It all started when the world got hotter. The seas receded and their sandy shores grew like deserts. The Earth was drying up.
The coasts were parched and inland it was even worse. The land cracked like eczema and water become the new gold.
Animal and man faced a common enemy, thirst. It stalked us like a virus as everyone and everything slowly dried out.
Yet the richer countries stayed wet. Money bought water and their citizens hydrated every day as gallons of fresh liquid gushed through the pipes of the wealthy.
They watched the rest of the world with moist vacant eyes. They were okay as long as the water kept flowing in their direction. It didn't matter if they sucked dry the remaining underground stocks and so the tentacles of the rich spread out across the world, a secret mesh of pipelines bleeding the water from the very mouths of the poor.
The hotter southern regions became a death zone. Waterless corpses rotted on the sun-cooked roads and only the crows grew fat for a short while, until even they searched in vain for life-giving pools.
It was around this time that those in the Southern hemisphere who had the strength to notice saw the first crabs.
They crawled out the vanishing seas in their millions desperate for the the sanctuary of anything damp. The search for moisture drove them inland and eventually they found the secret pipelines full of sweet liberating water heading North.
They entered and walked along the pipes until they came to the cities of the Northern zone.
Its thought that the very first crabs to encounter the citizens there were those siphoned straight from the countless street hydrants into large glasses of clean fresh water guzzled on the spot by the thirsty residents. These were smaller crabs and were washed straight down as people drank and drank and weren't even noticed.
But then came the big ones.
They'd seen their little cousins enter the humans and sensed a damp, warm, attractive hole waiting for them too. The best holes around in fact; mobile, dark, wet and with a constant food supply coming through the teeth.
But as much as the big crabs tried they just couldn't get in. They'd hide in the undergrowth. They'd sneak by the buckets. They'd clasp the defiles between the walls and pounce.
Launching themselves onto the screaming victims the crabs pawed and clawed at their mouths forcing their way in but to no avail. As long as the humans kept their mouths shut the crabs would suffer in the sun relying on the small drips from the outdoor taps and meagre scraps from the bins to keep them alive.
Citizens became intensely fearful of the crabs and attempts were made to crush as many as possible. Gangs with mallets were paid to patrol the streets. They swept the cracks and nooks for secreted crabs, smashing any they found, leaving their flattened guts bubbling in the relentless heat. The towns began to reek of rotting seafood and the greedy crows had a field day.
The remaining crabs muttered in the darkness. They needed a plan. They needed a breakthrough, so they hunkered down and waited for it to come.
It came as a unusually wealthy man was sleeping by his pool. He snored contentedly under a wide parasol shading him from the damaging rays. A tray containing a half-eaten lobster thermidor shell, a used lobster fork, several lemon slices and a tall drink stood on the marbled patio next to his lounger. A female crab was lurking there too enjoying the cool shade. It picked lazily at the crustacean's cheesy carcass and licked the droplets of condensation slowly descending the glass.
The man woke and sleepily reached down for his drink. The crab was balanced on top. The man hadn't seen it and momentarily paused lifting his drink as he yawned dramatically. It was a huge wide loud yawn, the yawn of the carefree rich and lasted and lasted.
The crab sensed the appealing damp breath of the man's wide-open mouth and leapt. It landed smack inside and for a split-second rested on his tongue as it squeezed its rear legs in as well. The man gagged and reached for his lips, desperately trying to drag the creature from between his teeth. He let out a muffled scream and his wife came running to his aid from the house.
She arrived to find her husband on his knees clutching at his mouth and imploring for her to help him as he choked and screeched next to the pool. She knew he was choking. Quickly getting closer and clutching his hands so she could inspect his mouth, his wife peered deep between his teeth and was horrified by what she saw.
She screamed and screamed as she watched the crab gingerly turn itself over so that its soft belly pressed neatly onto her husband's upper palette and its mouth faced his top teeth. It hung there like a bat, snug in its new wet dark place. The woman fainted when the crab's long thin maxilla began to finger her husband's incisors and pick the lobster flesh wedged there in the gaps.
Other crabs near the pool had seen the way their sister had gained its entry and spreading out they tapped out their hideous observations to the others.
And so it began, the terrible invasion as people yawned; unseen crabs legging into their mouths before they could shut them, sitting inside and turning to rest on the upper palette like hard cats, their twitching mandibles waiting for their hosts to feed and drink, which inevitably they did after the initial days of wretching.
The notice went out not to yawn. Posters, billboards and webspots proclaimed that 'under no circumstances must citizens yawn!'
People tried so hard to keep their lips tight as crabs stared directly at them, but it was no use.
The natural human urge to stretch and yawn after a day playing croquet was too strong and as soon as mouths widened in flew a crustacean.
Adults, men, women, children and the infirm all succumbed to what became known to scientists as Palette Crabs and to citizens, Gum Fucks.
To their utter disgust, over time people got used to the passengers inside their heads, the gum fucks. A few hundred citizens died from choking after trying to chew the crabs inside their mouths but many thousands settled into a new life with their visitors and any further attempts to chew them resulted in the crabs descending lower into the throat until the danger passed and the violent heaving stopped.
As months passed residents became familiar with seeing crabs' small front pincers waving around between the lips of their friends . Lovers got used to their maxillae touching as they kissed, which somehow heightened their arousal to a whole new symbiotic climax.
For their part the palette crabs were settling down in their new homes and learning how to make things easier for themselves. Rather than wait on tables and beds for someone to yawn they began to sit on top of people's heads until the inevitable mouth opening came. Some crabs even sat directly on people's faces, hanging vertically over the nose with their pincers dug slightly into their cheeks or even stretched them to hook into the ears. This was particularly evident in children, where the smaller crabs were much lighter and could hang like this quite easily. Even babies had tiny crabs waiting for them in maternity wards, standing on their foreheads bobbing up and down, waiting for their tender yawns. These small crabs were guarded by much bigger ones inside their adult hosts, so that no-one was tempted to flick the little ones away. Every crab deserved a home and like their hermit cousins, as kids grew up, different sized crabs would take up residence.
As time went on the behaviour of humans began to change. They could no longer speak in the same way, as their mouths were now more or less full. A new way of talking came about, with muffled words, hisses, head and hand gestures and even some crab teeth tapping. Eating and drinking were also affected. Food tended to be partially liquidised because there just wasn't enough room for anything substantial and besides, chewing had become awkward to say the least. Drinking was easier and both host and crab would open their mouths.
In the beginning their was a lot of resistance to the crab invaders. Posters were plastered on billboards denouncing the creatures. 'Kill the Gum Fucks!' and 'Chew the Crabs: they're just Seafood!' and 'Our Mouths are Ours!' were popular. But the occupation continued apace and hosts resorted to drastic measures: attempting to rip them out of the mouth, drinking bleach, piercing them with screwdrivers, drilling into them and burning them with lasers, but these usually ended in the hosts being badly injured or even dying. Some truly desperate hosts took themselves and their Gum Fucks out of the cities and walked way into the parched deserts beyond to lay down and dry.
But by and large the situation stayed the same for decades and over the next half- century, whilst there was still enough water for the rich, the two species co-habited without much trouble.
After about 70 years some reports eventually trickled through of the two species merging, suggesting that humans with crabs' faces were ambling around a few towns and in the far reaches of the enclaves there was talk of humans walking on all fours in a sideways fashion.
There were even rumours of really big crabs, much to big for mouths, about the size of dogs in fact, mating with citizens and even giving birth to crab children.
And have you guessed, I'm one of them!
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