Wyso And The Other Creepy Kids on Gerard Street
Man's Best
Sparkers
Better Dig 2Unlike the kingdom of humans, the animal kingdom offers a wide variety of mating rituals and encounters. None more fascinating and/or horrifying than that of the anglerfish.
I’m partial to this sexy creature, because I used the premise of the anglerfish for two of my novella monsters—the Night Terrors in Book 2 and the Farragos in Book 3.
It probably goes without saying, I’m one among many writers who have fashioned a fictional monster after a creature in nature. Godzilla, Werewolves, Vampires…is there any monster you can think of that doesn’t resemble some aspect of nature here on Earth?
Looks like a bad dream.
The anglerfish gives the appearance of someone’s worst nightmare. And what she does to her mate is—well, let’s just say—she makes whips and blindfolds look like trick-or-treat kids’ play compared to her moves.
An Anglerfish Tale
In thick blackness. In the abyss. In the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean, a bright light beckons. Edward, the tiny male anglerfish, follows a trail of pheromones, and there before him lures the most beautiful female anglerfish he has ever seen, Bella.
(Wait. Is it seen or is it smelled?)
He is 40 times smaller than she.
Edward wants Bella to notice him, but he has no light. He is small. Cold. Weak. And a tad fishy. So he opens his mouth wide to give her a love bite. To make her notice him.
He can’t resist. She smells so delicious.
And she is beautiful.
He sinks his teeth into the soft underside of her belly. He is stuck. Attached. He can’t escape. He is dissolving. His lips, his eyes fuse into her.
His freedom is gone forever.
(You married guys out there reading this. No wisecracks about marriage, please.)
From this point on, for the rest of his life, Edward becomes nothing more than an attached lump of a sex machine…or sex creature…or reproductive entity.
Edward’s internal organs wither away. He no longer has need for them. His blood vessels fuse with Bella’s and he gets all the nutrients he needs from her to sustain his reproductive function. He remains the rest of his life attached to her, readily available to her beck and call whenever she is in the mood.
He becomes a mere pair of gonads.
The sacrifices he made for Bella. Oh my! And she doesn’t even remain faithful. Oh my! When her inner goddess calls, she may melt another male—up to eight male melts have been noted. It’s not likely Edward will remain her true one and only.
No fairy tale ending or once-upon-a-time for Edward. Fused and attached he will be until Bella dies.
ProbeFiling
My monster from novella 2, MAN’S BEST. Head, teeth, jaws, and its bioluminescent borrowed from the deep sea anglerfish. Artwork by Kip Ayers.
When I first read about the anglerfish, I was designing my monster for novella 2, Man’s Best. I didn’t use the mating ritual but I did use the mouth and jaw of the angler.
The first scientist to descend into the perpetual darkness of deep sea was naturalist William Beebe. In 1938 in Ceratias—Siren of the Deep, Beebe writes of the anglerfish mating ritual: “But to be driven by impelling odor headlong upon a mate so gigantic, in such immense and forbidding darkness, and willfully eat a hole in her soft side, to feel the gradually increasing transfusion of her blood through one’s veins, to lose everything that marked one as other than a worm, to become a brainless, senseless thing that was a fish—this is sheer fiction, beyond all belief unless we have seen the proof of it.”
Beebe said it beautifully.
With that kind of a build-up, what better basis for a monster?
The Farragos invade the Big Chief drive-in and do to the young males what anglerfish do to their mates. Artwork by Kip Ayers.
To be absorbed to the point that nothing of you exists is what the Farragos do in novella 3, Sparkers, to the young males they entice. Just imagine a fleet of space aliens—who have the mating habits of an anglerfish female—descending upon a captured audience. I did. Scared the heck out of me. Imagine anglerfish of the deep evolving and creeping from the ocean depths to find food and/or viable males. Another scary thought.
Probing Deeper
William Beebe (left) and Otis Barton (right) with their Bathysphere became the first people to observe deep sea creatures in their natural environment.
(Photocredit: “WCS Beebe Barton 600” by U.S. Federal Government (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Beebe used the Bathysphere to descend into the ocean. The Bathysphere is as science fiction as it gets and well deserving of a full-fledged blog…like the fact that the first sketch of a Bathysphere was drawn on a napkin by Theodore Roosevelt (a colonel at the time) while the two chatted over the possibilities of venturing into the ocean’s depths. I wonder how much influence Jules Vern’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea had on Beebe and Roosevelt as they dreamed of the deep unexplored regions of the sea.
Today’s Thought Question
Can you think of any monsters roaming around out there in either books, on TV, or in the movies that are NOT based on actual creatures on Earth? Name one and argue well, because I’ll try to find similarities in nature.
Or just mention other monsters and their similarities to those found on Earth.
The Probe Mission Statement
Smallville’s Chloe Sullivan and her Wall of Weird.
The Probe is a blog devoted to the exploration of the unexplainable, to finding the truth in occurrences that resemble science fiction, and to researching and reporting on topics that could be flung upon the wall of weird. New posts are featured every week.
(Mostly on Mondays, but sometimes I release early, like on Sundays, if I have a writing deadline, or if I’m going camping, or if I have something exciting I just can’t wait to tell you.)
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blog post #114
The Probe has been nominated for the 2015 Liebster Blog Award
- Strangers Within: An Introduction to Walk Ins - May 26, 2022
- Does Life Exist On Other Planets? - May 5, 2022
- Do Water Bears Offer Answers for Earthlings? - April 21, 2022
Laughing my ass off! Then remembered this uplifting little ditty:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t7E4amWDqI&w=560&h=315%5D
Hi Myk,
Thank you for the link to the hysterical YouTube. I loved it and LMAO as well. Well, I wish I could laugh my ass off but I think that takes real exercise like jogging or cycling. So let’s just say: I laughed. And laughed. And played it again and laughed some more.
Thanks for stopping up, providing the humor, and making my day. It’s always fun to read your comments.