An
Original Story by JH Glaze
Horror
Challenge Topic: Hummingbird
Suggested
by Brittany Carrigan
thecoverbybrittany.blogspot.com
A Garden
Secret
Madeline
loved her backyard garden. It was easy to see how much pride she took in every
display of color, especially her rose bushes. Although she had never entered
any competition, she often said that her roses were prize winning. They were
stunning. Every summer, she invited friends for afternoon tea, just to show off
her flowers.
One
beautiful Saturday morning, she was out in the garden again, fertilizing and
pulling weeds. As was her typical routine, she began on one side and
methodically worked her way around to the other side, taking care to inspect
and improve every inch of the rich black soil that made everything grow so
well.
She
was nearly finished for the day when she looked back over her work and caught a
glimpse of something she hadn’t noticed before. It was some sort of container
with strange markings on it. If she had to describe it, she wouldn’t have
called it a box, a bottle, or even a cylinder. It was an oddly shaped item to
be sure. How she could have worked this soil only a short while ago and not
have seen it?
“What
in the world? Where did this come from?” she asked aloud to nobody there as she
bent to pull the thing from the ground. It was partially embedded as though it
had been there for some time. “How could that be?” she wondered. She wrapped
her gloved hand around it to pull it out. The thing began to buzz or maybe it
was a vibration. Startled, she let go of it. Rather than use her hands, she
decided to dig it out with a shovel. She would have to go through the door at
the back of the garage to fetch one.
Madeline
entered the garage just in time to hear the phone ringing in the house. Her
mouth twisted in frustration as she walked through the door that led to the
kitchen through the laundry room, removing her dirty gloves as she went. She
managed to catch the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello, this is Madeline,” she
answered, forcing a cheerful voice.
“Hi,
Mads!” the equally cheerful voice on the line greeted her. She immediately
recognized her friend, Carol. “What are you up to on this beautiful afternoon?
I bet you were working in the garden, right?”
“Yes,
I was. You know me so well.” She walked over to the window so she could look
out at the object. She could still see it sticking up out of the ground. “As a
matter of fact, right now I am looking out my window at all the beautiful
color.”
“I
bet it’s gorgeous on a day like this.”
“Indeed,
it is. It’s the strangest thing, though. I found something odd out amongst the
flowers. You might think me crazy, but it looks almost… alien?”
There
was a slight hesitation, and then the sound of Carol’s unbridled laughter came
ringing out of the phone. “Really, Mads, I just love your sense of humor!
That’s why I called to see if you wanted to go shopping at the plaza later. I
thought maybe we could get a bite and…”
“No,
Carol. I’m not kidding. I found something out there and, believe me, I’ve been
working that dirt for years, and I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
She swallowed hard. “Tell you what. Come on over in… let’s say, an hour and a
half. I’ll dig it out and show you. Then we can go to dinner and shop.”
“Okay
then. See you around five.”
“Right.
Bye now.” Madeline was eager to get back to the garden. She went back to the
garage, put her gloves back on, got her shovel, and then back to the garden she
went. For some reason she had felt a little panicked, as if the object might be
gone when she returned, but a sense of relief washed over her as she found it
right where she had left it.
Careful
not to crush any of her flowers, she placed the tip of the shovel against the
object and pushed it down with her foot. Lifting the object up and out, it fell
away from the dirt as clean as though it had been washed. It was about a foot
long and cylindrical in the shape of some kind of missile made of some kind of
shiny metal. The end that had been buried in the ground was turned with threads
like a screw.
Madeline
slid the shovel further under it to lift it out of the flowerbed. It was
heavier than she expected. She moved her hands toward the metal head of the
shovel and tried again. This time it was easier to lift, and she carried it to
the center of the grassy area between the beds and laid it on the ground. She
got down on her hands and knees to get a closer look.
It
was a work of beauty, smooth and iridescent in the light of the sun. She turned
her ear to make out whether the quiet hum she heard was indeed emanating from
within the peculiar object. Oddly, she found the sound to be quite soothing.
Without
warning, one end of the object began to turn, twisting itself off the cylinder.
A full two inches of the flattened end, fell off onto the ground. She was
spellbound. Part of her wanted to run away, but the other part wondered what
would happen next. A few seconds later, she had her answer.
Madeline
saw only a blur, and then she heard a low buzzing noise. The thing took off
across her garden, weaving in and out of the flowers the way that a bee might,
but this was no bee. A small body, rapid wing movements, and long needle-like beak… Were those legs with feet on them hanging underneath?
Captivated
by the flashes of changing color as it flitted about, she followed it with her
gaze. It must be some kind of hummingbird, she thought.
In a moment, the thing was hovering only inches from her face. “You are a
strange little creature.” She spoke quietly so as not to scare it away. Before
her eyes, the tiny bird-like creature cycled through a range of the most
beautiful colors she had ever seen. “Strange to be sure, but beautiful.” Almost
as though responding to her words, the creature buzzed in a rhythm with her
voice as she spoke. “I think I’ll call you Buzzby.” She smiled. “But what are
you?”
Just
as her lips formed the last word of her question, the thing flew straight into
her mouth. She let out a squeal of surprise, but there was no chance to spit it
out. It braced itself against her tongue and drove the sharp spike of its beak
straight through the roof of her mouth directly into her brain.
She
could make no more than a muffled sound as the Buzzby blocked her mouth and
rapidly extended its beak to a full three feet. It quickly curled through her
skull and entwined itself in her brain. When she fell face first into the dirt,
Buzzby was stunned for a moment and was forced to regain his footing inside her
mouth. He was in the process of surgically connecting her neurons to his
consciousness.
The
fall jarred his concentration, and he no longer had the control he required.
The plump creature he was working on was lying on the ground, jerking and
twitching, and that was not what he had intended. He needed to take control so
he could begin his feeding. It had been so very long since he had eaten. With a
great deal of mental focus, Buzzby finally located the creature’s control
center. As the body relaxed, its mouth opened allowing the warm light to shine
in. At last, it had stopped moving.
Wasting
no time, he began sucking on the fluids that were seeping down along his long
proboscis. He vibrated to keep a constant flow. Once he began to feel somewhat
satisfied, he realized that something was happening that he wasn’t expecting.
Small bumps were cropping up all over his body. At the same time, his hunger
returned. The more nourishment he took in, the larger the bumps became.
In
minutes, the bumps were so large that he felt his body filling up the small
space he currently occupied. He shuddered. Suddenly, the bumps exploded all at
once, and Buzzby was dead. Collapsed
inside the host creature’s mouth, his limp body was buffeted by tiny wings as
more than a hundred Buzzby clones struggled to free themselves from the cramped
space. As they reached the opening, they flew to freedom and spread out across
the landscape.
Next
door, a woman stood on her back porch calling her dog when the tiny colorful
creature flew into her mouth. Seconds later, she tumbled down the steps to land
crumpled on the sidewalk below. Two houses down in the other direction, three
children were playing on their backyard gym. They were chasing each other and
laughing when the small group of ‘bugs’ invaded their bodies. One little girl
screamed just before she collapsed, which brought her mother out to see what
was wrong. The woman yelled and fell next to her kids where she lay helpless
and twitching on the ground.
Madeline’s
friend, Carol had decided to leave her house early. As she pulled up in front
of her friend’s house, she noticed the man across the street lying in the grass
next to his running lawn mower. She started over to help the man but, when she
saw his condition, she decided it would be better to call 911 and get help
right away. When she got to Madeline’s front door, she loudly pounded on it
with her fist. Unwilling to wait for an answer, she tried the doorknob. The
door swung open.
Carol
ran in calling out to her friend, but there was no one to be found. From the
corner of her eye, she saw the phone and hurried to dial for help. The
dispatcher asked, “911, what’s your emergency?” Carol told her about the man
across the street, gave Madeline’s address as a reference, and hung up the
phone. She wondered what could have happened to Madeline. Surely she was around
here somewhere, maybe in the garden.
She
would go out there just as soon as she got herself a drink. There was a full
pitcher of filtered water sitting right in front of her on the counter, and her
anxiety had made her extremely thirsty. Probably, Madeline needed a drink as
well if she was still out in the garden. She opened the cabinet above the sink
and took out two glasses, then poured some water from the pitcher. Just as she
put one of the glasses to her lips, a small colorful bug tumbled into the water
unnoticed. Hearing sirens, she went to the front window in time to see the
ambulance pulling up across the street. She watched as the paramedics got out
and ran to the man.
Relieved,
she took a long sip of the cool water. No sooner did she swallow than she felt
a pain in her stomach. A long needle-like object began to poke through her
sweater. It stretched out in front of her nearly six inches. A small spot of
red started to spread across her belly as she watched in horror. Panicked, she
ran out of the house toward the paramedics. As she rounded the ambulance, she
found them convulsing on the ground next to the man. She was so frightened she
let out a scream. Another ‘bug’ took advantage of the opportunity and flew into
her mouth. It quickly sent her tumbling to the ground.
All
through the neighborhood, the cloud of death was spreading. The tiny colorful
creatures flew and people fell. It happened so quickly, no one could send out a
warning. By the next morning, the sprawling city fell quiet. Bodies littered
the streets, and a colorful cloud of tiny creatures drifted across the
countryside growing larger by the minute.
No
one in their path was warned. They only heard the buzz.
Copyright
ã 2012 by JH Glaze.
Author Bio:
JH
Glaze is the Author of “The Paranormal
Adventures of John Hazard” series (The Spirit Box, NorthWest & Send No
Angel), The Horror Challenge series of short stories, and other books. He lives
in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Susan and their two dogs.
Contact:
Visit
his website www.JHGlaze.com for more information. His
books are available exclusively on Amazon.com in print and eBook formats.
On
Twitter @themostcoolone
Watch
for new stories coming soon!
