One thought on “BDA #89: Interplanetary wedding

  1. Reminds me of a sci-fi story I once read.

    A space traveler lures a prostitute to a village of longhouses on a jungle planet. An acquaintance of his made his fortune there, having unintentionally left his partner out for local cannibals, who paid him for the choice meal with priceless gems. Unfortunately he fell aoul of the traveler, who tortured him to learn the source of his wealth and ultimately killed him.

    The space traveler strips his victim, ties her to a tree and hides in an apparently abandoned longhouse, awaiting the cannibals.
    Night falls, and to his shock the traveler sees a serpentine shadow slither forward and devour his screaming victim in one gulp.
    It is not a humanoid at all, but one of the longhouses, come awake with the rising of the moon.
    Before he can run, his own hiding place animates and swallows him, alive and screaming.

    The story ends with the longhouses, lounging in the warm sun. The one that ate the traveler belches and settles in to wait for the next meal.

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