October Rewards 9

Coolcat

Kinda a simplistic idea, but still pretty spooky: What about a Parasite that makes the infected fatten up until they explode?

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Once again we head back to the Underside, that detestable other dimension where nightmares from beneath the bed and monsters in the closet dwell, and today we'll talk about.... Cooties.

Also known as Cootie Bugs, Cooties are some of the most terrifying entities within the Underside. With an appearance similar to a squirrel sized pink striped spider that possesses a head that looks like an upside down face with no features on the actual head, and eyes on the chin, with a large curling proboscis as a nose, proportionately small flapping insect wings, and three jointed grasping hands, the Cootie is already an ugly and intimidating creature. They can fly faster than most kids can run, and only kids with a distraction, or if they're on a bike, roller skates, or a skateboard can they outrun them, but even then Cootie Bugs are known to track people for miles. Cootie queens are the queens of their colonies, and that is what is pictured here, as the cootie queens are roughly the size of a German shepherd or larger, and are often the same size as a child. 

Cootie Bugs live in large nests that are made up of pink cotton candy like structures, reminiscent of a Hornet's nest. They are filled with toys and objects considered to be feminine, such as pony toys, dolls, doll babies, pink or pastel blankets and clothing, skirts, glow in the dark stars, fairy lights, and they are more often than not covered in glitter. A single hive is usually the size of a small building or restaurant, taking up a huge area, often times in the air, between canyons or in a massive tree or outcropping of chocolate or rock candy depending on where they're found. A single nest usually houses anywhere from 300-1,200 cootie bugs and a cootie queen, unless it's an entire Cootie Colony in which it may have upwards of 7,000 and up to 5 cootie queens. These are very rare however and it's believed that there's only a few cootie Colonies within the entirety of the Underside. They can be seen coming and going from their massive hive, flying about with blank expressions and a loud buzzing sound. Occasionally they will communicate to eachother through movement, intwelocking their proboscis' together, and making utterances that sound like excited screaming baby laughs. If one should spot a creature such as a Bugaboo, a Child, or pretty much any other kind of creature in the world, it will let out one of these vocalizations and move swiftly toward it. 

They will often grab at a creature with their grasping arms, and once they have done so they will bite their teeth into the subject repeatedly. If the subject is in a cootie bug's territory, they will swarm the subject and bite it until it is unconscious or incapacitated, or until the cootie bug is killed.

Herein lies the true horror of the cootie bug. Creatures bit by the cootie bug become afflicted with a strange disease. After being bitten, after a few hours the target becomes feverish and exhausted as well as light headed. They also begin salivating twice as much as usual, which causes them to drool or occasionally cough from choking on their spit. Their breathing will become heavy, and their body will become flushed while their heart feels aflutter, however they will start to feel a euphoric feeling after a day or two. During this time their eyes will become red, and their pupils will become pink and start changing shape to be shaped like hearts. Every now and then blood will be found in their saliva, tinting it pink. Their teeth will all start to fall out and they will be replaced by two to three times as many sharp jagged teeth, and the subject will no longer be exhausted or light headed, but they will still walk with a sort of shambling appearance as they move due to the euphoria their body seems to be in, and they are almost always trembling with anticipation. At this point they are salivating roughly 20 times more than normal, and their saliva is a pinkish color, and they are constantly drooling from it. During this period they are prone to fits of giggling, but also they are prone to violence. They will lash out trying to embrace others, and kiss them. They will do everything in their power to kiss as many people as they can. This is usually limited to people of a gender they may find attractive in the case that they think boys or girls are cute. During this time they may also try to bite if people fight back, and often still bite even when they receive a kiss. They may become "Kiss hungry" before they fully reach this stage and may be more amiable. Regardless, they are highly infectious, and if they successfully bite or kiss another creature, the saliva will infect the other creature as well. The saliva must enter your body through your mouth or your blood stream, so just getting the saliva on you can't make you sick unless it gets in a wound, in your eyes, or somehow in your body. The saliva tastes sweet in an almost sickening way.

A cootie outbreak can take down entire colonies of kids, as one kisses another and spreads it to the rest, with the others biting at eachother and infecting one another in an apocalyptic scenario if they can't figure out how to fix it. Kids will become feral and use extreme strength and dexterity, enough to hurt themselves, if they are given a chance while infected, and they will fight to the death in an instant. 

During this time, the child will smell sickly sweet in an overwhelming sense, and the nearest Cootie bug will pick up the scent and inform it's colony, and a swarm will begin moving toward them. As time passes, and they salivate more and more, they swallow the spit they have built up, and the thick, syrupy like substance starts to fill their stomachs and they start to get full, ballooning up slowly like water balloons in the process. When the Cootie bugs reach the location, they will use their proboscis like a mosquito, and jab it into the subject's stomach and begin drinking the excess fluid and storing it in their abdomen as they grow heavy and thick with saliva. This fluid is used to feed the Cootie Bugs, and brought back to feed their babies, and their queen, but it is also the substance by which they weave to make the material their nests are made of. Their abdomen can transfer the liquid into their stomachs, into an injection pouch so they may feed the young or their queen with their proboscis, or into their spinnerets to weave the cotton candy like substance. If there is an abundance of food in the area, the first small swarm will return to the hive to collect more to return for food, and if it is exceedingly good, in that it could feed the entire hive twice over, one of them will return with "Lady in waiting" to become a queen herself by consuming royal saliva injected by the queen so it may create a new colony in the area. The cootie bugs will continue to drink from the targets until they expire, though this can take a long time as the substance in their saliva that they constantly swallow contains nutrients and water enough to count as several full meals and a healthy amount to drink every day, so they only need to keep breathing. In some areas you may find children wandering in the wastelands, drooling and breathing heavily wanting to kiss anyone they see and being fed on by several cooties. Whenever the queen lays eggs, it's usually inside of one or more people that have been infected, in which the young grow and cocoon themselves in the sloshing liquid, until they burst free.

If the child is in an area where no cootie bugs are however, it can be just as detrimental. If nothing drains the substance from within the child, they will continue to expand until the pressure grows too great and they explode. Due to the strange nature of this substance, the target can grow fairly large, with one instance of a Bugaboo becoming infected being that she grew to the size of a large house before she exploded. The substance within is pink normally, however due to the gritty, glitter like substance within, and the way it interacts with creatures' organs, it can become the clumpy cotton candy silk on it's own, and it can cause little hearts and rainbows to form within due to the strange interaction with whatever strange magic causes this. This can cause someone to explode into a large fluffy and wet puddle of cotton candy and tattered flesh, but it also splatters the infectious liquid everywhere. This can be managed by medical practitioners by draining the fluid, but it's really difficult to do without becoming infected yourself or without harming the person. 

There have been cases of children and bugaboo coming back from cootie attacks, though it does leave them permanently scarred and they have to manage their saliva output at all times. They drool a lot, their eyes are red, they're still extremely over touchy and kiss starved, and their teeth are still sharp, however, it can be managed, and such people often find a sort of superhuman strength and dexterity as well as a viciousness they didn't have before, and cooties will often avoid them or treat them as friendly. This is very rare and requires a medical procedure that involves killing a queen that has fed, and extracting the bluish liquid from it's abdomen, as well as the organ (Cootiebladder) that creates her royal jelly and introducing it to the person's system slowly as the fluid is drained, or as vomiting is induced. 

Females seem to be more likely to contract the cootie bug than males, which seems to be where the childhood fear of getting cooties from girls stems from, which means that cootie bugs lived on earth at one point before they were here.

Beyond this, cooties can be used for other things, as they can be kept alive indefinitely without food or oxygen, and they will go into a hibernation state in such a scenario. This means they can be captured in jars or vials and used as a thrown weapon, though this could cause more trouble than it's worth. Cootie chitin is very hard, and as such their parts can be used to make durable and powerful gloves, and you can even make an injector gauntlet with their proboscis that extends whenever you punch and you can equip it to pump various liquids through your strikes. These can also be used in shoes, especially to make knife shoes, or to use their claw like legs to make spiked cleats. The Saliva can be carefully extracted and used as a weapon, however it can be diluted greatly and used as a sort of love potion that makes creatures smitten with one another, especially when combined with any of the royal jelly from the queen. It can also be used to trade with monsters, as many beasts use it in various recipes for poisons, potions, and magic creation. Their wings can also fetch some money as they glitter like a rainbow in the light and are very durable and usable as jewelry. 

The queen's teeth can be used as weapons, as well as her proboscis, and some particularly savvy kids know how to make a jetpack like device using her wings if you're a light enough kid. Finally their heads make intimidating helmets, and their bodies good armor that lets you climb surfaces, or maybe even shoot webs provided you have extracted fluid.