Servants (Patreon)

Cindy hated her job.  Cleaning houses for other people barely paid the bills.  Every day, 8 hours a day, she had to endure her boss or one of the clients complaints about some trivial detail or another.  That all changed the day she accidentally sucked up the ... well whatever it was.

It was tiny.  That much was certain.  It had shiny skin like some kind of insect and wings, too.  The details were almost impossible to discern.  At first, Cindy thought to simply discard it with the rest of the contents of the vacuum cleaner.  Then she heard its squeaky, high pitched voice.  It pleaded to be released.

To say Cindy was astonished would be the understatement of the decade.  Insects?  She'd sucked up hundreds (maybe even thousands).  Talking insects?  Now that was considerably rarer (like one maybe.  This one!)

It promised a magic wish if released.  Now Cindy had long since forgotten childhood stories of wishes and fairy and genies and such.  But she couldn't let something that could talk stay trapped.  It didn't seem right somehow.  She carefully opened the top of the vacuum and pulled the bag.  Once the top was separated from the inlet pipe, the creature immediately flew out and landed on the floor, sneezing violently.  While Cindy reassembled her vacuum cleaner, the sneezing subsided.

"And your wish?" the tiny voice asked.

Cindy didn't hesitate.  She was tired of being a servant.  She'd rather have servants of her own.

"I want servants.  Hundreds of servants.  Servants I can boss around."
"So be it," the tiny creature nodded.

A strange glittering fog surrounded Cindy and the room she'd been cleaning faded, to be replaced by a dark smooth surface.  The air was oddly warm and filled with strange smells.  As her eyes adapted to the darkness, she realized that there were thousands of huge termites all about her.  They weren't attacking though.  They were massaging a huge yellowish sausage.  

It was then Cindy realized three things.  First, she could feel the massage ... the great sausage was part of her.  Second, every few minutes, she'd get a painful urge to push something from the sausage.  One of the huge termites would grab the egg (for that's what she had laid) like it was gold and scurry off with it.  Finally, she realized she now truly had thousands of servants to command.  She was mostly a termite queen.

This was definitely NOT what she'd wished for ... but the fairy (or whatever it was) was long gone.

Photo Credits:
Woman: https://www.DeviantArt.com/Akiuonsen
Termite: Creative Commons: CSIRO