Tales From the Low Roads (WARNING: grisly content).

[His Divine Shadow]

This may (If failing memory serves) be the first "first person" tale yet told! I see you leave us to draw our own conclusions about the relation between the Indians and the mysterious lightning ball, what with no clear link defined. The collective angry spirits retaliating against the descendants of those who forced them there? I can't say. One thing seems clear: the government knew about the pillars, for why else would they seal off the area so well? Or is there something else in there we've yet to see? A twist of an ending, I'll say. Simply leaving family behind isn't what I anticipated. Now he's probably part of the itinerant crew who resides in the dry creek beds.

 

[Low_Roads]

Your memory continues perfect, HDS! This is indeed the first time I've employed first-person viewpoint in this series. There'll be only one other instance, short but key, towards the end (it'll be the capper, in fact). I wanted some sense of a personality behind these stories, though hardly any of them will apply to him personally... he'd only be relating things he'd heard around the Low Roads campfires. You're quite right about him being a Low Roads denizen... one we've met already, actually, although that fact won't become apparent until the end.

Astute, too, about the Indians and the well... I wanted that relationship to be vague (was the well the site of a ritual? Were the Indians victims of some unearthly force, etc? The reader shouldn't be able to figure out any more than the narrator was able to relate). I did want it to seem, however, that county officials were familiar with the menace... likely enough that a few bureaucrat monoliths joined the indigenous crowd before any fences went up!

 

[Cbarton]

Excellent tale yet again, LBH. Enjoyed the first person, 'round the campfire feel to it. Joe gets to join Lot's wife in the "Pillar of Society" fraternity. Sad end to an old friend, but the Low Roads cannot be denied their next extraordinary victim...

 

[Low_Roads]

Excellent tale yet again, LBH. Enjoyed the first person, 'round the campfire feel to it. Joe gets to join Lot's wife in the "Pillar of Society" fraternity. Sad end to an old friend, but the Low Roads cannot be denied their next extraordinary victim...

Thank you, Hawk! Lot's wife... I believe you're onto something! I've always been morbidly impressed with that Genesis incident (converting something living instantly into something non-living is freakiness beyond words!); even if it wasn't consciously considered during writing, the impression had been strongly established (oh well... if one must steal, might as well steal BIG! XD) Very pleased that you too enjoyed the confidential, first-person intimacy; I'm sorry now that I didn't use it more often in this series.

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #23

The Ravenous Flock​

You have to be careful about fooling with Mother Nature. Sometimes there can be unexpected results.

A new "natural" way to take care of rodent pests in fields is to put up big wooden boxes on poles with a hole in it and a good perch. It's a sort of luxury apartment birdhouse. You put them at strategic points around your farmland and this encourages predator birds to nest there and eat up the rats and mice.

One farmer did this. It actually worked pretty well. Hawks moved in from all over the county and set up residence. Now, the problem was that there was a balance of hawks and owls hunting on his land. They would compete for the food, the hawks hunting by day and the owls hunting by night. Hawks and owls don't get on because of this competition. They fight whenever they meet and because hawks are bigger they usually win. Now that the hawks all lived in one place, they were ganging up on the owls and killing them.

The owls gathered in one big flock for protection. They took up in this farmer's barn and their combined hooting was driving him crazy. One night he couldn't stand it anymore. He went out with a shotgun and started blasting away at the birds. The famished owls descended on the man. They pecked him to death and then ate all the flesh off his body. In the morning, all that was left was a pile of clean bones.

The farmer had changed the owls' habits. Instead of mice, they had developed a taste for human flesh. They were like a bunch of flying piranhas now.

The owls stopped their hooting because it gave them away to people. They became stealthy and silent. The flock moved from place to place frequently. They had to do this often because humans are less plentiful than rats. If a farmer would come into his barn in the middle of the day, they would surprise him. They became quick feeders and could strip a body down in just a couple of minutes.

This happened about seven times. No one knew what was causing it yet, and there was nameless terror in the farmland. The birds left no clues. Everyone had their own theory, from some kind of new flesh eating virus plague to acid rain showers. This last one was pretty stupid since all the killings took place indoors.

The panic spread and people took to locking themselves in their houses. The flock started to become really hungry and desperate. One night they besieged a farmhouse. The residents called 911 for help, but before assistance came the owls had found an entrance through the chimney. They ate everyone in the house. When cops arrived they only found a home full of skeletons.

The sheriff was starting to look incompetent for not discovering how these crimes were taking place. Really, though, it wasn't his fault. This behavior was so out of the ordinary he couldn't be expected to guess. The blame rested with the original farmer. The sheriff had a very small department and his deputies couldn't cover very much ground even if they had known what they were looking for.

Then there was a break. One of the sheriff's men found a huge pile of owl dung. It was unusually large because of the size of the flock. This aroused his suspicions. He went through it carefully with a stick and fished out a wedding ring from one of the murdered people.

Now the sheriff knew the truth. Still, finding the flock was another matter. Tabor County was large but the owls could fly to any part of it in a night. The sheriff had a big map with pins marking where the killings had taken place. Unfortunately, the attacks showed no pattern.

Meanwhile, the countryside was still being terrorized. The owls had learned that they could hunt down people in their homes as well as wait in ambush. The killings occurred once every week. Three more had taken place. When folks learned what the menace was and started boarding up all the entrances, the owls made a couple of raids on migrant camps in the dried creek beds. That cleaned the Mexicans and hobos out pretty quick. They left for safer regions. For a change, the Low Roads were completely empty. Without farm laborers, the crops started rotting in the fields.

The answer came from Travis Air Force Base. Their experts got a great number of owl mites and treated them with poison. Then they used their planes to airdrop the poisonous mites all over Tabor County.

Everyone held their breath. The next week came and went, but there was no attack. The strategy seemed to have worked. Then, a farmer went out into his barn and found dozens and dozens of dead owl bodies.

So the menace was ended. But like I said, you have to be careful when you trick with nature. The venomous mites killed every owl in Tabor County. That left them with no food. This is just rumor, but I understand that a number of people have died of unexplained poisonings. What do you use to kill mites, anyway?

 

[His Divine Shadow]

All the more frightening due to humanity actually doing similar things! One pest must be controlled so you bring in another ... and another ... and another ... The cane toads of Australia come to mind. Nothing on the scale of killin' humies or, at least, not yet. Be slow, evolution, be slow enough for us to stay on top of ya. 😛

What are the Low Roads without migrants? So many of these tales would flounder with none there. Will they be repopulated? Or are the ghosts of the eaten planning on being the only inhabitants?

 

[Low_Roads]

All the more frightening due to humanity actually doing similar things! One pest must be controlled so you bring in another ... and another ... and another ... The cane toads of Australia come to mind. Nothing on the scale of killin' humies or, at least, not yet. Be slow, evolution, be slow enough for us to stay on top of ya. 😛

Aha! Thanks for the wicked perspective, HDS! Oh yes indeed, those famous carnivorous cane toads! Squadrons of man-chomping hoppers would likewise make for exotic, harrowing reading!

The described open-air aviaries are becoming quite common in our area... a neighboring ranch has them, and they're forever occupied. The damned hawks screech and circle whenever I happen too close, which is what originally prompted this story. We've got owls, too, nesting in our water tower... the ground beneath is regularly littered with rat and gopher skeletons. Marlin Perkins would love this place! XD

What are the Low Roads without migrants? So many of these tales would flounder with none there. Will they be repopulated? Or are the ghosts of the eaten planning on being the only inhabitants?

Not to worry: the migrant labor will be back! It is indeed a ubiquitous, irreplaceable story element, a reflection of the actual farmland setting. It'd be well-nigh impossible to tell a rural tale without this consideration... migrant (particularly Mexican) workers are as integral to the landscape as the trees and vines they tend. Without 'em, the country'd return to scrub.

 

[Cbarton]

Just like the old TV commercial..."It's not nice to fool Mother Nature..."

Mess with God's order and His intelligent creations will bite back, sometimes literally! I have heard reports that whenever animals in the wild kill and eat humans, they do get a taste for it and will seek it out. That is why 'man-eaters' in the wild are hunted down so quickly. They like to come back for seconds, thirds, etc.

 

[Low_Roads]

Just like the old TV commercial..."It's not nice to fool Mother Nature..."

For the younger members that may not ring any bells, but I sure remember it! A cultural touchstone at one time! Note: I seemed to think it applied to Parkay Margarine... Wikipedia corrects me: it was actually for Chiffon Margarine. Parkay, of course, had it's own distinctive ad line ("Butter!" "Parkay... Butter!" "Parkay!")... I'm growing way too old if any of this is becoming vital information!

Mess with God's order and His intelligent creations will bite back, sometimes literally! I have heard reports that whenever animals in the wild kill and eat humans, they do get a taste for it and will seek it out. That is why 'man-eaters' in the wild are hunted down so quickly. They like to come back for seconds, thirds, etc.

Thanks so much, Hawk! Once again, a trip down Memory Lane! That vividly brings to mind Man-Eaters of Kumaon, adventure-filled reading (true-life stuff about Indian tiger tracking) I enjoyed when only a wee one! The advantages of having a life-long well stocked home library at one's fingertips! Being consumed by a predator animal seems to qualify as a primary human fear... atavistic baggage we've dragged with us from the savannas... even in a world where morning traffic commutes and bad eating habits serve as much more realistic threats (try making up horror stories about those menaces, and you get nowhere! Well... not me, anyway. Stephen King could do it!)

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #24

The Walking Nightmare​

At the turn of the century, things were very different in Tabor County then they are now. I'm talking 1800s to 1900s, not the new one. There was no Monticello Dam and no Low Roads. The town of Fairview hadn't even been thought of yet. Rockville was the closest thing to a population center and it was pretty tiny. Most people lived on little isolated farms. I don't mean ranches like we have now with lots of surplus. These were subsistence, self-contained farms. No one had gotten very organized yet.

If you think the farming lands seem remote now, you should have seen it back then. There were no paved roads. Dirt or gravel had to do. You didn't get around by cars. They weren't common yet. Mostly, people walked or took horses if they had any. This didn't encourage travel. Folks just stayed on their own property unless they needed some kind of supplies.

Tabor County didn't have any law officers of its own. A marshal would come around from time to time, but he had alot of counties to cover. So people tended to rely on their own justice.

This is pretty shadowy because it occurred so long ago, but here's what I think happened. A little girl disappeared off one of the farms. Maybe she was killed or maybe she was just kidnapped. Maybe she just wandered off and got lost. No one knows because she was never seen again.

A passing vagrant got accused of the deed. There wasn't the remotest evidence that he was to blame, but that didn't matter to the father. He had made up his mind. Now, lynchings were not unheard of in this part of the country, but the father was too mad for that. He was an arrogant man who never thought he could be wrong, so he tied up the vagrant and threw him on a haystack. Then he set the hay on fire and burned the man to death. None of his neighbors attempted to stop him.

This was one pretty horrendous crime, but the marshal was away and the man couldn't immediately be arrested. Since the bum had never been proved guilty, it was decided his burned up body should be buried in Rockville Cemetery. The father raged about this, but the rest of the community overruled him. I think they felt guilty about letting the murder happen to begin with.

With the vagrant safely in the ground, people started to forget about the murder. He wasn't an important enough man to bother about. The farmer wasn't even brought to justice for what he had done.

Now it so happened that the tramp had been killed on a moonless night. To me, that means the farmer secretly knew what he was doing was wrong. Anyway, a rumor started going around about a dark figure that would haunt the cemetery on moonless nights. How they worked this out, I don't know. The graveyard has always been overgrown with trees and it's hard to see in there even in daytime. But that was the story that went around.

It was a year after the killing. A moonless night had rolled around, and the next day the guilty farmer was found dead in his home. He had been strangled, but folks on the scene witnessed that the finger marks on the man's neck had burned through the flesh all the way to the spine. His face was frozen in a scream of pure fright. There was alot of loose talk about vengeance from the grave and how everyone hoped restless spirits would lie still now. But that's not what happened.

A grim specter was supposed to be abroad in the county. It was a real horror. On any moonless night it might tramp through the country with a rickety but deliberate gait. The mostly skeletal figure was clothed in smoldering rags. Charred, cracked, smoking flesh clung to the bones and occasionally dropped off in steaming heaps. If a wind swirled past the figure, it would lift a trail of fine ash. The palms of the specter’s hands glowed like live coals. Its smoking head held two blazing, hate-filled coal eyes. I don't know who was supposed to have seen all this. The thing would grope through the night, seeking out those who stood idle when the burning took place.

The fact is that several more killings did occur, all similar to the farmer's. Bodies would show the marks of scorching palms. One would be burned to the brain through its eyes. Another would be missing its heart through a smoking hole in the chest. All these would occur on nights that were completely dark.

Time has worn on, and the killings have become less and less frequent. I think the last one happened around thirty years ago, so the curse must be winding down. It's hard to say if it's finished, though. No one I know ever rests easy on moonless nights.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Not only a spectre but a one of coals and cinders! Some kind of merger between a Tolkienian Balrog and a shade, maybe. Substitute Ghost Rider for a Balrog if applicable. 😛 And that's all we hear of the little girl? No ghoulish tale to explain her demise? For shame, LBH, for shame! =P

 

[Low_Roads]

Not only a spectre but a one of coals and cinders! Some kind of merger between a Tolkienian Balrog and a shade, maybe. Substitute Ghost Rider for a Balrog if applicable. 😛 And that's all we hear of the little girl? No ghoulish tale to explain her demise? For shame, LBH, for shame! =P

Alas (a lass?)... no hint of the poor child's fate! Her dad may even have been right in his surmise (though not very likely... justified killings don't usually prompt occult vengeance). I'm afraid we'll never know what happened to her... a more mundane mystery among so many unnatural, ugly ones.

The walking nightmare is indeed kin to the Balrog (or, sure, Ghost Rider) in that he's an elemental menace, using fiery heat to do murder. I like the simplicity of elementals, and more so to see how elemental creatures got to be that way (Edward Scissorhands, an ice elemental, is one of my favorite cases-in-point). This particular bogey goes back a long, long way, finding its inspiration in my grade-school days (see picture below). Never throw anything out... the economical credo I live by!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

That looks like some of the stuff I sketched out (When I used to sketch). Except many orders of magnitude better. 😛 The smile on the ghoulish ghost has a way of ruining the atmosphere, though.

 

[melanie2]

i didn't know you posted the story Low Roads here..is it the same story as you have been emailing me weekly???

 

[Low_Roads]

That looks like some of the stuff I sketched out (When I used to sketch). Except many orders of magnitude better. 😛

Thank you HDS! You've done artwork of your own! Glory, I'd like to see it someday! You ought to consider posting a few of your efforts... I know the whole forum would be fascinated!

The smile on the ghoulish ghost has a way of ruining the atmosphere, though.

It's true! My art always manages to have a goofy edge! It looks particularly ridiculous in my early stuff, which (for the most part) was intended to be taken dead seriously... a clear case of not putting one's strengths to best use. It's the sort of thing that works best in a dumb-fun Ed Wood way, which is okay with me... I don't care how I entertain, so long as I'm able to do so at some level!

i didn't know you posted the story Low Roads here..is it the same story as you have been emailing me weekly???

Hi Izzy! Most happy to see you back at the TTC! Yes indeed, these are the very same tales! You're way ahead of this forum in the rotation, though (a good 12 stories or so, I think), since I split the weekly Low Roads focus here with two other collections. Check out "Vintage Scripts" and "Pokemon Poetry" if you like... only bear in mind, I plan to send these to you as well (once the Low Roads are finished), so you may end up seeing them twice. They will, of course, be easier to save that way... literature for the ages! XD

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #25

One by One​

Do you remember back in the early '80s when those cons busted out of The Camp? The police never did recapture those guys. You might also recall that there was a huge propane explosion around the same time. There was an investigation, but no one was ever able to tie the two together.

If you travel north on the freeway past Fairview, after about thirty miles you'll pass a state prison. You'll never know it, since it's located behind some hills. You can see the road leading up there and a few small signs, but all the fences and guard towers are carefully hidden away. The local taxpayers insisted on that before they voted yes. This facility is in Pierce County, near the town of Blue Powder. There's also an insane asylum somewhere close to the town. Blue Powder has all the luck.

This prison is known to almost everybody as The Camp. It doesn't much look like what I expect a maximum-security prison facility to look like. There are no tall concrete walls. Instead, they rely on electrified fences and razor wire. These don't seem like much but they must get the job done. The worst criminals from all over California are sent there. They all sleep in cement blockhouses in the middle. The whole thing is pretty open air. Set against those wild hills, it looks more like a summer camp than a prison, but I'm sure it's no fun.

Despite all the precautions, four convicts managed to escape. They got out in a laundry truck or some such thing. I'm not sure about details. These four were pretty bad men. The least of them was guilty of murder. Once they were free, they stole a car and searched for a remote spot to hide out.

The area north of Fairview is fairly flat plain. It's pretty featureless and remote. The few houses are pretty isolated. The convicts headed that way, hoping for an out-of-the-way spot to hole up.

The house they chose was so plain and lonely looking, they thought it must be deserted. It was an ugly two-story farmhouse. It seemed like it must be seventy years old at least. The paint was thin and gone in places. Some of the windows were boarded. The men hid their stolen car in back and barged in.

The place wasn't abandoned. An old, wrinkled woman was sitting down to her lunch as the men entered. The worst of the convicts, the leader, threatened her. He had a gun and waved it in her face. Then he laid down the law. She was going to have to put up with them or else. The men demanded food. The old woman did everything they wanted but she didn't seem afraid. She seemed all too eager to have them there.

There was a transistor radio in the stolen car. The convicts used it to listen to reports of their escape. The cops knew what the stolen car looked like. That was okay. The old lady knew a guy with an auto yard who would take it away, no questions asked. He had done this for her before. One of the cons didn't like this idea. That meant they would be stuck out there. But the car seemed like too much of a risk for being spotted. What if a helicopter should fly over? The old woman made the call, with the head convict carefully listening in.

An oily fat guy came out with a tow truck. He and the old lady seemed to be on pretty good terms. He winked and handed her two hundred bucks. That was an awfully spindly amount for such a nice car.

The convicts slept like logs after their hard day. In the morning, they found that one of them had left. It was the guy who had complained the day before. The rest all cursed him. If he was caught, he might lead authorities right to them. But there was nothing to be done.

That night, the old woman made a big stew for everybody. It was full of good red beef, and carrots and potatoes, and a thick brown gravy. She cooked it over a slow gas flame. The woman used propane gas for her stove and to heat her water. It came from a giant tank out back that was filled every two months.

It seemed incredible that this old biddy could do all the work they demanded, fix their meals, clean and mend clothes and such. She was so bent over and wrinkled up and brown and leathery that it was impossible to know how old she was. She still had her own teeth, but they were worn and jagged. Her thin silver hair was just a few threads. But her eyes were sharp and bright. Her old, withered arms were thin as broom sticks, but she could handily heft the bulky stew pot.

The heavy meal of stew made the men sleep soundly. In the morning, another of them was gone. The head con was savage. He raged at the stupid idea of running off when they had such a comfortable hideout. The other man wasn't so sure. That old lady seemed just too eager to please.

That night they ate hamburgers made with fresh ground meat. Each man had several and the heavy meal made them tired.

But the food must not have agreed with the head convict. He woke up sick in the middle of the night and headed for the bathroom. He passed the open door to his partner's room and stopped dead.

The old woman was inside. She had the other man by the neck. He struggled against her grip but it did no good. The crone looked up and saw the head convict in the open doorway. A wicked, leering, toothy grin spread across her face. She slammed her victim against the wall. She took his chin with her other hand and slowly bent his head backwards. There was a sickening series of crackling pops. The man's head hung loose behind his back.

The remaining convict scrambled wildly back up the stairs to his room. He retrieved his gun and descended again, but the old woman was gone. Then he noticed that the door to the larder was wide open and the light was on.

He entered. He was awake, but it was a nightmare. His fellow convicts all hung upside down from hooks. They were stark naked and two of them were stripped of skin. Pieces of meat had been cut from their bodies. But they weren't alone. Other human corpses hung next to them. The shelves were lined with jars containing severed heads and organs. A human hand waved at him from the meat grinder.

The old lady was a fiend. She was so old that all the organs in her body had dried up. Now she ate only human tissue since it was easy to absorb. She must have been luring people there all along. The convicts had made a bad mistake.

The man rushed out of the house to get away. His gun was ready. Then behind him he heard a screeching laugh. The crone came toward him. In her hands was a length of knotted rope to strangle him with. The con fired. The bullet passed through her body with a dry whoosh. The old woman never wavered. He fired more and more. All he did was fill her body with holes that wouldn't bleed. She chased him around and around the building until he had only one more bullet left. He stopped and took careful aim right at her heart. He squeezed off the shot, but never got a chance to find out if it was effective.

The propane tank was directly behind the old woman. It erupted with a huge blast. The terrific force shattered both bodies into a rain of dust and blood drops. The house and all its human evidence disintegrated completely.

The Fairview cops were out there the next day. They examined the property, but that was just a big hole in the ground. No portion of the house was left, only sawdust. There was no mystery to the cops. They wrote it down as an accident. As far as they knew, no one had been there. But now you know the truth.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

I guessed as soon as the stew came up that there would be some cannibalism involved. Reminds me somewhat of Kroenen of Hellboy fame, the old woman does, with nothing but dust for blood and flesh. You'd think such vicious criminals would have the sense to realize something was wrong ...

 

[Low_Roads]

I guessed as soon as the stew came up that there would be some cannibalism involved. Reminds me somewhat of Kroenen of Hellboy fame, the old woman does, with nothing but dust for blood and flesh. You'd think such vicious criminals would have the sense to realize something was wrong ...

No, these guys weren't being terribly clever at all! One may not expect world-class intellect from lifers, but you'd certainly hope for some sort of animalistic danger-sense to kick in after a while! Then again, these guys had a limited range of options. Beggars, even beggars with guns, can't expect to choose; an attractive trap might inspire a degree of self-delusion when the alternative of re-incarceration looms.

The female fiend does indeed resemble Karl Kroenen (from the Hellboy movie at least... I'm not really familiar with the character as he exists in the comic, where I understand he's radically different), though in her case the desiccation is meant to reflect a bizarre consequence of extreme old age rather than any sort of deliberate modification. The cannibalism was intended as a form of sympathetic magic: tissue feeding on like tissue by a system too ruined to accept anything very foreign (this explanation certainly wouldn't hold up as biologically accurate). As to why the cons are fed one another... that was a nasty joke at their expense, justified by their bullying presumption!

 

[Cbarton]

Two nicely macabre tales, LBH. The burning avenger fits right in with the other unworldly population of the Low Roads.

Nice fun twists in the second tale. Half the fun was trying to figure out when the cons would finally figure out the protein source of their new diet. On the farm I grew up on, we had a big propane tank that Dad was always telling us not to climb on or hit it with our bats. balls, etc. Now, the ultimate 'fireball' takes them all out...

Well done!

 

[Low_Roads]

Most kind of you, Hawk! I'm well familiar with those propane tanks myself; we got rid of our huge household ones only a few years ago (like your dad, we were always super concerned about them... god forbid someone should accidently back into one!) and still use a large portable to fuel the shop heater. Good thing the first story's scorching menace avoided contact with the latter's explosive setting, or both would have ended almost instantly! I'm very pleased the cannibalism angle hit you the way it did; waiting for these guys to finally wise up was intended to stimulate sadistic glee! The benefit (probably the sole benefit) of a story with zero sympathetic characters is anticipating the ax about to fall on all of them!

 

[Low_Roads]

Low Roads Story #26

The Weeping Wound​

If you work out of doors, a certain number of cuts and scrapes can't be helped. Usually these aren't of any concern unless they're deep. But if they won't heal up, don't neglect them. That can be dangerous.

A guy up in Gordon Valley who lived pretty much alone was none too concerned about his hygiene. That can happen when you don't have anyone else to please. He was young enough but wasn't employed regularly. He had had an injury and was on disability now. So all he did was putter around the place his parents had left him.

Just because he had no job didn't mean he was idle. He would forever be beavering away on his property, making improvements. If you went to see him you would likely find him landscaping or replacing the tarpaper shingles on his roof. He was skilled at all sorts of home repair, from the electrical to the plumbing to the carpentry. A guy like this would be in great demand, but he preferred to work for himself than work for pay. All this labor left him covered with cuts, nicks and sweat. And like I said, he wasn't careful about bathing.

So in the course of all this activity, he got himself a nail gouge. It was high up on the back of his arm and was hard to reach, and since it didn't hurt he didn't pay much notice. He didn't clean it the way he should have and didn't sterilize it with hydrogen peroxide or alcohol. Everyone should do this anyway, but particularly if you're dirty all the time.

Well, the wound didn't fester but it didn't heal up either. This was because the guy slept on his back. Every time the gouge tried to scab over, he would scrape it clean during the night. So, the wound always stayed wet with clear fluid. He would see the wet spot on his bed sheet the next day, but it was so small he didn't pay it any mind. That's really dangerous. It gives germs a chance to get really well established and do major harm.

Believe it or not, he let this go on for two months without seeing a doctor. The leaking wound never bothered him, so he never felt the need. The only measure he took was to wear a T-shirt at night to spare his bed sheet. Also, the few times he bathed he scrubbed the area extra hard. This didn't help, as it just prevented a scab from forming all the more.

It wasn't until a friend saw him without his shirt that he started to get concerned. The area looked unhealthy. Not only was the hole wet, but the skin around it had changed to a bluish-green color. That scared him and he did what he should have done long ago. He made an appointment with his physician.

The doctor was perplexed at the sight of the wound. The man had an infection, but it was like no infection he had ever seen before. The germs were strong in that area but they weren't spreading. It was like they were building up their strength for a major attack on his body. The doctor injected antibiotics to kill the infection and that's when all hell broke loose.

The greenish color left the wound site. It broke up and spread all over to different locations on the man's arm, like it was on the run from the antibiotics. The medicine had certainly not killed it. It was hard to state just what kind of condition the germs were in now.

It was plain that the man's unsanitary living conditions were to blame. He had allowed all sorts of germs to live and mutate on his body, just waiting for the right moment.

The doctor recommended hospitalization. He was afraid to try more medicine since he didn't know what the result would be, but he wanted to keep an eye on his patient. The condition of the arm had him more and more concerned. The green color spread all over like disease spots. They seemed determined to take over the arm. Then the wound site finally closed up, but not in a normal way. A mound of greenish material forced itself up through the hole and settled there in a weird tangle of scar tissue.

The doctor saw that his patient's state was beyond his ability to treat. He sent the man up north to the big teaching hospital at the University of Davis. There, they put him in isolation. If this was some new awful plague disease, they didn't want it to spread.

The man's condition became more and more bizarre. The whole arm turned green. A series of bumps appeared on his hand, like new fingers were beginning to sprout. These finally erupted in flexible green tubes a couple of inches long. Then more grew out all over the arm.

The situation was desperate. Doctors finally decided they couldn't wait a moment longer. To save the man's life, they amputated the arm. The operation went well. The man seemed to have no other trace of the disease in the rest of his body, so he was expected to recover. For him it was a close call.

The doctors placed the arm in a sealed glass tank so they could do experiments on it. Without the rest of the body to feed it nutrients, they expected the arm to be dead. The fingers moved, though, and it was clear that the disease germs were operating it now. The raw meat from the amputation healed up in the same way that the puncture wound did. The severed arm had a separate life all its own now. It could move along on the green tubes like they were little legs.

The doctors placed a small turtle in the tank to see what would happen. At first nothing took place. Then, a green eye emerged onto the back of the hand. It saw the turtle and crept toward it. The palm of the hand clutched ahold of the shell and in a few minutes it had sucked all the juice out of the turtle. It seemed that the germs could make anything out of the flesh that they needed. That should have been a warning to the doctors, but they were so fascinated they got careless.

They left the arm alone at night. That's when it got away. Mounted cameras told the whole story. The hand grew out long, sharp fingernails. It used them to scratch a big circle in the glass, which it pushed out to make its escape.

When they learned the arm was gone there was a desperate search, but it could be found nowhere. There was much speculation about how it might have left. Since it could grow fake limbs and organs, it might have developed wings or gills. It could be living anywhere now.

A couple of people have been killed since in a way that suggests the arm might be responsible, but mostly it has laid pretty low. Maybe it's dead now. Of course, maybe it's grown some. Maybe it's just waiting to make a major attack. Those germs did know how to bide their time.

 

[Journia]

Marvelous story and in my opinion the best yet, with a great moral. Don't have bad hygiene people!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Wasn't this a Stephen King novel? No, the Byrus didn't really control body parts like that ... and no, if you'll pardon my language, "shit weasels" in this story. 😛 I find this more plausible than not. We are constantly told of advances in swarm intelligence, where a multitude of tiny 'bots will be able to act as a much more powerful computer by linking together. Who is to say some nasty germ won't develop such? Or, worse, that it is waiting patiently like the germ here ... A case for good hygiene at all costs.

Yanno, with all the "no one knows what happened to's" going on here the Low Roads must have a convention of missing and mysterious ne'er do wells every few years.

 

[Low_Roads]

Marvelous story and in my opinion the best yet, with a great moral. Don't have bad hygiene people!

Grateful thanks, J! And words to live by! I've worked with my hands my whole life, and have earned a weighty collection of festering wounds (many of them self-inflicted; allowing a sliver it wrap itself in a comfy cushion of pus is the surest, simplest way to squeeze it out). I'd cheerfully have done without them.... in an age of flesh-eating virus, infection is nothing to screw around with!

Wasn't this a Stephen King novel? No, the Byrus didn't really control body parts like that ... and no, if you'll pardon my language, "shit weasels" in this story. 😛 I find this more plausible than not. We are constantly told of advances in swarm intelligence, where a multitude of tiny 'bots will be able to act as a much more powerful computer by linking together. Who is to say some nasty germ won't develop such? Or, worse, that it is waiting patiently like the germ here ... A case for good hygiene at all costs.

Heh heh! "Shit Weasels"! Colorful ol' Uncle Steve! Actually, I've never read Dreamcatcher... I did see the movie, however, and I suppose it may be trusted in so far as its intestinal invasion angle (along with the attendant grue and fetor) is concerned. At least my victim got away clean, if minus a wing... nothing as nasty as indigestion! Actually, a closer cousin might be the engineered bacteria colonies in Michael Crichton's Prey, in that they're intelligently guided and microscopic. Each of these outsiders has managed a greater level of lethal autonomy than my humble bacilli... attacking a world is a whole lot more ambitious than conquering an arm! Give me time, though... developments are on the way!

Yanno, with all the "no one knows what happened to's" going on here the Low Roads must have a convention of missing and mysterious ne'er do wells every few years.

That's the reason I had to spin-off this series... give the unemployed misfits something productive to do! Though, a few will be seen again in the 70 some-odd stories still remaining to this series... I just hope everyone remembers who they are by the time they re-emerge!

 

[Journia]

I can't wait for the final stories...113...here we come! I'm sure the club of Blackie? will be returning...you know...the super smart rats with wind up cars...