The Old Packets

What an elderly couple doesn't know about what to do with the packets may or may not hurt them, but just may bug them an awful lot.

    It seemed that she’d lived in this old house in the mountains forever. When the summer Telluride crowd started showing up for the various festivals the demand for Alice’s cookies helped to make payments on her credit. Her old man, Sam, had family down in the valley at the western slope of the Rock Mountains. Alice hoped that Sam’s son would bring his wife and kids up for a visit. She was going to make some extra batches of chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. So after digging out the ingredients for mixing the batter, she saw that she needed to stoke the old wood burning stove.
    As she piled kindling up in the belly of the stove on top of some old grasses to start fire she heard Sam move the old ladder from the back of the house to the dingy garage. He’d spent most of the spring repairing the roof of the old place, mending holes in the shingles using old rags saturated with tar. Rain wouldn’t come until later in August, the water shouldn’t leak too much once everything dried, and even though Ronald and Rachel may not even be there with their kids, it was better safe than sorry. As the flames grew in the old stove and more wood was piled inside, Alice started mixing the dough that would have to sit overnight and coagulate once they were mixed in several bowls around the kitchen covered with plastic.
     Alice was only seventy two, and she still had some teeth that she religiously brushed every morning along with her long, flowing grey hair that she wore in a wide braid during the day. Her pale blue eyes grew weaker every year and her back bent more forward, but her hands still had their strength and her sense of smell was as keen as it had been when she was just a girl. She wore blue jeans and a warm long sleeved shirt that kept her lean body warm. The old Army boots were dingy and scuffed, and the laces had several knots to keep them tied, but their waterproofing kept her feet dry and they were warm and comfortable.
      The old house stood behind a stand of trees near the turnoff from the road from the Dallas Pass that led up to Placerville, Telluride, and beyond. The white wash that Sam applied last fall faded in the late spring sunshine but the frame of the old place was sound. It had a wide living room that shared the dining room table, a stone fireplace, and the kitchen wall was properly insulated with ochre which helped keep the main living room warm at night and cool in the sunny afternoons. There was a rickety old staircase that led to the second floor above the kitchen where three small bedrooms shared a narrow hallway. Sam and Alice slept in the outer most room on the old brass bed Sam hauled up from Grand Junction the summer they were married some thirty odd years before. It was a sturdy old home that stood against the wind and the harsh elements of the mountains, and it was all theirs. Taxes had to be paid by the spring though. Thank God for the recipes Alice’s mother swore by and Alice kept hidden inexorably in her memory.
      When the kids would finally show up and bring their children to the mountains to go fishing in the river and hunting in the foothills, they’d all stay in the two small rooms adjacent to Alice’s. Ron’s kids would run around the house playing hide and seek, explore the grounds outside the house with the German Sheppard mix named Sadie, and after a day or two go nuts with boredom with the cabin fever that Sam and Alice had learned to live with for decades. Still Rachel had her new jeep, and she’d help Alice to bake the cookies, wrap them up in plastic with paper labels so they could be sold to the wealthy crowd by July fourth, and the children would test the flavor of them until their little bellies would almost pop. The cookies were a nice distraction for little Marcy, and also for Lizzie who was once a young girl but was now becoming a budding beauty of youth, which raised Alice’s smile. Lonnie was another thing. His broad shoulders and long hair that draped around his wide face and blue eyes were an almost carbon copy of Sam’s youthful image when Alice was the young girl he wooed once upon a time.
     Once the afternoon sun pushed shadows of the house across the old road, Sam finally came in carrying a bottle of gin and a tall six-pack of Coors beer. Alice had the table set with steaming TV dinners. The rest of the evening would see the elderly couple sitting in front of the fireplace, Sam with his old guitar and Alice with her fiddle. Music was always what kept the couple looking forward to each other’s company over the years. As Sam placed the gin on the table and the beer in the icebox, he smiled for Alice and caressed her cheek with his calloused hand.
     “Sky’s actin’ funny out there, darlin’.” he said. “I ain’t seen it like this for a long while. There’s one of those weird sunsets where the pink clouds are pushing out from the peaks, like back in seventy three.”
     “Okay.” Alice answered, rolling her eyes at her husband and his silly superstitions. “So what does that mean?”
     “Well, I ran into old Hector at the liquor store up in Placerville.” Sam replied. “And he said the bugs are comin’ back this year, somethin’ about how the magpies are acting, how they’re gatherin’ together in big flocks. They don’t usually do that unless there’s something comin’ down the pike. And he gave me these.” Sam handed her four packets, cards with plastic on them containing four dried up old bugs tied with string and a bunched up glob of grass or weed or some herb about the size of Alice’s thumbnail.
     “Now what the hell are these, Sam?” she asked. The packets were antiquated and the strange writing on the cards was faded, but the dead bugs beneath the plastic were still whole like they’d been put in the plastic mere months ago. They looked like grasshoppers, or crickets with a funny green color. Each packet had four different insects that were different species yet similar in their color and the way their bodies were put together by nature. In each package a small bundle of organic green stuff was tied up in the upper corner of the packets.
     “What is this green stuff, pot or something?”
    “I dunno’ Alice, Hector wouldn’t say. That old guy can barely walk he’s so old and faded.” Sam held one of the packages reverently in his hand and placed it next to the bottle of gin on the dining table. “He’s one of those old boys that’ve been around up here forever, and his dissuasions used to hold a lot of weight in these parts. Just put em’ up in the cupboard for now and maybe we can sell em’ to one of those damned curiosity shops up in Telluride before winter.”
     “Okay, Sammie; okay.” She took the four packets and stuffed them into the old junk drawer in the kitchen as far away from the bowls of cookie dough as possible. The old couple sat down at the table in front of the aluminum trays and started eating their supper. After their meal they sat down together on the ruddy old couch and played their music. They played to keep their instruments in tune, to keep up to snuff in their abilities, and they played to help their old bodies to relax as the night came to help them sleep. And they played because that was what they’d always done as a couple of old hicks from the high country of the Colorado Mountains. Before Alice knew it old Sam had leaned his head back on the couch and had fallen asleep. She smiled at him lovingly and did her normal set of scales on the violin that normally made Sam wince because he was pretty much just a chord player and a rhythm section, but that was long ago when they were part of an honest to goodness band. When she finished her last minor scale in D flat she put the old fiddle back in its case, lit the old kerosene lamp, and squeezed Sam’s hand.

      The sun was fully down and darkness saturated the house like the welcome odor of Alice’s cookies baking that would flow through the house and out into the yard outside when they would finally go into the oven. He opened his eyes, grinned toothlessly, and wrapped his arms around her neck after setting his guitar down on the floor.
    Sam kissed Alice and took her hand, leading her up to their bedroom where they went to bed in each other’s arms every night for many years. As the two fell asleep and the moon rose from behind the weird clouds that had formed in the sky, an ominous vibration echoed down from the mountain from above the old house. In the old junk drawer, far away from the bowls of cookie dough by design, the same high pitched vibration started from within. The noise from the drawer and the mountain outside was drowned out of Sam and Alice’s ears by their own snoring.
     The peculiar pink clouds dissipated above the house, revealing a half moon up in the sky that cast shadows in the rugged landscape in the night, and the vibration from the rocks above rose in intensity and in volume. The shadows cast by trees, bushes, and the rocks that pushed up from the ground suddenly became enshrouded by more shadows of a huge mass of bugs that resembled the shadows of a swarm of bees aroused from their hive, but these bugs weren’t bees. Another weird cloud of pink formed above Sam and Alice’s house, shading the old place from the moonlight, shrouding the house in a cloud of noisily vibrating bugs that looked sort of like grasshoppers or light green crickets.
     The sound of the bugs filtered into the bedroom waking Alice from her light sleep, and a single grasshopper, green and thick as a narrow cigar, plopped down onto the chest of drawers near the bed. It buzzed and flapped its wings, its legs walking its body towards the two people lying on the bed. The grossly large bug lifted itself up into the air and dropped down on the blanket that covered Sam’s body as the vibrating noise made Alice sit up with a startled gasp. Her sleepy eyes focused on the big grasshopper resting on her husband’s body and Alice reached over,flicking it away with her finger.
     As if to signify an advance by the gesture of her hand reaching to the flapping wings of the big bug a cloud, a swarm, a storm of bugs made up of light green looking crickets and weird, green colored grasshoppers of different biological make up rushed into the bedroom through the open door from the living room below. They made a bizarre, creepy, and very loud buzzing sound as if from a swarm of hornets. The bugs encircled the two people completely, each bug trying to settle on the two elderly people’s flesh to make a meal of their skin and blood and hair. As Alice opened her mouth to scream the bugs flew right into her open mouth and down her throat, silencing her. The old bed became a swirl of light green with flapping wings and loud, vibrating buzzing sounds in the darkness of the room. They maneuvered their insectine bodies beneath blankets and underwear, and ultimately beneath skin and flesh, devouring Sam and Alice, swallowing blood and bile and all of what was once the two people’s bodies. Their humanity was consumed down to even the bones themselves that were eaten by the hideous green swarm of bugs.
     After Sam and Alice were no longer people but a part of the swarm of insects, the swarm expanded throughout the whole house, searching for more humans to feast on. The bugs surrounded the bowls of cookie dough and the icebox that remained closed from the frantic swarm of death. They maneuvered into drawers and cupboards and closets, and finding nobody else to devour the bugs formed into a thick cloud of spasming green, forming in front of the inner main door of the house. With a peaked, vibrating roar the cloud of light green insects rushed against the door, pulling it open as if by some ghostly hand, and the swarm flew out into the night, the moonlight cloaked by a large, weird, pink cloud above old Sam and Alice’s house.
    As the sun drew its bright colors above the mountainous horizon of the dawn, the half moon peaked through the waning pink cloud that dissipated with the rise of the temperature. As the sun came up and shadows grew on the east side of the valley the front door of the house stood wide open.

    Later that day the sun stood high in the sky with nary a cloud. Lizzie and Marcie were asleep in their mother’s arms in the back seat of the jeep, Lonnie was driving with a cigarette burning in his hand, and Ron was in the passenger seat reading from his bible. Their dog Sadie snoozed in the very back with the luggage. They’d been driving for hours after having breakfast in Grand Junction earlier that morning. The family left their home in Berthod just north of Longmont and stayed at a motel the night before.
    Ron planned and saved for some time during the spring semester where he taught biology at Rocky Mountain High School in Loveland. He looked forward to spending a few weeks at his father’s cabin with his family. He liked Alice, his stepmother, and he was hoping that young Marcie would continue her interest in the way the old woman made her fiddle sing. There was a brand new violin hidden in the luggage for Marcie’s eleventh birthday three days from now. Lizzy had no interest in music anymore. Being thirteen, all she cared about were boys and fashion and her tiresome case of acne. Ron had plans for Rachel, there was a nice little stand of trees up on the mountain above the house where a blanket could be spread and her affections could be aroused.
    Lonnie finally found the short driveway to the house where his grandfather lived and pulled up to the front door which stood conspicuously open. When the jeep came to a stop, Marcie woke up and raced out of the back seat, making a beeline for the kitchen where she couldn’t wait to see her ‘gramma. The young girl ran into the living room with the dog following her, hollering for Alice but there was no one there. As Ron slowly walked up to the door, images of his youth raced through his mind, and he smiled at the familiar landscape and at the house. Lonnie stood up from the driver’s seat and tossed the butt of his cigarette to the ground, dreading the following weeks stuck in these confounded mountains. Rachel and Lizzie slowly followed him into the front door of the house.
     Marcie went to the kitchen and gleefully examined the various bowls of cookie dough that sat undisturbed on the kitchen counter, still calling for her ‘gramma. As the family entered the house, looking for Sam or Alice, some concern was raised for them but they reasoned that the old couple had probably gone to Placerville to go to the store or something. Ron checked the old wood burning stove and there was still some coals burning within, so he put some wood in to restart the fire. Rachel wiped down the counters of the kitchen, preparing for the annual ritual of baking cookies with her old friend Alice. After a while Marcie went to her mother, inquiring the location of her ‘gramma.
     “Oh, well, ‘gramma’s a pretty old lady, sweetheart.” Rachel smiled and hugged her daughter, reasoning that Alice had probably lost herself in shopping or gossiping with one of her chums in the area. “She’ll be along before too long. Why don’t we help her out and get some of these cookies in the oven and give her a nice surprise when she comes home?”
     “Okay!” young Marcie replied with a grin. “I’ll get the cookie cutters out of the drawer.”
     “And I’ll get the flour and rolling pin so we can lay out the dough.” Rachel said, opening a cupboard and pulling out a wide, wooden cutting board. “Your dad’s getting the fire started in the stove. Isn’t it fun to bake the way the pioneers used to?”
     “Oh yeah!” Marcie said, looking through all the drawers of the kitchen for the cookie cutters. She opened the old junk drawer and pulled out the four strange packets that were on top of everything else. “What are these, mama?”
     Rachel looked at one of the packets that had a strange bundle of grass looking stuff that was surrounding four peculiar looking grasshoppers that twitched and gyrated against the bindings of the cardboard they were tied to.
    “Ewwww’…” Marcie exclaimed in disgust. “These bugs are all still alive! Yuck!”
    “Yes they are.” Rachel said, looking at the packets in her hand with the living bugs straining against the strange grass that surrounded them beneath the plastic. There was some strange, cryptic writing on the cardboard beneath the flowing grass surrounding the squirming bugs, but Rachel didn’t want anything to do with the odd grasshoppers. She took the packet out of her daughter’s hand and took the packets to the wood burning stove that now had a full flame burning inside, almost ready for baking. Opening the door of the stove, she tossed the four packets into the flames with revulsion, and went back to the kitchen to help Marcie roll out the dough and cut out some cookies to place on a baking pan for Alice. As Marcie happily chattered about how she couldn’t wait for her gramma’ to play the fiddle, Rachel didn’t hear the humming coming from the fire of the stove as the packets, the weird bugs, and the strange herbal grass burned.
     As Lonnie poked around in his grandfather’s back yard he looked up at the mountains behind the house. He planned to take a hike up there later that afternoon and sneak in a smoke of some ‘real estate’ hidden in his pocket. As he considered what trail he would take to get way up there, he saw a mist forming up in the trees high up near the tree line and noticed it had a faint pinkish color. Taking another cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket, Lonnie wondered if there were any cute girls around the area who smoked pot. As he lit his cigarette, Sadie nuzzled up to his leg and licked at his hand.
    “C’mon girl!” Lonnie said, rubbing the dog’s head and ears, turning towards the high rocks and the pink mist. “Let’s go for a little hike.” Sadie barked happily and started up the path leading up into the trees, her nose sniffing away at the brush alongside the trail.

Author's Note

Ever been to Colorado?

Reviews

[HoWiE]

Gahh!! Nice work mate, if there's one thing that gates me it's frickin' bugs - I'm not sure if I could imagine anything worse than being snaffled by a horde of flash eating bugs, very creepy indeed. I liked the whole idea of this and think it worked pretty well. I did have an old plot kicking around somewhere where an old guy is absorbed into an insect collective, fairly similar. I remember watching an old 'Twilight Zone' once where a guy is a Roach exterminator who comes to a fairly revolting end, your story puts me in mind of that. Nice work mate, you certainly made my skin crawl. Cheers!! Howie ;)

[Twilight]

In some ways, this did remind me of that film from the seventies, called "Bugs" (dating back to 1976 I think) or that infamous scene from "Creepshow" (1982). Either way, it was creepy in parts! Also, your details about the characters and their lives, certainly helps to add a little realism. There is also some dark and cynical humour, perhaps? In some ways, I could understand this as a parody of small-town life in remote areas of your country? The dialogue is great too, although I don't know why you used such long paragraphs?

A pleasure to read, and thanks for entering it in my Contest!

[Jimmy Greenie]

nice little tale, but it got a bit gruesome at a point. what happens next?
Describes a beautiful place. Would love to go there.