The Uninviting
Envenomed
The Unknown Creature
The Third Canister
Jeff Daniels Micro Prey
The Uninviting
Part One
A story out of Peru and the Amazon Jungle of the Microscopic World at its most terrifying point, one no one can ignore…
Erich Maria Gunderson, had long been a biochemist in Augsburg, Germany, he had taken some time off as a graduate student, to study Plant hormones and pheromones, the signaling scents used by plants, and in particular response and reaction to insects, and during these early days, went to visit a professor, by the name of Manuel Tapia, from the University of Lima, whereupon they both had went to Iquitos, took a boat 125-miles up the Amazon River to a small lodge, the region being infested with nearly every kind of insect known to mankind for research and study.
Thereafter He became a professor at Heidelberg University for a number of years, getting a regular salary and a comfortable job. That was his early life, all the way up to his sixty-forth Birthday.
What had happened to Professor Manuel Tapia, no one knows, he just up and vanished, so Erich Maria said, told the authorities, and his body was never found—suspicious as it was, nothing could be proven beyond speculation.
And of course the reason for this story is that he discovered something, now housed in a small shack, owned by a guy who owns a pottery-shop, whom also sells necklaces made out of beads and the colorful untidy heap of plant life that surrounds him—not an educated man by far, but a needful man.
Other than a few tourists and Doctoral students studying and writing on their thesis’ on the indigenous people, archeology, spiders, mites, ants, beetles and so forth, botanists for the most part, the area is silent. No highways to turn off of or on to, no illumination like the Eiffel Tower or New York City at midnight, no industrial park, not much of anything.
To the outside world it looks quite dull, unromantic, not the place you’d take your sweetheart. The hut has just a simple metal roof, nothing more than a broken down wooden shed, crude at best, and Omar and his son Fillmore Dayton run the place, when not drunk, they put on rubber gloves to check on the Uninviting, as instructed by Erich Maria.
He had learned from Erich Maria, the substance was from the chemicals of plants. At the time Omar didn’t take Erich seriously, but he was being paid $100-per month to simple sit in that shack, and guard the substance, three canisters about the size of an eight ounce tomato soup can, and was told not to open them, just guard them, keep it under the floor in a secure metal box, lock it, that someday he’d return for them.
He explained: that should some form of a technological company ask questions on what he was doing there, about his research, that it was no more than general lab observation, testing this and that.
Truth be told, his investigation wasn’t the usual line of work, a biochemist does, it went beyond those layers.
As I was about to say, Omar had his suspicions, supposedly as often we get, in guarding something out of the ordinary, and shrugged Erich’s warning aside, and took a peek, his son opening up the box, he was just a kid then, now in his thirties, Omar himself, the same age as Erich.
He did remember what Doctor Gunderson told him though: “Plants talk,” he told them, “they communicate with one another by way of releasing chemicals to trigger responses.”
“Why?” Omar had asked.
Gunderson saying, “Plants interchange information in particular when under attack by insects. You see there are sixty to seventy percent more insects in this world than plant life, as a result, they have a need to protect their species (survival of the fittest as Darwin would say), thus, they have created a defensive system similar to what mankind would call chemical warfare, in that they can rapidly produce toxins within their system to scare off their enemy to stop their attack, consequently making their leafage taste bad, or infect the creatures that insist on eating them while eating them, even if they taste bad. In so doing, they attack back, and during this process warn others by chemical responses that an attack is forthcoming, or in progress.
“But why a guard for a substance,” pondered Omar, “that is worthless and he puts no claim to its chemical responses, or shares them with other such biochemists, for future research, isn’t what it’s all about? Why not just dump it in the river, or drain it in the dirt if it is so ugly?”
So what he didn’t tell Omar, led him to believe it was a treasure; I mean to say, it all didn’t make any sense to store it for thirty-years, well at the time, it was only ten years, and Fillmore was but thirteen years old. But he shut his mouth, he didn’t want to ask too many questions, talk himself out of a job that required very little—you know what I mean.
So it was that day in September, he told his son, “I just want to know what this is all about! I want to know what’s really in those canisters. I don’t like being kept under the rug (sort of speaking, he inferred) for a decade… so we’ll see for ourselves.”
“I don’t like it pa,” Fillmore replied, in a near whisper.
“Probably it is nothing,” his father responded, in a humors manner.
Fillmore gave him a grim look.
Omar gave him back a look that said: what do you care!
I mean, Gunderson was not going to walk thorough the door of the shack an any given minute; and true it was.
Omar pushed back the board of the floor which hid the metal box, with the three canisters under it, then folded his arms, said: “Well son, take it out.”
Omar had an ample belly, hard to move at times, he had gained a sufficient amount of weight in a past decade. The son just looked at the box.
“Well, are you going to, or what?” the old man questioned.
Now pulling the box out, Fillmore felt nervous. But he felt: what the hell, if my father wants me to—he had no choice.
There were no windows in the shack. The boy put the key into the lock, opened the metal box, pulled out one canister, took the top off the canister, it wasn’t easy, it had been sealed for ten-years. He thought as he glanced back at his father, what was waiting for him…
Then he saw thousands of microorganisms hundreds of bacteria species (unknowing what they were), they had grown to various sizes and shapes, he had no glasses on, his pulse was pounding, the old man pushed himself backwards, a feeling of a cool breeze hit the face of the boy, a large black substance was emitted from the canister, hanging in thin air, it moved quickly with a hum to his face, blinding him, deep grooves appeared in his face.
Omar noticed the floor was crawling with creatures as small as a grain of sand. He crouched down to look more closely, and as he peered he saw spots of a black substance covering the floor stretching itself out, he stared curiously before he thought to grab his son and run out of the shack. Fillmore was bleeding from his eyes, ears, mouth, all opened areas of the head.
“What the hell!” Omar said, afraid to touch his son, then ran and poured water over his head, buckets of water, as Fillmore stood in near shock, dripping blood onto the ground. He found some old rags, wiped his face dry, the bleeding had begun to stop.
That was twenty years ago. He had time to put things aside, clean the shack back up, say nothing to the Professor, lest he lose his salary, and he needed it. His son now half blind, red gashes on his forehead and around his eyes; he had ripped some clothing off the clothesline, wrapped it around his hands to secure the canister that day, his wrist and knuckles still had the red wounds to validate that day had come and gone.
It was now, September, 2011, he was waiting for the professor, not thinking anymore of the contents of what was in those canisters, he knew. But the professor didn’t know for sure, thirty years had not killed whatever he found or created, it had fermented into a stronger substance, what on God’s earth was he planning? No damned idea, he told himself. He was not sure what was coming, he just had to wait for Doctor Erich Maria.
It was September 21, 2011; Omar and his son both were lying in a hammock, half asleep outside their shack, when someone splashed them all over with the substance of one of those canisters: Omar opened his eyes, his last thoughts were, “The bastard never gave me a chance!” And then darkness closed around both of them, Omar and Fillmore. The micro organisms and its deadly potency had grown so strong, it took only a minute, and one thought to kill both father and son.
Professor Tomas Gunderson, the elder son of Professor Erich Maria, said to his father, wearing wire-framed spectacles, rubber gloves, and a kind of a white jumpsuit, “I do understand, we must be patient for the results of some experiments, and make sacrifices, such as this one for science.”
His father replying, “Fill me in on the details later,” and went back into the shack to consult his notes.
#835 (12-11-2011)
Envenomed
(The Microscopic World—Incarnate)
Part Two
The Microscopic Word
The boat drove away from the landing sight, the dock area, down a mile or so on a tributary of the Amazon River, brood trees shaded the river, and the dark waters of the dock and tributary, where the piranhas dwelled, the whole dark tributary infested with them.
An hour or so down river towards Iquitos, the Captain spotted his village. An open area, plateau, along the banks of the river, above a slight embankment, the area was surrounded with small huts and a large wooden structure in the middle, the sides open to the wind, it was the school, “That’s my village, my home!” shouted the Captain, a little man, perhaps closer to eighty than seventy, an ugly little man with deep grooves in his face—thinned out hair, no taller than five foot four, Captain Chipana.
Professor Tomas and his father Dr. Erich Maria Gunderson made no comment.
The river turned pale dark—it was heavy with shifting clouds, and a full moon was appearing, as if out of the dust of the sky, shedding a ray of sandy light on the river as if it was a spot light.
“Folks like you usually go to the lodges along the river, normally not this far up river,” the Captain told the two professors. Erich Maria looked at the Captain—thought, ‘the busybody captain, why doesn’t he keep to his own business…’ he reminded him of an ugly toad.
The river narrowed now, with a slight zigzag to it, then they came to a fork, and the rushing waters were a bit difficult to navigate through, especially with the moon the size it was, and seemingly coming closer to the earth, with its magnetic pull. The boat tossed about some as waters shifted out of and into the colliding waterway to its right.
“Be careful,” said Erich Maria, “we’ve got extremely rare specimens here.” (Some of the species of insect, and insect-venoms were uncharted, unknown to mankind, never named.)
Looking down into his open black canvas carryon bag Erich Maria brought onboard, consisting of three canisters, one half empty, and several tubs with an assortment of poisons—, venous in them from insects such as: caterpillars, centipedes, spiders, wasps—even some from snakes, he tighten his ankles on each side of the bag to secure it more.
“You scientists are spies for some big corporation—aren’t you…just robbing us Peruvians like the Spanish done hundreds of years ago with our gold.” It was a statement-question for the most part, a rhetorical question at best.
The old Captain stood up, kicked the bag, “Well!” he said with a hoarse intimidating voice, “Aren’t you?”
“You be careful Captain, what’s in this bag will kill you and me instantly,” said Tomas.
The black bag was two foot square, about eighteen inches in height, the floor of the boot was uneven beneath Erich’s feet, and the bag was balanced on the open keel of the boat.
“Shoo the insects away from me,” said Erich to Tomas, they were drawn to the boat’s light, and Erich was now holding the bag in place with his two ankles and knees, filling a tube, and placing a syringe at its end, filling it with wasp and snake venom—thus not free to swat and shoo away the insects himself, from his face, neck, legs and forearms, and so forth.
“I want more compensation for this long ride back to Iquitos,” said the Captain, in a most rough and serious tone. “And perhaps a little payment for keeping my mouth shut—who knows what you two are taking out of my lovely country, in that there bag.”
“I believe you’re right Captain,” said Professor Erich Gunderson, irritated with the old man’s threats, “I think we can accommodate that immediately.” A devilish grin became apparent across Chipana’s face.
“Turn the boat into the tributary over there,” said Erich, pointing to his right. “We’ll settle up there.”
“Why?” questioned the Captain, “we can settle up right here?”
“I want the boat steady, and my bag steady when I pull out the currency in my pants pockets, if you want to get paid.” He didn’t say his jacket, in fear the old man would himself, insist on pulling out his wallet.
“Oh…that…okay!” agreed the old man (hesitantly).
Envenomed
Erich grabbed the arm of the Captain, fast as a wasp, he pushed the syringe deep into his upper arm, before the old Captain could figure out what he was up to, injected, envenomed him with toxin he had extracted from insects, which produced a rapid fireball throughout his Central Nervous System: the old man started to go into convulsions, a seizure, his eyes rolled up into his head.
Erich knew within a few more minutes he’d have internal hemorrhaging, it would make his heart stop (he felt the poisons, he had grabbed in the dark and mix together, not quite knowing at the time, exactly what venoms he grabbed and blended, were wasp and crab spider venoms, both very poisonous when injected in such amounts; although the snake venoms were next to them, he could have grabbed that too).
His body started to swell, as if he had elephantiasis.
It all happened so quick it was like a swap sting to the Captain—; his vital signs now were very weak.
“Wh..t it?” he tried to say.
“Wh…t did yo…u do to m..e?” he slurred out, in a questionable manner, his face distorted.
“Push him into the dark waters,” commanded Erich to his son. “The piranhas will eat him; they are like little sharks, and wolves, when it comes to smelling blood.”
(SPLASH!”)
((Microscopic World written 12/11/2011)( Envenomed written: 12/17/2011)
The Unknown Creature
(The Great Iron head Mite)
Part Three
Inside the second canister was small insects no bigger than a comma in this writing, they made a snapping noise, swimming in their own spaghetti like reddish matter. Professor Tomas Gunderson, was in his father’s lab (Doctor Erich Maria Gunderson), testing the black marble eyed mite—its hemolymph (insect blood, for its chemical defenses, those that scare off its predators).
The young professor was slanted examining one; he picked it up with a tweezers and held it under a microscope, it struggled some, it had six legs, and that untiring clanking sound—apparently coming from its iron like jaws, round as a ladybug.
“What are these things?” he murmured to his father as he was in motion to leave the lab and go next door to his private enclosed lab (encircled with glass, where one could see the other).
“They’re not known in the normal world,” he confessed. “That’s why I canned them, decades ago, I thought they’d be dead, and I was too fearful to take them out of Peru at the time.”
Now alone, sweat dripping off his forehead, a drop fell onto the bug, the mite, he became very sticky, and he clamped on tight against the tweezers, to where Tomas, couldn’t shake it loose. Thus, bringing the insect out from under the microscope, and closer to his eyes, he had no glasses on, trying to break its resistance from the surface tension, it heaped itself up and onto the eyelash of the professor, then like a blob onto the surface of his right eye, making his eye twitch rapidly, liquefying the creature.
Forward cautiously, but rapidly the mite dug into the eye sprawling its legs as if creating extending roots, as it worked its way deeper into the eyeball.
A sharp pain came to his eye, and a putrid smell, odor came out, seeped into his nostrils. He tried to pull the bug out but it kept moving inward, it was making a tunnel. The walls of the eye were protecting the creature now, and therefore, he couldn’t any longer see the creature with his good eye, it had vanished. He looked into the glassed enclosed private lab, motioned to his father for assistance, as the creature seemed to grow larger, wider, and stronger.
Professor Erich Maria, swiftly hurried on out of his lab and into his son’s, saw the little tunnel it had built, or dug, its body being reddish green in color, and prickly with hairs, and a head of armor, hard as hard plastic, eyes black as midnight marbles—he knew its dimensions and colors and some of its capabilities well.
Again its odors drifted out of its newly dug tunnel, tart and sharp, the smell of formic acid. He looked at the eye with great interest and intensity.
“I need to do this quickly, lest it reproduce itself and create a colony within you, and I don’t know what then.” The old professor took in a deep breath, then continued, “Remain still and solid as I do what I got to do,” he told his son, “this species, they’re all females.” Then with a sharp and heavy blow to his son’s forehead, he popped out his eyeball, out of it socket, it hung like a Christmas bulb.
“Don’t move,” he murmured, “it’s coming out of the left side, and I’ll meet it.”
“Um…” came from his son’s mouth, trying to hold his body solid and straight.
“To be honest son, I’m a bit ignorant on this species; we’ll name it the Great Tomas Iron head Mite.”
“Leave my name out of it,” cried his son, and then he became wordless, just wanting it all to be over with, feeling he had lost his eye, and he had. And as Erich would continue, he’d find out in due time, it was one of the most destructive invasive insects on the planet.
Notes from Professor Erich Maria Gunderson-s notebook:
“January, 15, 2012. These high energy mites, large as they are, become larger and more deadly when any kind of liquid is poured onto them. Yet despite the threat that they may pose, I find them fascinating, and do not feel, I am in any real threat by them, only as a group of thousands, yet one must be careful in handling them. They vomit a substance, and chew any kind of liquid—and can absorb it, and produce glue like substances out of their six legs; especially when fear is triggered. Their chopping and clanging sounds I do believe are hunger sounds; they eat one another, a form of cannibalistic survival…” Professor EMG
#837 December, 13, 2011
The Third Canister
((The Deadly Fungus) (March, 2012))
Part Four
The young professor Tomas Gunderson’s eyes were empty, vacant, body oddly twisted, as if he had had a heart attack. Greenish fungus was all about him, he looked, his body looked mushy soaked, there was a scent, an odor that exhumed from his body—that of strychnine and oleander sap, and another mysterious, but deadly odor, that he couldn’t identify, before he had died.
There was a look of the forsaken on his face, and those threads of green fungus like growth.
He had been in the process of being consumed (for within the fungus, mixed with the fungus, were cylindrical animals, micro-millipedes, normally not aggressive, similar to a centipedes—and from the pores of the insects came a stanch, one Tomas could not identify, cyanide! mixed with the other lethal chemicals within the fungus…and the insects themselves had iron like jaws, and were eating, chopping there way into his flesh) when Doctor Erich Maria Gunderson entered the lab.
It was forenoon; his son had worked throughout the night evidently, so it looked. He held back his tears to investigate, knelt by his son’s side, his body ravished.
Several biochemical students stood at the doorway, drooped in mystery. Tomas, He had been working on the contents within the third canister his father had brought back from the Amazon Jungle, trying to identify the smells.
“I tried so hard,” the old professor professed out loud, said, cried— “He just wouldn’t listen, he wanted to work on his own, make his own discoveries.”
He went to enfold his son’s body into his arms, at which time a young graduate student by the name of Jeff Denials, a visiting student from Bio-Tech, Chicago stopped him, holding him back saying, “You’re a brave soul Doctor but this is crazy!”
The fungus had been in the canister, it was moving, as if it was alive, with wormy type organisms.
Silent and weary, the other students stood wordless at the doorway watching, as that one mysterious odor seeped about, then all of a sudden one of the female students yelled: “Be careful Jeff, I smell deadly fumes, I think it is an incredible toxic, I can’t seem to name it though.”
Jeff spoke: “We’ve got to move out of here professor, lock this lab up tight!” then grabbing a yardstick, coughing and coking from the fumes, his eyes watering, he slashed at the fungus as if it was a monster, as if he was holding a machete. Then he cringed from the fumes, his throat tightened, the micro-organisms were multiplying, the fungus widening—as he stood up, the old professor had died, a heart attack from the fumes, and lethal chemicals in the fungus. Thus, Jeff held his breath; beat off the fungus that made it to his shoes, in particular, onto his right shoe, striking at the substance, the micro-movements in the fungus, and then kicked off his right shoe.
The fungus squirmed all about the shoe; it had Jeff’s scent in it.
As he looked down and onto the body of the old professor, he had been covered over by the fungus, like a green shroud.
Then the primitive part of his brain was activated and he could no longer hold his breath (for had he not up to this point, the fumes would have stopped his heart). Thus, so-called reality had sunk in; he rushed to the door, released the carbon dioxide within his lungs, locked the door in front of him and with his comrades, ran to the parking lot— (class dismissed…).
# 838 (12/14/2011)
Jeff Denials Micro Prey
((Chicago, Micro-Biochemistry Tech) (July 2, 2012))
Part Five
For Jeff Denials, life went on as normal for the month of April, 2012—now back in Illinois, at Chicago Micro-Biochemistry Tech (CMBT—or Bio-Tech). But inside his body, his biological system had been invaded; deep inside his guts were bacteria from the fungus and its micro organisms, perhaps an insidious micro-prey.
Strange as it was, he couldn’t figure out why he had lost the capabilities of smell and taste. In those following days after his visit to the Minnesota biochemistry lab, it was as if the atoms inside of him were mismatched—with life outside of him. Something was wrong, perchance an alteration inside his body was in process, and his system was having a hard time interacting, adjusting, again I say with the atoms around him, in the outside world: so he was thinking.
He had no concrete idea; neither did Doctor Stan Weber, professor at Chicago Micro-Biochemical lab 4; young Daniels professor.
By and large, Jeff was a happy go lucky fellow, student, now he brought with him wherever he absorbed in Minnesota, thus, producing, an eerie pale composure, countenance. Had you asked him, he would have said it was due to those dooming echoes that flowed cumbersome throughout his head, his body: like trimmers prior to an earthquake.
“By gosh, what is it?” he murmured to the professor, in lab four.
In May everything from the outside world coming in, he heard in low frequencies, contrary to what was happening inside of him. He was feeling some form of lethal presence inside of him.
“I’m beginning to understand,” he told the professor, “how it is to slowly go insane.”
In June, one afternoon he lost his balance and began staggering as if he was drunk on a sinking ship. The professor scrambled to his rescue; catching him just in time before he fell right onto the hard concrete floor in lab four.
Upon awakening for a brief moment, he told the Professor—in so may words—the only thing I can remember is: the earth under my feet started to rumble and groan and my heart started hammering… in plain words he whispered: “My chest is crashing.”
Whatever it was whatever he saw, appeared, and materialized a moment before his death: as if he could see right into his body, his heart section, and then he passed on.
(It was as if a flying predator, with whooshing roars, was climbing out of his stomach, then crisscrossing his head, and somehow ended up in or on, his heart. That all of a sudden pulled the cord of life out from under him).
Notes from Professor Stan Weber’s Journal (July 2, 2012): “The best conclusions I can theorize about Jeff Denials mysterious death, a graduate student here at Chicago Micro-Biochemistry Tech, in the biochemistry lab four, goes as follows: he breathed in some form of micro-physical-organism, while in the Minnesota lab, during his visit there in March, of 2012. His body started up some kind of defenseless—well, for lack of a better word, some kind of a weak defense system against the invading prey; that being, sound waves, noises, drumming or banging sounds. The prey went from his abdomen to his brain, via, bloodstream, perhaps tumbling along its way. The prey hearing the echoes that his body produced (and that he was hearing himself, which was driving him crazy) that was telling the prey to leave, telling all the systems at in his body at the same time to be on guard of this invader, was at this time searching for the kill zone, while at the same time forming a larger shape, growing. To Jeff’s brain the prey was invisible, and when it sensed its presence in one area, it had already left, it was already in another. As the prey closed in on its kill zone—the heart, the sounds became louder for Jeff. The prey tried in a way to jam the sounds and couldn’t, thus it started to eat at the heart itself, and abruptly killing its own world around it. I have to assume the worse, that it found a new home, I just hope it is not me!”
#839 (12/15/2011)
