Daniel sighed as he entered the convenience store. It had not been an easy day of work. Though honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an easy day of work. It was the same every day, getting warnings from his bosses and extra work from his co-workers. At least it was Thursday, only a few days from the weekend.
His listless eyes passed by several brightly coloured snacks, settling on a blue pouch of energy gel. It was a meal substitute; a strange mix of protein, vitamins, minerals, and preservatives, melted into some kind of unholy abomination that claimed to taste like blueberries. It was quick, easy and cheap. As for the taste, Daniel didn’t really want to think about it too much.
As he waited in line to pay, he stared at the tv screen behind the busy cashier. The news was on, broadcasting information about some incident.
“The Dexter building’s front windows have all been smashed, in what appears to be another in a series of mysterious vandalisms.” The female reporter intoned. “No victims have been reported, and no eyewitnesses have come forward about the incident.”
The line moved forward and his attention shifted.
Soon enough, Daniel walked out of the convenience store, pouch in hand. As he raised the nozzle to his mouth and swallowed a mouthful of gel, he thought about work. It was getting close to the end of the month, so work was getting busier. They were working overtime more, and he getting more and more exhausted. He knew that it would only last a week or 2 more, but that didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
The young salaryman looked up at the surrounding cityscape as he walked. Despite it still being sunset, there were already windows brightened by the light bulbs. Through some of them he could see the silhouette of couples and families, and Daniel couldn’t help by envy them. As if matching his mood, dark clouds masked the sunset as rain began drizzling down, drop by drop.
Daniel sighed as he stared at up at the overcast sky. In the back of his mind, he thought things should be different, somehow. It felt like just yesterday when he’d been just like those happy people, without a care in the world. It could always be worse, he supposed. There were certainly more unfortunate people in the world. Little comfort that was for him.
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The rain came down harder, and Daniel ducked into a nearby alley to retrieve his umbrella. Holding the pouch with his teeth as he searched through the bag with his hands, he inadvertently caught his foot on a brown cardboard box on the floor. He glanced at it curiously. The box was closed, but on the side was written in black marker, ‘Free to a good home’, streaked from the rain. He frowned. Did people still abandon their pets like this? There were a few shelters in the city if they needed them, leaving it in an alleyway was simply irresponsible.
As Daniel looked on, however, the box rustled and the flaps on the top slowly opened...
It had 6 spindly legs, covered in feeling hairs and tipped with gripping pincers. Its torso was shaped like a cockroach, with strange spines lining the sides. It had pitch black compound eyes, streetlights (and his own face) reflecting on all facets like a kaleidoscope. On its front was a long mosquito-like proboscis, rigid and pointed, the end flecked with a mysterious substance.
It was the strangest thing he had ever seen.
The young man’s mouth dropped open in stunned silence and his hand loosened, dropping his pouch of energy gel onto the rain-soaked floor with a wet slap. That seemed to get the creature’s attention, as it shifted its gaze towards the fallen object. The creature slowly extracted itself out of the cardboard box, limb by limb, revealing itself in all of its green and brown glory. Daniel followed suit, walking backwards step by step.
The creature’s back legs were bent like a grasshopper’s, readying the creature to pounce at any time, and its front limbs had hair-like feelers. It ambled slowly over to the dropped pouch and stopped to inspect it. Daniel for his part, slowly turned around, and as soon as he saw the creature’s focus leave him, he hurried out of the alleyway.
The creature poked and prodded its proboscis into the nozzle. The half-drained pouch began deflateing further, soon shriveling up into a plastic husk. The creature slowly extracted its needle-like appendage from the bag, before taking a moment to clean its proboscis with the feelers on its front legs. After it was done, it stared in the direction the Daniel had left in.
Following in his footsteps, it stalked silently into the night.
