The giant mosquitoes

"Oh man, these mosquitoes are slowly beginning to look like rats with wings!" Ashutosh complained as he crawled inside the mosquito net. His wife groaned something in her sleep and turned over.

It was about 1 AM, and both Ashutosh and his wife had no idea that the pharmaceutical company, which had a "white-collar" research facility in their neighborhood, had actually made a breakthrough in growth hormone research that evening. They were hoping to market it to cattle ranchers around the world to increase their meat output.

And, the pharmaceutical company had no idea that the freshly prepared barrel of the experimental drug was somehow labelled as "waste". Of course, as pharmas working on low-budgets do, they paid an out-of-work newspaper vendor to pick up the waste every night and dump it in the lake behind Ashutosh's house. So, at 2 AM that night, a barrel of concentrated growth hormone was dumped in a lake, that already produced mosquitoes that looked like rats with wings. And the world, was on its way to being taken over by a mutant specie.

Ashutosh woke up early in the morning, to the sound of what seemed like fighter jets. There was an air force base close by, but he had never seen the jets come so close. As he moved the curtains, he saw a strange sight. His neighbor was being impaled by a buffalo sized giant mosquito. With a proboscis, that looked like a spear.  And the rest of them were flying around, sounding like jets.

The giant mosquitoes were growing in numbers by the hour. People were running for their lives. And, in a few hours, it looked like the entire planet had fallen to the power of a flying insect. No known chemical or mechanical weapon was able to do anything to them.

Ashutosh's turn came eventually. His entire family was hiding in the kitchen, but a giant mosquito had broken the window to get inside the house, and it was slowly making its way to the kitchen. It was crawling, since it was too big to fly inside the house. As it came within a few feet of Ashutosh, he heard a scream.

His wife saw the mosquito, and panicked. Then, she picked up whatever she could lay her hands on, and threw it at the mosquito. Suddenly, the room got very red, and Ashutosh started sneezing. It seemed like his wife had tossed a can full of red chili powder.

As the dust cleared, they saw the giant mosquito. It was dead.

Soon, Ashutosh was calling every TV station he could reach. The armed forces moved swiftly. Within a few hours, the sky was red with chilli powder. The roads were red with tomato chili ketchup. And everywhere the eye could see, there were giant mosquitoes, that looked like buffaloes with wings. And they were all dead.

The world was free again, thanks to a toxin in chili powder, that worked only on mutant mosquitoes.

-x-

"Nonsense! Absolute Nonsense!!!"

Sharma-ji was yelling. "Gupta, after all these years, how can you possibly write such a stupid story? You want me to make a movie out of this shit? Do you even know how much money people lose in Bollywood when a film flops nowadays?"

Sharma-ji was the producer, and very often, he also sat on the chair that said "director" behind it. In capital letters. Obviously, he couldn't be wrong about these things.

Before he tossed Gupta's file across the room, he was listening to the story with his eyes closed. From time to time, he would open them, only to pick up yet another pakoda from the giant plate in front of him, liberally dab it with tomato-chili sauce, and pop it into his mouth. Sharma-ji loved his chili more than anyone else.

 "But sir, everyone is doing science fiction nowadays. We could become the Spielbergs of India!"

"Let me tell you something Gupta, the people of India neither know science, nor fiction. Just give them the shit that you always gave them. Throw in a few bare-chested hunks and bikini-clad beauties, and deposit your checks in the bank. Yeh science-whince peh time waste mat karo!"  

Gupta picked up his file, looking very glum. Sharma-ji's voice softened a bit, "Are suno yaar.  What was that shit in the tomato sauce you wrote about, you know, the one that killed the mosquitoes? Will that kill humans too?"

Gupta opened his mouth to say no. Then, he saw Sharma-ji pick up his last pakoda to wipe the remaining tomato-chili sauce with it. .Gupta thought, "If Sharma-ji was a giant mosquito, by now, he would be dead."