Thursday July 23rd, 2009

The exercise:

Today's starter is: insect invasion.

Thankfully not inspired by anything in particular.

Mine:

It was too late for Karen Carter to reconsider coming in to work that day, seeing as she was already at her desk and the clock at the bottom right corner of her monitor was displaying 9:45 am. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the heels of her hands and weakly tapped her feet together while mumbling, "There's no place like home."

"Karen! I needed that report on my desk ten minutes ago!" Aaron, her constantly angry supervisor, bellowed from down the hall. Karen groaned and flopped back into her chair, her head lolling to the side to stare bleakly out of her twenty-third floor window.

That was when she saw the insect for the first time. It was no more than a few inches long, perhaps an inch wide, with milky white eyes and a midnight black body. Karen thought it was odd to see a bug this high up, clinging to her window no less. And it seemed to be staring right at her.

Karen allowed herself a small shudder before dragging herself to her feet. She made her way to the coffee station down the hall (blessedly in the opposite direction of Aaron's office) and filled her Rolling Hills High, Class of '92 mug with the blackest coffee known to man. She took a long sip, shuddered again as the caffeine began to work its magic, and shuffled back to her desk.

It took her a few minutes to notice the cool draft that had appeared in her absence. It took her only slightly longer to find the inch wide, inch high hole in the glass window where the creature had been perched only minutes before.

But by then it was too late.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Oh my, the humanity! Think of the children! Won't somebody think of the children?!

Love the story though, and all the little details, particularly the phrase "...the blackest coffee known to man."

Insect Invasion

"Picnic?" said Sylvestra, holding out a picnic basket in one alabaster hand. Dr. Septopus, sat on the lawn feeling like a fish out of water, looked at her quizzically, and the Green Lightbulb sighed.
"I think you mean Piccaninny" he said, wondering if he could match the green of the grass and pretend he was invisible. Dr. Septopus slapped him with a tentacle, then hid a smile and slapped him with each other tentacle in turn.
"Sorry, think I had a mental hiccough there," he said to the indignant Green Lightbulb. "You really do have to look that word up, Green, it's offensive."
"Picnic?" repeated Sylvestra, her tone suggesting stormclouds on a summer horizon.
"Isn't it more normal to bring one picnic and lay it out, rather than a picnic per person?" said Dr. Septopus.
"That's what I said!" said the Green Lightbulb.
"It doesn't matter now, anyway," said Sylvestra sounding defeated. "The insect invasion has begun."
They looked down, as the ants swarmed out of tiny hidden holes in the lawn in their millions and attacked the three super-villains.
"What are they doing to Green?" gasped Dr. Septopus as he and Sylvestra ran for the comparative safety of the boating lake.
"Trying to milk him, I think," she gasped back. "He must look like a giant greenfly to them."

Marc said...

Indeed Greg, indeed. It's the children that are always hurt the most :(

"Dr. Septopus, sat on the lawn feeling like a fish out of water..."

Heee heee!

Also: 'ew' at the milking thing. I don't even wanna know.