Ezra
Johnson
Open
Genera Project
The Reverse Metamorphosis
One morning, Rufus woke up all by himself. Normally the pheromones
from his neighbors awoke him, but today he just woke up. He sniffed the air to
catch a waft of the morning pheromones. Nothing. “That’s odd,” Rufus thought to
himself. He tried again in vain. Rufus opened his eyes, but everything was all
wrong. He looked around to the back corner where he kept his secret possessions
collected while foraging. Rufus looked in the pile for his new shiny bead – Rufus
had found it in the trash pile a few days ago while foraging for food—but his
eyes couldn’t focus on anything. He was determined to make sure it was there,
so he began to move towards the pile. As he began to move Rufus realized
something was amiss. He looked behind him to make sure all six of his legs were
in working order, but instead of six thin legs he found just two soft, thick,
pink legs. He thought that maybe his vison was acting up again, so he tried to
move them. The right one twitched but then went limp again. Confused, Rufus
looked down and found that he had two smaller legs close to his head. These
legs were different. They had floppy things at the end which each spawned 5
tiny stick-like appendages.
Rufus’ thoughts returned to work when he heard scurrying in a nearby
tunnel. “If I’m late one more time Archibald will kill me!” Archibald was
head-forager, specially bred for administrative roles. Rufus resented
Archibald. While Rufus was out foraging all Archibald did was emit anger
pheromones and scare the foragers. Rufus pondered his options. He knew
Archibald would come scurrying by with his anger pheromone completely maxed out
if he didn’t get up soon. He willed his new form to move, but all he got was a
lot of twitching. “Maybe if I emit some help pheromone, Zoey will come by and help
me get to work,” Rufus thought. He tried, but felt no odor being emitted. Rufus
was at a loss. He couldn’t call for help or move his new body. “I guess I will
just wait for Archibald to come by,” he thought.
As he was waiting, Rufus couldn’t help but fall asleep. When he
awoke, he found Archibald standing above him his antennae in a flurry over his
body. He sniffed the air. “No anger pheromone,” he thought “Why is he not
emitting any anger pheromone?” Again Rufus made an attempt to communicate.
However, in this attempt rather than emitting a pheromone he felt an odd
sensation inside of his neck. It was a small vibration that reverberated
through his body. Not only did it reverberate but it made an audible sound. Archibald
was still feeling around when Rufus accidently did this, and it caused him to scurry
away in panic and fear. Rufus could hear his scurrying get further and further away.
He resolved to just wait for him to come back.
After a while, Rufus could hear lots of scurrying, it got louder
and louder until seven workers came and approached him. Rufus attempted to
communicate again, but it only sent the entire group of workers cowering away. Rufus
made no more attempts to move or communicate while the workers picked him up
and carried him away. He had only visited a few sections of the colony. It just
wasn’t his business to explore the nursery or the workers area. All the same,
Rufus was being carried through unknown territory and he couldn’t help but be
curious. He wondered where they were taking him. “Maybe this happens often and
they have a special food to fix it,” he thought optimistically. The tunnels
seemed to go on forever and he began to wonder about the life ahead of him. “There
must be some way that I can go back to work,” he thought. “I want to find more
shiny beads to add to my collection.”
The tunnel slowly got wider and emerged into a large room with a
dark endless pit in the center. “Oh, no!” he thought. He began to struggle – or
attempt to struggle—with the workers. He sensed that he was unnerving them with
his small movements, so he began to vocalize and squirm as much as he could.
Rufus could smell the stench. Every single dead member of the colony was dumped
into this pit. Every corpse was thrown down to rot and decompose. “They think I
am dead!” he thought as he wrestled free of their grip. Rufus fell to the
ground. His soft pink skin was punctured by the sharp rocks he fell on. Rufus
felt a hot gooey liquid begin to flow over his body. He didn’t know what the
liquid was and he realized that his soft pink skin was useless for protection. After
he fell the workers, who were past uncomfortable, quickly rolled Rufus’ limp
body into the pit.
When Rufus woke up he was ready to put the nightmare behind him and
go to work. Except when he opened his eyes he saw nothing but utter darkness.
He realized that it wasn’t a dream. He really did transform into a soft pink useless
monster. He took a whiff of the air. It was so putrid and repulsive that he
could hardly breathe. After collecting himself, he discovered that he had some
control over his large lower legs and smaller upper legs. It was enough that he
was able to scoot himself over to the wall through all the slimy corpses. After
feeling around with his new appendages, Rufus realized that he had grown to about
twice the size as he when he first got thrown down. His body felt incomplete,
like it needed to stretch out and expand. There was nothing Rufus could do but
sit and wait for something to happen.
As Rufus’ form began to grow, the pain from the wound returned. One
day he was able to muster enough effort to reach around and feel around for the
wound. As soon as he touched it his entire body shuddered. The wound had gotten
worse. Rufus felt dizzy and went back to sleep. With each day Rufus grew larger
and larger, but so did the wound. One day it was only a small spot on his back.
A week or so later the wound had grown so large that it overwhelmed his entire
back. Rufus tried to move as little as possible. He began to drift off to sleep
more and more often. He slept for longer periods of time and soon forgot how
long he had been in the pit. Sleep became the only thing that comforted him.
After about a month Archibald came to check up on him. Archibald
emitted so much panic pheromone when he saw the giant pink skinned monster that
the whole colony stopped to come see. Archibald had an idea, rather than
letting all this soft decomposing flesh go to waste he would use it. He
commanded the workers to start to dig a hole in the center of the soft-fleshed
thing. “That’s a human,” one of the workers responded. “I have seen them up on
the surface.” Archibald emitted a little anger pheromone “I don’t care what it
is,” he said “Just make a hole in the center!” Archibald would use the new
hollowed out area as a nursery. “It has all the perfect conditions,” he
thought. “It’s warm, damp, and the larvae can just feed on the flesh rather
than eating the foraged food.” After about a month the nursery inside of Rufus
was ready. It was as perfect as Archibald had envisioned. Archibald was
promoted in the social ranks of the colony and everyone prospered.
