Fast Fiction Challenge 2010, Day 143: The Pink Crazy Spider
Title: The Pink Crazy Spider
Word: exuberant
Challenger: Cheryl Liptrott
Length: 200 words exactly It was a very quiet laboratory: very quiet and very clean. Visitors and inspectors often commented on that when they arrived.
At first, the members of the bio-genetics lab were happy with the results of the year-long experiment.
That exuberant and positively ebullient attitude now seemed a long time ago.
The initial results had been confusing though encouraging. When the seventy-first generation genetically-modified arachnid first communicated with the researchers, its speech patterns were confusing to them; they assumed it was due to the mind communicating its ideas was so alien compared to a human's.
Within weeks, however, as the spider mastered every human language, they realised it was merely insane.
By then, of course, it was far too late; they were its slaves.
It was not a bad life, they admitted to themselves, as they invited more visitors to the facility, each of them to be injected with modified venom before they in turn invited yet more guests.
No one could remember whose idea the religion was. But as they worshipped it, the spider continued to think. And plan.
And laugh. It had learned to laugh.
Now the only thing more terrifying was when it stopped laughing and cried instead.
© Lee Barnett, 2010
This story is part of the 2010 Fast Fiction Challenge. A list of the first one hundred and twenty-five stories in the challenge can be found here.
The Fast Fiction Challenge - The Book; now available from lulu.com and, if you're in the US, via Amazon.com here; 180 of the best fast fiction challenge stories from the first three years' challenges...
Word: exuberant
Challenger: Cheryl Liptrott
Length: 200 words exactly It was a very quiet laboratory: very quiet and very clean. Visitors and inspectors often commented on that when they arrived.
At first, the members of the bio-genetics lab were happy with the results of the year-long experiment.
That exuberant and positively ebullient attitude now seemed a long time ago.
The initial results had been confusing though encouraging. When the seventy-first generation genetically-modified arachnid first communicated with the researchers, its speech patterns were confusing to them; they assumed it was due to the mind communicating its ideas was so alien compared to a human's.
Within weeks, however, as the spider mastered every human language, they realised it was merely insane.
By then, of course, it was far too late; they were its slaves.
It was not a bad life, they admitted to themselves, as they invited more visitors to the facility, each of them to be injected with modified venom before they in turn invited yet more guests.
No one could remember whose idea the religion was. But as they worshipped it, the spider continued to think. And plan.
And laugh. It had learned to laugh.
Now the only thing more terrifying was when it stopped laughing and cried instead.
© Lee Barnett, 2010
This story is part of the 2010 Fast Fiction Challenge. A list of the first one hundred and twenty-five stories in the challenge can be found here.
The Fast Fiction Challenge - The Book; now available from lulu.com and, if you're in the US, via Amazon.com here; 180 of the best fast fiction challenge stories from the first three years' challenges...