Stories

[lloopp D lloopp]

I know.

Anyway, anyone heard the story of Lizzy Borden?

Nope, tell me.

Lizzy Borden took an axe,
and gave her mother 40 whacks,
and when she saw what she had done,
she gave her father 41

[Jonzu95]

Lamest.

Story.

Evar.

[Natef]

Let's see you do better.

[FOTEPX]

Finished my story:


(Note: The following is based on a true story. The real events which took place may have been changed for various reasons.)

The PS1 was a great console. It had some great games; one of the uncovered gems for the console is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for the PS1. It had a large storyline, good graphics for the time and was quite loyal to the original story. It was a good game; I know first-hand, I got the game a few days after I bought a PS1. The game itself was good, with me getting up to around the 60% mark on the first day. I was 5 years old at the time, and I was hooked. This game had drawn me more than any game I'd played since Gran Turismo. I stayed up until 10 o clock, just to finish the Hufflepuff chapter. Once I had, I didn't even remove the game. Just turned off the console and the TV and slithered into bed. I didn't even want a bedtime story; I just wanted to rest so I could prepare for the game once more in the morning.

That's where this story stops getting normal and starts getting flat-out creepy.

I woke up the day after. Same standard stuff, have my breakfast, get dressed, go to school and come back. For the rest of break time and dinner time, I was telling my friends about the game. Of course, they didn't care much; Yugioh was becoming quite big around then, so all they were interested in was if I had cards or not. After getting through school and coming home, I instantly sat down, shoved a DualShock controller into my palms and started playing; I was ready to have my house rocked by awesomeness once more.

Of course, that didn't happen.

When I started up the game, my save file was deleted. Some people say the PS1 memory cards are unreliable, but, this is not the case. This is the first and only time any of memory cards have deleted anything. Sure, some of my third-party memory cards have become corrupt and some of them may have deleted my Soul Calibur III saves, but they were problems on the PS2, NOT the PS1. I thought whatever, and started up the game as normal. Then I noticed something odd. The music, even though it sounded nearly exactly the same as I can remember, the music this time seemed to have more... malice in it. Something sinister hiding behind the notes. This put me on edge like I haven't experienced, ever, not even from Fatal Frame or Silent Hill. The only music that sounded the same was the music when you were meeting Dumbledore for the first time, but that's about it. I continued with the game as per normal, with the PS1 now having a more quiet maliciousness about it. I continued with the game, walking past the common room and moving up to the broomstick training place, as I had done before.

That's when I noticed: The background music had now completely cut out. All that was left in the terms of sound was the sound of some odd jingly things that sounded like wind chimes. As I entered the room where that ghost holding the candle floats through, the game kicked up the scariness to full throttle. The sound of the ghost was almost doubled, with the ghost seeming to follow you rather than going through the wall. This is when I noticed the textures of the game seemed less blurred, allowing me to see the ghost's face. It was quiet, yet twisted. Malicious, yet muted.  Terrifying, yet calming, all at the same time. After getting slowly creeped out by this, I ran off ahead, speaking to Ron at the start of the jump training thing. This time, unlike normal, I didn't have to talk to Ron. I could just walk through the door. The cut scene that would usually occur was also weird; there were no character models, not even Harry or Malfoy. Instead, there was an eerie silence of the PS1's motor gently spinning and a dark, quiet, low-pitched tone, meant to represent silence, but more representing tension. The cut scene only consisted of the camera angles, no subtitles, no nothing. The character model returned once the cut scene was over, and I carried on. Halfway through the first jumping training, to go meet Nearly Headless Nick, A subtitle box suddenly appeared, with the camera focusing, again, on the spot where Malfoy should have been. The subtitles said 'TURN BACK', all in bold.

At this point, I should have done as it said and talked to Ron. My mind was set solid that this was just a glitch, and that that's what I should do.

But I was intent on getting up to where I was. I pressed on.

As I got up to the part with Nearly Headless Nick, everything seemed normal. Everything he said was normal, apart for one or two dead pixels in the subtitles box, and then it continued like normal. However, as I was climbing the steps, I heard... voices. One of the portraits, of an old lady, seemed to move... It shifted its head, slowly, backwards and forwards, without blinking. I stayed watching this girl for quite a while. It was probably going to be the only relaxing thing I’d see for a while.

And I was right.

After watching this girl for a while, I continued climbing the stairs. I noticed that there were two extra steps that weren’t meant to be there. I ignored this, got the chocolate frog, and continued through the door. Oddly, it didn’t take me to the place where you learn the Flippendo; instead it took me to the room afterwards, where you had to try to Flippendo the blocks to get across. Of course, I hadn’t learnt the Flippendo, so I couldn’t do the challenge. I saved and loaded a few times in the hopes that it’d fix the glitch, but there was nothing. I wanted to restart the game, but something inside me said it would be best if I didn’t. I walked around the room for a while, before finding another picture shaking it’s neck. It wasn’t shaking it’s neck as vigourously as last time, and this time it was blinking. I watched it for a few seconds.

That’s when the game stopped being innocent and scared me half to death.
After a while, the game went into a cutscene of the statue saying some random Hogwarts trivia. Luckily, I have a photographic memory, so I remember what it said. It said:

“Don’t trust anything around these parts; It’s 1497, everything is lies. Ravenclaw lies. Trust me.”

The weirdest thing is as it was saying this, there was no voice saying it. Just blank noise and the painting moving its neck more vigourously, whilst moving it’s lips like it was talking, even though there was no noise. As soon as the game returned to it’s standard view, the game made up my mind for me; It wasn’t glitching, it was possessed by some evil force. The camera suddenly focused back in on the painting, as the subtitles “AAAaaaAAAaaaAAAaa” appeared underneath, and the PS1 sped up to RPM’s I’ve never heard before in my life. I put the game on mute, but it was still screaming. The motor was spinning so fast the console itself was beginning to self-destruct. The game was quickly scrolling through every one of the 12 paintings in the room, and the RGB socket started sparking. At this point, I ran off. I couldn’t handle anything like this at this age, let alone back when I was 5. I ran off and told my Dad, but as soon as I told him, the console and the game returned to normal, with me somehow learning the Flippendo and me collecting 666 Jelly Beans, even though there's only about 500 in the ENTIRE GAME. I instantly turned off the console, ejected the disk and put it away. The game was a copy, so it is a possibility that it got hacked by someone. However, I highly doubt that, I’ve had some encounters in the standard edition of the game as well. I’ve never played the copy since, and even when I’ve been playing the standard edition, I’ve always had a chill down my spine, and I’ve always had my guard up when playing it. Even to this day I haven’t completed the game. But now the story’s out there. Now you people are going to want more. I know you guys, I’ve been around the horror circuit for a while. So, I might play it again. For old time’s sake, and to bring back some old memories; wish me luck, I’ll need it.

[GoldenFox93]

Finished my story:


(Note: The following is based on a true story. The real events which took place may have been changed for various reasons.)

The PS1 was a great console. It had some great games; one of the uncovered gems for the console is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for the PS1. It had a large storyline, good graphics for the time and was quite loyal to the original story. It was a good game; I know first-hand, I got the game a few days after I bought a PS1. The game itself was good, with me getting up to around the 60% mark on the first day. I was 5 years old at the time, and I was hooked. This game had drawn me more than any game I'd played since Gran Turismo. I stayed up until 10 o clock, just to finish the Hufflepuff chapter. Once I had, I didn't even remove the game. Just turned off the console and the TV and slithered into bed. I didn't even want a bedtime story; I just wanted to rest so I could prepare for the game once more in the morning.

That's where this story stops getting normal and starts getting flat-out creepy.

I woke up the day after. Same standard stuff, have my breakfast, get dressed, go to school and come back. For the rest of break time and dinner time, I was telling my friends about the game. Of course, they didn't care much; Yugioh was becoming quite big around then, so all they were interested in was if I had cards or not. After getting through school and coming home, I instantly sat down, shoved a DualShock controller into my palms and started playing; I was ready to have my house rocked by awesomeness once more.

Of course, that didn't happen.

When I started up the game, my save file was deleted. Some people say the PS1 memory cards are unreliable, but, this is not the case. This is the first and only time any of memory cards have deleted anything. Sure, some of my third-party memory cards have become corrupt and some of them may have deleted my Soul Calibur III saves, but they were problems on the PS2, NOT the PS1. I thought whatever, and started up the game as normal. Then I noticed something odd. The music, even though it sounded nearly exactly the same as I can remember, the music this time seemed to have more... malice in it. Something sinister hiding behind the notes. This put me on edge like I haven't experienced, ever, not even from Fatal Frame or Silent Hill. The only music that sounded the same was the music when you were meeting Dumbledore for the first time, but that's about it. I continued with the game as per normal, with the PS1 now having a more quiet maliciousness about it. I continued with the game, walking past the common room and moving up to the broomstick training place, as I had done before.

That's when I noticed: The background music had now completely cut out. All that was left in the terms of sound was the sound of some odd jingly things that sounded like wind chimes. As I entered the room where that ghost holding the candle floats through, the game kicked up the scariness to full throttle. The sound of the ghost was almost doubled, with the ghost seeming to follow you rather than going through the wall. This is when I noticed the textures of the game seemed less blurred, allowing me to see the ghost's face. It was quiet, yet twisted. Malicious, yet muted.  Terrifying, yet calming, all at the same time. After getting slowly creeped out by this, I ran off ahead, speaking to Ron at the start of the jump training thing. This time, unlike normal, I didn't have to talk to Ron. I could just walk through the door. The cut scene that would usually occur was also weird; there were no character models, not even Harry or Malfoy. Instead, there was an eerie silence of the PS1's motor gently spinning and a dark, quiet, low-pitched tone, meant to represent silence, but more representing tension. The cut scene only consisted of the camera angles, no subtitles, no nothing. The character model returned once the cut scene was over, and I carried on. Halfway through the first jumping training, to go meet Nearly Headless Nick, A subtitle box suddenly appeared, with the camera focusing, again, on the spot where Malfoy should have been. The subtitles said 'TURN BACK', all in bold.

At this point, I should have done as it said and talked to Ron. My mind was set solid that this was just a glitch, and that that's what I should do.

But I was intent on getting up to where I was. I pressed on.

As I got up to the part with Nearly Headless Nick, everything seemed normal. Everything he said was normal, apart for one or two dead pixels in the subtitles box, and then it continued like normal. However, as I was climbing the steps, I heard... voices. One of the portraits, of an old lady, seemed to move... It shifted its head, slowly, backwards and forwards, without blinking. I stayed watching this girl for quite a while. It was probably going to be the only relaxing thing I’d see for a while.

And I was right.

After watching this girl for a while, I continued climbing the stairs. I noticed that there were two extra steps that weren’t meant to be there. I ignored this, got the chocolate frog, and continued through the door. Oddly, it didn’t take me to the place where you learn the Flippendo; instead it took me to the room afterwards, where you had to try to Flippendo the blocks to get across. Of course, I hadn’t learnt the Flippendo, so I couldn’t do the challenge. I saved and loaded a few times in the hopes that it’d fix the glitch, but there was nothing. I wanted to restart the game, but something inside me said it would be best if I didn’t. I walked around the room for a while, before finding another picture shaking it’s neck. It wasn’t shaking it’s neck as vigourously as last time, and this time it was blinking. I watched it for a few seconds.

That’s when the game stopped being innocent and scared me half to death.
After a while, the game went into a cutscene of the statue saying some random Hogwarts trivia. Luckily, I have a photographic memory, so I remember what it said. It said:

“Don’t trust anything around these parts; It’s 1497, everything is lies. Ravenclaw lies. Trust me.”

The weirdest thing is as it was saying this, there was no voice saying it. Just blank noise and the painting moving its neck more vigourously, whilst moving it’s lips like it was talking, even though there was no noise. As soon as the game returned to it’s standard view, the game made up my mind for me; It wasn’t glitching, it was possessed by some evil force. The camera suddenly focused back in on the painting, as the subtitles “AAAaaaAAAaaaAAAaa” appeared underneath, and the PS1 sped up to RPM’s I’ve never heard before in my life. I put the game on mute, but it was still screaming. The motor was spinning so fast the console itself was beginning to self-destruct. The game was quickly scrolling through every one of the 12 paintings in the room, and the RGB socket started sparking. At this point, I ran off. I couldn’t handle anything like this at this age, let alone back when I was 5. I ran off and told my Dad, but as soon as I told him, the console and the game returned to normal, with me somehow learning the Flippendo and me collecting 666 Jelly Beans, even though there's only about 500 in the ENTIRE GAME. I instantly turned off the console, ejected the disk and put it away. The game was a copy, so it is a possibility that it got hacked by someone. However, I highly doubt that, I’ve had some encounters in the standard edition of the game as well. I’ve never played the copy since, and even when I’ve been playing the standard edition, I’ve always had a chill down my spine, and I’ve always had my guard up when playing it. Even to this day I haven’t completed the game. But now the story’s out there. Now you people are going to want more. I know you guys, I’ve been around the horror circuit for a while. So, I might play it again. For old time’s sake, and to bring back some old memories; wish me luck, I’ll need it.

Sounds an awful lot like a "Ben Drowned" Creepypasta to me.

[FOTEPX]

Thanks.

[GoldenFox93]

Thanks.

'tis alright. Now-

[GarvinTheGreat]

FOTPEX i'm startin to wonder does "Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

[lloopp D lloopp]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

wut

[NFX]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

Your grammar saddens my proccessors.

[GarvinTheGreat]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

Your grammar saddens my proccessors.

Fixed. But seriosly I hated grammer.

[Enigm@]

-A letter that I wrote to a random address-

To whom this letter pertains to:
Help me. They're after us. They know that I've been smuggling large amounts of crack-cocaine across the US-Canada border. I need you to help me with problem. The FBI has my address and all 3 of my wives and our 12 children hostage. Inside a little Zip-Lock baggy is a quarter-ounce of said crack that I've smuggled to Canada. Give it to Danny the neighborhood rapist and he'll know what to do with it. About the FBI, they are searching for me at this very moment. I've have to change my name 5 times just to stay out of the radar for 2 days at the most. Please, it would be something that Allah would do, I believe in you friend.
Dunka,
Anonymous

The "crack" was really sugar.

[FOTEPX]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

Your grammar saddens my proccessors.

Fixed. But seriosly I hated grammer.

Garvin, how dare you. Try and find that story anywhere on the internet before critisizing me of Ctrl+V'ing. Writing is an artform, like building robots. You don't see me saying every single of your bots sucks, so I don't respect the same. If I could rate you down to oblivion, I would. How dare you, you f**king, lying, pathetic, idiotic, yapping, hate-inducing, dumbass little noob. And I don't care if I get banned for swearing back then, because it was worth it if it put your pathetic little noob ass in it's place for even 2 seconds.

In short, GET OUT.

[Clickbeetle]

This is a short story I wrote for my Insect Behavior class a few years ago.  Looking back on it, I can see several areas where it could be improved... but I still think it is my best finished piece of writing.  (Hopefully that will change once I finish some other things I'm working on.)


Italics formatting is removed from copy/pasting into here, but oh well.



What Might Have Happened: A Story About Click Beetles and Their Behavior


   This is the story of two click beetles who met in a stand of spruce one day, and were preparing to mate when one of them was suddenly and tragically killed.  The other beetle escaped by using its renowned jumping ability.  There was no dialogue between the two beetles and neither of them felt any true emotions, as for the most part they were following preset instincts and fixed action patterns.  The beetle that escaped lived on to find another mate and led what might be called a successful life.  The end.
   These kinds of things happen every day, and a detailed, accurate account of this quite common occurrence would be rather dull reading.  The male beetle waved his antennae up and down.  The sensilla on the top and bottom of the antennae were picking up pheromone molecules.  Some instinct told him to start walking, so he did.  The instincts must be obeyed.  Then the instinct told him to start zigzagging, so he did that.  And so on; you get the picture.
   This, then, is what might have happened, had the beetles possessed somewhat more intelligence and feelings.
   Elanor Tara Davenport, or Ela as she liked to be called, clung with all six of her legs to a narrow blade of grass growing under a large grove of spruce trees.  She was a click beetle, of the genus Agriotes to be specific, a rather unremarkable brown individual with a few thin hairs on her head and thorax, antennae about as long as her legs and segmented like beads on a string, and several barely distinguishable lines running along her elytra.  She was also newly emerged from her pupal stage, after having lived underground as a wireworm feeding on roots for twenty-five molts over a period of years.1  She would have very much liked to remain a larva for a while longer, but her Mother didn’t appreciate Ela staying underground for so long.
   “You’re a growing female, Ela,” Mother Nature had said to her at her twenty-fifth molting.  “You can’t stay a wireworm forever.  Quite frankly, I think it would be embarrassing for you to still be living in the soil at your age.  It’s about time you became a responsible adult and got out into the world.  Forage for food, find a mate, oviposit, pass on your genetic material.”
   So Ela had finally and reluctantly pupated, and just recently had become a responsible adult, just as her Mother Nature wanted.  Now, perched head-up on the blade of grass, she was learning the ins and outs of what being responsible entitled.
   A tingling sensation near the tip of her abdomen drew her attention.  Something inside her wanted to be released.  It’s my exocrine glands, she guessed.  It’s time to release pheromones to attract a mate already?  Oh, frass!  I don’t know at all what I’m doing.  What am I supposed to do when somebody comes?  What if I don’t like the guy?  What if he doesn’t like me?
   Ela worried and fretted over this until the conflicting mental signals of pheromone release and caution resulted in grooming behavior.  She seemed to be doing a lot of grooming lately.  So much, in fact, that she would bet the strangely attractive, greenish paper she found on the ground once that she was the cleanest click beetle in the forest.  After starting to groom her perfectly spotless left antenna for the second time, she suddenly realized she would need someone else to take the bet, and decided to release her pheromones.
   Involuntarily, the hemolymph pressure in her abdomen increased slightly, and tiny wisps of volatile chemicals, detectable only to another click beetle of her species, began diffusing out.  Ela just hoped the chemicals weren’t conveying some embarrassing message like, “Hi, my name is Ela Tara D., and I’m anxious to mate with any random guy who happens to be passing through.”
~
   Meanwhile, flying over an open field adjacent to the spruce forest, wings rhythmically beating the air in figure-eights, was another click beetle named Cole Leopold Terry.  It was swarming time for the Agriotes males looking for mates, of which Cole was a part.  He had already found several mates, however, and the other males were starting to get jealous and roughhousing him because of it.  So he flew some distance away from the area everyone else was searching, hoping to find a lone female in need of company.
   He wasn’t expecting to find one very quickly, so it came as a shock when his antennae picked up the intoxicating scent of a female sex pheromone.  The few particles he smelled burned through his antennae like fire and set his brain alight, and then the effect was gone, leaving an empty, primal hunger for more.  The aroma was so powerful, in fact, that it caused him to drop rather ungracefully to the ground.  When Cole finally recovered his bearings, he found himself lying on his back.
   He knew he was upside-down because all of his legs were contacting nothing but air.  Lacking the ground for sensory feedback, he started waving his legs about in a very uncoordinated fashion, searching for any sort of contact on his dorsal side.  He kept up his fruitless search for ground contact for maybe fifteen seconds before giving up.2  “Frass!” he cursed.  He would need to perform a jump if he was going to find that lovely female.
   Cole knew from experience that a jump wasn’t something you did unless you had to, or unless you were one of those “extreme” types with a death wish who did stuff like poke sleeping frogs and fly through the holes in spider webs.  The process of jumping was like having your brains shoved down your crop while you spun like one of those demented whirligig beetles.c Clicking was an activity best avoided, but sometimes, like now, there was no other choice.
   He started by retracting his appendages and head.  This loosened up a pivot point in his thorax, and he arched his body so that only his pronotum and elytral tips remained in contact with the ground.  As he did this, he felt a small peg on his prosternum slide smoothly out of a pit on his mesosternum.  Another retraction of his head briefly opened the sutures on his prosternum, causing a slight depression, and he felt the peg slip a little ways over the lip of his mesosternum, where it caught and held its position with a rough, ridged spot on the tip.  The cuticle of his mesosternum was stretched taut, tension was rapidly building up in his prothoracic muscles, and within half a second he was ready to jump.4
   Before actually clicking, Cole lay on his back for a while, mentally preparing himself for the debacle.e He really did loathe having to click.  Well, there’s nothing for just laying here.  That female isn’t going to come to me.  He just hoped he would land on his legs on the first jump, so he wouldn’t need to do it again.
   He relaxed his muscles, his head shifted forward, and he felt the peg slip over the mesosternal lip.  All the tension that had been building up until now was released, sending the peg back into the mesosternum and rapidly jack-knifing his body so it arched the other way.  He felt the bumper on his prosternal peg slam into the buffer on his mesosternum, producing a sickening snap.  The base of his elytra struck the ground, and suddenly his brains were in his hindgut.  The ground was spinning over and under his eyes, his head was vibrating from the recoil, and his legs flailed helplessly in the wind as he bounced up to a height he would be much more comfortable flying at.f
   Then, with a thud, it was over.  He found his legs once again in contact with solid earth that was no longer spinning.  After a moment of sorting out his senses, Cole remembered why it was he had needed to click, and set off to try and catch another whiff of that pheromone.
   He found one near the stand of spruce bordering the clearing.  It was stronger here, burning through his whole nervous system, and it seemed to carry a message implied in it, one he had not noticed before.
   “Hi, my name is Ela Tara D., and I’m anxious to mate with any random guy who happens to be passing through.”
   Cole’s antennae waved furiously.  His legs scrabbled on the dirt in an uncoordinated attempt to accelerate.  His wings twitched in his elytra.  He would have whinnied if he could.  He was so excited, he concluded he must be in love for real.  Not like the other mates he had found.  This beetle would be his one true mate for life, and they would live a happy, peaceful life and die together in their sleep.  Love would conquer any obstacles between him and this female.
   In most circumstances, higher vertebrates are far more intelligent than insects, but in this respect Cole was at least as smart as the average human being.
   Which is to say, completely brainless.


   Nevertheless, Cole kept walking toward the spruce, vibrating his antennae diagonally up and down as he did7, driven on by the intoxicating pheromone.
~
   Ela was surprised when she saw a male beetle coming so soon after she released her pheromones.  So surprised, in fact, that she dropped off her blade of grass, fortunately landing on her tarsi, and scurried behind a nearby plant.  The other beetle approached the blade where she had been, calling out her name.
   “Hello, Ela Tara D.!” the beetle shouted from the base of the grass.  “I’m Cole Leopold Terry, and I’m in love with you!”
   Cole probed the base of the grass with his antennae and started climbing it.  His movements were rushed and unconsidered, and he sounded like a sugar-filled third-instar wireworm on the night before Christmas.  “No you’re not,” Ela corrected him.  “You’re just following a set of fixed action patterns.”
   “No, I really do love you!” Cole said to a bead of water on the grass.  “Your cuticle is the most perfect shade of brown, like the soils of my larvahood.  Your ommatidia are like deep pools of twilight.  Your labium is so exquisitely formed–”
   “If you were motivated by more than just fixed action patterns, you would know that there’s nothing on that blade of grass except a few beads of water, dumb-abdomen,” Ela interrupted.
   Cole rotated his entire body, looking in every direction until he finally fixated on Ela hiding behind another blade.  “I knew that,” he said.  “I was just... um... blushing.  Yeah.  And I didn’t want you to see.”
   “Beetles don’t blush and you know it,” Ela retorted.  “Not even freakish anthropomorphic beetles.”
   “Well, maybe,” Cole admitted.  “But I still love you.”
   He dropped off the blade of grass and landed flat on his back.  “Oh, caterpillar frass!” he cursed loudly.  He flailed his legs about, searching for ground contact and finding none.  “Can you come over... wait, no don’t.  Watch this.  I’m going to click higher than you’ve ever seen before, and I’m going to do more somersaults than you can count and still land on my tarsi.”
   Ela would have rolled her eyes if she could.  Cole was already arching his thorax above the ground to set the click mechanism.  Then he held it there, head and appendages tucked in, apparently thinking he could build up more tension by staying like that.  The stress on his muscles must have been enormous.h
   A minute of silence followed.  A very awkward minute, as Cole lay on his back like someone doing yoga and Ela watched curiously from behind her grass.  Then, suddenly and with a loud click, Cole catapulted into the air.  He went almost 30 centimeters, head and prothorax bouncing on his mesothorax, and his whole body flipping end over end the whole way.  Then he came back down again, landed on his head, bounced, and came to rest on his tarsi.  “Impressed?” he asked with a flourish of his antennae.
   Ela was impressed, although she wasn’t about to admit it.  She wasn’t about to admit that, in a flash of intelligence on par with that of a human, she had decided she might like this guy after all.  Maybe they could find a nice patch of loamy soil somewhere and overwinter together, maybe raise a small family of 130 the next spring...
   All these thoughts vanished, however, as she saw the most horrible monster imaginable come crashing through the grass to her left.  It had to be a hundred times bigger than either Ela or Cole.  Its grotesque mound of soft, fat flesh rippled under its coarse, wart-riddled skin in a midgut-wrenching way.  Its eyes gleamed with a predatory hunger as its malicious gaze fell on the two beetles before it.  It was a toad, the dark creature mentioned only in whispered stories by the wireworms in the soil, who were oft promptly shushed by Mother Nature.
   In an event that took only seconds, but seemed to last hours, a black, gaping maw opened in the toad’s nightmarish face, and an impossibly long pink tentacle shot out with impossible speed.  It caught Cole, and brought him struggling back into the toad’s maw with equally impossible speed.  Ela, frightened out of her wits, switched into instinct mode.  She retracted her head and legs and arched her body so the peg on her prosternum slid out of the pit on her mesosternum.  She set the peg on the edge of the mesosternum, built up tension in her prothoracic muscles, and wasted no time in releasing it as soon as it was ready.9
   The click she had heard from Cole sounded quite different when she was doing it.  It sounded like her cuticle was snapping.  She launched into the air, spinning and flexing uncontrollably, unable to pick out anything from her jumbled senses.  The image of Cole being snared by the pink tentacle flashed across her thoughts.  Would he be all right?
   Suddenly, her abdomen struck the ground, and she bounced off into the grass and came to rest on her back.  The toad was sitting a little further away than it had been, looking a bit startled, with one of Cole’s elytra hanging out of its mouth in a macabre fashion.  Ela would have screamed at the beast in rage, but there was no way for her to communicate with it.  So she clicked again, partly to escape from the toad, partly to scramble her brains and forget the appalling image of Cole’s elytron.
   Ela landed on her tarsi this time, and scurried into the tall grass in a fit.  Behind her, she heard the toad go crashing through in the opposite direction.  “I hope you get run over by a car!” she cried after it, knowing that it wouldn’t hear her.
   She sulked for a long time after that.  There was a tingling in her abdomen, but she had no desire to release any pheromones.
   “Oh, get over it already,” Mother Nature told her.  “It was just one male, and he would have left you as soon as you mated.  Now, there are plenty more fish in the sea.  Forget Cole and go find another mate!”
   Ela had long ago gotten used to her Mother popping up when and where she was least expected.  “Actually, the humans are overfishing the sea quite severely–”
   “I know what the humans are doing!” Mother Nature snapped.  “Terrible, awful things.  Worse than that toad just did.  And they’ll pay for it, don’t worry.  But that’s not the point.  The point is, that your point is to pass on your genes.  Not start some bloody touching romance.  This is nature, red in tooth and claw!  You need to be tough; be strong, or you won’t survive.  Move on and find more mates.”
   Ela reluctantly took her Mother’s advice and found that she was right.  The next male she found mated and then left, as did all the others.  She overwintered and laid several eggs in the spring, but knowing she would never see them hatch and that the majority would die in larvahood, she derived no satisfaction from it.  Some, like her Mother, might say she led a successful life, but Ela didn’t.
   Eventually, her life came to an abrupt end when a random hiker backpacking through the woods crushed her underneath his expensive hiking boot and walked on completely oblivious to what had just happened.  He went on to start his own fishery, and was mildly successful until all the fish in his area went extinct and he was forced into bankruptcy, but that is an unimportant detail.
   Ela, meanwhile, as she lay dying, just wished there could have been more to life.
   “Quit your sulking,” Mother Nature said to her one last time.  “Your life isn’t some bleak tear-jerker any more than it’s a romance.  Your purpose is to grow up, mate, lay eggs, and die.  Emotions, other beetles, right and wrong, they count for nothing.  But you did a good job, and I’m proud of you, my daughter.”
   Ela disagreed.  With great effort, she uttered her last words.  “Do I have a Father?  I want to hear what he has to say.”

Works Cited


1.  Berenbaum, May R.  Bugs in the System: Insects and their Impact on Human Affairs.  Basic Books, 1995.


2.  Evans, M. E. G. 1972.  The jump of the click beetle (Coleoptera:Elateridae) - a preliminary study.  Journal of  Zoology.  167:319-336


3.  Evans, M. E. G. 1973.  The jump of the click beetle (Coleoptera: Elateridae) - energetics and mechanics.  Journal of Zoology.  169:181-194


4.  Frantsevich, Leonid.  2004.  Righting kinematics in beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera).  Arthropod Structure & Development.  33 (3):221-235


5.  Furlan, L.  2004.  The biology of Agriotes sordidus Illiger (Col., Elateridae).  Journal of Applied Entomology.  128 (9-10):696-706


6.  Gronenberg, W.  1996.  Fast actions in small animals: Springs and click mechanisms.  Journal of Comparative Physiology.  178 (6):727-734


7.  McGavin, George C.  Insects, Spiders, and Other Terrestrial Arthropods.  New York: Dorling Kindersley Inc., 2000.


8.  Merivee, Enno; Rahi, Mart; Luik, Anne.  1997.  Distribution of olfactory and some other antennal sensilla in the male click beetle Agriotes obscurus L. (Coleoptera: Elateridae).  International Journal of Insect Morphology & Embryology.  26 (2):75-83


9.  Rothschild, Miriam; Schlein, J.; Parker, K.; Neville, C.; Sternberg, S.  1975.  The jumping mechanism of Xenopsylla cheopis III. Execution of the jump and activity.  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences.  271 (914):499-514


10.  Sannasi, A.  1969.  Resilin in the cuticle of click beetles.  Journal of the Georgia Entomological Society.  4:31-32.

[GarvinTheGreat]

Im  guessing thats how you got the name Clickbeetle.
EDIT: McGavin? Hmm, I like the sound of that.

[GoldenFox93]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

Your grammar saddens my proccessors.

Fixed. But seriosly I hated grammer.

Garvin, how dare you. Try and find that story anywhere on the internet before critisizing me of Ctrl+V'ing. Writing is an artform, like building robots. You don't see me saying every single of your bots sucks, so I don't respect the same. If I could rate you down to oblivion, I would. How dare you, you f**king, lying, pathetic, idiotic, yapping, hate-inducing, dumbass little noob. And I don't care if I get banned for swearing back then, because it was worth it if it put your pathetic little noob ass in it's place for even 2 seconds.

In short, GET OUT.

Temper, temper   

[GarvinTheGreat]

He almost pulled a Garvin. But we made up.( Not to be confuse with made out.)

[madman3]

FOTPEX are startin to wonder"Copy and Paste" ring a bell?

Your grammar saddens my proccessors.

Fixed. But seriosly I hated grammer.

Garvin, how dare you. Try and find that story anywhere on the internet before critisizing me of Ctrl+V'ing. Writing is an artform, like building robots. You don't see me saying every single of your bots sucks, so I don't respect the same. If I could rate you down to oblivion, I would. How dare you, you f**king, lying, pathetic, idiotic, yapping, hate-inducing, dumbass little noob. And I don't care if I get banned for swearing back then, because it was worth it if it put your pathetic little noob ass in it's place for even 2 seconds.

In short, GET OUT.

Cool story, bro.

[GarvinTheGreat]

But seriously it is a good story.Its kinda like a Biography about me:
Garvins Bio, By FOTPEX
**** you Garvin! But seriously no disrespect ment by that.

[HurricaneAndrew]

I have a story...

This one time, at band camp...

Uh, maybe I shouldn't tell this story.