The Summon of 2012

View Writing Prompt: Mysterious Animals

Marza mewed sweetly from her high chair. Linda peeked into the kitchen. “Oh, no, ” she said aloud. Marza had made a huge mess again. This time her meal of calve hearts had hit the ceiling and some had made it as far as the living room couch. When Linda approached her, she kicked her hind legs and began to trill her tongue.

“Why can’t you be a good little and put your food in your mouth instead of…everywhere else,” Linda asked her sweetly through a toothy smile.

Marza returned the smile, exposing a triple row of razor sharp teeth and fluttered her three long-lashed eyes at Linda. Whenever she was excited her lavender hued fur would stand straight on end and the black stripe down for forehead would become luminescent, glowing like a black-lit poster from Linda’s youth. Linda found it impossible to stay mad at such a magnificent creation.

Marza wouldn’t stay small for long; however, and Linda dreaded the day. At this point lil M weighed approximately 52kg and was only 1 month old. With a proper diet, she would continue to gain approximately 10 – 15 kilograms a week and her height would double every month. In a eighteen months she would be able to peer into a second story house, the point at which she would be considered full grown. Like others of her kind, she was even-tempered, playful, and affectionate. However, there had been evidence of other’s similar to her hunting entire villages of families in Northern Europe, slaughtering and eating everyone and everything in sight. Thankfully, genetic testing had shown a difference between the two individual genomes that distinguished those like Marza as docile and not driven to hunt if fed properly.

In Linda’s past past life she had worked as a zoologist and taught at a local university, but when the Venus-Solar eclipse occurred in June of 2012 and soon after, her career took a drastic redirection. That fateful evening, the creatures emerged – some of which were dazzling, ethereal, even mythical – while others were downright terrifying and deadly. After the Summon, the entire world was overtaken with panic and for a good reason – many lives were lost in the beginning. Complete mania broke out. It was as if WWIII had begun, but this time the enemy was not man. It was everything else.

The world held it’s breath when the second Venus-Solar eclipse occured in 2017. Thankfully, the day passed uneventfully and left everyone scratching their heads as to why it happened before. It was now 2028, fourteen years since The Summon. A lot had changed and most of the regions inhabited by creatures had returned to a new normal while other regions were quarantined. The areas with the most lethal and terrifying ones were under constant military surveillance and completely walled off from society. In fact, one third of North America was no longer accessible to civilians. In the military zones, the world’s top biologists, geneticists, and scientists of every field relished in the observation, study, the poking and the prodding of any creature they could get close enough to.

None of them appeared to be linked to any species known to man and no one seemed to know exactly where any of them came from. Some experts speculated that some came from the depths of tropical rain forests, others  may  from South-American caves untouched by man, or from parts of Russia and Africa were humans did not inhabit. Nonetheless, the creatures came from everywhere and were in every country, in every city, across the globe. In 2019, it had been determined that approximately 106 genetically distinct creatures had been identified, and every year, at least 10 new ones were discovered. Linda had joined a special group of activists to help save the creatures, even the ones that were not docile, easily domesticated or harmless; a move that proved to saved thousands from being incinerated by military war heads and militia groups.

Linda turned to Marza and wiped her glowing nose with a hand towel. Marza violently sneezed. Orange snot dripped from Linda’s arm onto the floor. “Augh, you bad little,” Linda teased as she wiped the mess. Marza continued to mew and bunted her head tenderly against Linda’s now clean hand.

Suddenly, a loud alert came from the television in the living room. Linda had forgotten she had even had it on. She slowly walked towards the set and listened to the urgent announcement in between the siren. The announcer frantically spit the warning that the North border of The Summon Holding had been compromised and that everyone within a 100 mile radius must retreat to their shelters until further notice. Linda choked down her own saliva as the blood began to circulate wildly through her arteries and veins. The sanctuary where she worked and resided was only 22 miles from the border. She backed up from the television, walking backwards into the kitchen. She turned to Marza, but she was gone.The buckled straps that had held her in place were now chewed through completely and Marza was no where in sight. Linda’s heart leapt in her chest.

A low snarl came from under the kitchen table. Linda slowly lifted the table cloth and her eyes met glowing lava red orbs. Linda was so startled she fell back on to her bottom, hitting the floor. Marza emerged from under the table, her once lavender fur had shed, exposing sharp, jagged quils. The word “please” barely escaped the roof of Linda’s mouth before Marza lunged for her throat.

 

The Summon of 2012 by Heather Brewer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://mujerprolijo.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/the-summon-of-2012/.