The Fur Coat: An Original Story by Jennifer Weigel
I grew up in a small but comfortable house in northeastern Maine. The backyard overlooked the ocean from a short, rocky outcrop. The front faced onto the gravel road that Father drove to and from work. A poorly defined gravel driveway ended behind the house at a small ramshackle shed that I dared not enter under Father’s strict orders.
Mother never strayed far from the house despite her apparent contempt for the simplicity of her everyday existence. She cooked. She cleaned. She laundered the clothes and washed the dishes and did all of those things that a good housewife should. But every afternoon, she plopped my brother Shane and I in front of the TV to watch cartoons while she gazed longingly at the sea.
Shane and I shared a room. Our window faced a small broken-paned hole in the ramshackle shed. Late at night, long after the world was asleep, a faint glow emanated from that shed. Always careful not to wake my brother, I pulled myself up to the window and peered out.
Every night, Father stole away into the shed and flicked on a small lamp. He opened a door in the floor, from whence he pulled a large wooden box. Out of this box he drew the most beautiful fur coat. The brownish-gray fur glowed in the lamplight as if it were alive. He gently massaged oils into the coat to keep it supple and carefully replaced it under the floorboards. And when he had finished, he withdrew from this haven and locked his secret firmly behind a deadbolt. Until one winter day…
It was biting cold that day, the kind of cold that gnaws away at your bones from the inside out. Shane and I ran home quicker than usual, hoping for two mugs of hot chocolate to thaw us out. Preferably heaping with marshmallows. But Mother was nowhere to be found.
“Mother,” I called to the cupboards in the empty kitchen.
“Mother,” Shane called to the silent TV in the empty living room.
“Mother!” I screamed to the howling wind out the front door.
Nothing.
The wind beat the porch door into the front of the house with a rhythmic “Ker-chunk!” A terrified Shane dashed about the house crying. He frantically searched for any scrap of evidence while I braved the outdoors.
I rounded the house, past the frozen flowerbed and along the wind-tattered backyard fence. Another loud “Ker-chunk!” resounded through the air, but not from the front porch door. A chill wormed its way up my spine as I spied the driveway.
“Ker-chunk!” The door to the ramshackle shed lay in ruins, leaving a splintered gaping hole. In that hole, Mother swayed back and forth. Her clenched fist tightened around a hammer as she swung into the floorboards with a wild, untamed lunacy. I melded into the fence, unable to move and scarcely able to breathe. I stared at her.
A final “Ker-chunk!” and the floorboards loosed their secret. Mother madly grabbed the wooden box out from under the floor of the shed. She pried it open, her black eyes brimming over with tears. She pulled out the fur coat and barked a shrill cry to the wind.
Mother ran from the tattered shed clutching the fur to her chest and darted around the back of the house. Her gaze slipped right through me as she tore past, unaware of my presence. Meanwhile, the gravel road growled and spat under Father’s tires as he crested the hill towards the house.
Father sped into the driveway upon seeing the shed. His truck jolted to a harsh stop. He erupted from his poorly parked truck and raced around the back of the house just as Mother hurled herself over the rocky outcrop and into the sea. My heart sank into my stomach and my legs became jelly, free from their rigid, frozen stance. “No!” I screamed as I dashed to his side. He clenched my hand tightly, fighting back tears, while I buried my face in the warm cuff of his coat.
“Such a pity. Such an exotic beauty,” the townsfolk murmured. But Father and I knew. She had been our selkie. She had merely returned home.
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.
This story came to me in a sort of roundabout way from a rather unusual source. So I thought I’d share it with you, dear readership, and see if you can make heads or tails of it. – Jennifer Weigel
Dread Pirate Rum Tum Tugger could tell this was the right spot.
The site, beneath the sweeping limbs of the Live Oak, Spanish Moss swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect match to the crude map he had bought off that soothsayer Deuteronomy.
The earth moved easily, as if it had been excavated previously. He dug in with greater fervor with each swipe. The sandy soil gave way to reveal something hard. He scooped and smoothed the remaining detritus from the surface as he uncovered a box.
The carton was simple.
No markings; no ornamentation; no writing. Just a plain cardboard crate, brittle from having been buried for so long but still sturdy. He hoisted it from its burrow.
“Ha HO!” he shouted to the passing breeze, rousing a small cloud of birds that erupted from a nearby thicket. They captured his attention for a moment, but he quickly refocused and returned to his task.
The box was locked but no difference.
Any self-respecting ruffian like himself could pick a lock in seconds. And he did so with panache, as was his way. He pried the lid open and licked his lips.
Inside was the legendary Kernel of Eternal Life, a small sparrow’s heart, still beating.
Artwork description: Myself as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty wearing black bell sleeve shirt and black vinyl skirt with strapping leather belt over leopard print shirt and tights, with strapping leather boots, pirate head wrap and leopard cat ears.
Image text reads: Purr! Avast ye mateys, Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty invites ye to check out her booty stash and dig ye up a dungbie prize. Seek ye some buried treasure! Just grab ye a plastic litter scoop and dig… dig… dig… to ye heart’s content.
I created this image for a promotional poster for a performance piece in a charity art show in which I, as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty, hawked a carnival sideshow style sidewalk installation. For a mere $5 donation to the animal shelter the show supported, gallery goers could dig around in a kiddie pool full of litter to find a prize: a cheap plastic trinket from the dollar store. I had some takers, including one kid who seemed to really enjoy the digging and whose parents were all in, saying “You know, you can totally do that at home too.”
For more cat antics, we invite you to read C-2747’s logbook here on Haunted MTL. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Happy Mother’s Day to the Queen of Everything… nothing gets by you.
Artwork description: A Happy Mother’s Day card featuring a picture of a Nefertiti doll with swooping hair, glitter makeup, and elaborate gold and blue headdress and evening gown.
Image text reads: Happy Mother’s Day! You are the Queen of Everything and you shimmer brighter than the twinkliest star in the sky. Stay sparkly and shine on in your magnificent glitter bombasticness. You ARE truly everything everywhere all at once and you’ve seen and heard it all. Eyes in the back of your head and superpowered hearing mean we can’t get away with much no matter how hard we try. So Queen on and rule over home in sparkly sentinel.
And may this be a testament to why us kids shalt never get you out of bed too early or run amok while you are getting ready to start your day… Because being the Queen of Everything takes planning and preparation…
Feel free to check out this Mummy Dearest Mother’s Day card from 2021 here on Haunted MTL.
