Three foot one inch tall Mary stood for a few minutes catching her breath, wiping the mildly stinging acidic insect blood from her face. The mosquito was still bleeding out from the stump of its severed leg and she could still hear the faintest sound of it breathing. Slow pained breaths that indicated was looming closer for the super sized animal.
Mary took a couple steps back and watched in amazement as the giant creature still slowly grew despite being on the very verge of dying away. It was fascinating watching the process, but incredibly morbid with the circumstances. The pool of blood continued to pool beneath the limp form of the mosquito. The mosquito topped nine feet long, then ten, gently shifting to the side, as it became monstrously large for the confined hallway. At twelve feet long at last the growth started to slow, at 12 and a half feet long the mosquito finally stopped growing. Mary felt she was back in her youth when she and her brother would torture bugs just to see their reactions as they died. Snuffing out a life just because it was so small and seemingly pointless.
Mary approached the truly massive insect very carefully and heard the last final ragged gasps of breath. The insect’s body had no power to drive its complicated internal workings and without that power it was fading fast. Organs started to shut down as the simple brain panicked to keep it working. The mosquito gurgled and emptied the contents of its gut, thick viscous saliva leaking from its beak and joining the puddle of blood. The gush of blood from the stump of its leg was down to a trickle in short spurts.
Mary felt the second pang of guilt she had felt. “Oh God…” she gasped, almost breathlessly. “I’m sorry, big girl. You were just doing what you do.” Mary stepped forward, stepping into the puddle of blood, and reached her trembling hand out to touch the mosquito’s body with her hand. The smooth exoskeletal flesh felt like a cool plastic under her hand and Mary trembled. “You don’t deserve to die like this, girl. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
The guilt suddenly returned and Mary whimpered. She ran back to the bathroom and grabbed the remaining gauze and wraps from the first aid kit sprawled out on the tile. She ran back cradling all the wraps and set to wrapping the stump of torn flesh that had previously been a leg. Mary first squeezed the stump tight, sending another gush of blood from the hanging muscle fibers, then wrapped it completely around, creating a decent tourniquet.
The blood pooled around the creature was a problem, but the bandaging seemed to have stemmed the bleeding considerably. Mary couldn’t have known that the mosquito had lapsed into a massive blood loss induced coma, but that she had also saved its life with her kindness and it was beginning to gradually gain back what it had lost.
Mary shook her head, wondering why she had just saved the huge bloodsucker from certain death, and carefully walked back downstairs to get a mop and a pail and also grow herself back to normal.