Howdy, guys! It's me, WitchDoctor! Yes, THAT WitchDoctor. It's been a while, no?

To make a long story short, I was digging through my old hard drive, and I found some of the old stories I wrote. They... haven't aged well. The main character comes across as a sociopath researcher wannabe, and I feel that I could have done better.

To that end, I remade the first fic I ever wrote on this site and included it below. Enjoy! And... To be honest, it's nice to see you guys still here.

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Jissouseki, or installation stone, are a strange humanoid species notable for their unusual goblin-like appearance, their unusual asexual reproductive strategy, and as one notable paper pointed out: “extremely agitating personalities”[Harold and Kumar, 2009]. Despite being a major food source for many impoverished parts of the world, the driving force behind an entire subindustry of the pet trade, we know next to nothing about them other than that they first appeared in Japan. They are so unlike most life on earth that there have been serious proposals suggesting that they may be of extraterrestrial origin [Rupert and Henderson, 2013].

This is where my research comes into it. Most of my research up to this point has been in studying the neurobiology of dogs, cats, and other higher mammals. That changed recently, when our department received a massive grant from the NSF specifically for studying Jissouseki. I changed my area of research at the behest of my thesis advisor, who wants his group to have one of the first publications researching this new creature. Unfortunately, most research into Jissouseki up to this point has been, for lack of better terms, unofficial and unethical. One notable instance that kindled my research was a video of a vivisection of Jissouseki in a high school biology class. While it was grainy and it’s hard to make out the sounds of what is going on, it becomes apparent that a larval Jissouseki is capable of speech the moment it is born. Not only that, but it is capable of carrying on a conversation (an admittedly broken one at that). While there have been other papers on this phenomenon [Chang, 2015][Filip et. al. 2016], my research is remarkable because I am trying to identify just how intelligent the larval Jissouseki really are. In addition, I am trying to identify if this ability is a learned ability or one that is inborn.

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Acquiring larval Jissou that are fit for testing is quite a challenge. It turns out that they’re quite fragile, and in the wild, that translates to them having a lifespan that is measured in minutes. Their main predators are dogs, cats, birds, insects, humans (not for predation; killing them en masse is somewhat of a bloodsport nowadays), and other, larger Jissouseki. As if to make things more complicated, Jissouseki happen to be a social species as larvae, and leaving them isolated for long periods of time without their siblings can induce stress that could result in sudden cardiac arrest.

This is not the only limiting factor. For the purposes of my experiment, using captured feral Jissouseki is out of the question. While wild-born specimens are rather numerous (there’s a small colony of them on campus that keeps coming back no matter how many times it gets wiped out), using any number of them would compromise my research by introducing outside variables (chemical exposure, parasitic infestation, disease, mental trauma, etc.) into my experiments, which could invalidate my results.

To make matters worse, it would appear as though store-bought Jissouseki are hardly any better. They come in a wide range of prices, from fancy, trained specimens that can go for several thousand dollars, to “abuse toys”(a practice I take objection with) that can go for $4 or less. However unscientific the methods that are used to separate Jissou into these categories are, they do show that the parentage of these creatures is important, which is something supported by preliminary research. A few other researchers have identified that Jissouseki are genetic copies of their mothers [Abiteboul 2007][Kahan, Kumer, and Robinson 2009], and a more recent paper in the proceedings of the FASEB 2017 indicated that intragenerational mutation was negligible in Jissouseki[Kumer and Mallaya 2016]. This means that any Jissouseki I use in my experiments cannot come from the same mother or else my results will be called into question for having too homogenous of a testing set. Since most pet stores use a “factory farm” method to birthing Jissouseki, this means that the selection available at somewhere like Jissou Paradise may only have three mothers between them in the best case scenario. In the worst case, the breeders can be “graduates” of past batches, and there is the distinct possibility that every single Jissouseki in the store could be first cousins.

Last month, we finally had a breakthrough in terms of finding a suitable source for research material. A local breeder I had been in contact with said that he would sell a batch of Jissouseki larvae to our lab, 200 individuals in total, and insisted that his specimens had been reared in a suitable environment and were not related. After spending an additional three weeks to identify that the mothers were genetically separated by at least five generations, I could finally begin my testing. I booked the lab time a week in advance, late in the evening where nobody can disturb me or otherwise compromise the experiment.

So, there I was, in the lab, with a small green cardboard box in front of me and all kinds of cooing and mumbling sounds coming out of it. Judging from the sounds coming out of it, it seemed as though all twenty of the larvae inside had survived the trip from the breeder to our lab. They had to be six hours old at most, and they were already vocal. An interesting development, but covered in enough papers that it wasn’t worth covering again. I put on a pair of rubber gloves, pulling them taut over my hand with a satisfying snap. I anticipated the next part might get messy.

I decided to do a preliminary examination on one of the larvae. While it meant that I most likely could not be able to use this one in my experiment, I needed to do this to ensure that the rest of the test batch are indeed viable. After organizing my work area, I carefully open the box and remove one of the Jissouseki inside, laying it on a plastic dissection tray.

To those unfamiliar with what a larval Jissouseki looks like, allow me to give you a picture. At first glance, a so-called “Jissou maggot” is a fat, grub-like creature with oversized triangular ears that are constantly twitching. Closer examination reveals a tuft of hair on its forehead, two large mismatched button eyes, and a large A-shaped mouth defined by a harelip and fat cheeks that is located just below two tiny nostrils that are flush with the rest of the face. While their primary method of locomotion does not involve limbs, they have two pairs of tiny, nub-like “feet” that are located in analogous positions to the arms and legs of other life stages. This, along with the slit-like cloaca located on a fatty pad just behind the second pair of legs, makes it apparent that the larval Jissouseki is analogous to both a newborn marsupia and the caterpillar of a butterfly: an underdeveloped fetus that has to obtain enough nourishment to fuel its transformation into the next stage of its life. The creature itself wears a simple, form-fitting body stocking, which it’s born with, surprisingly.

The maggot, recognizing my presence, looked over its shoulder before flipping on its back, exposing its fat belly. With a high-pitched voice and the Jissouseki equivalent of a smile, it chirped


“Tummy soft, tummy springy~ Want rub, refu~”

Admittedly, it was rather cute. So I ended up breaking protocol and fulfilled its request. With a gloved finger, I gently stroked the grub’s fat belly. Like it said, it gave some resistance when I pushed down on it, and it was pretty soft. The maggot closed its eyes and stuck its tongue out as it panted contentedly. Greenish slime oozed out of its anal slit.

“Feel good refu~ Happy refu~”

After a couple seconds of this, I set about to preparing the rest of my work area for the examination. Once a notebook and a pencil were in front of the dissection tray, I pulled over the surgical lamp to the work area. The maggot opened its eyes to look at me, and while it was very small, there was still a noticeable look of confusion on its face.

“What doing refu~?”

“This might be a little bright, so don’t look directly at it, okay?”

I flipped the switch, and the LEDs came on, bathing the work area in light. No sooner had I done this did the maggot flinch and start screaming bloody murder.

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~ TOO BRIGHT REFU! CAN’T SEE REFU!”

I immediately killed the light, but the damage was already done. The maggot’s eyes were unfocused, looking around randomly with streams of red-green tears flowing from them. As the maggot rolled onto its stomach in an attempt to crawl away, I noticed that it kept running randomly into the sides of the tray, which it should have seen just fine.

A few seconds of exposure to bright light resulted in permanent blindness. Jissouseki larvae are incredibly fragile indeed. Unfortunately, putting this one back with its siblings was not an option. Cannibalism, a rare occurrence in most higher animals, is actually quite common Jissouseki. Larvae, nymphs, and even juveniles are at risk of being devoured by their own siblings if they’re born with some form of defect or if they’re critically injured. While this is beneficial in the wild (saving resources on the wounded Jissouseki to give its littermates a better chance at survival), the consumption of this maggot may have had an adverse affect on my control group.

So, I decided to acquire some tissue samples from the now blinded maggot, since it’s death was assured anyway. I reached for the scalpel I was not intending to use and cut away at its green bodystocking with a slight sawing motion. A few seconds later, and the maggot’s belly is exposed. I lowered the faceshield of my protective gear, anticipating what would happen next would get rather messy.

“What happen refu~? Why no see refu~? Why belly cold refu~?”

I gripped the maggot on both sides of its head and lower the scalpel, cutting away the flesh with a single long stroke. The blade cut into its soft flesh with ease, while the maggot thrashed about wildly. Red and green ichor mixed together and flowed from the incision in its stomach. A jet of green gelatinous waste shot from its lower orifice a good six inches into the air, splattering against the face guard and dripping onto my labcoat. All the while, the Jissouseki larva kept screaming.

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! REEEE! REEEE! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! IT HURT! IT HURT!”

After I had made the first incision, I grabbed the skin on both sides of the incision and gently pulled it back, revealing the interior of the larva’s body cavity. It arched it back painfully in response, pulling its peritoneum tight, revealing the soft, dark outlines of its internal organs. Gripping the grub on either side, I made the second incision through the membrane, releasing the maggot’s viscera. Its screams, though never increasing in volume, became more ragged and desperate. The combined action of it arching its back and screaming forced its entrails through the cut, it's green-red intestines uncoiling as they escaped the maggot’s abdomen.

The Jissouseki larva, its intestines hanging out of its stomach and lying in a pool of its own blood, collapsed back onto the tray. Its tongue hung limply out of its mouth, a mixture of blood and drool flowing from either corner of its mouth. The grub’s breathing was ragged and shallow, and the color was draining out of its eyes.

“Tired refu… Cold refu… want mama re…”

With a final, pathetic sigh, the maggot’s body went limp and it stopped moving. Collecting the brain, stomach, heart, and other tissue samples proved to be less difficult for me to kill the maggot to get them in the first place; its skeleton was still cartilaginous and had not hardened, so my scalpel cut through its skill with relative ease. Its flesh, similarly underdeveloped, had weak connective tissue, making cutting through it like slicing through wet tissue paper. By the time I was done with it, it was no longer recognizable as a Jissouseki larva, looking more like an unrecognizable mass of meat, blood, and feces.

Per lab protocol, unused material had to be disposed of in an appropriate manner, so I dropped the maggot’s body, along with the paper towel I used to wipe up the mess it left behind, into the medical waste bin. By morning, the larva, along with the other waste from the experiment, would be well on its way to the laboratory’s incinerator.

With the initial screening finding a randomly selected maggot to be in good health, I prepared for my actual experiment.

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My experimental rig requires some explanation. While we were trying to secure the materials (i.e. Jissouseki larvae) for the experiment, my thesis advisor and I assembled the rig over a weekend. It was an ugly device, constructed from plexiglass, scrap electronics, and more breadboards than a hack-a-thon. My advisor, however, deemed this necessary for preliminary observations on whether or not maggots are able to pick up on environmental cues and look for unconventional solutions to the problem put before them. [Minsky et. al. 2010] showed that adult and sub-adult Jissouseki are indeed able to learn from environmental cues as well as through experience. Our experiment was a continuation of this same reasoning, applied to Jissouseki larvae.

The rig was laid out like a rectangular arena, with the maggots on one end and a chute on the other end that was connected to a box filled with Jissouseki food pellets. When I pressed a button on a controller, a food pellet was dispensed and rolled into a basin on the far side of the arena. On the wall, in plain sight of the Jissouseki larvae, was the depiction of one of the grubs touching a dark strip with a lightning bolt through it. Indeed, any maggot that tried to crawl directly to the food would touch the metal strip in the center of the arena, receiving a low-level electric shock in the process. While painful and disorienting, it would only serve to repel them away from the strip, not kill them. However, towards the back of the arena, there was a passageway that connected to a tube that ran from one end of the arena to the other. While it was not the shortest route, it had no traps in it, thus allowing the grubs to bypass the strip entirely.

The basic premise for this experiment was to test to see if
If the maggots could link symbols to ideas (the sign warning them about the electric hazard)
If the maggots couldn’t learn from the symbols, would they recognize it as a hint to start looking for other solutions to the problem.

In the first case, if the maggots could link the sign with the shock, then it would tell us that we should focus our research in that area, as it would indicate that they learn a language in a similar fashion to humans. The second case was my invention, a criticism of [Minsky et. al. 2010], in which there was no solution for the problem they presented.

One by one, I gently removed the Jissouseki maggots out of their box and into the rig. Some of them rolled over on their backs, asking for a belly rub as the first grub had then cried when they did not receive it. Others just did regular Jissouseki maggot things, like gumming each other and crawling about to explore their environment, mewling and defecating all the while. Once I had ten grubs in the arena, I moved out of sight to avoid interfering with the experiment. With the larvae in place, I was ready to begin.

I pushed the button on my controller. A buzzer sounded, capturing the larvae’s attention. A red LED mounted in a breadboard above the arena pulsed, then a green one, followed by the groaning of a stepper motor and gears. Then, a single pellet of Jissouseki food dropped unceremoniously into the arena, where it rolled about half-way to the metal strip.

The larvae, excited by the introduction of food to the test area, inched merrily towards the strip, leaving green slimy trails in their wake. They were completely oblivious as to what would happen, which should have made the lesson that followed stick.

“Looks tasty refu~”

“Food fall from box refu~”

“Scary noise refu~”

Then, the fastest grub, leaving a trail of drool and feces behind it, touched the metal strip. With a sharp electric pop, it jerked back violently with a yelp, a dazed expression crossing its face as its eyes welled up with tears.

“Maggot-chan hurtie refu…”

“Loud sound refu~”

“What happen refu~?”

Initially, I thought that the maggots’ reactions were a sign that they learned what just happened through observation.

They did not. One by one, they crawled towards the bait, only to get knocked back with a sharp electric shock. By the end of the first minute, the entire group of maggots was reduced to a crying, tearful, feces-smeared mess.

“Re peeen~ Re peeeen~”

“Maggot-chan no get food, refu~ Sad refu~”

After a minute of crying themselves out, the maggots made another attempt at the bait. Inching along a little faster than before, in fact. The outcome was predictable, with one exception. One of the maggots tried to vault over the strip, meaning that instead of just receiving one big shock, it received multiple successive pulses. Its screams became shorter and more frantic in sync with the unit’s capacitors discharging one by one.

“REEEE! REEE! REE-EEEEE-EEE-EEE-E-EEEE--EEE--!”

Suddenly, its cries were suddenly cut short with a soft popping sound, accompanied by the color draining out of the grub’s eyes. The maggot’s body spasmed violently as its nerves fired off their signals coordinately. There was no doubt as to the fact that it was dead, but I wasn’t sure what killed it.

Almost immediately after sensing the death of one of their own, a crowd from the nearest maggots crawled their way over to the still-twitching corpse. Initially, I thought that they were investigating the body, an assumption immediately disproved when the nearest grub grabbed one of the stump-like legs and pulled it off in its teeth. The others dived in, tearing chunks of flesh free from the corpse and ensuring that they and everything around them was soaked in red-green blood.

“Tasty refu~ Want more refu~”

“Maggot-chan taste good refu~”

As I said earlier, cannibalism is already a well-known characteristic of Jissouseki. In addition, I was under the impression that the time that larval Jissouseki would stop eating when they are hungry, which means they could lose interest in the food pellet. Thinking quickly, I press the button on the remote to drop another food pellet into the arena.

Nothing happened. I pressed it again. Again, nothing happened. I reached for the base to see if a wire had become unhooked, somehow. A searing pain shot through my finger, and I jerked it back instinctively. The base of the controller had become too hot to handle. It was then that I noticed the smell: the putrid smell of burning feces and the acrid odor of ozone. I looked up and saw why the rig was not responding to my button presses.

The now very-dead larva had squirted a jet of its green, sludge-like feces backward, either as it died or as its fellows devoured it. That jet landed a lucky shot on the transformer for the rig, shorting it out. It was no longer receiving the five volts that powered the Arduino board that controlled the various electrical systems of the unit. Instead, the entire system was receiving the current directly from the wall. The microcontroller was scorched black from the short circuit, and I could hear the thrumming of electricity.

Not wanting to get electrocuted, I made my way towards the laboratory’s door. At that point, there was nothing I could do. In our haste to assemble the experimental rig, we had forgotten to add a breaker or fuse in the system. I just had to wait for the electronics to fail, which they eventually would. The capacitors that delivered the charge were beginning to swell, and some of the wires were glowing hot.

It then occured to me that the maggots were on their way towards the bait, right towards the metal strip. If one of them made contact with it, the grub would close the overloaded circuit and…

I could only watch as one of the larvae grabbed the tail of the one in front of it in its teeth and pulled back. I could hear the maggot’s complaints, even from where I was standing.

“Re? Why no move refu? Want food refu... Repeeen...”

With the maggot now stopped, another maggot crawled towards it. To my surprise, rather than rip into it as they had earlier, the newcomer climbed on the back of the restrained larva. Then another, then another.

Maybe they finally recognized that the strip was dangerous, and they were trying to build a bridge over it? A fascinating development for sure, one I was unable to examine up close owing to the incredible danger of the rapidly failing experimental enclosure. By the time all the maggots were in one spot, their bridge was almost complete. Then, something happened.

The top Jissouseki larva got agitated for some reason, and began advancing forward as fast as it could, trying to build speed to cross the gap.

“No touch food refu! Maggot-chan hungry re-”


What happened next occurred so fast that it was over by the time I had registered it. The larva on top of the almost completed bridge falling from its perch and landing on the strip. A bright flash of light, accompanied by the sound of arcing electricity and the smell of burning flesh mixed with feces. A thick, gooey splat of organic matter on the sides of the enclosure in time with the loud popping of the rig’s capacitors venting and exploding from the excessive voltage of the new current, filling the air with toxic fumes. The stench of burning plastic as the power supply burst into flames at the same time the room’s breaker failed, plunging the room into darkness, illuminated by dim red emergency lighting as the fire alarm screamed overhead.

The entire experimental rig had burst into flames, and in so doing had thrown the breaker, knocking out the power for not just our laboratory, but for the entire building as well. I could not stay in there for much longer, as the flames from the unit were rising higher and higher, and the stench of burning plastic was becoming unbearable. I ran my way for the door and slammed it shut behind me. Safely in the entryway, I pulled the lever on the wall to my right. The door behind me locked and sealed. An automated female voice sounded over the intercom.


“Fire detected in Laboratory 3C. All personnel evacuated. Fire suppression systems engaged.”

With that, there was a loud whoosh of gas being emitted from ports in the ceiling, blowing loose objects in the lab around and shaking the sealed glass door behind me as the pressure in the room suddenly changed. All the while, the klaxons overhead kept screaming their rhythmic electronic buzzing. And then, just as suddenly, the alarms cut off.

An eerie silence loomed over the laboratory. Looking back through the door to the lab, the entire room was filled with smoke, but I could just make out the shape of the rig. The experiment platform was completely destroyed, its walls scorched black, sagging, and half-melted into the table. A few minutes passed in silence before the breaker reset and the overhead lights flickered and finally lit up again, bathing the smoke-filled room in soft, sterile white light.

Finally, the voice on the intercom broke the quiet with a new message, accompanied with the whirring of multiple industrial fans.

“Fire extinguished. Venting atmosphere in laboratory 3C.”

I waited for the room to be properly vented, then rushed in.

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My thesis advisor leaned back in his chair, howling with laughter as the maggot bridge exploded on the screen in front of him. Thankfully, we had a recording system installed to the unit during its construction, and the microSD card that recorded the experiment from the start to its fiery end had remained intact, even if the camera had not been so fortunate. Per his insistence, we were looking over the video recording to draw further conclusions from this experiment, details that we may have missed earlier.

“Doctor Kumar, I don’t see how this is funny,” I said, trying to suppress my annoyance. “That accident cost us at least three grand for the cost of the rig, not to mention the remaining larvae that were killed by the suppression system. We had been waiting weeks for that breeder to be certified, and we lost all the maggots, including the ones not in the test chamber! If my notes hadn’t survived the explosion and the suppression system, the entire experiment would have been a failure!”

“Heh heh… Watching that made getting kicked out of lab 3C almost worth it!” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “That being said, don’t worry about funding. The point is that we were able to quantify the mental qualities of larval Jissou…”

Then, in unintentional unison, we both quoted Charles Darwin.

“... There is little to be said.”

Doctor Kumar chuckled. “Heh, you owe me a soda. Though, it does strike me as strange what that one Jissou larva did.”

“The one that dropped onto the strip?” I asked.

“Yes. It seemed as though the whole lot of them were getting rather coordinated towards the end of the test, only for the one on top to lose its patience. I wonder why that is?”

I got up to leave. “Well, we can figure it out later. In the meantime, I have a report to write. I’ll see you next week.”

As I walked towards the door of his office, he called me back over to his computer.

“Hey, ******, how many larva did you say you put in the experimental course?”

“Hm? I only added ten, as we agreed upon when we assembled it. One was killed and eaten, then they all died at the end. Why?”

Doctor Kumar stared blankly at his computer screen. “I’m asking because I only count eight maggots.”

I walked back to his computer. Sure enough, there were only eight maggots in the testing area. Before I could ask about where it went, Doctor Kumar pointed to the green trail leading away from the group. It lead directly into the alternate path we had set up, through the tunnel, and out the other side, where the missing grub was munching happily on the bait.

“How could I have missed that? How long was it doing that?”

“In all fairness,” Doctor Kumar said, “It only appeared on the other side after the transformer short circuited. By that time, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

With that, he pressed the play button on the video, picking up on the exact moment the rig exploded. One frame, the ninth maggot is sitting there, chewing on the food pellet. The next, it’s gone, leaving a carbonized shadow.

“Do you know what this means?” Doctor Kumar said.

“Um… no…” I said, playing dumb, hoping to get out of this experiment once and for all.

“We need to investigate the outlier. And by we, I mean you. This is your experiment, after all. I expect to have some result on the outlier in two weeks, all right?”

“But, Doctor Kumar--!”

“Good luck! I have faith in you,” he said as he logged out of his workstation and past me, towards the doorway of his office. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. Take care of this for me, okay?”

I stood completely dumbfounded as he walked down the hall, his footsteps getting softer and softer until I could not hear them any more. It took a few minutes for it to sink in what just happened.

So now, I’m tasked with repeating an experiment that could have killed me, with even less supplies than before, all on the off chance we get a repeat of the anomaly observed during said test. Oh, and I have to rebuild the experimental rig, as the old one is a molten heap of plastic, scorched scrap electronics, and burnt organic matter.

God-fucking-dammit.