My Zoo (standard:horror, 1946 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Dec 27 2009	Views/Reads: 3100/2049	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Insects! What will you do when they come to get you?

MY ZOO 

My lover was ardent, vulnerable, sincere.  When she left me for another
woman, I wept with mixed emotions.  It was inevitable -- I had known 
this for months -- but my tears weren't expressions of primitive anger, 
pain and loss.  They were tears of joy and compassion at her great good 
fortune. 

We had snuggled together, like larvae, for more than seven years; now
the poignant beauty of her flight from our cocoon touched me deeply.  
In her new metamorphosis she hovered, wing-tip to wing-tip with a 
kindred spirit.  I remained behind, aimlessly rattling around the huge 
apartment. 

This was my third incarnation as a mealy-worm.  Like my earlier wives
and lovers, I too had been re-born.  But before long, my loneliness 
became a stifling chrysalis.  A world of other beings was dimly visible 
beyond its chitinous walls.  Slowly, I felt the transformation 
commencing, the long journey I had to face alone. 

Not altogether alone.  Somehow I slept, somehow I ate, somehow I worked.
 Dream voices whispered to me through the telephone earpiece.  Somehow 
I answered.  Dream-people took my money and filled my shopping bags.  
Now and then harsh reality -- in blinding, shocking Technicolor -- 
would crash through the fragile, translucent shell around my life. 

I came home to find a large roach scaling the door jamb.  It was over
two inches long.  Instead of scampering away, it lifted its carapace 
and spread its veined brown wings with a threatening hiss.  One part of 
me recoiled in fright, while the other part dug impassionately into its 
meager archives of entomology and tried to identify the harmless 
insect.  Was it a water bug?, a dor beetle?, a lacewing?, a dung 
beetle?   If it got away, would it head for the warm spot under the 
computer and lay two million eggs? 

A thorough search of kitchen/bathroom cabinets turned up one half-empty
can of flea spray -- nothing more.  I came as close as I dared and 
emptied its contents all over the insect.  Terror had triumphed.  The 
sure-footed beetle probed every crack and slot of the door frame on its 
way down to the rug, then headed purposefully behind the filing cabinet 
ignoring the cluster of white poison lather that enveloped all but its 
feelers.  It vanished somewhere under the desk.  Considering its size, 
the flea-poison would probably supply it with nourishment all summer 
long. 

I slept fitfully and woke dreaming.  Somebody was working alongside me
in a long hallway -- we were sitting on secretary-chairs that rolled on 
casters, tacking something up on the wall.  "Watch out for that 
centipede," he told me, "it's got a tail like a scorpion."  I turned 
this way and that, but couldn't find it, until I looked at my shoe.  
The thing was clinging to the edge of my sole and was about ten inches 
long. Reflex action kicked my leg and stopped my heart simultaneously.  
The centipede remained wrapped around one of the casters, which rolled 
over it, crushing the middle section.  The two halves, linked by 
macerated segments, whipped and thrashed furiously on the terrazzo 
floor.  As I rolled my seat away, it followed, coiling and uncoiling, 
jerking, weaving, writhing, squirming.  My co-worker had disappeared.  
I abandoned the chair and fled to the far end of the hall, but all the 
doors were locked.  Behind me, the centipede seemed to attack each 
caster of the chair in turn, then twitched and wriggled in my 
direction.  I realized my soft vinyl shoes were no match for its horny 
sting.  Paralyzed with fright, I pressed into a corner, bracing my 
soles against the smooth walls to gain some altitude, but that didn't 
work either.  Nobody came.  Somewhere an alarm went off.  It rang, then 
stopped.  Now it rang again.  The telephone!  I was awake, at last. 

I leaped out of bed shaking off the macabre web of dream, secure in the
fragile reality of my sixth floor apartment.  When I grabbed the phone, 
I heard a buzz and a click.  Only when I was seated firmly on the 
toilet seat was I aware that I was not alone.  It came out from behind 
the hamper: a gray mottled hourglass embellished with eight 
multi-jointed limbs. Six glossy obsidian beads scanned every inch of my 
vulnerable skin and licked their optic mandibles.  Slowly it dawned on 
me: this was not a Black Widow.  It was too small for a Tarantula.  
Only one species was left: the Aggressive Household Spider -- renowned 


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