Summer Slaughter Series: Chapter 5
Warning, make sure you read PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, and PART 4 before continuing…
“Mom… don’t you smell it?” I whispered, my voice cracking in anger.
She shook her head and rattled Frankie’s rotting arm in her hand. “There’s nothing here, Aiden. Frankie’s fine.”
Flecks of foul flesh spackled the dried grass and dirt. Black and red specks sprayed her blouse and skin. I nearly vomited as I got caught in the spray myself. Frankie hadn’t said a word, he seemed to be unconscious. The violent jerking of his arm had no effect on him.
I started crying. Mom glanced at me and I didn’t recognize who I was seeing, she seemed different, somehow. I didn’t know why.
She picked up Frankie and began to walk toward the boat. I still sat in the dirt and grass, confused. I watched her walk off in silence.
It was then I noticed her ankle… putrid blackened rot seemingly creeping up her leg, under the leg of her capri pants. I took a harried and grasping stumble backward on all fours as a thick layer of deadened skin sluiced off her leg and onto the dirt.
“Mom! Are you okay?”
She paused with Frankie in her arms. She turned her head ever so slightly, not looking at me.
“I’m fine, Aiden. You need to calm down. Come on the boat.”
Not sure what else I could possibly do, I followed. I was still crying, and I wiped tears and snot from my face as I made the trek to the boat. I had been walking slower than I had thought because Mom had taken Frankie on board already. I saw her standing toward the bow… Dad was there, too.
I made my way up the small ramp and trudged my way toward the front in silence and dread. I felt the boat rock slightly, but the water looked too still – it looked thick. Silvery. I heard nothing but lapping waves – thick, chunky slaps against the wood. No birds, no splashing. I was shattered by the past few minutes already – the silent stillness just made it worse.
As I approached the bow, I saw that Mom had Frankie on the deck. Frankie was silent and still. Dad stood there, fishing rod in hand, looking down at Frankie like he was a catch that puzzled him.
As I crept closer, I noticed the drips and splatters on the deck… rotting flesh. I followed the trail with my eyes to my mother’s leg – the whole foot, now, was beginning to slide off the bone. Within a moment her ankle snapped in a spray of gunk and she hit the deck, hard. She said nothing. Dad stood there, in silence.
I stood, shaking, and watched her pick her body up enough off the ground to climb up on her legs with a struggle. I saw her rest her weight on the mashed stump as though nothing had happened. She stood lopsided and had I not been so frightened it would have been strange. Now, it simply terrified me.
I approached my parents and my younger brother. The smell of rot grew stronger the closer I got.
“Mom? Dad?” I whispered.
My Dad looked at me and I could see how that his left hand had become an oozing curtain of rotten skin. He smiled as though nothing had happened.
“Looks like Frankie is really tired, huh?”
Mom stood, lopsided and wobbling, staring at Frankie. Frankie’s hand was now starting to resemble my father’s.
“Oh, Aiden,” Dad smiled and gestured toward me with a finger, “you’ll like this. Your dad is quite the fisherman.”
He gestured to the cooler chest behind him. I leaned to look just past him at his catch, already knowing what it was. The chest was full of shimmering, coiled jelly. A twitching tentacle hung over the side, slapping idly at the plastic.
“Who knew your father could catch something so big, huh?” Mom chirped.
“Frankie is going to love it when he wakes up,” Dad added.
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.
