Finish the SyFy Movie Giant Snail thread, or, Don't be an Escargoner!

Cafe Society
1

Here, as I said, is the opening of what I hope will be a fun finish the story thread. This link is to the control thread, where we can talk about what’s going on.

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Prologue:

For as long as she could remember Karen Schultz had loved aquariums. But it wasn’t the fish or the plants she thought were the most interesting, it was the little snails she liked, the ones that slithered their way all over the tanks, acting as janitors and consuming the waste left behind by the fish…

Karen read all the books in her elementary school library that said anything about snails. She read the encyclopedia articles, and went all over the internet, looking at snail articles and snail pictures. Her favorite snail was the African land snail, an invading species in Florida, that was the biggest snail around. She wasn’t allowed by her parents to capture one and keep it in the house though, so she had to be satisfied with finding them, and observing them outside. She had already decided that when she grew up she would go to college and learn WAY more about snails and other mollusks than she could learn now.

Karen had once seen two large African snails in the mouth of a culvert and tried to feed them. She even gave them names, Jake and Charley, although she didn’t know their gender. And there was something else she didn’t know, what else Jake and Charley were eating.

Because the culvert was linked to a system of sewers that connected with a research company’s plant that was doing experimental work in growth hormones. To get rid of some pesky failures GenTech had been illegally dumping in the sewer carcasses of a variety of animals, allowing them to decompose, with the effluvia eventually reaching the culvert where Zeke and Charley hung out.

The Present Day:

Karen Schultz looked up from her computer screen as her office phone chirped at her. Picking it up she heard one of her labs techs speaking. “Dr. Schultz, there’s a guy on the phone who says he has a question for you about, uh, some ‘weird findings’ he made. Do you want to take the call?”

Rubbing her tired eyes she replied, “Pass it on to me Bernie.”

2

“This is Dr. Schulz,” she said.

“You’re the snail lady?”

Karen rolled her eyes. Years of schooling, a grueling dissertation, student loan debt she was still working on, papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and she was reduced to the Snail Lady.

“How can I help you?”

“Yeah, I got me one of those big snails. It ate my cat.”

Karen sat up straighter. “It ate your cat? How do you know that?”

“Came across the damn thing on my porch. I couldn’t figure out what it was doing, until I realized the thing sticking out in front of it was my cat’s tail. I kicked the thing hard enough to break its shell. I think it’s dead. I have it in my freezer if you want to look at it.”

Karen was speechless. Was this somebody’s idea of a joke? Perhaps the safest thing to do would be to ask the caller to come to the lab. She could have one of the guards inspect the bag and call her if she was needed.

“I will be here until 5:30, sir. Would you be able to bring by your, uh, specimen by then?”

“On my way!”

3

About three-quarters of an hour later, a security guard escorted a man wearing a visitor’s badge and carrying a large picnic cooler into Dr. Schultz’s office. Karen rose to meet the man.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Karen Schultz, Professor of Conchology”

The man put down the cooler and offered his hand, which Karen shook. “Doug Simmons. But I was told you were an expert on snails”.

Karen took a deep breath and slowly let it out again. “Yes, I am. You say a snail ate your cat? Do you mean the cat was dead and the snail scavenged it?”

“Nope, at least I don’t think so. Cat was fine earlier this morning. Now all’s left is the tail. Never saw anything so gawd-awful”. Simmons indicated the cooler. “Take a look, see for yourself, but I hope you’ve got a strong stomach”.

Karen bent down, picked up the cooler, rather large and heavy, and carried it to a nearby work table. She undid the catch, lifted the lid- and got the shock of her life. The thing inside was clearly a gastropod but she had never seen anything like it. It was gigantic, easily five or six times longer than the largest conch or abalone. The antennae alone were nearly a foot long. The half of it’s shell she could see sported a network of cracks out of which a greenish liquid oozed. And, as advertised, the tail of a domestic cat trailed out of the thing’s mouth.

“This…” she could only stare at it, at a loss for words. “This- is incredible”

4

“Absolutely incredible. At the risk of making a cliche, I’ve never seen anything like it!”

Karen put on a pair of long sleeved rubber gloves and, with a grunt of effort, lifted the…creature…out of the cooler, placing it on the metal surface of the work table. It felt like it weighed at least thirty pounds, although some of that might be the cat.

Poking at the cracks in the shell with an index finger, more of the green liquid leaked out. It had a peculiar odor. She had seen a lot of snails, all sizes, alive and dead, during her career, and this didn’t look or smell quite like any of them.

Looking up at Simmons she asked him “Say this was on your porch? Does a stream or creek run through your property, or do you live near a pond?”

“No, not on my own lot, or all that close. I’m a maintenence worker for GenTech, up north there. I rent a house in a neighborhood not quite a mile from the plant. Say, what is this thing anyway? I didn’t think a snail was fast enough to catch a cat.”

“They aren’t, not ordinarily. But this is not ordinary snail. The closest it looks like is the giant African land snail, but it’s got to be ten times the size. Do you mind leaving it with me, so I can dissect it, run tests?”

Simmons gave a lop-sided grin, which somehow made him rather attractive. “Be my guest, I’m down to one cat now, since Pirate is gone. I’d better keep Diablo indoors, in case any more of those things are around. Do you want me to look?”

“Well, do you mind if I come to your place, this weekend maybe? I’ll see if I can get a couple of lab techs to come along, we can spread out and do a good search.”

“Fine by me.”

5

As she walked him out of the lab, he stumbled and bumped into the door jamb.

Karen blushed slightly as she realized what had likely happened. Guys are often somewhat surprised and even flustered by her. Being on the petite side but curvy, plus her flowing red locks, provides a bit of a contrast with her top level position at a scientific research facility.

In these enlightened times, it seems a little silly to her. Someone else might be offended at it, but she finds it more amusing than anything else. She never thought of herself as being pretty, but it does make her feel a little embarrassed when others seem to find her looks distracting.

Those thoughts all stopped instantly when she saw in her peripheral vision what looked like a flash of light within the limp eyestalks of the giant gastropod.

“Did I really see that?” she thought to herself.

Rushing back to the table, she peered at the snail closely. Shining a laser pointer at the eyestalks, she stared and waited. But, no reaction.

“Well, maybe I imagined it. I got distracted, too, I guess,” she decided.

Leaving the lab to go power up the x-ray machine down the hall, she didn’t notice the slight twitch of the former cat’s tail.

.

6

There were a couple more twitches. and then what was left of the tail disappeared, sucked in like a strand of spaghetti.

The cracks in the shell, thorugh which slime had been oozing slowly, suddenly gushed out a greater amount. The cracks narrowed, as part of the liquid weight of the snail lessened, and then dried up, looking like plastic patching. It lifted it’s head and, with those long antennae quivering, seemed to look around.

The animal was large, and the table not short, but using the dripping slime to ease it’s way, the snail slipped over the edge and made it’s clinging way down one table leg. Reaching the floor it stopped for a moment, as the door began to open and Bernie, Dr. Schulz’s lab assistant, entered the room. He wasn’t looking for the snail and didn’t see it as he passed the exam table. As he passed it the creature humped itself up on it’s “foot” and sprayed a fine mist at Bernie’s leg.

7

The spray of droplets hit Bernie at ankle-height, the liquid reacting with the air to form a thick glue which rapidly dried into a hard resin. The sudden change in momentum caused by his foot sticking to the floor pitched him forward, the fall breaking his ankle and stunning him for a moment.