(A Caterpillar TF/ Moth TF Story)
By grapehyacinth


Farmer Bill was in a particularly bad mood today. The damned tomato hornworms were decimating his tomato plants, and he had had enough of it. In order to sell his produce as organic, he could not use any harmful chemicals, thus the huge green caterpillars were simply taking over. The stupid worms basically laughed at those harmless soap sprays he used. They could eat a tub of soap and still have room left to chow down on most of the leaves of the plants.

So he began his daily routine of murdering them.

Sweating and cursing in the hot sun, he found it amusing to devise the most inhumane ways to kill the insects. Crushing them quickly beneath his shoe was far too boring. So, sometimes he would stretch them until they ripped in half, their guts spilling to the earth. On other occasions, he would section them into pieces and observe them as they continued to squirm in the dirt...The list of caterpillar tortures was endless, and sometimes he would lie in bed at night, thinking of new torments for the damned creatures.

Crystal, his niece, came running over to where Bill stood musing. “Uncle Bill! They're going to give me a butterfly party for my eighth birthday! Can you come?”

Bill grunted something as he brandished a razor blade from his pocket.

“Uncle Bill, what are you doing?” she asked, watching him pull the protective paper from the blade.

He plucked a caterpillar from the nearest plant and let it wriggle in his grasp. “Surgery,” he snapped merrily. He placed the insect on a piece of wood at his feet.

Crystal began to cry. “No, don't hurt him! Look, he's trying to run away. Stop it! Please!”

But Bill ignored her. “I'm telling Mommy! Right now!” The girl ran off, but he was too intent on the job at hand to notice. He grabbed the fleeing hornworm and pressed it slightly into the center of the wood, injuring it enough so it could not escape.

“Now, how interesting would it be to cut you in half lengthwise? I'd have a great view of the inner workings of a caterpillar, and you can slowly die for me in the process. Ready?”

As Bill descended on the helpless bug, he felt a slight whoosh of air beside him.

“I've had enough of this crap. What the hell is wrong with you, you bastard? And you want to show a child how to murder helpless creatures? You horrid, horrid...thing...”

Still bent over, he was now at eye level with two feet. They wore delicate white sandals, and as his eyes traveled up the perfect set of legs they graced, he realized that something quite extraordinary was going on.

“You just appeared out of thin air,” he stated, viewing the pale pink dress that was draped over the body of a perfect woman.

“Wow, you are perceptive.”

Her eyes were purple-green. Did that color even exist in nature?

“I am nature,” the woman said smugly.

“Did you read my m–”

“Yes, and it's horrible in there.”

“Are you God?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what, the less you know the better. Just shut that stupid mouth of yours.” She bent down to the suffering tomato hornworm and ran her finger gently over its body. With a shiver, its figure was restored, and the worm grew still. “Yes, my dear, you're fine now. Thank you for holding still there so I could help you. Here,” she picked up the larva and placed it back on a tomato plant, “eat all his plants up like a good boy.” She turned and smiled at the farmer, and he grew enraged.

“Listen, God, or whoever you are, these things are destroying my crops! I lose so much income to these little bastards! I won't have you do this to me!” His hands formed fists, and he fought to cover his fear.

“Please don't speak to me that way, you sad excuse for a man,” she scoffed.

Bill's face was beet red, and he was making sputtering noises. “How dare you...”

Suddenly the woman descended on him in a rage. “How dare YOU? Do not make a mockery of Mother Nature! These are living beings too! Every caterpillar you kill FEELS it. There's no mercy in that hard heart of yours – you must torture my creatures? To what end? They feel that torture. They have feelings, unlike you, you terrible person!”

“They're vermin! No one needs them!”

“And who needs your kind? You've destroyed my earth more than any creature ever has! You will ruin us all!”

And then Bill lost all semblance of control. “They're fucking caterpillars, you bitch! They destroy my living, and they deserve to feel pain! A lot of it!” He folded his shaking arms across his chest.

“And so do you, my dear.” Her words echoed through the heavens, and Bill felt something like a bolt of lightning jolt through his body.

He was shrinking.

He tried to run, but something was happening to his feet, making him trip and fall to his well-tended soil. “What's happening to me?” he gasped, staring up at the smiling woman as his vision blurred and his body continued to get smaller. Lying on his side, he realized that he no longer had legs in the human sense of the word. These limbs had simply merged, allowing his feet to thin into odd pseudo-legs. His arms shrank into what seemed to be front legs, and more of these began to sprout from his increasingly fleshy body.

“Ha, ha, ha! Isn't transforming fun?” the now-giantess cackled merrily.

Bill could only writhe from side to side as he continued to shrink. “Help me...help me...” he whispered, but his jaw melted into caterpillar mouthparts and he could no longer make a sound.

“Yes, dear, you make a lovely tomato hornworm!” She clapped her hands together and picked up his plump, two-inch long caterpillar body inbetween two fingers.

He cringed. Help me...If only someone could hear me...

“Oh, my little green caterpillar-man, I hear you, and that's all that matters!”

You hear my thoughts?

“Human minds are so transparent. And look at you, a human mind with an insect body! I love it!”

Shivering, Bill tried to coordinate himself enough to walk on his new legs. How the hell do I do this? You can't leave me this way!

“Do what? Walk on caterpillar legs? Well, caterpillars don't seem to have a problem with it. If you can't even do what a 'worthless' caterpillar does, well then, do you even deserve a human mind?” she threatened.

Frightened, Bill realized he should stop the complaints if there was any hope at regaining his true form.

“And yes, I can absolutely leave you this way. You can live out your measly life as part of a bigger thing...nature itself!”

What do you want me to do like this?

“I want to you learn your lesson!” she hissed, and with a sudden lurch, powerful fingers grabbed him. He looked up at his captor, and was shocked to find himself looking into his own human face.

What the hell is...

“Now let's see what to do with you, little guy,” announced the human Bill in a foreboding tone.

That's me! What's happening? Am I back in time or something?

“I think you should be drawn and quartered. Or maybe halved.” Farmer Bill's voice boomed in the caterpillar's ears.

Oh, my God! I'm getting tortured by...me! he cried, staring at her in dread. You're... horrible!

She gaped at him, truly amazed at his audaciousness. “I'm horrible?”

The human Bill's two fingers grasped the caterpillar Bill's body at both sides. It pulled and stretched...

Oh, God! I'm getting ripped apart! Please, help me!

The pain increased exponentially, tearing through him. The tension on his soft caterpillar insides was beyond unbearable, and just as his organs began to snap...

...he was lying on the dirt below a tomato plant.

Mother Nature glared down at him. “Who's horrible?”

I'm horrible.

“Yes, you most certainly are.”

I learned my lesson. Please change me back...

She surveyed him carefully, as if reading his very being. “No,” she said decidedly, “you haven't even begun to learn your lesson. I'm not done with you at all.”

But...my wife will be looking for me!
“And she will never find you this way!” she cried gleefully. “She must be pretty desperate. I can't imagine living with someone like you all of my life...Although you do have such short lives...”

But...she'll be here soon! It's almost dinner time!

“Yes, my friend, dinner time it is.” She scooped him up and deposited him on a tomato plant. “Eat your crop, my dear caterpillar-man.”

The green caterpillar recoiled in anger. I won't.

She threw her head back. “Oh, my dear, you will, or you'll die. And dying as a caterpillar is a lonely death. Especially if one of my wasps gets you and lays eggs on you. The larvae hatch and tunnel into you, eating your whole juicy caterpillar-body alive. Kind of a good way for you to go, considering what you've done to my other caterpillars.” She disappeared. Bill tried to find her, but he was having a hard time getting accustomed to the weird caterpillar vision he now possessed. As he tried to focus on something fluttering down beside him, it said, “Ah, much better.”

He realized that Mother Nature had become a moth and now was next to him, lazily pumping her wings. From what I can tell with these crazy eyes, you're beautiful, he admitted grudgingly.

I'm a sphinx moth. That's what my caterpillars would have become had you not tortured them to death.

That's what I'll become? He studied her wings, brownish with ornate patterns of blacks and whites. Her thorax was dotted with orange-yellows, whites and browns. She was a large moth, and quite imposing in comparison to himself.

Yes, Bill. This is what you will be if you eat and stop sulking. Admit it, you have plenty of tomato plants for my babies to munch on. They rarely if ever touch the actual tomatoes.

Bill pondered her words. I guess I could have set some aside for the caterpillars to eat.

Yes, perhaps instead of killing them you could have placed them all on a few plants reserved just for them. I myself could have kept them from migrating to the others, if you had wished it.

You can do that?

I turned a man into a caterpillar. What do you think?

It was growing increasingly impossible to refrain from taking a bite from the leaf he stood upon. Weakly, he tried to resist to make his point, but his small stomach twisted, and he found himself nibbling uncontrollably on his prized tomato plant.

The moth had flown off hours before while he, now ruled by his caterpillar instincts, was rendered more of an eating-machine than anything else. He stripped through leaf after leaf, hardly registering anything but the taste of the greenery and the overwhelming need to fill himself to the brim.

Presently, a woman's voice startled him. Mother Nature, in human form, gazed down at him. “Ah, you're growing larger and plumper! You're going to shed your skin any moment!”

What the hell are you talking about –

Suddenly, the urge to eat ceased, and he grew restless. His long body itched all over, and the cliched “jumping out of one's skin” became very real to him. He experienced a strange pop as his skin split down his side, and he wriggled free of it.

“Ah, you're much more handsome in this instar, Farmer Bill.”

Instar?

“The stages of a caterpillar's growth. Each time he sheds his skin. The hornworm has five. Congratulations. You're now officially in the fifth.”

But Bill was not listening any longer. He had resumed his new goal in life, to eat.

He came upon a tomato, and scrutinized it, his human and caterpillar urges at war with each other. This was a prime tomato! No worm should eat it! But he was so hungry, and how delicious it would be to sink his mouthparts into the red flesh of the fruit...

“Ah, I love this!” cried the woman, watching his indecision with amusement.

What the hell do you love? Bill responded in irritation. And honestly, is this your thing? Do you just turn people into stuff and torture them for sport?

“Well, yes. But not for sport. It's to teach them a lesson.”

You mean you've really done this to other people besides me?

“Oh, dear, yes. Far more. For generations! You think all those sick people that commit animal cruelty get off scott-free? My stars, no. I visit every single one. And I make sure they pay dearly for their crimes.”

The caterpillar/farmer shuddered, and veered away from the fruit.

Day became night, and Bill's wife Belinda came looking for him several times. By midnight, she was crying. “Bill, I called the police. No one in town has seen you...Oh, I hope you're okay...”

Sobbing, she collapsed in a heap by the nearby rows of corn. After a short silence, she wondered, “Did you hear what I was saying to Crystal? Is that why you left?” She pulled a leaf from the very plant that Bill helplessly watched her from. “I was so mad at you! Why would you want to show an eight-year-old how to torture helpless creatures? How horrible is that?” she drew herself up angrily. “No, you know what? I'm right. What you did was awful. You can be so horrible at times...” She stalked off. Her voice dissipated in the wind as her figure vanished into the darkness.

“She's a lovely woman,” Mother Nature remarked. “What did she see in a cad like you?”

Bill lifted his head from the leaf sadly. I had a full head of hair once.

She chuckled. “You do amuse me, Bill. That is most definitely in your favor.”

Will you ever change me back? He asked half-hopefully, half-defeatedly.

She studied the creature momentarily. “We'll see.”

The days following saw several search parties combing through Bill's fields, but he was usually too busy eating to notice. His new life was calming, for the sun felt good on his growing caterpillar body, and sleep was dreamless, like the slumber of a baby.

And then one day the itchiness returned, and instinct led him to climb down the stalk of the most recent plant he had destroyed.

Mother Nature looked down at him as he trudged aimlessly through the soil.

What am I doing here? he asked confusedly. I need to dig, to rest...

“It's your time, Bill.”

My time?

“You're going to pupate. Let your body guide you.”

For the first time since his metamorphosis, he felt a twinge of fear. Pupate? He would be enclosed in a cocoon, helpless, buried in the dark soil... You're going to make me go through this?

“Sh. It's what caterpillars do. Lose the human you and let your body take over.”

As Bill burrowed into the soil, its graininess massaged his itchy skin. His body felt so plump; there was almost a pressure all though him, as though he would burst... He needed to fix this; he needed to pupate...

And he was fabricating the pupa around himself, spreading the silk like a master seamstress...

“Wow, such fine work, Bill. I'm impressed,” Mother Nature said, but he ignored her, intent on creating his temporary house, the perfect work of art...

Soon he was fully enclosed by his handiwork. He could no longer see, and the outside sounds were muffled. Comfortable and fully encapsulated, and he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

He awoke and was momentarily startled by his inability to move. Then he realized where he was, and he relaxed.

But the relaxation lasted only a moment as wonder crept in. His body was changing. It was happening slowly, quite unlike when he had become a caterpillar. Here he could feel it altering; the prolegs were almost being sucked into his body, and his insides were rearranging. Wings were forming...

And he was enjoying it all immensely. He was paralyzed, but his body shifting and changing all around him was quite pleasant.

He burst from his cocoon; he no longer felt the need to remain encased as his body had finished its metamorphosis. Climbing onto a branch, he took in the fresh outdoor air, pumping blood into his wings triumphantly. I'm a moth! A beautiful moth! He observed his new delicate body in awe.

Yes, you are! Lovely, isn't it?

He studied the moth that had alighted beside him.

You turned yourself back into a moth, huh? Why am I larger than you? he asked.

Mother Nature fluttered her wings invitingly. You're a female, Bill. That's why.

He drew back from her in shock, giving this knowledge a moment to sink in. No! No! I don't want to be a female! A female moth? Why would you even do that?

Now Bill, did you think I was just letting you enjoy how wonderful it is to be a part of nature?

I thought you were showing me how horrible it was that I was torturing and wiping out innocent creatures! And now that I'm experiencing insect life first hand, I can't believe what a horrible person I was! But now you're....

Yes, yes. You're right on all accounts. But you still owe me something.

Owe? What do I owe you?

You need to repopulate the babies you wiped out. She bobbed up and down before him, wiggling her back end invitingly.

Boy, she smells good, he realized. Attempting to ignore the strong attraction he felt towards her, he asked, How am I going to repopulate anything? How am I going to lay eggs and all that? He studied her figure; it was perfect, healthy, and strong. She would be a fitting mate...

“Don't worry, Farmer Bill. I'm a male today.”

When his eggs were laid, unlike other moths, Bill guarded them with his life. He was thrilled to see his hatchlings spread over the prime tomato plant he had laid them on. Though his fields were weedy and going to seed, he did not care. He strove to be the best parent he could, darting back and forth to defend his young as they matured.

One day several birds flew at him as he valiantly guarded his offspring, but he was no match for any bird in his current state. He was quickly pierced by a sharp beak.

The pain was excruciating, and he beat his wings frantically. Mother Nature! Where are you? Please help me!

In response to his frantic movements, the startled bird dropped him from the air. He hit the ground painfully, and before he could think, he was again sandwiched inside another bird's pincer-like beak.

He felt himself being raised into the air, and a nestful of chirping birds came into view.

Oh, no! Mother Nature! This bird's going to eat me and regurgitate me back up for the chicks' dinner...

A falcon swept past, and the bird swiftly dropped what was left of Bill. The raptor caught him tightly in its talons and lowered him to the earth.

“You may resume your true form, now, Bill.”

Farmer Bill became well-known for his outstanding produce. Somehow neither pests nor disease ever visited his fields, and the output of his land was more than he could deal with. For the first time, he had to hire help.

His wife was happy to have him back, but she never accepted his story of how he had been hurt in the woods. He claimed he had hit his head, resulting in memory loss. He then wandered to the next town over and remained in a homeless shelter. Belinda knew he would never be able to prove his 'adventure', and she considered following up on it at some point. But he insisted this story was true, and, whatever had happened, she had to admit that he was definitely a changed man.

She wondered how circumstances had turned around so drastically for them. Bill did not seem to be doing anything different, yet their earnings had more than quadrupled in the time that he had been back. She did notice that he did spend much more time in one corner of the garden than the others...

Bill murmured soothingly to his children as they feasted on his tomato plants. Lovingly, he had set aside this special area just for them, and he spent many hours watching and caring for them. No predator would touch his young, nor would any insecticide ever be sprayed on his farm.

Gently, he ran a finger down the back of one of his young, missing the feeling of the wind beating against his wings.

He looked forward to the day when his babies finally would take to the skies.