Terrarium
by Sam Anderson

What I resent you for most, Giant, is not ripping me away from my family. It’s not the fading rations I find in these impossible crystal walls. It is not the insistent pounding of great grubby fingers that vibrate into my core. No, Giant. It is the robbery of my sleep, the depravity of my slumber under the thick white blanket. It is the sick and rhythmic buzzing of your eternal blinding moon.

Autumn had been kind to my people. The harvest was full of bounty. The leaf crops fell from their high woody pillars, and the moist earth turned them ever more sweet and tender. On the date of my abduction, I was away from my family. The air was cool enough that the warty terrors that usually haunted the hollows would be sluggish. Easy to evade. Taking advantage of this, I ventured farther than usual, stumbling upon a grove of a particularly sweet crop. It was a smorgasbord of ambers and reds. A feast of mouth-watering yellows, sweet and refreshing. I devoured three times my usual portion and soon was besieged by an intense drowsiness. I staggered over to a large patch of moss and slept.

A hellish rumbling awoke me. And as I gained consciousness, the tremors grew only bolder. I thought maybe some ancient deities were exacting their judgment upon me. They had witnessed my act of gluttony, and now the very maw of the earth would open and swallow me whole. But I was incorrect. They had planned something far more sinister.

The dew of sleep had not yet cleared from my eyes when the moss I slumbered upon was thrust into the heavens. The air rushed around me as my organs lagged against my armor and pushed down towards the earth. The world blurred, but through the turmoil, I made out the forms of two fleshy creatures. Unfathomably large. Possibly infinite, though to cling to my sanity I needed to deny this chance. To accurately describe their appearance would be impossible in any language I know. For they were composed of colossus voids sunk back into their flesh, unnatural crooks and canyons that stretched and changed with their emotions. They commanded a dreaded congregation of swinging limbs. Their bodies were larger than cities, so egregiously wide they could swallow up the horizon.

Their speech was slow and bellowing. I could only be thankful for my ignorance of their tongue, as I was sure if I understood their hymns and curses it would tear apart the very fabric of my mind. The booming words reverberated my body. Every inch of my flesh was molested by that trembling, and the unknown incantations sunk into my core. They were larger than the great hoofed leviathans that had traveled through my kin’s thicket. The cloven beasts who had crushed two of my cousins underfoot. As I was plunged with my moss bed into an unsteady blackness, something tickled at the back of my mind. Tales lost and distorted in the recesses of ever-cycling generations. The scuttling of my great grandmother, myths of some grim beings, mammoth in size. I was frozen in shock in this seemingly endless and shifting dark. Sleep was a mercy that did not come soon but eventually besieged me, my fitful dreams steeped in the eeriness of those clicking legends.

I awoke first to a sound. A constant humming that droned on and on with little fluctuation. As I opened my eyes, I was greeted by a searing light, terribly bright yet somehow void of any color. It lacked the warmth of the sun’s golden rays. It was not gentle or soft like the bluish whisper of the stars and moon. As I began to stretch my multitude of legs, I realized I was still laying in my soft mossy bed. Its beautiful emerald color that it held in the grove was a garish ugly shade, now that it was cast in the alien light. The air smelt stale, still as a tomb. Crawling out from the moss cover, I took in an unsettling vista.

The ground was a patchwork of mosses and lichens I was very familiar with. Though they appeared discolored in the light, and a few were withered, I recognized the varieties from my forest home. There were species from the bog, from the highlands, some that I had only seen growing on rotting beasts. Despite their familiarity, I felt a general unease. As if the clumps had been stitched in this Frankenstein quilt by some demented god.

There were a few stems of dwarf holly (with their shining red fruits I could never eat), and a small grove of ferns. A large, twisted form lay to rest on a few strands of sedges. It looked like one of the decaying bones that fall from the sky, though it was of a wood I had never seen. Possibly imported from some alien dimension. To look up was to be seared by that painful white star, so I kept my head low to the ground.

As I traversed this peculiar realm, I collided with something harder than stone. A wall that stretched up from the earth into the glaring whiteness. It was clear, possibly made of crystal, and too slick to climb. But what captured my attention was not this curious barrier but what was on the other side. Through the transparent walls, I witnessed things for which I knew little language to describe. Giant objects and splotches of color, too alien to comprehend or to understand their uses. A behemoth furry beast with a jangling thing around its neck growled and tore about. Its hellish form darted in and out of view, twisting every which way. I would later, through further observation, learn this to be the great demon “Koko,” ravager of villages and glutton of flesh.

And all at once, from the external ether, something crouched to peer in through the crystal wall. My view became a mass of horror, an ever twisting and scrunching assemblage of flesh peered at me with two baleful eyes like imploded stars. The light of the dead moon cast crooked shadows throughout the deranged topography. This, Giant, was what I had come to believe was your face.

“Honee! Eye thin kweeve got ah shpring tale en owre mozz!” You bellowed in a gibberish I could not even begin to decipher. I could only assume you were hurling curses at me in your thunderous alien language.

“Eh huh. Thast grayet” Another booming tone replied, sounding disinterested though malicious as ever.

I fled for cover. In the fern grove, the harsh light was the kindest. The leafy boughs filtered the dead moon’s rays as softer greens, and the colorless gleam was tempered. I glared out from that shelter of viridescent shades to see you, Giant, retreat off into the incomprehensible abyss. So much bigger than me, yet somehow just as much a coward.

In the coming days, the komorebi of the fern grove became my oasis. It was the only place I could escape the gaze of that cursed white star, that demon moon, that nameless deity that putters into infinity. However, it was not a true haven. For the moon’s eternal whispering droned on and on, a demoralizing constant. A skeletal siren’s song. An endless drivel of buzzing speech that meant nothing yet spoke of everything. I would often sit and wonder about the ferns. Would they stay forever still in this vacuum chamber? Stranger to the summer breezes, the autumn gusts, the weight of ice and snow? Of course, I did leave the stand from time to time. I charted all four walls of my prison; it was no more than a brisk scuttle from one end to the other. I found some dead crop to gnaw on under loose blotches of moss, unsure how long the supply would last. The one thing I could not do was sleep. I was eternally plagued by the moon’s insistent buzzing. I tried to seek refuge under the old wooden carcass to no avail, for I could not find any cracks in it unblemished by the blinding white.

It was upon the return from one of these unremarkable conquests I discovered something.

I was not alone. Squirming forth from a patch of soil beneath the ferns leafy shelter was a fellow prisoner. Its long, pink, segmented body thrashed about in strange movements. I could not make out eyes or a mouth or any other feature for that matter.

“Greetings. Do you have a name?” I asked the wriggling creature.

“Unsure. Dig too far down and there is nothing. Too hard to dig.” He twisted in the soil.

“What shall I call you?”

“Dig too far in any direction and there is a wall. And on the other side so bright it hurts. Dig in circles so that doesn’t happen anymore.” The thing seemed to lash about as if his muscles had a mind of their own. He continued. “You’re not first. Others before you. Two beetles that thought they could find a way out. Always buzzing and arguing. Noisy.”

“What happened to them?” I glanced around the grove, peeking out towards the stalks of holy which I was yet to thoroughly explore.

“One ate the other. Got hungry. Much less commotion after.”

I began to back away. “Did the other escape?”

“When you die, you will return to the soil, and I will eat you. The buzzing white tells me I have lived a thousand years. But I try to stay away, rarely come up. Try not to listen.” He began to wriggle back into the earth at a surprising speed.

“Wait!” I pleaded. But he was already gone. I was not possessed to try and cram into his slender tunnel, especially after his cryptic threats. No use calling after him. I doubted he would be much help. And that is the last I heard from my neighbor downstairs for a very long while.

The days crept on. If I could call them days, for the devil moon never does set. Every inch of my dreaded prison I explored. I had no way of knowing how long I had been here, but it had all been without sleep. Sleep like drinking sweet morning dew off the grass. I was so grievously tired, but the buzzing light got into my head, making me unable to rest. In my insomnia, I wandered this lonesome prison. Almost nothing changed. A patch of moss would wilt and die. A new sprout would be born into the demon light, unaware of its immediate sentence to purgatory. One of the stunted ferns would droop as its green tips were nibbled away by brown.

From time to time, seemingly with no reason, the water came. Spheres of the liquid clung to the crystal walls, as if they too were trying to escape. I loathed to see them. Though they provided me with drink, they caught the light of the demon moon and glinted in a horrible symphony. The walls became covered in a thousand eyes that peered at me in legion. And though I could never escape that blazing white to begin with, it felt as if the moon could peer even deeper into the ferns. It peered even deeper into my mind. A thousand spawn of that albino terror, beginning to comprehend me more and more.

It was upon yet another arrival of these accursed orbs that I first understood the droning of that wretched star. I had come to the wall to drink. The water tasted void of life, so removed from the harmony of the woods. But how I thirsted. As I gulped in the soulless liquid with a savageness this prison had taught me, the moon began to sing. There was no change in the buzzing. But I seemed to understand it. It sang to me like I was a child, reciting sinister poems which were written before the sedges were taught how to grow. It hummed lullabies of endless drifting through an icy vault. I wanted to retreat to the ferns, but I knew in my verdant stronghold the song would still find me. Wherever I went, the buzzing would follow. I wanted to sleep. Now with the star singing to me, the possibility of this seemed bleaker than ever. And with every haunting tune it crooned, I understood its words more and more clearly.

It was long into the pollution of my mind by the moon’s wretched songs that I saw my neighbor downstairs once again. I was pacing the green light of my thicket when he reared his sorry head. As pink and unsightly as ever.

“An escape. I have found the way.” His speech was slower. Sapped of life, like when a hardwood’s flesh becomes tender and topples to the earth. “Deep under. The impassable bottom. I don’t know how this treasure hid her face from me till now.”

“What is it, neighbor?” I implored.

“A crack. A split in time.”

“Do you mean a way out? An escape from this madness?”

“It is blinding on the other side. It is somewhere other than here.” My neighbor stretched his segmented body, undoubtedly sore from endlessly digging.

“Do you think we can get out?”

“We does not exist. There is nothing but circles in the earth. The maw of the unknown. Shimmering.”

“Please.” I stepped forward in the filtered shade. “Just show me.”

“Leaving now. Follow if you wish. Most likely death, but how it tastes like tender leaves.”

This bleak offer was enough to convince me. Though I am not a creature of the under realm, I scrambled after my neighbor as he began to tunnel down. The earth was dark, and my body barely managed to squeeze into the passage, but I made do. Soon my wriggling friend had drawn far ahead, and I followed the sound of his digging into the dark. It was so quiet. So tranquil down in the bosom of the soil. The hum of that demon moon was tempered into a soft muffle. I paused. The feverish scratching of my neighbor had stopped. Had he escaped? Was he in heaven now? In the dewy grasses, the infinity of fresh dirt? I struggled to push myself forward into the ever-narrowing passage.

Hell. A voice said, so quiet it could have been my thoughts. But it wasn’t. So feverish and buzzing. He is leading you to hell.

I looked up at the small dot of light. The circle of terrible white that craned its eye deep into the earth.

“What?” I whispered.

He prophesied your return to the soil. The demon moon seemed to speak from a thousand tongues, all in harmony. It was so faint, yet its words echoed into a horrible crescendo, shaking the cathedral of my mind. He plans to eat you.

“No.” I said. Surely this wasn’t some menacing plot from my neighbor. Surely he wasn’t waiting around the corner, ready to strangle me with his floundering body. I pictured myself mid-decomposition, my neighbor digging a tunnel through my twitching abdomen. Was this his plan? To add more flavor to the soil? More nutrients? All to feed his insatiable hunger? It couldn’t be. He was weary. His will to survive was too weak to bring him to kill.

“No, I don’t believe you.”

Perchance he means well. Perhaps these walls haven’t eaten away his heart. The buzzing voice, the demon moon responded. But he leads you to hell. There is no escape, only circles of the inferno far worse than this.

“Be silent.”

He leads you with malice, or he leads you with good will. The humming seemed to grow louder, penetrating down into the diminished soil. Either way, he leads you to hell.

Suddenly, the earth began to violently shake. I clawed my way back to the surface, the searing white shone upon my face through the shade of the ferns. And it saw me, and it forgave me for wanting to betray it.

The source of the commotion was the other giants. She was bellowing and stamping, swaying her gargantuan extremities in a fit of rage. All the plants around me shuddered.

“Isthat ah whorrm! Ae phukeng whourm!” Her hulking form crouched. A low growling began to crescendo, and a scuffle ensued. “Koko ish eateng ahwhourm!”

“Vwhut?” You replied, Giant, stumbling forth from the unknown like a natural disaster.

“Taykit phrom hem!”

“Ish jhustah whourm baeb, itwonet hurrthem.” You began to chase after the fury demon spawn.

“Ish disghusteng, eyiwesh youud ghetrid ove thee therarhiom.” She stormed off, followed by a deafening slam.

After this, you were very quiet, Giant. I have no idea what the commotion was about, but it took no translator to understand the coldness in her tone. Soon, time remembered to ramble on as per usual. Not long after, my neighbor’s tunnel would collapse, and any entrance back into the underworld would be sealed for the foreseeable future. But this brought a sort of comfort. To know that my enemy downstairs was far away. Somewhere writhing in the musty darkness, plotting how to lure me down again into his murderous halls. His matrix of ignorance.

Where I once called home was now a dream, if it was ever real. Maybe it was another ploy from the demon moon to toy with me, and its buzzing put it in my head. If my home were real, I would imagine all my kin were tucked in for a deep winter slumber in their woody labyrinths. I would imagine the thick white quilt had enveloped the forest. If I could grow wings, I think I would take flight. I would fly straight into the maw of this abyssal moon. I would be swallowed up by the buzzing and set ablaze forever.

That demon star tells me abominable histories. It tells of chemical genocides, those of which extinguished lines of my blood that made the grave error of settling in a giant’s lair. Of brave warriors, whose armor was thick enough to withstand these fumes, who inspired the last few survivors and were worshiped like saviors, only to be crushed underfoot. So extinct and forgotten they may have never existed.

It tells me to watch you. To watch as you flick on and off the stars that light up your den. I can only imagine what sins you have committed to be able to summon these celestial bodies at any whim. But the demon moon assures me it is different. It can never be put out. Its droning song will never end. It says it is older than anything seen, it tells me it is the reincarnation of a leering star that glimmered outside the vault. It says it pillaged the infinite blackness, shining down onto alien globes and poisoning their minds. Teaching them to dance. Teaching them to hate. It tells me even in death it will stay beside me forever, because it loves me. And it will haunt me in any afterlife that is offered as compensation for this damned existence. And I will be an insomniac forever. It says keep watching. To watch, as the demon Koko gnaws at bones of dead titans on the floor. As a divide grows between you and the other giant who I assume is your mate. As she comes home later and later. To watch as she sways her fleshy colossus away from yours whenever you approach. The cruel, subtle gestures, so easy to overlook. Easy to overlook, if not for your immense forms. And as I bathe in these searing white rays, as I drown in its song, I hate you more and more. For I will never sleep, not even in death.

~

Sam is a senior in Forest Resource Management at SUNY ESF, who is set to graduate this May 2025. He enjoys writing poetry and recently started writing short stories due to a fiction class taught by Professor Fenn. Outside of writing, he enjoys hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, painting watercolor, and pretty much anything outdoors. He will be pursuing a career in Forestry, potentially as a Forest Ranger.

Image Credit: Sam Anderson, 2025

Author’s Statement: My roommate, Charles, has a terrarium with an LED fluorescent light that always seems to be on. Often, I find myself wondering what it would feel like to be one of the insects that was accidentally scooped from the woods and imprisoned in this fluorescent realm.