by Jeff Strand
He made it to the house still twitching and grossed out, his skin feeling somehow alive. He quickly took off his jacket and shook it hard.
Nothing.
He bent over and rubbed his head.
Nothing.
He was clean, but his entire body felt like it was crawling with the freakish caterpillars, the only thing that he wanted to do was jump into a hot shower.
He spent extra time in the shower thinking nothing of water conservation as he let the hot water cleanse the wound on his neck with a hot stinging touch.
If it doesn′t hurt it ain′t getting′ clean. His dad used to say.
When he was done, he toweled off and examined his neck in the mirror, there was a raised welt speckled with droplets of blood, It looked like a curling iron burn his late wife June had gotten many years ago when she slipped in the bathroom. He opened the sparse medicine cabinet and gingerly rubbed some Neosporin on it.
By the time he finished it was dark out, he looked out of the big sliders and saw the horse barn lights swarming with a large amount of moths. He could still see that the horses were nervous pacing around in their stalls. Don decided he would blanket them, but first on the list was to relax for fifteen minutes and have a beer.
Don was sitting in his easy chair with a cold bottle of Bud in one hand and the local newspaper in the other as the tapping started. It was light at first.
Tip, tap, tip, tip, tap.
Don continued to nurse his beer and flip through the paper. The sound slowly built up to a frenzied thumping, that couldn′t be ignored.
TH-TH-TH-THUMP THUMP THUMP, THA-THUMP, THUMPTHUMP.
He glanced at the sliders and saw nothing, but the blanket of night, darker than usual. Don couldn′t make out the shapes of the landscape in the moonlight like he normally could, or see the glow of the horse barn′s new halogen. It was as if beyond the windows was nothing. Nothing but a thumping blackness.
Don slowly pulled himself out of his chair, his knee groaning. He moved toward the window, the thumping and tapping became more frantic almost in response to his getting up. The window seemed to shimmer with life. The closer he got the easier it was to make out. The entire window was covered with large dark moths, flitting, tapping thumping, pressing against the heavy glass trying to get to the light of the lamp near his chair.
His skin crawled and began to phantom itch. The mass of black squirmed against the window like a living curtain. Don grabbed a broom from the side closet. ″Disgusting,″ he said under his breath. He had never seen anything like it in his life. He put his hand on the cold metal latch and was about to pull the door open when he thought better.
He turned around and went to the lamp and clicked it off. ″Don′t want you fuckers streamin′ in to the light,″ he muttered. Satisfied he went to the door and slipped it open just enough to get his body outside.
He slid the door closed behind him and moved a few feet from the house. The moon was reflecting brightly off his white short sleeve t-shirt. He could see the horse barn now with its halogen lamp showing a cloud of moths around it. The horses were agitated, knocking back and forth, snorting. In front of him most of the moths were concentrated around the glass of the big sliders.
He took a step forward planted his foot firmly and reached out with the broom. With a heavy sweep he brought the broom down across the glass. The moths flew up into a burst of dusty wings. At least 30 or 40 of them were smeared across the glass in the process. The soft bristles of the broom began to sizzle and smoke. The stench was overpowering, chemical, choking his breath in his throat. He hid his mouth and nose into the t-shirt at the shoulder.
Within a moment the moths were on him. Angry. Don spun right, then left to try to avoid them, but it was no use. They were hitting him from all angles. His hands wildly swiped at them, instantly burning his skin if he smashed them. The more he tried to swipe at them the more it burned like napalm. He closed his eyes and stumbled for the glass door. Shrieking in agony as his arms and neck felt like they had acid splashed on them.
Don slammed into the door hard slapping his arm against it, crushing moths and instantly causing quarter sized burning wounds on the tender underside. His left hand scrabbled for the door, fingers slipping, burning, his legs jumped and danced. His fingers found purchase on the pitted handle. He slid it open and tumbled through, smashing his shoulder hard on the door as he fell to the floor.
He rolled over, squinting his eyes, and saw a stream of ten to fifteen of the Moth′s flutter in. He shot up and slammed the door closed.
He could hardly believe what was happening, his arms, neck and cheek were burning with pain. He could almost smell them destroying the fabric of his shirt, without a second thought he whipped it off over his head, struggling to get out of it, dancing around like some kind of mad man on fire, smearing a couple more moths into a searing mess in the process.
″Fuck, fuck, fuck!″ He pulled the shirt off and threw it on the floor in disgust, holding back the urge to stamp on it. His eyes were wild and darting following the moths that streamed in the house. They were bouncing around the glass as if they were communicating to the rest that they had made it inside.
Don Grabbed an afghan off the couch and began to swing it at the moths smashing and stunning them. When they dropped to the floor, he crushed them into a sizzling mess under his shoe.
Don hurried to the small guest bathroom and flicked on the light. The window was open and the moths were heavy on the sagging old screen. He thought could hear them chewing through the screen, tiny razor sharp pinchers working the thin mesh.
He slammed open the medicine cabinet in a crash of mirrored glass, his panicked trembling hands tore through the shelves of old medicine, toothpaste, and dull disposable razors. The burning was becoming increasingly more painful, almost like what he imagined a jellyfish burn to feel like. His head was swimming with ideas of poison bites and flesh eating viruses as he desperately searched the cabinet for any kind of a cure. He grabbed a third of an old bottle of rubbing alcohol and thought better.
″Vinegar,″ he said aloud as he bailed off to the kitchen.
Within moments he was knocking coffee filters and spices out of the way to get to a bottle of white vinegar. His trembling fingers spun the lid off. It hit the floor and rolled haphazardly under the refrigerator. He paused for a moment wondering if it was the right idea. The increasing pain of the burn forced him to splash the backside of his red welted forearm. Instantly the burn subsided in sweet relief, within moments he had practically bathed in it.
The sound of the bathroom screen caving in shook him back to reality. Don sprinted across the dark house. In the light of the bathroom doorway he could see the room was filling with a cloud of the moths. His foot caught the edge of the afghan on the floor and shot out from under him throwing him backwards to the hard wood. All of his breath was forced out with the hard slam. He rolled on the floor groaning, gasping to suck air into his lungs.
Moths continued to fill the bathroom like a cloud of dark, dimming the light.
Don rolled over and managed a deep breath into his heavy chest. He tried to get up, but his ankle gave way under him. He knew he had twisted it when he fell. He flopped over onto his hands and knees and began to slowly crawl towards the bathroom door twelve feet away, moths began to filter into the hallway, ten feet away, he could see their smoke grey wings flapping in the dusky darkness, eight feet away, more moths poured into the hallway bouncing themselves off of the ceiling, six feet away, he began to feel them land on his bare back, four feet away the burning started as they began to chew into him, two feet, he reached out with his arm, but could not quite reach the door. One more shuffle forward and he was able to grasp the bottom of the door with his fingers. He pulled it toward himself with a slam as the door latch caught.
The moths on his back felt like they were boring holes straight through him. Don dropped one shoulder and collapsed over onto his back crushing the hungry insects. The acidic burning of th
eir smashed bodies lit up his back like live wires.
He rolled back over and started to scramble towards the master bedroom skinning his knees on the hard floor as he went. He reached the carpet of the bedroom which felt like a brief respite on his battered stinging knees. He kicked the door shut behind him having no idea how many of the little critters had already made it into the room. He continued on his hands and knees straight into the master bathroom. He rolled over onto his ass and leaned his wounded back against the cabinet doors as he shut the door with his good foot.
Don sat for a moment gathering his thoughts as he examined his already swollen ankle, his skinned raw knees, various red welts teeming with droplets of blood mixing with sweat. His arms were covered with the red raw burns some of them having opened up into weeping sores. Don began to laugh, ″Fuck, ain′t nobody gonna believe this shit.″ His laughter turned to tears as he deeply missed June.
Seven months, seven long and miserable months of adjusting to life without her. Most of it he couldn′t give up, he′d never really been a horse man, but he certainly wasn′t going to get rid of them after she was gone. He felt they were a part of her and a part of his obligation of love to her. The same went for most of her stuff, he just didn′t have the heart to get rid of any of it, so he didn′t. The bathroom was still stocked with a box of her belongings, brushes, hair sprays, makeup, perfume it was all still there. Her best friend Margaret had offered to empty the place of all of that stuff when he made the move, but he wouldn′t let her.
Don started to fish through the box, a flood of memories and smells assaulted him the more he took it in the more he cried. Part of him wanted to give up, let what ever this was that was happening, take him over end it, maybe go get the gun from the hallway closet and meet her at the pearly gates, except they always said if you kill yourself there weren′t no way you were goin′ to Heaven and he sure didn′t want to end up somewhere else.
The sound of the scraping above his head drew his attention to the vent. ″Fuck!″ He realized at that moment that he should have fixed the broken vent earlier, the loosened grate was falling in, even more so now because the vent, was full of twitching devious little hungry moths.
Don jumped to his feet favoring his good leg. He grabbed a towel off the towel rack and wadded it up, he reached up but couldn′t quite get to taped vent. He needed to prop himself up onto something. He looked at the counter top and plopped his ass onto it, he brought his good leg up first to steady himself and then slid the bad leg up, with his arms and his good leg he powered himself up into a crouching position, he was able to reach out and steady himself against the wall with one hand while he pushed against the ceiling with the one that had the towel in it. The vent grate sagged more with a squeak, the tape was slowly peeling away from the ceiling.
The sheer weight of the moths piling in was becoming ridiculous, he could see the ones at the edge of the grate, their demonic little pinchers working in excitement. He tried to jam part of the towel into the vent but the fabric was too thick to get it into the vent grates. He was going to have to pull the grate down and stuff the towel into the hole at the same time.
His pulse quickened, one wrong move and hundreds of those evil things would be upon him. He stood up on both legs, shifting his weight to the strong side. He had to crouch over so his head wouldn′t hit the ceiling. He brought up both battered arms in front of himself, fingers outstretched, ready to grab the edge of the grate. He knew it wouldn′t take much for the grate to come down once he grabbed a hold of the loose tape.
″Just do it, just reach in and do it, they′re only god damn moths, just do it, they ain′t gonna kill ya.″ He wasn′t so sure about the last part, but saying it out loud helped steel his nerve. Before he could talk himself out of it he whipped down the grate and jammed the towel into the open duct in one quick move. Moths poured in around his arm as he shoved the towel home with a series of stuffing jabs.
The quickness of his move threw him off balance and his last jab at the towel was more of a punch as he was falling off the counter. His worst fear came true as he tumbled to the floor hard, with the towel in hand. Moths poured out of the open hole and descended into the room. Don′s mind was a whirl and the first thing he thought of was fire. He dumped over the box of June′s old cosmetics and grabbed at the tall thin can of hair spray, without a thought he began to spray it around him in all directions while his other hand dug into his tight pants pocket for the lighter.
His fingers closed around the zippo and he came out with it flicking it open in front of the spray like an action hero, he felt a moment of pride as he struck the wheel. Flames shot forth, instantly vaporizing the cloud of spray into a flash fireball, Don felt the heat on his face and immediately smelled burned hair.
He blasted the flamethrower around the ceiling and the hole of the vent. Burning moths rained down and twitched on the rug and tile, snapping like popcorn in the heat. He blasted fire up into the hole, watching years of dust and spider webs disappear in the inferno.
The edge of the vent caught fire as the can of hairspray started to sputter. He dropped it and grabbed at the towel again, whipping it back and forth at the flames smashing them out. Don wrapped his fist in side the towel and on one foot he hopped in the air plunging his arm forward into the hole, after three tries he got the towel to stay, he kept hopping and stuffing his fist into the hole trying to jam it deeper when he hit the ground awkwardly twisting his ankle even worse. Pain shot through his brain like white hot lightning. He screamed out loud and felt his vision tunneling out to blackness. His last vision a victory flag of the towel stuck in place.
* * *
He had no idea how many hours had gone by. There was no clock in the bathroom and outside the window was still covered with a few moths as the sun light began peeking in. He looked up at the duct, the towel still hung there like a maroon terry cloth ghost, three quarters of the towel had been stuck up into the hole and that had apparently been enough. He heard a tick against the light bulb, he looked quickly to the light. There were a few moths hovering there around the light, bouncing off of it drawn to it like a God. All around him on the cold tile were hundreds of crisped moths their wings and legs burned away. None moved. He laid there for a moment staring at the hanging towel wondering what it looked like outside, wondering if the coming of day was driving them away to sleep, or maybe to die.
Don′t they have short life spans? He thought.
He tried to stand but couldn′t and instead decided to crawl out into the rest of the house, past the devastation of the night before. Most of the moths were quietly resting on the curtains, on the ceiling, on the walls. Don crept quietly out into the living room trying not to disturb them into a frenzy, the sliding glass door held a large smear of gray, yellow-green and red. There were no more than a few hundreds moths still on the outside of the windows, most of them seemed to have gone in the mornings light. Don grabbed a smooth driftwood walking stick and used it like a cane to get up onto his feet. He slowly limped toward the sliders, a battered warrior, June would have been proud. He pulled it open and felt the fresh clean crisp air of the morning, it smelled like victory.
The tree caught his eye, not just a few like the day before, but all-of-the trees, were filled with the horrible bag worms as far as the eye could see, sacks hung off of every low hanging branch.
* * *
Mick Jones opened the cage and stepped back a few feet. ″Come on little guy don′t be scared″ There was no movement from the cage. He stepped forward and nudged it with his foot, the cage jumped and what looked like a rabbit shot out of it. The little creature tried to scurry under a bush, but found its head would not fit. So it turned around and stood up proudly on its haunches sniffing the air. Its long black and brown striped pheasant tail twitched with its nose. Jack got a good look at his creation, well partially his anyway. When he joined DARPA as a geneticist he never had any idea that he would one day create a strange crossbreed of Jack Rabbit, Antelope a
nd Ring-Necked Pheasant.
Who could have conceived of such a thing? He thought.
But it all made sense. Once the weird strain of Gypsy Moths became immune to the BT bacterium and started overproducing a heavy stomach acid as a side effect, they became a plague, towns were overrun, thousands were killed, practically devoured by the acidic moths. Hundreds of thousands of acres of crops were destroyed by this new scourge of the Southwest, so something needed to be done and done fast. That something was called the Jackalope. The speed and jump of the Jack Rabbit, the appetite and tail of the Ring-Necked pheasant and the horns and striking power of the Antelope.
Mick smiled as his baby hopped forward toward one of the trees the moths seemed to be breeding in. It paused sniffed the air, took two small steps forward, sat up again, again tested the air, then bounded forward to underneath the tree. The Jackalope sat up on its haunches, its long brilliant tail twitching with delight. One of the sacks of caterpillars hung off a low branch. Mick watched with excitement this was the moment-of-truth. The Jackalope crouched down low and then sprang forth almost straight up into the air, its rack of four horns caught the silken bag and ripped it wide open, dumping its contents out. Within moments the Jackalope was gorging itself on the fat juicy caterpillars. Mick smiled and turned around to look at the flatbed truck full of live animal crates, and spotted his two assistants. ″Lets get 'em off and cut 'em loose boys, it looks like its gonna work out just fine.″
