(Author’s Note: Hello, my lovely friends! I’ve been wanting to get into short story writing again recently, so here I am with another random little tale. As per usual, I get my short story ideas from Reedsy’s short story contest ideas. So for this one, the prompt was “Start your story with the line: It was the hottest day of the year…” Also, I don’t tend to edit my short stories; I just let them go freely into the world. Sorry for any typos!)
It was the hottest day of the year when the larvae rose to the surface. They wouldn’t hatch until the conditions were perfect, but that required more than just heat. The heat would bolster their cocoons, keeping them safe while they waited.
That was where our sly Professor came in. Professor Porter was a popular man with more than a few PhDs to his name. One of his degrees was biology, which made him more than qualified to handle organic life. However, it was the doctorate in alien sciences that had gained him a position studying the larvae.
Leaning over their small habitat, he positioned his glasses a little higher and gazed in wonder at his creatures. They weren’t his creatures, but among the creatures in the facility, they felt more like his children than any of the others. And anyone who asked him would hear so.
“They’ve risen to the surface,” his companion, Dr. Sheffield, stated. He was a portly man with rosy cheeks and a solemn demeanor. Sometimes, he wore the grim mask of his thoughts on his face, but most of the time—like right then—he wore the mask of excitement. It hid everything darker in him, but it didn’t extinguish it; it never had.
“The first step in the hatching process. Now, we’ll introduce the swarm,” Professor Porter said. Pressing his nose to the glass, he jotted down a few notes before lifting a careful, bony hand over the habitat. While it was open now, they wouldn’t keep it open once the wasp swarm was introduced. For obvious reasons, a horde of wasps wasn’t safe to be exposed to.
“Release them,” Dr. Sheffield barked.
“Hold on,” Professor Porter hissed, irritable. Working with others came naturally, as long as they remained his subordinates and didn’t try to take control of his experiments. Sometimes, Sheffield found himself toeing the line, and Porter had a mental list of each incident.
That was incident nine.
Clipping a small tube from the habitat to the buzzing tube above it, Porter carefully locked it into place. Then, he forced the lid down and listened for the heavy snap that informed him the lid was properly in place. As any good scientist should be, Porter was a meticulous man with meticulous plans. To him, it was a trait to be celebrated. To others, he was just anal.
“Go on then,” Sheffield urged him, impatient. Apparently, his excitement mask had recently combined with an impatience mask, because that was the third time that he’d tried to rush Porter in the last week. Something had him raring and itching for project completion.
“Flip the switch,” Porter finally said.
As was his job, Sheffield moved to flip the switch. It caused the small barrier between the tubes to lower, which released the wasps into the habitat. Several of the swarm spent time investigating the new habitat, while the rest of the horde shifted through hopelessly, aimlessly, and aggressively. That aggressiveness caused the alien larvae to stir.
Fastening a small light onto the outside of the glass, Porter leaned against it to survey his children. Held in small egg casings like that of a snack or a reptile, the larvae stirred. The light helped to outline their shadowy movement inside the eggs. They reacted violently to the wasps, which drew them to break free of their confinement.
One hatched. Then two. Until the whole brood rose from their shell prisons and stretched thick, hairy legs. Strong like frogs, the larvae’s legs were muscular and powerful. But their torsos resembled that of a bug, along with the heads.
Four amphibian legs, one dragonfly head, and the neon blue of a poisonous frog to tie it all together. Its entire body was blue, save for the very tips of its toes, which were a deep maroon.
“They have toes,” Sheffield announced.
“They do,” Porter agreed. Wiping breath fog from the glass, he jotted down a few more notes as the alien larvae began feasting on the wasps. Without much trouble, and without mercy, the larvae consumed them all.
“What comes next?” Sheffield asked, leaning away from the habitat. Perhaps he didn’t have the iron stomach he had once boasted about because he looked away from the glass in clear disgust.
Porter could never look away. This was his life’s work, the self-proclaimed height of his career. Turning sixty two had left him feeling bitter about his life’s achievements. Not only had he never received a Nobel Peace prize, he’d never received any prize for his sciences. Sure, he’d been given the offcolor award for his work in nanoscience and bioengineering, but biology was his passion.
“Yes,” he whispered, elation overwhelming his senses.
“Sir?” Sheffield whimpered, stepping away from the habitat. As the larvae consumed their prey, they grew. It wasn’t a fully rapid growth, but it was more rapid than any creature on Earth. They doubled in size, tripled in size, and filled all four glass walls of their containment. Yet, Dr. Porter was so focused on his worth that he didn’t notice.
“What do we do?!” Sheffield shouted, packing further away. There was a containment protocol in place for these rare situations, but if Porter didn’t move, he’d be contained along with them. And that wouldn’t be very gentlemanly on Sheffield’s part, or so he felt. Regardless, he would do it.
“Professor Porter!” Sheffield stepped back behind the containment doors, ushering his fellow scientists to join him. They did so, without hesitation. The larvae were an experiment. They had never been hatched in a secure facility before, which meant no one knew what hatching them would mean, except Professor Porter, who sat laughing maniacally at his once-in-a-lifetime creation.
“Shut it down!” the other scientists exclaimed.
“But—” Sheffield exclaimed, conflicted.
“—He’s gone!” they insisted.
Though Porter had never been very kind to Sheffield, nor very fair or pleasant or humane really, he was an excellent mind. It was always a loss when an excellent mind was taken too soon, especially in these circumstances.
But Sheffield did as he was advised, and he locked down the room. Containing the aliens contained the Professor, and our Professor died enjoying the very last laugh he ever had. It was a laugh that defined his life, a laugh that overrode his rational brain.
It was a laugh caused by the very creatures he studied, who mirrored his laughter as they escaped their habitat. Large enough to overwhelm a small dog, the larvae continued through the frozen wasteland of their contained containment and stared out at their captors.
Luring them to the glass would be just as easy as it was with Porter. They would be so interesting that they would invade their minds. They would cause such fatal intrigue that they would convince their captors to release them.
Release them.