hwango

Hmm, what? Where did all of you children come from? Wasn’t that door locked? I see. Next time I take a nap I’ll be sure to close the window first.

So, you’re after a story, eh? I suppose persistence ought to be rewarded.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a little girl named Abigail. Abigail was a willful, disobedient child who was forever ignoring the wisdom of her parents, because she was certain that she was smarter than they were. Not like you children. You obviously realize that your elders are valuable resources of knowledge.

One day, Abigail was picking berries in the woods and – what? Oh, blueberries, probably. Many other varieties of berry have sinister counterparts that mimic their appearance, such as the Blighting Psuedocranberry, Dire Wolfberry, or Treacherous Strawberry - which of course isn’t a proper berry at all but actually an aggregate accessory fruit, as I’m sure you children well know. Regardless, Abigail’s parents were hardly going to send her off alone into a situation where she might accidentally pick from the wrong bush and come home with something deadly.

Anyway, Abigail had already picked until her bucket was half-filled when she stumbled upon an enormous caterpillar. It was a gruesome thing – all black and spiny, with baleful red spots all along its wriggling body. She shrieked in horror and was about to crush the thing with her bucket when all of a sudden it spoke to her.

“Please spare me, little girl!” it squeaked piteously.

Now, like any responsible guardians, Abigail’s parents had warned her that the forest was full of shapeshifting monsters that would cheerfully devour her soul if given a chance, and that she was not to converse with any talking animals, flowers, rocks, or sparkling motes of light that she might encounter. However, we’ve already established that Abigail wasn’t the sort of girl to heed such warnings, and so she lowered her bucket.

“And what manner of creature are you?” she asked.

“I am just a harmless caterpillar,” the monster said. “I know that I look grotesque, but I cannot help that. Please, take pity on me. Truly, I am meek and harmless and no threat to anyone at all. You are in no danger whatsoever.”

Of course, one ought to be suspicious of any claim repeated so many times and with such insistence. This is doubly the case when the speaker is a giant talking bug you’ve met in the forest while you’re all alone and radiating that air of smugness so common to people who aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are.

“If you take me home and care for me, one day I will undergo an astonishing metamorphosis!” said the caterpillar.

“You mean you’ll turn into a butterfly?” Abigail asked.

“That’s what most caterpillars turn into, isn’t it?” the monster said, carefully avoiding the question.

Abigail’s brain filled with absurd visions of herself soaring through the clouds on the back of a butterfly with a wingspan over six feet wide, totally failing to account for the impossibility of an insect that size, disregarding the potential load-bearing capabilities of flying creatures of any kind, and apparently forgetting the sort of wing motions used by butterflies to remain aloft.

So Abigail dumped out all of her berries, deposited the giant caterpillar into her bucket, and then skipped and laughed all the way home. She hid the caterpillar under her bed, promised to bring it some delicious leaves to eat later on, and then skipped and laughed all the way back to the forest, because, like so many children, she failed to realize that something can be endearing in small doses, yet insufferable when it is done too often. She retrieved her berries, picked more until she had filled the rest of the bucket, and then skipped and laughed all the way home with her parents left completely unaware of her horrible mistake.

Over the next several weeks, Abigail brought her monster buckets and buckets of the vibrant green leaves it claimed to love so much, and it grew to simply appalling size. Abigail began to worry that soon it might not fit under her bed any longer, which really should have been a warning sign to even the most foolish child that things had gotten badly out of hand.

Eventually, the caterpillar told her that it was time for it to undergo its transformation.

“I’m going to sleep for a few weeks, now,” it said in a deep, rich voice.

“And then you’ll be beautiful and amazing?” Abigail asked eagerly, her preposterous aerial scenario flooding her mind once more. The caterpillar gazed at her for a long moment.

“Yes,” it said. “I will.”

The next few weeks passed with the caterpillar in its chrysalis stage, undergoing its dreadful metamorphosis. No, it didn’t spin a cocoon to sleep in. That’s moth caterpillars that do that. A chrysalis is like a hardened layer of shell that forms after the caterpillar sheds its skin for the last time. You think that’s gross, do you? Scary, too? If you think that’s scary, then you might want to leave now.

Abigail spent those few weeks tired and listless, and was often ill. Every night she had strange dreams, and she often woke up flailing against the blankets as if they were trying to suffocate her. Again, to any sensible person, these would be pretty obvious indicators that something was wrong. But no, Abigail just went on with her life as normal, eagerly looking forward to the day that her new friend would emerge from its shell.

Finally, Abigail woke up early one morning to a strange sound from under her bed. Even though she had slept through the whole night, she still felt tired. She dragged herself to the edge of the bed and looked underneath. The chrysalis was empty. Then she flinched as something touched her arm – she looked up and saw a young girl standing next to her bed. It looked just like Abigail - the same hair, the same face. It was even wearing some of her clothes.

“That’s much better,” the thing said in a voice just like Abigail’s. It ran its fingers over the smooth skin of its face. “You really are a beautiful little girl.” Then, of course, the vile doppelganger finished devouring Abigail’s soul, disposed of the body by means I’m sure some of you are too squeamish to handle hearing about, and then took her place in Abigail’s family with none of them suspecting a thing. At first.

After that, I’m afraid the story becomes extremely disturbing.

The lesson to be learned here is that when a creature increases in size, the new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier in size, while the cross-section of muscle tissue would only have increased by the square of that multiplier. A butterfly six feet across would be crushed under its own weight, and certainly wouldn’t be able to fly.

Also, sometimes there really is a monster under your bed, particularly if you were dumb enough to put one there. Always get your parents’ permission before bringing home a pet.

Now, you children run along, and be sure to stay on the lookout for shapeshifting monsters that have eaten people’s souls and taken their place in our community.