Prompt: Surprised by an avalanche, Part 4

… Continued from Part  3

How long had it been? Hours? Days? There was no way to tell down here. The crabs were in constant motion. He couldn’t tell individuals apart, couldn’t tell male or female. They all had the big claws—maybe they were all male? What had he ever cared about crabs before, flying overhead? He had a dim memory of watching crabs at the beach, scuttling across the sand, bobbing up and down, waving their large claws. These were much larger, mottled orange and yellow, with large brown joints and pincers.

One crab settled on his lap, probing his abdomen over and over. Jake couldn’t see clearly in the dim light, but it felt different than before. No euphoria pulled him under. He concentrated on the slender tubes he could see stretching from the crab into his biofilter. These weren’t coming out of the crab’s mouth. They were coming out of its abdomen. Small black dots were flowing down the tubes from the crab into into his biofilter. Eggs! It was planting eggs in him! Jake thrashed his chest and arms, trying to push all the crabs away from him. They clustered around his legs, and soon the euphoria hit again.

How long had it been? Days? Weeks? Surely the biofilter should have failed by now? Jake thought about tearing it away and drowning to escape this hell. But when he scrabbled at it, the crabs swarmed his hands and weight them down, gently but firmly holding his fingers in their giant pinchers and pulling them away until they could pump him full of whatever it was they were giving him. Keeping him alive to incubate their eggs. When they hatched, would the babies eat him alive?

Continued in Part 5…

Dogs in house:	Houdini, Brindle
Time writing:	Too long!
March word count:	7,121