It Was The Longest Appendages I'd Ever Seen On A Daddy Long Legs

A 15 minute short story

With an opening sentence chosen, and the timer set for 15 minutes I began to write…

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Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash

It was the longest appendages I’d ever seen on a daddy long legs. I wondered how he’d made them. They were just as thin as the real thing, yet they were incredibly long, long enough to stretch across the entire room, 12 feet at the least. 

“It’s amazing,” I breathed,

“Would you like to see it move?” he asked.

“It can move? On those delicate things?”

“Sure it can, faster than a horse can run.”

He walked over to the center, the body of the daddy long legs, and rotated a thin silver disc which ran through it, then took a step back. The legs which had been lying limp across the floor, shot up assuming the position typical to the species. 

I gasped, I hadn’t expected the thin wiry legs to look so graceful, which led me again to wonder what material they were made from.

“Now watch this.” He drew a dead mouse from his pocket and tossed it across the room. The daddy long legs moved towards it at an incredible pace, its legs scraping and sliding on the smooth floor. It picked up the dead mouse, but didn’t seem to know what to do with it anymore.

“It Can’t eat I assume?”

“Of course not, even I’m not that skilled. But she has all the instinct of the real creature,”

“You truly never fail to astonish me Gustave!”

He chuckled, “Which leads me to the real reason I called you here today,”

My ears pricked, I had wondered why the reclusive inventor had called me, a journalist, out to his laboratory. We may have been friends for many years, but Gustave had never been the type for casual calls. 

“I have been working on a new invention. Something unlike anything we have ever seen before.”

He crossed over to his bench, and moving a stack of papers out of the way, revealed a small, ornately carved wooden box. It resembled the music boxes which had been so popular in my childhood, I remembered having one which would play the tune of Chopin’s Funeral March, a grim tune for a child of 8. 

“Go on, have a look.” He handed me the box. I fingered it gently, not sure of how delicate it truly was. The carving was immaculate, polished and ornate. I tried to open the lid of the box but it would not come. 

I looked up at the inventor questioningly.

“Ah, you thought it was a musical box perhaps? Haha, it is not quite so, look a little closer.”

I turned it over, and heard a rattle in it. I shook it again, and dropped the box in fear, for a terrible screeching issued from it. 

“Ahh, you’re getting closer now,” The inventor seemed to find the whole thing terribly amusing. 

I gingerly picked up the box, and examined it again. There was a small hole in the bottom, perhaps a key could be inserted? I began to try just such a thing with the wire close at hand, when Gustave took it from my hands. 

“That is enough my friends. I do not think that you would be able to open it, no, I have made that nearly impossible, but it is better not to risk it.”

“What on earth have you locked in there?!”

“It is better you do not know that.” And the Inventor winked.

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And that’s as far as I got before the timer went off. Maybe someday I’ll come back and finish it, first I have to figure out what’s in the box…any ideas?