“Okay, bring him in.” These were the words that I heard every so often when outside. I lived across the street from the crayfish slaughterhouse, a sinister, horrific place where criminals were brought to be brutally murdered. Many superstitions were created about the place, about how millions of ten-foot long crayfish were stored there, and how if you were killed there, you would come back as one of the giant crayfish.



Occasionally, my friends and I would dare each other to look into the slaughterhouse. To me, it looked like the darkest part of a nightmare, where the very evil of our world is created. The walls and the floors were covered in red, glistening blood with a menacing looking table with iron straps sat in the center of it. A door was at the end of the room, but nobody except the owner of the slaughterhouse knew what was behind it. Bloodcurdling screams were often heard, but nobody knew exactly what happened in there, but soon, it would all change.



One Tuesday morning, I was woken by an odd cry, followed by the screams from townspeople. I looked out the window, and I saw them scurrying across the ground, their enormous claws viciously snapping the air behind a crowd of frantic, screaming people running for their lives. They were huge, about ten feet long. They were slicing down people left and right, their bodies littering the ground like broken toy parts in a messy bedroom. These were the crayfish. I was horrified, but I knew the worst was still to come.


I tried to stay calm. I knew they couldn’t get in. But suddenly, CRASH!!! The door flew off of its hinges and five enormous crayfish lumbered into the hall. Their shells were glistening with blood and their eyes were flickering and their pincers were snapping with delight. Out of instinct, I ran out of the back door and hid in the only safe place, the slaughterhouse.


Fortunately, the crayfish all left the slaughterhouse already. The bad news was that there were almost no sounds in the town now, only the scuttling of crayfish legs. Also, one of the crayfish picked up a smell and started running directly towards me! I quickly ran to try to find a place to hide. Then I remembered, the door. I slowly opened it, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Piles of corpses were scattered across the room. I slowly turned around to leave, and a hand came down on my shoulder. Hard.


It was the owner of the slaughterhouse. He was a sinister looking man with a grotesque face that resembled a mask from a Halloween shop. He spoke in an ominous, gruff voice that seemed to make his face rattle every time he spoke. He explained that the crayfish were bred to be huge and super aggressive, and to kill any human they came in counter with. They were resilient to weapons of any kind and soon they would take over the world. They would soon destroy everything and form a new world. Soon we would be the only people left in the world. As soon as he said that, I felt a tickle on my neck. If only I paid attention to it, I could have reacted faster. And with one snap, it was all over.