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« on: September 20, 2016, 11:05:51 PM »
decided i'd dip my toe into some story writing with a short story before creating Gorilla Warfare, the hottest novel of 2017 or something.
i also wrote this pretty late at night, so i'll probably come back to revise it. i just though of a neat concept and ran with it for a little bit, just tell me what you think of it.
Moths
For my whole life, there existed a forest behind my house.
There was nothing haunted or particularly paranormal about it, though. In fact, it was shockingly uninteresting. Me and a couple of the neighbors had built a pathway leading to a tree house that was more a sad, unfulfilled stack of wooden planks than a tree house (as well as some dilapidated couches and lawn chairs). We never ventured much further beyond that, though, as there was nothing interesting enough to warrant the possibility of ticks. However, everyone always suspected it was the source of all the moths.
Everybody's pretty used to the moths at this point. Some kids at the school claim it's a 'strange' or even 'worrying' thing to be accustomed to, but there are rarely any serious concerns about them. The properties in this area are decently sized yet incredibly cheap, thanks to the moths. However, it's not an uncommon occurrence to fumble in the dark to find the right key on your front porch, despite the light being on. It turns out that a large swarm of moths can quickly block out a simple porch light completely. Once you get the hang of it, it only becomes a matter of whether or not you can get into your house before the moths can swarm. It's not really strange, though. Everybody knows moths flock to light.
It's not a seasonal thing, either. Nobody is really sure what species of moth they are specifically, but they have to be pretty hardy to survive the winters here. That's not to say they don't die, though. They die pretty frequently, to be quite honest. After about a week, you usually need a broom to sweep away the lifeless husks and detached wings littering your driveway. This is of course counteracted by an incredibly rapid rate of reproduction. It's generally recommended that you scrape the moth eggs off your walls when you see them, but it's mostly fine unless you allow it to get out of control. A couple dozen is manageable, but porous, almost bubbling amalgamates of densely-packed moth eggs are pretty unsightly. If i had to describe it, I'd say it looks roughly like cave stalagmite, just way 'fleshier.' It's ok to let them hatch, though. The moths would find their way in anyways.
I'd be lying if I said people were at peace with the moths, as it's definitely more of a coping situation. Even the most apathetic person would be bothered by finding dead moths in his cereal bowl, or having to scrape away the charred skin of the moths unfortunate enough to be in your toaster in the morning. People always find solace in the little things that make it seem less abnormal, though. Did you know that you actually consume about a pound of insect parts per year?
There's been a couple of attempts to get rid of the moths, believe it or not. When people realized pesticides and exterminators weren't enough, they suggested burning the forest down. People began considering this so seriously that the local police force actually had to patrol the forest at night to ensure nobody actually tried it. That didn't stop Dan Bush from trying it, the poor guy. Some people just can't deal with things in a healthy way, I guess. The autopsy claimed he burned to death, and they concluded he had committed accidental self-combustion while attempting to follow through with this plan. Ironically enough, the light from the fire he had set upon himself actually attracted many moths to him, as evident by the estimated hundreds of moths found near his charred corpse. In an incredibly ironic, and honestly kind of repulsive twist of fate, many moths had decided to use his body as sustenance for their offspring. His corpse was near unrecognizable when the police found it the next morning. One officer described his body as having "Molted into some kind of flesh cocoon." His death has turned into a kind of urban legend in our area since then, spawning a multitude of wild speculations. Some kids on the schoolyard would tell tales of his corpse reanimating, vibrating and twitching rapidly, as though the moths were piloting him. They would say the moths would crawl from his pores, from under his eyes, and escape from his lips. Some would even say the things inside of him aren't even moths anymore.
I'd just say that people have a bit too much imagination.
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