Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #17 August 2015 | Page 20

Lepidoptera
Rubigo

disgorge the morning
commuters. There is a
symphony of doors slamming,
dusty engines coughing into life,
wheels popping over pot holes.

In the old red car, the glistening
yolk-yellow eggs are rocked, and warmed,
by the car’s daily journey. In each, a wriggling
shape, black—like tadpoles in a garden pond.

By Pete Sutton

The street is blanketed in silence.The houses—
sleeping sentinels, eyeless windows blankly staring.
A cat stalks from beneath a car hearing something, a
flutter of wings perhaps?

The dust undisturbed, under a broiling sun for
several days, stirs in the light breeze. The fluttering
gets louder. The cat, spooked, runs.

The shape is moth-like but much larger than a
seagull. It flutters over the cars, landing upon an old
red one. Its abdomen distends and its ovipositor finds
nooks and crannies in the chosen car. A wheel arch, in
the spaces between moving parts, in the engine.

When it flaps off to seek another host
for its eggs, it glints in the moonlight,
gun-metal grey, lustrous, like it has been
freshly polished.

In the morning the cat
has slunk back only
to be disturbed
again as the
houses

The cars return, the cat stretches, the houses
awake, their windows light up. Inside the hidden places, in the engine block andbehind the wheels, there is a
scuttling, a scratching and a series of ghastly plopping,
ripping sounds.

They are voracious and insatiable machines
adapted for eating. The front of the old red car is
stripped, like a giant’s hand ripped a chunkout of it.
They squirm into the dark places beneath the street,
dropping through the grates, wriggling into the drains.

Once they are safely secreted, the cat braves
the street again.Its eyes reflect the light of the stars and
the fingernail moon.

#

When the moon rises full, they take to the air, a
hundred survivors, glistening in the light. Like a freshly polished revolver.

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