literature

The Greatest Specimine

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Literature Text

        I took the final sip of my drink, placing the glass back on the table as the ice clattered against it.  I looked up at a jar holding an aging beetle, carefully preserved in a vial of stained preservative.  Through it, there was a door, warped by the glass and vile liquid.  Inside was my most prized preserved specimen.  You see, I am an avid collector of insects, to discover ways to kill pests that plagued the cotton crops of the nearby farms. You see, they caused the stalks to wilt, making it harder to pick each plant.  Every year I had carefully scoured the fields, systematically preserving each one. I remember how my most prized one cane to me fresh today.

        Next month would be the beginning of the cotton harvest and the plants were already listing over from the parasites that plagued them.  My wife had been busy tending to our son's cold.

        Today I would pick up the preventives that I used to fill each jar.

        Looking at the door frame of the old store, I crossed over the line of shadow into the dreary shop.

        "Are you here for your bottles of arsenic?" the aging shopkeeper asked.
        
        "Yes, I've used all of my preventives last harvest season," I replied to the aging man. Arsenic was the most effective; it prevented any mold from forming on the insects that each jar contained.

        "Allow me to retrieve them then," he replied, walking into the back room, before emerging with a box clanking with muffled glass.
     
        Taking the box to a nearby field I began my work, one day soon I would find something that could kill these parasites without harming the crops, but for now the aristocrats would have to live with the damage they reaped.  After I had found my third insect, a neighbor ran to me, urgently telling me to return home.
        
        As I opened the door to the room my wife stood shaking in the corner looking at the floor pointing in terror. Looking at the floor, I had an idea.  

        Taking the empty box of arsenic, I lifted my greatest specimen into the box, taking a bottle of arsenic I carefully poured the bottle's contents onto it, being sure to soak every part.

        As I nailed the box shut I looked at the small engraved species name, one I had named myself and I would forever be proud of.
        
        I entered the aging door into the room I haven't entered for years.  My wife had left me years ago, not long after preserving the organism in the box. Leaning down, I blew off the dust on the warped box.
The plaque revealed itself.

On it, one word was engraved in the tarnished brass:

"Son"
I had to write a shorty story in the Southern Gothic style for English.
© 2011 - 2024 alienscorch
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Azerarhk's avatar
:[ poor wife.

HOW DARE YOU TAINT THE NAME OF BIOLO- oh wait it's already tainted. XD