Greetings Villagers,
I’m sure this missive must come as a surprise. No doubt you have heard the distant wails echoing from my cliffside castle laboratory and wondered if I, Professor Ballantine, was preparing to unleash another ungodly experiment upon the populace. Or perhaps you thought — or hoped — that some misfortune had befallen me and my loyal servant Todd. But nothing could be further from the truth. I am merely going through what I am told is a normal phase of life, one that many of you — or at least those of you still able to procreate since the … enhancement … of your water supply — have also experienced. You see, I am, as of this month, an empty nester.
Ah, how humbling that I, a scientific professional of such infamy, should have been brought low by the emotional vicissitudes of parenthood! You see, like many of us, I could not have imagined how my perspective on life might change once I became responsible for the care and wellbeing of my helpless young. Even as the larvae bubbled and multiplied exponentially in the artificial womb beneath my lair’s incubator lights, I felt no threat of mawkish sentiment, only that familiar satisfaction of a scheme coming to fruition.
But as soon as my progeny began to hatch, I was overtaken by a new, not entirely unwelcome emotion. For who could gaze upon a clutch of freshly born creatures, their eyes still glazed shut, toothy beaks opening and closing with silent need, blue veins throbbing beneath their translucent pink skin, and not feel their own heart burst with tenderness? (An irony we can all appreciate, as you no doubt know by now the hatchlings do prefer to nest in human chest cavities.)
Their pupation passed in what seemed like a blink of an eye, and with time their individual personalities began to assert themselves. A parent should have no favorites, but it was impossible not to take pride when observing one of my young take their first tentative flight across the nursery or experimentally snap their claws at Todd’s nose. Within a few months it became necessary to separate them into smaller pods, as their natural competitiveness led to several unfortunate incidents of sibling cannibalism.
I know what some of you might say: “Kids fight! Let them figure it out! Only the strongest survive!” But there are no parenting groups for geniuses who have decided to spit in the face of God and Nature. And with his missing fingers, Todd was next to no help for much of their metamorphosis. I alone bore the burden of nurturing, feeding, educating and securing the walls of my bedroom lest one of them mistake their own father for a potential host. Many were the nights I lay awake in my fortified chamber, listening to them skitter up and down castle’s stone steps, and hope that I had equipped them with everything they needed to make good choices.
And then, one late autumn day, it was time. My restless young were ready to be released into the world. A few had already begun laying clutches of sticky red eggs in the castle’s various nooks and crannies. And so, with a sigh of sadness mixed with relief, I pulled the lever to open the castle’s ceiling and watched them rise into the air, my babies, my dozens of eight-chambered hearts living outside my body, unleashed upon the world to bring forth a new era of human suffering.
But now, even as I swell with pride hearing of their multifold accomplishments through the evening news and emergency alerts, I feel a bittersweet kind of longing. I had grown used to hearing the whisper of little wings in the corridors, the clack and snap of their claws, even to dodging the acidic venom they shot from their thoraxes when provoked. Yes, my nest, the chitinous honeycomb lining the castle dungeons, dotted with the corpses of unwitting villagers, was indeed empty.
In desperation, I turned to advice articles about this phase of life. Some of it was useful, such as focusing on the positive. I must admit, it feels good not to worry about tripping over an errant exoskeleton one of my molting young has discarded on the floor. And the advice about embracing the extra space and redecorating was spot on. I’ve reassembled what I could find of Todd’s bones into what I consider to be a cheeky Halloween decoration. But I’m still not quite sure what to do with myself now that the kids are gone. It’s just me, rattling around this drafty old castle by myself.
And so, I invite your counsel and your company. Perhaps we can all get together for dinner one of these nights and commiserate? I suspect it would be heartening to share our experiences. And, as though you needed the reminder, the castle is one of the only structures left that’s sufficiently fortified against my young and their own progeny. (Grand-progeny, at my age! It boggles the mind!) I’d welcome your thoughts as I mull this next chapter of my life. Maybe I’ll take a watercolor class! Or even … start over? There are still a few egg sacs in the cryogenic deep-freeze. Let me know if you can make it on Friday. BYOB.
Linda Stansberry (she/her) is a freelance writer and journalist who lives in Eureka. More of her work can be found at lindastansberry.com, where you can also sign up for her weekly newsletter.
This article appears in ‘Crash Course’ A Halloween Comic by Liz Valasco and Collin Yeo.
