
He slowly and methodically wheeled the cart to the foot of the hospital bed while continuing his chanting and swaying. As he came to rest in the proper position, he stopped suddenly and fixated his gaze upon Raynala. The time had come for the Naming Ceremony to occur. It was up to her now.
Raynala gasped and emitted a hollow shrill sigh before finding her nerve and her voice. “May I call upon the Gods and hope that this pleases them, this child’s name shall be Aryanalarayna,” Raynala proclaimed through clenched teeth as she winced. She had stuttered in the Naming Ceremony and, although she had recovered, she desperately hoped that the misspoken moment would not cost the baby girl her life.
The Recorder of Newborns pressed the tip of the pen to paper in the giant book on the cart before himself. A faint glow emanated from the page and then faded away as he traced over the letters. Nothing happened. He looked up and gazed at the young mother smiling.
“So it is written, so it shall be,” the Recorder of Names exclaimed. “You have chosen wisely.” He rose from his perch overseeing the hospital bed where the young woman lay with the infant. He turned and wheeled the cart with the tome recording all living and dead persons out of the room and down the hall towards the next uneasy new mother’s room, chanting and swaying.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
So, now that it’s getting cold, here on Nightmarish Nature we’re going to talk about a different kind of terror – the starvation diet. It’s winter, and food is becoming ever scarcer, so many creatures will slow down to conserve energy. Let’s take this a step further to the sleep of the damned… But I’m not talking hibernation, or settling in for a sort of long winter nap version of seasonal affective disorder on steroids. No, I’m talking hummingbirds.
Sugar Rush
Hummingbirds are about the polar opposite of what you’d think of when you talk about inactivity. They’re more the picture-perfect speed demons. And yet, due to their crazy high metabolisms and constant need to refuel by consuming all the nectar and insects they can get their little beaks in or on, they have near death experiences on a regular basis. Even during the summer at night whenever the temperature falls too low. It’s like all their systems have to go offline for a bit just so they can survive.
Energy Suck
Essentially a hummingbird burns so much energy that he can die in less than eight hours of not eating. The little sugar daddy needs another fix just to keep going. This lifestyle is a far cry from the Energizer bunny. Essentially he has to enter a torpor state in sleep so he doesn’t succumb to his own starvation diet. Not every time, but when the temperature drops or food is scarce.
A hummingbird in torpor may, by all accounts, appear dead. He can be frozen in place, his tiny feet clasped rigidly around a branch as if rigor mortis has sunk in. He can be cold to the touch and unresponsive. He can face upwards, unmoving, breathing and heart rate slowed to near indiscernibility. He can even be hanging upside down, oblivious to the world. In fact, the hummer’s heart rate can reduce to almost one tenth of his waking state, and his temperature can drop by ~5o degrees Fahrenheit (~ 30 degrees Celsius).
Miracle Mavericks
Honestly, as shown in this article on Journey North, this ability to exercise such fine control over metabolic rate on a nightly cycle makes the hummingbirds more marvelous than terrifying, switching between cold- and warm-blooded. And they are very well-adapted to their eating regimens, especially given their diminutive size. But such is the cost of burning so much energy to keep going without much room to store fuel. Like I said, a strict starvation diet.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
This time on Nightmarish Nature, in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring scads of scat! And not just because of the aftermath of all that eating we’re going to be doing, given that everything that goes in must come out eventually. But because turkeys are weird.
But, how weird?
Apparently, the shape and size of a turkey’s poop can tell you the sex and age of the bird. Male and female birds poop different shaped turds, and bigger ones with age. Your poop can’t do that, we’re pretty sure. And no, we don’t want to check, even if it does come in a whole host of rainbow colors with all the dyes in our food nowadays. Keep your weird quirks to yourself.
Fecal Fetishes
Vultures have very acidic scat that helps to keep their feet and food clean of bacteria from hopping in and around dead things. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a step up to us, but I guess if you’re a carrion crawler you take what you can get. At least you’d know where it’s been I suppose, and that’s more than you can say for some of your long dead food sources…
Rabbits must process their food twice in order to break down the grassy matter they digest (like cows chewing cud). And so they eat their own partially digested matter, the cecotropes they produce after the first digestion. This isn’t true poop per se, that fecal matter comes after second digestion, but it does work its way through the same way.
And that brings us to koalas. They are one of only a few mammals that can eat eucalyptus leaves (and are closely related to wombats, one of the other two). Koala offspring eat their mother’s pap, which is a specialized form of poop that allows the baby to transition from nursing milk to eating solid leaves. It is green, smeary, mushy, and can get everywhere. Just like you’d expect.
We aren’t exempt.
For all that we have learned to be poop averse, a lot of animals eat others’ scat and glean a lot of nutritional value from their detritus. It’s not just your dog raiding the cat litter box and then licking you in the face. And we humans have even fought wars over rights to seabird guano, which was used as a form of fertilizer in the late 1800s.
Anyway, that’s the scoop on poop for now. Maybe we’ll revisit this load later on, seeing as how there’s still plenty of content here.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
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:
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Movies n TV3 days agoThriller Nite, Poem by Jennifer Weigel Plus
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Original Creations6 days ago
The Fire Within – A Chilling Tale of Revenge and Power by Jeff Enos
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Movies n TV2 days ago
Goosebumps, Stay Out Of The Basement Pt 2, could have just been one part
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Movies n TV1 day agoSmile 2: A Poor Rate Second.
J.M. Faulkner
March 22, 2022 at 12:37 pm
“Russian Roulette” with children – a terrifying prospect
Jennifer Weigel
March 22, 2022 at 6:59 pm
Best choose wisely… 😉