A True Tale of Supernatural Terror: Cicada Nexus ("Rated" PG13)

[color=lime]-----PART 3------

I had final exams that morning, so I dashed from the house early, when the bugs were still dormant. After exams, I raided Coyote College's library for insect lore, coming across one [color=lime]magicicada, active once every 17 years. It was the closest match, although the pictured species had orange highlights, rather than green, and were labelled benign. The ones in our yard must be fierce mutations, I thought.
On a hunch, I then perused some books on the Aztec and Maya, recalling Toti's mysterious expressions last week. I found several totemic masks, some insect-like, and THEN I SAW IT: the magicicada totem-mask! Next, I followed data on the tribe to something called the Mayan Calendar. It predicted the end of the world in 2012, Common Era. That was only five months away! The ground seemed to slip-away under my feet, but I forced myself to turn to the icon-page of the Calendar chapter....
Icons were sorted by planet and totem...I followed the totem 'til the end: snake, spider, then...cicada! A super-vicious kind, with bat-like wings and ferocious mandibles like a tarantula's. I felt sick, stumbling to the bus-stop to get home quickly....
I had to walk past my work to get home from the bus-stop, and I noticed Toti through the storefront's window. Her mascara was smeared, eyes bloodshot and eerie. She beckoned to me with a curled finger-motion, and I rushed inside.
"Toti, I just discovered the--"
"I know. I know all," her voice croaked in the dim room. "My people have watched over this site for centuries, anticipating the end-time, hoping to guide it towards the merging with a positive plane of reality, rather than a wicked one. Your street is on the [color=lime]nexus! It is at that point the conflict will reach its peak! I sense great evil has already gained a foothold in your home--(I jumped up, running towards the door)--run, Scott, run home, but be wary of what you'll find...!"
Two ambulances, a police car, and a fire engine clustered around our dilapitated, California home. A body-bag was being loaded by the coroner as I plunged through the front door, fearing the worst....

(MORE OF PART 3 SOON!)


[edit on 14-10-2007 by tocs100]

11. "Coyote College exterior"

12. "Coyote College interior"

13. "Mayan Calendar a."

14. "Mayan Calendar b."

15. "Mayan Calendar c."

16. "Mayan Calendar d."

I'm really enjoying your story. Thank you for taking the time to write it for us and to share your great photos.

Just for your personal reference...cicada is actually pronounced "sikada".

^ Thanks Valhall. I know standard English pronounces it "sikaeda," but I'm trying to impart the local mood of the story, and the Hispanic population pronounced it "chichada."

Keep reading, it gets scarier, truer, and scarier still.

[edit on 14-10-2007 by tocs100]

17. "Toti"

18. "Work"

[color=lime]-----PART 3 (Contd.)-----

My nephew and mom were looking through the window at the spectacle, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
"What happened?!" I managed to ask, gasping for air from both the run home and the shocking scene.
"They killed him," my mom intoned, voice flat and emotionless. "The bugs swarmed over the man who came to cut-down the tree. He wouldn't listen to our warnings;" she hugged little Mikey closer, and "he wouldn't call an exterminator first, so they just swarmed all over him until he suffocated...." Mikey began wailing in terror, and she dabbed at his little, red face with tissue.

And that chilling night was to unleash a further trio of horrors....

The usual clucking of chickens, from the neighbors on the other side from the Japanese woman, awoke me from restless sleep. Switching on a lamp, I was assaulted by the sight of black shadows between my dresser and bookcase. I jumped back, fearing for a moment they were more of the bugs--but the shadows weren't moving, thank God!
I pulled the lamp closer to the wall, and I determined the "shadows" to be a type of mold, spotty and black. The extent of its encroachment startled me. What in the world could have caused this? To see something like this after the day's events was to see a kind of madness. So I awoke my mom to gain her opinion, and she began turning on the house's lights, one by one.
Like a dungeon, all the outer walls had become coated in the grime, filling the air with an unclean odor.
"Tomorrow we're telling the landlord we're moving" she announced, flipping-on the TV for a distraction. We slowly began to relax, watching one of the funnier X-Files about Ronnie the vampire, when one, then two, black sticks appeared on the edge of the screen.
"Is it in the house?!" my mom demanded, rushing for the swatter.
"No--it's inside the TV! Gross."
"My $1,000 TV, ruined too. That landlord is gonna--"
CRASH!
A flash of light and heat, and our television was in shards, with a pungent scent like a stinkbug's wafting-over the smell of burning plastic.
We spent the remainder of the night cleaning-up the mess, and assuring Mikey it ws okay to watch cartoons (on the small TV) even when it was still dark outside.
A few hours after dawn, more sirens interrupted the normal calm of our street.
"Now what?" I demanded, parting the moldy curtains with the flyswatter.
Only one officer could be seen out-front, peering around uneasily. Where was everyone else? We peeked out the back window to see another body-bag being loaded, a blue flap of a kimono briefly glimpsed before the zipper closed.
And then I spotted Toti, and explained who she was
to my mom.
Toti was wildly gesticulating to the cops, pointing at the disturbed earth where the Japanese woman's avatar-gnomes and frogs had been. Well, the bugs had killed again, but who had removed the avatars? And where had the mold come from so suddenly?

(PARTS 4 & 5 soon!)


[edit on 14-10-2007 by tocs100]

19. "So Cal police officer"

[color=lime---]------PART 4----------

An answer was needed; but not one that allowed us to suffer more, because we had suffered enough. Having been a college-student for several years, I hit my textbooks: anthropology, parapsychology, world religions, I searched through them all for a clue. What I arrived at was expressible only to Toti; I reached for the phone, and dialed the number she'd handed me while speaking of the [color=lime]nexus.
She agreed that my suspicions were quite likely, and she explained what she would do come nightfall.
Meanwhile, my mom was arguing with the landlord. "Look at the mold on the walls, look at my TV, look at the dead bodies. Whatd'ya mean you won't refund our deposit?! We need that money to find another place today mister."
"Calm down lady, calm down! The bugs are just some freak of nature, and the plaster's old--I'll re-plaster the walls tomorrow. And I'll hire the best exterminator around. But I won't refund your deposit, or replace your old TV. No court would award sufficient grounds!" He said the last with a sneaky grin.
"Screw you then. Scott: start packing. We'll stay at a budget motel before we spend another night here."
We were packed and out within hours, locking the place so we might hopefully retrieve our furniture later in the month.
Racing down Sweetwater Road, we were spun into traffic by a rear-collision, as a hysterical woman clawed at her hair, tossing her wig to the dashboard. The [color=lime]magicicadas were enlarging their territory, awakening from hibernation.
I didn't see more than a few in the air, but one bite would kill a 10lb. cat, and likely paralyze the average-sized human. We reached the nearest hotel in minutes, and got inside as fast as possible.

It would be nightfall soon, I thought, with no little satisfaction.

With no more light than a candle-flame, her brown, wizened face floating through the nightfog like an apple on a pond, Toti crept towards the domain of our Filipino neighbors. She came fully-loaded: every shamanistic type of paraphernalia, and four, cardinal crucifixes--out of respect for some of her people's newer beliefs.
Settling into a trance, she astral-travelled into the seemingly innocent household, a house never remarked for more than the ubiquitous chicken-clatter from the backyard, where several rows of cages were stacked, and noxious Mongolian barbecues of strange meats
burnt all to hell.
Innocent, my ass, she thought, as she surveyed the brutal cock-fight being played-out within the main room, walls heavily insulated to prevent the birds' pathetic squawking from reaching the outside world. And it wasn't just a circle the unfortunate creatures were struggling-in, but a pentagram
drawn with blood.
Lastly, an obsidian statue of the magicicada queen perched over the fray of ghoulish gamblers and opium-addicts--the satanic icon from the Mayan prophecy.

(Stay tuned for the terrifying conclusion, and the sequel, "Infernal, Cross-Country Bus Trek")



[edit on 14-10-2007 by tocs100]

20. "So Cal. squad car"

[color=lime]--------PART 5---------

For the third time in three days, police sirens sliced through the hot Caifornia morning on our low-income street. Toti had tipped-off the cops: having one of the desperate smack-heads as an eye-witness, the judge granted an emegency warrant. The despicable scum were not-too-gently escorted to prison, to the utter surprise of many neighbors (who naturally described the family as "so quiet and polite!").

The swarming death-beetles were also nowhere to be found. Apparently, they had returned to hibernating as quickly as they had been aroused.
But were we going to return to that horror-house? Except to collect our furniture to sell: no way.

Being a suburb of hugely populous San Diego, the hesitation of immediate neighbors to purchase from the "hell-house" had small effect on the liquidation of the larger items, which we sold because we were taking a bus far away from the horrid memories of this place. Old remnants were given away for free, as we made a final inspection of the interior.
Bedrooms, bathroom, living room, patio, then kitchen: Except for the mold all seemed in order. My mom looked through the cupboards one last time for any minor items, slowly closing the
final cupboard.
"Scott..." she began. The pitch of her voice made me turn from the entrance to the den...
"What...is...THAT?!"
As she stumbled to one side in disbelief, I saw it: [color=lime]The outline of the Devil himself burned into the light wood of the cupboard door; large enough to see from across the kitchen, for certain!
She scrambled in the junk-drawer, among the odds and ends, quickly retrieving a scrap of sandpaper. She scrubbed and scrubbed the outline, but it would not come off. And beside it was A SECOND ONE!...smaller, with slightly insectoid eyes, eyes that would chill your soul.

-----------THE END------------

[edit on 15-10-2007 by tocs100]

21. The original photo of the devil-images did not turn-out clearly. But they looked almost identical to the picture on this album cover:



Happy Halloween everyone, and please post some comments and questions.

Also, check back for the sequel, which I'll begin posting in a day or two.

Bwahahahahaha!!!!!!!

[edit on 15-10-2007 by tocs100]

[color=violet]

INFERNAL, CROSS-COUNTRY BUS TREK

---------INTRO-----------

If, my fellow readers, you had seen only a fragment of the crime, mania, and overall lack of human decency I had seen blanketing America's West, then you might question if you weren't living through a midnight matinee of Alfred Hitchcock films--followed by a double-bill of National Lampoon's Vacation.
Not Bradbury's "1/2 inspiration, 1/2 terror," but 1/2 terror and 1/2 Gothic de-evolution is the imagery this trip will express.
This fact-adventure follows "Cicada Nexus" as my mom and I fled from the still Wild West to the (temporary) safe haven of central PA, my nephew traveling separately with inlaws.
And in the spirit of Mark Twain, please join me in the employment of humor, as I've found it the best way to survive such a hellish journey intact.

(The story has nine, short scenes, for about 1,300 words total.)

[edit on 16-10-2007 by tocs100]

[color=violet](MOOD-PHOTOS):

1. "Hitchcockian"



[edit on 16-10-2007 by tocs100]

2. "National Lampoon mania"