Wednesday I went to a meeting at the USGS offices in Raleigh. At lunch time I grabbed my boxed lunch and went to sit under a tree behind the office building. Across the street from USGS is a fenced enclosure that I think belongs to NC State University. Just inside the fence is the bizarre contraption you see in the photo. Sadly the SpyCAM is still my lousy cellphone camera, so you only get a general idea of what I saw.
This unusual contraption is a piece of corrugated pipe on wheels. One end is sealed off and the other end has a doorway. The top of the doorway is attached to a cable that raises to open the back end of the "trailer". On the side and end of this macabre invention is a message painted in white paint.
WARNING: STAY BACK
You have to wonder what kind of creature they are hauling around?
And why?
As I sit underneath the tree, staring at the cage, I can't help but imagine ...
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Sweat drips from his forehead in the heat of the afternoon. He glances at the notebook in his hand. Water falls from his face onto the paper and flows down the page, creating little blue streams as it rolls over the words, picking up ink and carrying it downward.
He has written down the address, but after arriving and parking, he realizes he has no idea which one of the multitude of buildings houses his afternoon lab.
"Damn," he says to himself.
This latest screw-up is his fault and he knows it. If that stupid tease Monica had worn a bra the day before, he wouldn't have spent the last twenty minutes of class staring at her tits instead of paying attention to what Professor Kay had been saying.
Lab was forty percent of his grade and with an average in the low seventies, he knew he couldn't afford the zero he would receive if he missed today's class.
Sighing, he heads across the yard, looking and listening for some sign of his fellow students.
A faded wooden sign rests on the grass against a long white building. The words painted on the sign have faded from their once brilliant red to a chalky pink, but the message is unmistakeable.
"Research Labs."
"Thank god," he thinks and starts to jog towards the building.
As he approaches the doorway he notices another sign. Printed on white paper and tacked to a front window he reads, "Please enter through the back."
He glances at his watch and curses. His slow jog becomes a run and he sprints down the side of the long building. Turning behind the building he runs directly into a small metal trailer.
"What the fuck?"
He steps back, rubbing his left shoulder where it collided with an iron bar rising from the rear of the vehicle.
The strange contraption in front of him captures his attention. The trailer is made from a six foot section of corrugated pipe mounted on a rusty metal frame. In wobbly spray painted letters on the metal pipe someone has written, "Warning Stay Back."
The pipe and frame rests on a set of wheels. The wheels are cracked and bulge outward having gone flat from neglect. Both ends of the pipe are sealed off, but the rear contains a crude doorway. The same metal frame he crashed into rises from the back of the trailer. A cable from the top of the frame is attached to the doorway forming a primitive pulley system allowing the door to be raised. He assumes this is to give someone, or something, access to the interior of the pipe.
As he stands catching his breath, he hears a scraping sound from the crude cage.
Ignoring the painted warning, he approaches the cage.
He leans forward, listening.
A soft rythmic breathing comes from beyond the doorway. To the young man, the animal within sounds like a large and friendly cat. Feeling confident he grabs the cable and pulls. The doorway rises in it's metal frame opening the cage.
For a second he thinks he must be mistaken, nothing appears to be in the metal tube.
The sound of scraping metal makes him take a step backward and something springs from the darkness.
In his last moment he sees a blur of teeth and eyes.
As he raises his arms and begins to scream, the mouth expands exponentially
swallowing the unlucky student in one gulp.
The creature's body convulses as the sound of grinding bones comes from within. Slowly it's distended body begins to grow smaller until it returns to nearly it's normal size.
It's hunger satisified for now, the creature retreats to it's home and the doorway descends.
Bloody drool leaks from the bottom of the doorway ...
... and a contented purr comes from within.
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The above "story" is what I heard Stephanie Tolan refer to as an SFD. For those that don't hang around fiction writers, that's Shitty First Draft. No editing, just a brain dump. Sometimes you take SFD's, polish them and make them into stories. This one reminds me of a cheesy story from a DC horror comic that would have been published 35 years ago. I may rewrite and enhance it, I may not. But these kinds of things are fun and help to exercise the brain, so consider this a peek into my writer's notebook.
Lunch seems to bring out the worst in me. Must be the food.
Keep the Adventure Alive,
Tom Calhoun
