Santa in Black

by Jonathan Moon

Little Billy Skip dreaded the Christmas season, not for its candies and gifts- which he enjoyed quite a bit, but due to his crippling fear of Santa Claus. The other children would tease and laugh, they found his Santaphobia a real gas, but Little Billy saw something sinister in the Jolly Old Elf and his holly decked halls. 

He would write him no letters, nor sit on his lap. He trust not his wide smile, his jiggling belly, nor his silly sagging cap.

On Christmas Eve Little Billy would go to sleep as early as he could, in hopes of sleeping through his Santa-themed nightmares to wake up to presents and everything good. His brothers and sisters awoke from visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads by a thunderous thud-thudding downstairs which scared Billy right under the beds. They ran downstairs to watch Santa dispense his gifts, leaving Little Billy alone to cry and sweat in nervous shifts. Billy sat thinking of years past, the flashy presents and the joyful laughs, soon he was scampering after so silent and fast. He tip-toed noiselessly down tinsel wrapped stairs, only to find headless his mom, dad, brothers and sisters.

A pale, thin Santa with scabby face and filthy beard, all dressed in black from his boots to his cap, was dropping their heads into his swollen black sack. Billy ran to his room, to hide in the safety and gloom. He dashed to his window, and threw it open in a panic to scream out for help, but, sadly, fear choked his voice and he could manage only a yelp. On the street outside below Little Billy saw dozens of Santas in black, one and all a heaping bag slung over his back. 

HAPPY XMAS ALL!

You can find more of my work here. :)

Grasshopper Season 7: The Chaos Before the Storm by Jonathan Moon

7: The Chaos Before the Storm

Chaos. It hangs thick in the air. It clings to the trees as harsh as the evergreen bark. It rises from the ground like autumn fog. It swirls with the smoke from the burning town miles away. The animals of the forest, large and small, flee with no destination, driven by fear and instinct. In their sudden absence silence rings and buzzes throughout the dense forest.

Deep in the woods surrounding the town of St. Jim’s, in a small decrepit shack nestled at the foot of a ridge the Pulse in the Dark throbs and glows. It is older than most of the stars in the sky and has been buried in the Earth’s crust since the planet formed; an ageless cosmic parasite with unrelenting hunger. It glows, changing colors with every twitch of its vast coiled form. Only a few lumps of its smooth, glowing flesh poke through the ground, and like the tip of a morbid iceberg the majority of the creature is buried under tons and tons of Earth and rock. However, enough has been exposed to Earthen air to call the human, the Corn-Eater, those many years ago.

The Pulse sees through his eyes and it shows him the depths of the abyss. The Corn-Eater has proved helpless and loyal, forsaking all he had in his life to serve the Pulse in the Dark. The Pulse grew him food, ripe with the blood the Pulse leeched from the Earth from centuries of atrocities and the twisted darkness which the Pulse itself ascended from. The Pulse has used the human so effectively until now. The Corn-Eater followed the swarm, the thousands, a manifestation of the Pulse’s control in the hermit’s glowing eyes to guide then where they need to go. The Corn-Eater lead the swarm, the thousands, and each tiny mouthful of flesh was tasted by the Pulse and the Corn-Eater as the grasshopper feasted.

And then, something unforeseen, the Corn-Eater has tasted the flesh of his own. So long ago the Pulse reached into his mind and crushed it, the sliver of remaining humanity curled into itself and hid from the brain-picking malevolence. The taste of the flesh of his own has sent that sliver of humanity buried deep inside the Corn-Eater’s mind recoiling and thrashing in disgusted abstract terror. In order to maintain its control over the Corn-Eater and the Swarm, the thousands, the Pulse had to infuse his ugly human servant with its unholy power. This power filled the human’s shell when that last sliver of humanity fed itself to the Pulse, this power so strong and crackling it killed every grasshopper within a hundred feet of the Corn-Eater with the resulting spike in mental energy. The Pulse felt each grasshopper’s dying agonies as their tiny brains exploded with the Corn-Eater’s madness reaching its own hellish crescendo.

The swarm, the thousands, has been devastated. Between the Corn-Eater’s inadvertent mass murder and the roaring blaze which erupted during the chaos most died in St. Jim’s. The remaining grasshoppers wandered around aimlessly, mindless shells created only for consuming flesh for the Pulse in the Dark, until the Pulse could regain control of its pets and call them back to the cool dark of the forest. The fire which ceased their planned advance blew back through town eviscerating the blood-streaked ruins and scorching the blood to the asphalt.

The human, the Corn-Eater, has transcended into a shell the Pulse’s conscience can completely fill like a fist in a glove. The Pulse sees through its eyes.

Beautiful black grasshoppers, dead and dying.

Loud angry machines, spilling water on the town and shoving away the ruins.

The Pulse, in its infinite wisdom, knows humans pilot the machines without needing to smell their foul odors or taste their flesh. The humans exit their machines, and poke at the dead grasshoppers not consumed by the flames. They are amazed at their size and apparent appetite. They call more humans to the blood.

The Pulse wants the humans to come and be fascinated by the creatures it infused with its essence. Congregate and study. Gather and debate. Crowd and be slaughtered.

The Corn-Eater stumbles through the forest, glowing eyes shimmering in the middle of slack emotionless face. Through his eyes the Pulse sees everything in bright smears of abstract colors which hum with their energies. It feels the colors it sees. Inside the disgusting human shell the Corn-Eater is sleek and smooth and glowing.

The remaining grasshoppers burrow underground.

The humans are in flying machines and landing now.

The humans call each other to the blood.

The Corn-Eater reaches the shack and shoves the door open. Inside, the Pulse in the Dark glows, its reflection shimmering on every surface within the small space. The Corn-Eater falls to his knees and begins digging at the Earth surrounding the Pulse in the Dark. The Pulse is seeing through new eyes now, as it saw through the eyes of the swarm, the millions of eyes of the thousands. Human eyes again.  

It sees only dirt.

Next 'episode' posting up between April 9th-12th 2014

You can find more of my work HERE.

You can read the rest of the Grasshopper Season series HERE. (the first is at the bottom, sorry for the backassward display order.)

Grasshopper Season 6: Hell Hops Into Town by Jonathan Moon

6: Hell Hops into Town

St. Jim’s is a small town built at the base of the mountains at the north-eastern end of Hoo-Doo County. Early settlers to the region built homes and businesses along the popular trade route which followed the Merwin River down from the Hoo-Doo Mountains to where it meets the Palouse River. They used trees they logged from the unnaturally thick evergreen forest which grew up the side of the mountain range. As they clear cut their way up the side of the mountain people bought the cleared land at discount prices and built affordable housing to settle their families in. Within a few years the town reached up from the valley floor into a mushroom shaped cluster of houses and businesses all surrounded by the dense forest.

Gold, and all the promises its mere presence whispers, was discovered to the south, and the town’s population suffered accordingly. Those who stayed behind continued to farm the land and log the mountains but over time the region, and all the towns scattered throughout it, were rumored cursed after winters cold enough to freeze cattle to death in barns followed summers burning too hot and fast to produce valuable crops continually sent people fleeing.

After what is commonly referred to as the ‘Last Nasty Winter’ (the winter of 32, spring of 33) by locals and historians alike the quadruple average snow fall melted freakishly quick, forcing the Merwin to swell and flood the lower portion of St. Jim’s.  The waters rose quickly overnight, drowning over one hundred people in the freezing snowmelt as the sun was rising. Eventually the flood waters receded leaving a devastated town in its wake. All of the buildings in lower St. Jim’s were damaged by the flood, those which didn’t crumble on their own where brought down by the cleanup crews from the local logging company Kambitch Brothers.

Again, the land was offered cheap, and, again, it was purchased and settled quickly. Rather than rebuild the lower half of the town farmers planted fields down the rolling foothills all the way to the banks of the murderous Merwin River. These new crops grew well enough to support the now smaller, easier to manage, town. Bold famers cut into the forests surrounding the town, finding the soil on the back side of several ridges to be very fertile and easy to farm. These successful farms brought more industry which in turn brought more people.

So came the second breath of life to the town.

Now, as the swarm darkens the sky it begins its second death rattle.

Moses Richardson is first to witness the swarm of mutant grasshoppers as he is perched at the highest point in the town, the top of the town hall tower, but as he is not the smartest or cleverest man at all he can’t think of a way to alert anyone of its arrival. The sky tints black with shimmering purple as the swarm descends, and Moses scampers back and forth on the tower’s small ledge panicking to his core. Moses doesn’t own a cell phone, or even a home phone for that matter, but he knows his boss Carl would know what to do and who to call. So Moses screams for his boss in as loud a voice as his husky vocal cords can muster. During his frightened excitement Moses inadvertently bumps the ladder he used to shimmy up to the tower. The ladder falls with a metallic clatter to the roof below him, and Moses bellows for Carl in a voice wet with fear.

Moses is older than Carl, he doesn’t know by how much because he doesn’t know how old he is. Carl is his boss and best friend. Carl runs the town’s maintenance crew, and Moses is his dedicated right hand man. What old Moses lacks in smarts, for he is certainly a simple man, he more than makes up for with his positive attitude, strong work ethic, and eagerness to please. Moses has known Carl for as long as he could remember, though his memories are always warped and unreliable, streaked with vibrant colors which frighten Moses and render recalling memories or engaging in deep thought strenuous and terrifying. Even now, Moses lives in a single-wide trailer Carl let him put down in the back end of his six hillside acres. Over his many years in the town of St. Jim’s a great deal of the families took him in from time to time, and he has spent his years repaying the town and its people for their kindness to him.

Moses’s daddy left the summer before the Last Bad Winter and the resulting murderous flood from its freeze. His momma swore up and down, and to Jesus and everything, that daddy done went of chasing gold in Californ-y streams. But Moses swore up and down, and to Jesus and everything, he watched his daddy wander off towards Tree Horn Ridge, which Mrs. Simpson from next door had kindly answered him when he asked, was not in the same direction as Californ-y. Moses knew the ridge because his daddy would take him hiking on it almost every day. Even as a small child the ridge, however beautiful and serene, filled Moses with a sense of dread which was near as strong as the wonderment his daddy felt for the mountainside. Moses used to be able to remember toddling after his daddy over and around logs, down slick narrow paths and up steep jagged cliff-sides chasing something his daddy could never really explain to his young simple son. His daddy would talk funny out on the ridge, non-sense and babble talk that Moses still hears in his frequent nightmares. Daddy would take little Moses camping along the ridge-line sometimes, staying out for days at a time and coming home to an irritated momma. It didn’t matter how mad momma got because daddy couldn’t stay away from the ridge, couldn’t let his search relent, and he would be gone again. Daddy said it was out there somewhere, and he’d find it one day and bask in a rainbow of powerful lights. Moses always figured daddy to be standing somewhere, smiling as colors wash over him instead of kneeling in a cold creek panning for gold. Still, when momma said daddy went chasing gold rush streams Moses kept his little opinion to himself for he loathed upsetting his momma.

His momma had a taste for a strong medicine she’d get from the Chinese who emptied the outhouses and ran the laundry. A taste so intense she imbibed heavily before, during and after her pregnancy with Moses. He couldn’t understand the ramifications of the liquid she’d drip into her water, and he though her dulled senses and glossy eyes her natural state of being. Her little amber-colored bottle was empty and Moses couldn’t wake her up where she slept pale-faced on the couch the morning of the Great Flood. Mr. Simpson from next door carried him out of the house over his broad shoulders, the tears leaking down the old lumberjack’s cheeks in no way born of the small boy’s fists and feet as he thrashed for his momma. Momma wouldn’t wake up and those freezing waters rose up and swallowed her while the kind loving Simpsons dragged him kicking and screaming to safety. They couldn’t bury momma because the receding waters took her away and left their old house empty and water-damaged beyond repair. Moses lived with the Simpsons until old-age claimed them both, and other families were always there to take him in when he needed a place to sleep and food in his belly. He was treated like a son the whole town shared, and loved despite his imbecilic nature. Over the years he has outlived all those who once knew first-hand of his sad past, until Moses became the oldest living person in St Jim’s and isn’t even aware of it.

Now, the spry old Moses has no other words other than Carl’s screeched name as he watches the swarm descend on the unsuspecting town as people bustle about. He slaps his leathery hands on the side of the wooden tower, and hears the heavy thudding echoing throughout the floor below. Moses can see four colossal black grasshoppers, each bigger than the work truck Moses and Carl spend their days in, and countless other black hoppers from the size of cats to the size of golf carts, crawling all over down below him while the air turns thick with an incredible number of the normal summer grasshoppers. The larger hoppers smash into cars and buildings, shattering windows with their hardened exoskeletons and allowing others to leap through. From all directions screams rise on the early morning air up to Moses’s ears.

From his precarious perch Moses watches a group of men in front of the hardware store do battle with a group of black grasshoppers with rakes and shovels. The young muscled clerk Moses recognizes as one of St Jim’s football heroes from a few years ago manages to impale a fiercely clicking hopper with a pitchfork. One prong still wrapped tin the manufacturer’ s sticker stabs through twitching insect dripping orange slime. Next to him, two other men beat a grasshopper nearly as big as them with a shovel and a gardening hoe until they smash through smooth black exoskeleton and splatter bright orange grasshopper guts all over themselves and the street they battle in. The tide turns in the blink of an eye when the ex-football hero is tackled into eternity by one of the colossal giants. The other men rally against the monster but are torn into bloody chunks by the smaller hoppers the moment they turn their attention to it.

A drunk man who Moses recognizes as Tanner Webber runs in an erratic zig-zag pattern down the middle of Main Street, fleeing a grasshopper the size of an elk and half blinded by the six-inch beasties chewing at his face. The milk delivery truck from Hopkin’s Dairy careens around the corner and Tanner is dragged under its wheels when their zig-zagging paths collide in the middle of the street. The truck bumps obscenely and leaves a wide bloody smear in its wake. Tanner’s mangled corpse flops away from the milk truck as it banks hard to the left and crashes into the post office where it explodes in grand fashion belching boiling milk and shards of glass onto the people standing nearby.

The four biggest black grasshoppers throw their heavy bodies against the buildings downtown, reducing the brick and wooden buildings to rubble. People try to flee the crumbling structures only to be violently devoured in the street by the other hoppers.  The Main Street Bar begins crumbling and a flood of people who had sought refuse within scampers back out into the confusion and carnage. Moses watches a heavyset woman with bright blue curlers in her hair get torn in half by two six-foot grasshoppers in a primal display of greed which spills her sloppy innards all over the thousands of small hoppers crawling across the blood streaked asphalt. The smaller grasshoppers are scampering all over the ruins of the once fine buildings, feasting on survivors and leaving a multitude of tiny bloody tracks over the wreckage.  

Moses watches another one of the four giants smash into a school bus, tipping it on its side and allowing the smaller hoppers to attack. Tears form and slip down his weathered cheeks as he hears thin, terrified, high-pitched screams cut short. Moses jerks his attention from the horrors of Main Street, and nearly swoons and slips from the tower when he realizes the carnage has already spread throughout town. He clutches tight to the tower, his eyes closed against the horrors below but the sounds of random gunfire, harrowing screams, tires screeching, vehicles colliding and exploding all still assault his ears as tears continue to stream down into his own bushy beard. He wagers a look back out over the town through blurry eyes and aside from the brilliant splashes of crimson coloring the street below he sees pillars of smoke are reaching into the morning sky from all over town. The people of St. Jim’s are dying terribly and there is nothing Moses can do to help them all.

The grasshoppers’ song rings through the air, muffling the screams, and Moses can’t help but think of his daddy, though he doesn’t know why now of all times the old scoundrel would enter his panicked thoughts. Before he has time to get lost in his jittery confusing memories Moses hears the familiar squeak of the window below signaling Carl’s return. Relief flushes Moses’s face and he slaps the wooden walls excitedly, unable to form words to express his rampaging emotions.

“What is all the racket out here, Moses?” Carl asks as he pops his round face out of the window below.

Moses finally finds another word. “Grasshoppers!”

“Jeez, old boy, I’m talking about all the crashing and booming and shooting I’m hearing not the insect situation!” Carl’s good-natured tone sounds a little shaky to Moses, the slight tremble in his tone still evident when he notices the ladder Moses tipped over. He wiggles his rotund form through the tower window to flop onto the easy sloped town hall roof top. He stands next to the ladder and looks up at Moses with a gentle smirk. “Holy shit, Moses, are you stuck up there?”

Moses leans over the edge to stare down at Carl with his bloodshot eyes and tear-dampened cheeks. Next to Carl is the ladder Moses tipped, and just behind Carl Moses sees the townspeople he so loves being slaughtered ruthlessly in the street and in their homes. His answer comes in a hot flood of shouted words and ends choked with emotion.

“I am stuck up here, Carl! But it don’t matter none, ‘cause giant grasshoppers are eating everyone in town! I know that sounds like crazy-people talk, but I been watching some terrible things, Carl.”

Carl looks up at Moses with a look of uncertainty shaping his jovial features. He opens his mouth to say something but a sudden loud, scraping, crash births a huge fireball above one of two of the gas stations in town. Carl curls into a ball at the force of the explosion and the sound reverberation that pounds the morning air and rattles his teeth. He slowly faces the direction of the explosion and sees the sky blackened above the flames consuming the east side of St. Jim’s. He steps on wobbly legs to edge of the roof top so he can look down at the carnage below for the first time.

People Carl has always known are be chased up the street and overtaken by the mutated grasshopper and torn to wet ribbons of quivering flesh. Buildings Carl remembers from his childhood have instantly been reduced to smoking, blood-smeared ruins lining the gore speckled road. Cars and trucks are colliding with each as they try to flee the carnage engulfing the town.  Carl watches the bright yellow Toyota driven by one of the town mechanics, Stanley Ray, slam on its brakes right in the middle of Main Street when two of the giants block its path. Carl waves his arms over his head while screaming Stanley’s name, but before Stanley possibly has a chance to look up at his panicked friend a dozen giant black hoppers are crawling all over the truck and muffling the screams within.

Moses can’t handle watching Stanley’s terrible demise, so he turns away and looks away from town. His blurry eyes notice the shape of an old man walking down the road into town from the directions the grasshoppers came from. The old man’s beard is as long and gnarled as Moses’s childhood, and as crimson as the blood-stained road. The carnivorous grasshoppers leap all around him, but none attack him. Something stirs deep within Moses’s very core, when the old man begins shouting. The crimson-bearded interloper doesn’t manage any actual words, but the long-string of gibberish he screams at the grasshoppers echoes within Moses’s skull and injects his already rolling stomach with an eerie sense of dread. The sound of the ladder slamming against the ledge breaks Moses’s stare from the red-bearded old man and returns it to Carl’s pale frightened, pale face below.

“We gotta do something, Moses. It’s bad down there. Everyone I’ve ever known is being ate up by giant grasshoppers. Oh, no, Sadie and the girls…oh, Jesus…”

Moses reaches for the ladder, but it lifts away before he can grab it. He leans over the edge to see Carl put it back down where it was.

“Carl?”

“Sorry, Moses, but you’ll be safe up there. Safest place in town. I gotta go get Sadie and the girls, and I’m bringing them back here. We’ll wait it out together, okay, Moses. Stay put, old fella.”

Before Moses can protest, Carl is ducked back through the window and running through town hall. The old man in the street shouts again, and even without facing him the gibberish rings within Moses’s head. The sensation is personal and offensive and draws his eyes back to the horrible scene below in the street.

The red-bearded old man points at a station wagon parked in front of the ruins of the bank while screaming his wild babble. A cluster of black hoppers leaps where he points, crawling over, under and into the vehicle. As the mutant insects go under the car two humans, a man and a woman, scamper out from hiding to escape them. A black hopper leaps from the dented crater it created on the car’s hood to the man’s chest. He huffs, red-faced, at it. It gnashes forward and rips his throat out with clicking mandibles. The woman turns on the red-bearded old man and screams at him.

Moses’s squinting eyes see a smile worm its way onto the old man’s oddly familiar face, and his eyes glow strange neon colors like a cartoon. A grasshopper the size of a bear leaps right past the old man and smashes the woman into the passenger-side of the station wagon she had been hiding under. With the force of impact bone cracks and splinters, glass shatters, metal creaks and bends. The giant hopper jumps away, leaving the woman to slip slowly to a heap in the street just barely obscured from Moses’s view. The red-bearded old man screams and points at her fallen body and more black hoppers respond. A fine mist of blood in the air and sprayed across the destroyed station wagon signals her end.

Moses throws up his breakfast over the edge of the tower, and has to hold tight and fight the sway he feels coming. He screams with all his will for Carl. The, he screams for his daddy without knowing why.

Far below him, the double doors at the rear of town hall are thrown open as Carl bolts through the parking lot towards his own town-issued work truck. Before he reaches it one of the four largest hoppers smashes it to shards of metal and plastic. The colossal monster hunches down and hisses at Carl.

“Run Carl!” Moses screams down at his dear friend.

Moses’s panicked cry breaks Carl from his fear-frozen state, and he darts around the side of town hall towards the Clem Chem Co. gas station across the street. As Carl runs black grasshoppers leap at him, but he ducks and rolls managing to only get a few deep, but not lethal scratches across his back and legs as he crosses the street. As he reaches the front row parking, the colossal hopper that destroyed Carl’s work truck smashes into a fully-loaded Kambitch Brothers Logging truck, forcing the eighteen-wheeler into the gas pumps. Carl sees a dozen pale faces staring at him from behind the plate glass seconds before fire erupts behind him and consumes him and everything in his world.

Moses watches the massive fireball swallow Carl, the group of black hoppers chasing him, and the crowded gas station in the time it takes for him to bellow Carl’s name one last time. Surely Carl couldn’t hear Moses’s bellowing through the roaring of the flames eating him, but the red-bearded old man turns his strange rainbow gaze up to Moses on his perch. Moses feels caught in the strange gaze as a whirlwind of blurry neon memories whiplashes his simple terrified mind. While staring down at the old man with the crimson beard tears start leaking down Moses’s cheeks again. He can’t pull his eyes away, and when the red-bearded old man starts whispering his odd gibberish again Moses hears it as if he is shouting it directly into his ears. The tears slipping down Moses’s cheek which don’t soak into the gray of his beard drip down to land on his hand clutched white-knuckle tight to the ledge. While Moses is in a fear trance, his trembling hand slips on the tear-slick wood.

With the red-bearded old man’s haunting babble echoing in his head, Moses pitches headfirst off of the ledge. He falls the seven feet to the roof and lands with a sickening crack. The last sensation Moses is aware of in his body is a tight painful pinching and then all-consuming numbness. His eyes dart back and forth as his limp body begins slipping down the roof’s slight incline. He whimpers weakly but can do nothing to slow his descent down the slope. He reaches the edge, and falls the three stories to the ground; a helpless blurry tumble ending in another hard awkward landing. Moses hears many of his bones break upon impact but he feels nothing below his neck. As simple as his mind may be, Moses knows his neck is broken and he knows what that means. Blood trickles of his nose when he exhales, and the smells of burning death and spilt blood reach up his nostrils and rape his dead gag reflex when he inhales.

Moses stares helplessly ahead as the red-bearded old man staggers into his line of sight. The old hermit points at Moses and screeches his gibberish in a tone which inflicts as my pain inside Moses’s head as the fall did to his body. A black grasshopper as big as Moses climbs on top of chest, chattering and clicking excitedly. Moses doesn’t feel anything, but as he body is jerked and shook by the beast he realizes with hellish clarity he is being eaten alive. His own warm sticky blood sprays Moses in his face but he can’t take his eyes of the red-bearded old man. As his life slips away Moses sees everything the Corn-Eater sees, he knows what happened to his long-lost daddy, and he weeps at the beauty of the rainbows his world explodes into. 

Next 'episode' posts up Friday, April 4th

Find more of my work HERE. 

Grasshopper Season 5: Early Damn It Massacre by Jonathan Moon

5: Early Damn It Massacre

The bright orange of the road construction signs announcing the upcoming road work stand out against the earth tones of the evergreen forest landscape. The morning sun is peeking through the tall pines and the shadows retreat back across the four lane road from it. A small line of traffic moves lazily up the winding road as if the vehicles themselves are still waking up.

A light blue Chevy pickup brakes suddenly in front of Tom and Anna in their black Honda. Already irritated, Tom launches into a diatribe against the Chevy’s driver.

“Are you kidding me? The sign says road work ahead, asshole, I bet there is another mile between us and it. And a up and down mile at that! I don’t want to be behind your slow redneck ass! Bullshit country drivers!”

Anna looks at the Chevy’s battered tailgate in front of her on the road, but says nothing. She glances at the clock on the car’s stereo and winces to herself when she reads 7:27 am in the neon green numbers. Tom hated being woken up early, and she had done just that. She had not only woken him up early, but done so sleep deprived, terrified, and inconsolable. Anna had endured a sleepless night, cuddled to Tom’s snoring shape in the dark, but unable to sleep herself for the grasshoppers chirping, clicking, and singing outside the hotel window.

Anna grew up in Chicago so she was more familiar with cockroaches than grasshoppers, and even being a novice about crop-eaters she fully expected them to be silent once night wrapped the sleepy town of St. Jim’s in its oily arms. Instead as she watched the moon rise higher and higher into the sky they got louder and louder. Around midnight the chirping took on a menacing tone, and she could her screams in the chirping, clicking, and singing outside. The sound became so overpowering it was if the insects had transformed themselves into the very sound they were making and using it to crawl all over her, tangling in her hair and sticking their heads into every orifice they can find. So she wiggled and thrashed as her mind and reality did battle in the dark of a strange hotel room. She was chewing the inside of her cheek raw, with tears streaming down her face when the first precious ray of sunshine wandered in from between the nicotine-yellowed drapes. It was all the provocation her exhausted and frightened mind needed and she was rolling Tom out of bed, demanding he take her from St. Jim’s and never let her return. At the time he was still more asleep than awake, so any fight he had was overpowered by her obvious, irrational or not, panic.

Now, he is grinding his teeth as he mad-dogs the light blue Chevy’s tailgate. He stomps on the accelerator and jerks the wheel hard to the side, so he can pass the Chevy. She realizes he has had plenty of time to wake up and be mad about it. 

“I’m not following some redneck asshole who is going to slam on his breaks every time he sees an orange cone on the side of the road!” Tom shouts his words as they approach, but they aren’t directed truly at Anna or the truck’s driver.

The little black Honda squeals at the combination of increases in both speed and road grade as it jerks them past the pickup. Tom doesn’t even look over at the driver as he passes, he just huffs the word ‘asshole’ and keeps his angry eyes on the road. Anna does turn and look, taking in the square-jawed man’s weary appearance under his worn ball-cap. His eye are so bloodshot they almost seem crimson, and the worry lines on his forehead match the roadmap of illogical fear on Anna’s own forehead. He had a night like me, she thinks to herself.

Anna keeps her eyes on the Honda’s speedometer, expecting it to drop once they pass the pickup but instead it continues climbing. 55, 60, 65, 70, 75.

Tom stares at the road, a winding concrete snake slithering through Hoo-Doo County. Every few feet squat orange cones line the side of the old mountain highway, giving the concrete reptile vibrant markings to go with its blacktop camouflage. Another bright orange diamond shaped sign informs them they are losing the left lane in less than a mile.

“Seriously who is doing road work at seven in the damn it?” Tom yells and Anna bristles at the anger in his voice. Then, his choice of words strikes her as odd.

“Don’t you mean seven in the morning?”

Tom smiles back, an almost involuntary reaction to how amused he is by his own cleverness. “No, I meant damn it. From now on, the morning begins at 8:00 am, and anything before then is the damn it.”

Anna laughs out loud, the sound of her joyful glee tickling Tom until he is laughing along with her. The Honda’s speed drops back down, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60. She squeezes his hand. He winks at her. Without saying the words, she apologizes for waking him up and making them leave before breakfast and he accepts. The little Honda speeds around a turn a little yellow sign recommends be taken at 45 mph or less, and they see where the left lane ends three hundred feet ahead of them. The wide, white rear-end of a nice RV blocks the view of the road as it sits idling and waiting on something ahead of them.

Tom stomps of the breaks harder than he means to, pitching them both forward sharply, then slamming them back hard.

“Son of a bitch!” Tom bellows.

“Afternoon already?” Anna quickly jests.

Tom smiles, though it looks uneasy enough if he would have laughed it would have been forced and fake. He looks into the rearview mirror at the Chevy behind them. He scowls at the reflection he sees.

“That asshole in the Chevy thought that was funny. Eh, I mean the RV making me slam on my breaks, not your ‘joke’.” Tom looks at Anna sideways, teasing.

“Well, he would have if he heard it. Roll down your window, and I’ll yell it out to him.” Anna waves her hand at Tom, motioning for him to roll his window down, but he playfully waves her back. She looks back to the man driving the Chevy and sees a wide maniacal smile even with the square jaw, though the bloodshot eyes and deeply etched worry lines are now hidden by the shade of the cap’s bill. The unmistakable crack of rifle fire echoes through the morning air, startling both Tom and Anna to the point of jumping in their seats. Anna ‘s eyes go back to the rear-view mirror where the man is the pickup, still smiling wide, is now nodding his head fervently.

“What the hell was that Tom?” Anna’s voice squeals slightly, but her buried fear has to vent some way or another. The echo of the rifle shot is having the same effect as the grasshoppers’ overnight serenade, a sinking drowning sense of dread and despair that almost brings tears to hers eyes as it steals the moisture from her mouth.

Tom opens his mouth to answer that it could be hunters but a metallic silver Ford Mustang zips up over the last hill, right around the blue Chevy and then Tom and Anna’s black Honda before the RV’s taillights bring it to a stop just past the Honda’s front bumper with even harsher grinds than Tom’s moments before.

“That is kinda’ funny from back here.” Tom concedes and both of them laugh at it as the RV’s complete stoppage stops the coiling line of morning traffic leading back into St. Jim’s. Its wide rear-end completely blocks the view of what is obstructing the road and causing the delay.

The instant the car stops rolling the echoing clapping of the grasshoppers’ song fills the air as if licking to taste the echo of the rifle shot. Anna rolls her window up, and rubs her temples, hoping to keep it together. Hundreds of brown and green grasshoppers are jumping from the forested roadside and hopping down towards the farmed fields surrounding hilltops like they are drawn by a strange dormant migration instinct. Anna looks away from the grasshoppers crawling and jumping all over the ground to the forested hillside ahead of them. The northern Idaho terrain has gone from rolling hills to sharp rugged mountains, with as much predictability as a pregnant woman’s moods in the time Tom and Anna have been traveling through it, and the road from St. Jim’s to the larger town of Falterwood is no different, with patches of farmed fields dispersed amongst the trees and all of it on ever-rolling hills of earth.

Anna’s wandering eyes, desperate to avoid the hundreds of grasshoppers, see a sign announcing an upcoming road as Tree Horn Ridge Loop Drive. How quint, Anna thinks to herself, but her inner voice is mocking and snide so Anna keeps it to herself.

From where they have come to a stop Tom can’t see any oncoming traffic, but he can see the left side of a massive yellow bull dozer. A tiny little grasshopper, as black as the Honda’s paintjob, leaps brazenly through Tom’s open window slapping its glittery purple wings in his face as it flies past to land on the dash board. The insect’s flight seems surreal and slow-motion to Tom who watches the dazzling purple wings with empty eyes. Anna screams and recoils. Tom snaps from his momentary stupor and laughs out loud at her reaction, but he catches sight of the man behind him and his laughter dies in his throat. The stone-faced man looks both worried and frightened; both emotions look foreign and uncomfortable on his shadowed face.

Anna reaches to her side for the copy of People Magazine she grabbed in Stillwater, keeping her eyes on the small oddly colored insect skittering around on the dash. She draws the magazine to her lap, and rolls it tightly with both hands. She brings her paper death tube down onto the unsuspecting grasshopper, convincingly squishing it and squirting orange innards halfway across the dashboard.

“Was that necessary?” Tom asks while looking at the orange mess smeared across the dash.

Without pause, Anna responds, “Absolutely. The chirping bastards kept me up all night, Tom. They damn near drove me insane.” Something in her tone tints the words with eeriness. She flinches with each tiny thud of a grasshopper throwing itself against the side of the Honda, her heart racing in rhythm with the soft thuds as it tries to crawl up her throat.

A scream cuts through the grasshoppers’ song, which swells and swallows the scream as it the insects meant to keep the scream a secret. Anna feels the blood flush from her face as she spins to Tom.

“Turn us around, Tom!” She yells louder than she means to.

He turns to look at her, but traffic gives a sudden lurch forward. The progress only lasts for a few feet before the line of vehicles comes to rapid stop again. Anna’s frightened eyes scan the traffic, but are drawn above it to the darkening sky. She screams without fully realizing it when she sees the swarm of giant black grasshoppers leaping towards them with glittery fans of vibrant purple reflecting the newly risen sun in terrible prisms as they move.

All hell breaks loose.

A short, stocky man wearing an orange hardhat and a green safety vest dashes into view next to the RV. He is swinging a SLOW/STOP sign at several dog-sized black grasshoppers hissing and jumping at him. The RV’s taillights flash bright red as it attempts to back up, but it smashes the silver Mustang’s front end and stops cold. The Mustang’s driver, a middle-aged man in Dockers and a brown and orange striped polo-shirt, stomps out of his car shaking his fists at the RV. Dockers takes a few long angry strides in the direction of the RV as if he is planning to march right up to the side door like it was a trailer in a trailer park. He takes a good three steps before he finally sees the road worker struggling against the big black hoppers. Dockers makes a funny face, and looks around, as if he expects to see a camera crew hidden in the shadows of the evergreens. Instead, Dockers watches the road worker slap one black grasshopper away with his sign, just as another leaps onto the man’s broad shoulders. Its mandibles tear through muscle and sinew to scrap against his collar bone. The man falls face forward onto the side of the road, fighting weakly against, not only the grasshopper which took him down, but, anther two which scamper onto him through the cloud of dust his tumble stirs.

As the dust clears Anna watches one of the black grasshoppers perched on the road worker’s back digging out his spine while keeping its insect eyes on her. Dockers watches the same thing, and his hand twitches slowly several inches from his door handle, but his numb legs are frozen in place and his reeling mind doesn’t think to lean over slightly to reach the handle. He begins screaming as a group of giant black grasshoppers charges him.

More screams erupt from the RV and the side of the road is suddenly crowded with people in tacky tourists clothing getting shredded by the attacking swarm. Anna watches a mother attempt to shield her daughter, only to get her arms eaten, and then watch her young daughter get decapitated by a black grasshopper the size of a bear. Anna can’t pull her eyes away from the scene, despite how horrendous it is. Each and every person who has tried to flee has been taken down by one or more giant grasshoppers and torn apart by twitching mandibles and barbed legs. Dockers unfreezes from his fear just as a sleek oil-backed grasshopper at long as he is tall tackles him to the ground. The man screams into the asphalt as the monster tears at his spine, pulling most of it away with one firm tug of its powerful mandibles. Anna turns away from the  massacre to scream at her pale-faced boyfriend again.

“Tom, turn us around!” Anna screams the words and Tom shifts into reverse without taking his wide eyes off the carnage ahead of them. His muscles freeze after completing the initial shift, and he applies no pressure to the gas pedal to complete the retreat.

The roar of a bulldozer rivals that of the insectiod army as it rumbles into view on the opposite side of the RV as the slaughter, crushing orange cones as it rolls forward. The blue Chevy behind them jerks hard to the side and pulls around them, barely missing the Honda in its rush.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Anna repeats the modern trauma chant while Tom curses at the Chevy as it jerks past him, smashing over road cones and charging the bulldozer which just appeared. The stone-faced driver of the Chevy doesn’t have time to avoid the bulldozer as if he somehow missed its loud diesel-reeking appearance.  The bulldozer’s large yellow blade tears through the Chevy’s front end like claws through flesh. The Chevy’s driver doesn’t scream as he truck is engulfed in flames and shoved into a grinding, smoking retreat by the bulldozer. After hitting the truck, the dozer changes direction and forces the flaming pickup into the woods on the opposite side of the road from Anna and Tom. As it rumbles past them, neither Tom nor Anna see a driver in the bulldozer, just several grasshoppers climbing all over the construction vehicle.

An old man clad in rags staggers alongside the RV. He drags his hand along the side of the RV leaving a smeared crimson handprint which stands out vividly against the RV’s bright white. The old man’s long face is streaked with the same crimson as his hands and his long tangled beard hanging down to his belly is a vibrant scarlet with weak streaks of gray. He looks at Tom and Anna, his eyes swirling rainbows of dark neon colors which chill them both deep in their souls.

“What is this all about?” Tom whispers his question to himself.

The traffic behind them surges forward in the wake of the pickup, effectively blocking Tom and Anna’s planned escape. A colossal grasshopper leaps from the trees and lands on the top of the RV, crushing the massive vehicle down a few feet and making it sway as it settles. The RV creaks loudly as it sways and comes within inches of hitting the bearded old man, who ignores both the swaying RV and gigantic grasshopper atop it. The sleek monster hisses and spits at the little Honda before jumping at it.

“Holy shit, get out!” Tom yells as he opens his door and throws himself onto the asphalt.

He lands elbows first, but lands with enough momentum to smack his chin on the highway before he rolls away from the car just as the grasshopper smashes it to shards of metal and plastic with its girth. Tom sees blood splattered across the wreckage of the flattened Honda after the massive hopper smashes the next car in line, and he knows Anna didn’t make it out in time. He has no time to mourn his lost love, because a dog-sized hopper pounces onto his chest almost immediately. The monster smashes his ribs, and drools black slime onto his pale-face. The mutant grasshopper has two rows of eyes, quickly clicking mandibles, and a circular mouth lined with rows of sharp teeth. Tom panics and smashes the grasshopper in its closest eye. The creature lurches away blinded from the lucky strike, but another uses Tom as a launch pad crushing any ribs not already destroyed as it leaps of off him.

The momentum of the grasshopper’s leap rolls Tom’s battered body on the highway like a rag doll. Tom raises his hand at the people behind him, he can’t draw a deep enough breath to scream. His eyes relay his panic and pain to the people in their cars and trucks as he reaches feebly for their help. The grasshopper he temporarily blinded crawls over him slowly, methodically, severing a limb at a time and tearing at his back with its barbed feet in the middle of the highway.

The man with the red face and beard stumbles up to Tom’s scattered remains. Both his eyes seem to be rolling different directions, but it is impossible to tell because of their wild rainbow hues. He yells something unintelligible and hundreds of normal grasshoppers converge on the severed limbs, avoiding the old man completely.

The stunned drivers behind the scene slam into each other in their panic as the swarm of grasshoppers overtakes them on its way into St. Jim’s.

Two leather-clad bikers run screaming for the safety rail only to be gutted and flayed before their abandoned motorcycles hit the ground.

A white-van full of juvenile delinquents and two probation officers locks the doors to no avail as bear-sized black grasshoppers smash themselves into the windshield until it shatters in. Hundreds of black grasshoppers swarm the jagged opening and the next instant arterial spray colors the unbroken windows.

A team of sheet-rockers exit their battered work-truck swinging their hammers like savages. Neither makes contact even once before they are attacked. The driver manages a frightful war cry before a hopper nearly as big as him leaps onto his back and bites off the top of his head. The other man watches his friend die, and decides to retreat. He reaches for the door handle stiff with fear. An eight-inch long grasshopper lands on the sheet-rocker’s outstretched arm and rips ravenously at the tender flesh of his wrist. Blood spurts to the blacktop with every beat of the man’s heart. Others smell the spilling blood and swarm the whimpering man.

Screams join in the grasshoppers’ song as the massacre concludes in violent bloody fashion leaving no survivors on the gore-stained highway. The old bearded man, the hermit known as The Corn Eater, waddles towards the town which he wandered away from so long ago, his bare feet slapping the concrete and flinging blood with every step. He sees through the eyes of the swarm, and back in the decrepit shack the Pulse in the Dark glows terrible neon colors pleased as it watches the swarm advance through his shimmering eyes. 

Next 'episode' will be posted Tuesday, April 1st. 

You can find more of my scribblings HERE.