the silk farmer - short story

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For the audio production of “the silk farmer.”

Writing, Performance, Art, and Direction by Me

Production and Music by Honey House Records

the silk farmer

A short horror/fairy tale about a liminal being and what they do for a living.

This work was short-listed in the Ghost, Fable, and Fairytale Prize for Fractured Lit in 2022.

I hope it haunts and delights you.

Story Content Warning: whimsical child death, reference to chattel slavery, reference to childhood neglect, protohuman body horror, cosmic horror

the silk farmer

 silkworms dropped from the trees and coated the thirteen children. worms latched at the ends of their hairs, zippers, sleeves, and laces. looking like flowering mosses ready to spore. their struggle was invigorating, for the worms, not me. the more the children spun, the easier the worms could wrap the children’s sticky hands against their faded denim and matted plastic fleeces. no matter how many children find me, how eager their snotty begging, they always shriek. soon they were child-sized, wriggling silk cocoons in my humble marshland garden, hidden from tropical storms and unbelievers. 

looking over my glasses, i inspected the silkworm glands secreting to fill minute holes, sealing up whimpers as a queen-worm slipped into each cocoon. the other worms died away. yes, the children struggled a bit, but after sunday things were quiet. their forms just enzymes, proteins, with select organs and personality traits. i was able to sit, sip some sassafrass tea. 

two weeks i creaked in my rocking chair. a marvelous human invention. i heard her first, the sacred moon-deer. that ancient thing. we have the same mom. different dad. she’s much younger than me but more acclaimed by the locals. worshiped even. not feared like my kind, though we only take what is discarded. scavengers not hunters. 

that moon-deer is a hunter. for adoration. her pale legs snapped canopy branches. her bristles kept swallow’s nests, dripping lichen, and wasp hives. her neck alone dwarfed the oaks and the myrtles. her head blocked out the sun over my rocking chair and cocoon garden. often papa bois rides her. both attention seekers.

that day papa bois napped amongst the beds of toxic amanitas germinating in her pores, unable to translate for me. before I could shout, “bonjou,” her mouth opened (a known gate to heaven) and her tongue unfurled, drool coating the conifers. her tongue reached the earth and curled around one of my pupas. pointless to intervene, i continued to rock, slowly, using just my bare toe. i watched the cocoon ascend until it hit those deep molars. chewed like cud. she walked on, crushing one more at the edge of the garden. there were eleven left. the trees bent before her. if you don’t bow, you break. i dragged the crushed pupa to my cauldron to boil and extract what silk i could. i built a quick altar and buried the child’s remains. it was enough to appease him. the child has not returned to haunt me. 

for all her hunger, that couyon deer was my only entertainment for months. three cocoons turned to black mold over the following weeks. i kicked them to a pulp and spat on them. their silk unusable. i suppose those altars were enough too. what were the queens doing?! dying like that! inconsiderate! they made pacts with children and broke ours. bah! new pacts based on fear. the children didn’t want to know what they were becoming, and the worm-queens supported their impatient cowardice with a slow graying death. 

i had eight live ones. i tended to them with more care. even sang to them, though i can’t hold a tune. in peak summer they started to wriggle again. most of my kind, us old kind, us before-before kind wouldn’t let them get this far. most would’ve boiled them months ago, pupa-babes and all. sustainability is a joke to immortals. us never-born. i’m the kind sort. i let nature do her work. sure, the ripped strands can be a pain, but i don’t mind. it’s worth the spectacle and devotion. 

before creole and cajun codified wounds around each other. before whites stole my cousins to this land (and my kind followed). before saturday morning television, microwaves, propane stoves, presidents, parlors, bloomers, temples, cancer, cats and cream, telescopes, telling time, fire’s charred meat, and the eye’s found attraction, there was the dance of life and death. And there was me. us, we, who scavenge the edges of such transitions. 

of the many iterations of transition, of my many harvests, this one is my favorite: it started with the legs, all six of them. churning the cocoon silk away until a single clawed foot ripped through. all but one wrenched themselves free. one queen was breach. drowned in her own fluids. the seven survivors gingerly rose, slowed by time and the spiced juices of embryonic pupa soup. you never, ever remember how much it stinks. wood rot. dick cheese. burning silver mugwort. you never, ever forget how beautiful they are. not children anymore. more than adults. they’re queens. born pregnant and benevolent. yawning, stretching fat-soaked wings. wringing primordial lard from their antennae, nipples, and compound eyes. they stood, half internal bones, half exoskeleton, all popping together. They reached up their highest legs as arms, slapping fingers against palms. babes calling to be picked up. the trees responded. bent their branches so the queens could grab on to hang upside down, filling their wings with blood.

i waited. a slowed sated snake. i did good. positively stupendous. they took flight. maybe this one looked like their mother? their father? not that they would know anymore. or ever did. not really. what was once discarded, neglected had been reborn. maybe they recognized this transmutation as blessing, or maybe they just liked my scent or how i attempted protection when no one would? 

one by one, they greeted me and nodded with blissful flat grins. a promise that they’ll return. not them exactly. but their new babies with their new queen for a new season. their silk is mine. their stolen years, once fetid with harm’s promise, are mine to feed on.

i nodded back. they flew away to build hives near cities and populated country roads, where children who need them smell their pheromones. heed their call. then both worm and child will find me here. a perpetual and ephemeral here. rocking. weaving. sipping. waiting to cultivate the forgotten into resounding metamorphosis.