A caterpillar swayed in the air on his left shoulder like a pirate’s parrot.
A caterpillar inched up the back of his head.
They were everywhere. Luminescent green. Alien. Moving as one to the tick of a silent clock.
Green reached a careful finger to feel the acorn bulge in his pocket. It was there. Promising whatever it was the acorn seemed to promise, speaking from a mental fogbank that bit him like a caustic chemical whenever he tried to touch it.
What have I signed up for?
Sitting up, he could once again see the surface of the table. The rag moth corpse was a crumbling ruin of burlap scraps and heaped dust, but caterpillars were still streaming up and out of its center mass. They were emerging from nothing. It was like a stage illusion. The beautiful assistant was being sawed in half for an intended audience of nobody.
Even as he watched, the moth disintegrated more and more, collapsing inward, the dust rising to become a dark corona. It was as though every caterpillar that appeared removed one more stitch from the rag moth’s hold on existence.
If he hadn’t been so mortally terrified, he might have smiled. He had an answer for Valentina. He knew why rag moth corpses disappeared.
And all he had to do to report the good news was survive what he had learned. How many of those mummified corpses Valentina mentioned died with heads full of an interesting story?
He tried to estimate his chances of seeing morning and found he had little to go on.
The newts survived. Think like a newt. Be a newt.
Green knew as much about newts as he did Cyrillic.
On the plus side, only one plan made any sense at all. Stay stone-still. So far, that had been his course of action and he remained alive. The caterpillars were not the wolf. They didn’t seem interested in him at all.
Another data point.
Even so, nothing could stop every horrible hypothetical that Green’s imagination could cook up from testing the dials of his adrenal system.
Perhaps they all know I’m here and are preparing to swarm like piranhas…
…or like those beetles museums use to strip flesh from skeletons.
What did they call it with sharks? A feeding frenzy?
I’m probably thinking too simple. This is cryptonature.
They’re going to pluck me out of linear time and I’ll spend eternity watching worm dances.
Maybe they already have.
Maybe I wouldn’t know if I were experiencing eternity.
Maybe the Earth is a cinder and this moment has already stretched on to forever.
There are more of them every moment. Did I miss my chance to run?
Is this my last chance to run?
Valentina spoke from a memory.
“These are animals. Same as you or me. They are not demons or monsters.”
Yeah, but purely mundane animals can terrorize you. Can kill you.
The Valentina in his memory paused and frowned at his unspoken response.
“Mr. Green,” she said. “Are you focused on your own fanciful self-pity or are you watching the hitherto unobserved natural wonder unfolding around you?”
