"Uh Oh. Those trees ain't trees, Frank."

"Uh Oh. Those trees ain't trees, Frank."

"Yea, I know, Ralph, they're likely Yuggspawn-"

"Don't call me Ralph. I'm working."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. The name's A.U.X."

"If I still had lungs, I'd be sighing now, you know."

Laughter echoed hollowly inside the diving bell-like helmet. "Yea, Frank, I know. Must really suck to be a disembodied spirit--the one disembodied spirit--that just so happens to power my rig now, huh?"

"You have no idea..." Frank's ghostly voice was laced with weariness, with a hint of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. "...and by the by, I'm not wholly disembodied - I can condense into clouds now and again when I take a mind to."

Aux slogged onward through the putrid green quagmire, moving steadily closer to the massive beasts that loomed like silent sentinels. "So, Frank, what do we do about these Not-Trees?"

Frank chuckled, and a puff of eerily green smoke next to Aux's head took on a slightly brighter glow. "We? Well, I won't be doing anything. They can't do anything to me----aaaaaaAAAEEEEEOOOWWWW!!!"

Aux's bucket-like head swiveled, well oiled gears and motors humming, bringing his single blue ocular porthole to bear on the basic location where he thought his friend might be. "Frank! What's the matter?" Aux bellowed.

"It's those...things. Their minds are....ripping into me....AAaaaaaaahhhhHHHHH!"

At that moment, the entire swamp shivered as one of the tower-sized crustacean-things moved one of its many clawed and barbed limbs. Multiple eyes glared balefully down upon the armored man-machine known only as Autonomous Unigenious X-terminator, or the A.U.X."

"Looks like you won't be alone, ol' buddy."

Art Source: "Bog of Bugs" (c)/by Kisufisu
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #AUX, #Ralph, #adventure, #swamp, #Cthulhu, #yugg, #yuggspawn, #creature, #monsters, #Frank