"Honey, I'm home."said Charlie the crab as he entered his lovely underground home. He loosened his tie and put his cute little crab hat on the hat rack before going to the living room. He smiled his crably smile as he saw his crab wife playing with his crab son.
Crab Son ran up to his dad and gave him a big crab hug.
"Dad,"he said,"My big claw is growing in, see?"
Crab Son held up his right claw, showing his daddy just how big it had gotten. Charlie chuckled.
"Wow Crab Son, that's awesome, hey why don't you go to your room, and in a little while I'll come play Lobstercube with you."
Crab Son excitedly scuttled down the hall to his room.
"So how was work, honey?"asked Crab Wife, planting a loving smooch right on Charlie's crab cheek.
"Oh same old same old,"Charlie replied, letting out a grunt as he sat down in his recliner,"just another day on the beach slowly crawling out of holes, then rapidly scuttling back into them whenever ponies pass by."
"I wish you didn't have to have such a monotonous job honey, I know how bored you get." Crab Wife draped her clawed arms around her husband.
"Yeah, but it puts dried bloodworms on the table,"Charlie sullenly replied,"but,"he continued with a sparkle in his eye,"I just know that someday I'll get transferred to the lizard division, and finally be able to live out my dream of running across the sidewalk when ponies ride bikes past me."
Crab Wife kissed Charlie,"Maybe someday, but for now, you have a crab son to go play Lobstercube with."
So Charlie got up out of his recliner, and moved down the hall towards Crab Son's room. He entered, walking towards the gaming chairs in front of Crab Son's big, fancy television.
"So sport, what're we gonna play today?"
"Smeltio Kart!"
"But son,"replied Charlie with a grin as he pulled a video game out of his crab mouth,"why play that old game when you can play this?"
Crab Son's eyes lit up, and he gave his dad a huge crab hug.
"Super Splash Bros? Oh Thank you thank you thank you so much!"
Charlie giggled,"Well come on, I don't get these newfangled games, put it in."
Crab Son laughed and rolled his eyes at his middle-aged crab dad before putting his new game in the disc drive.
Soon they were playing the game, marveling at the graphics.
Unfortunately, their playtime was cut short by a screech coming from the kitchen.
Charlie rushed through the house to the kitchen, and gazed on in horror at what he saw.
Two individual pieces of his wife, and a sinister-looking king crab, laughing at her dead carcass. Charlie rushed back to his son's room, to get him out of the house, to somewhere safe, but when he opened his son's door he let out a bloodcurdling scream as he saw another king crab, chuckling as he kicked Crab Son, who was now just a twitching, bubbling crab body, his legs long since removed.
Charlie rushed the king crab, jumping onto the back of the creature dozens of times his size. He cried as he vigorously clawed the king crab's carapace, doing no damage save for tiny scratch marks on the nearly impenetrable shell.
The king crab merely grabbed charlie in one powerful claw, and bashed him against the wall until he burst through it, landing in a gored heap right on top of his wife's flower garden. Charlie tried his best to scuttle over to his neighbor's house so that he could ask, no, beg for help, but his shell was crushed, and he could barely move.
Alas, he yet again collapsed, unable to further move his frail, injured body. He tried to call out for help, but could only manage to cough up bloody bubbles.
"So what do you wanna do with these dead losers?" came the voice of one of the king crabs.
"Eh, shove 'em in a ziplock bag, we'll eat 'em later."replied his partner.
"Alright, what about the dad crab?"
"Eh, just kick him into the road, I don't wanna eat something that's been on the ground. We aren't hermit crabs after all."
The two king crabs shared a bubbly chortle as they dragged the bag of Charlie's family to their car, along with his TV, and drove away.
After a short while, a pair of ponies walking by happened to notice Charlie laying on his back as he died in the sun.
"Ew,"said one to the other,"a dead crab."
"Just leave it alone Lyra, it's probably swarming with horrible pathogens, and not the tasty kind."
Charlie twitched his claws, doing his best to plead with the two mares, asking them for some sort of assistance. In response, one of the ponies engulfed him with her magic, and lifted his bleeding near-carcass off the ground.
"Of course, a healing spell."Charlie thought to himself,"what a kind, thoughtful mare."
"What are you doing?"asked the non-unicorn pone.
"I'm gonna move it off of the road, that way nobody will step on it."
"Well hurry up, I think it's literally rotting in your grip."
"Whatever."replied Lyra as she carelessly flung Charlie off in some random direction.
Charlie was understandably mortified, after all, his whole family had just died, and here he was flying though the air, directly towards the Ponyville Toxic Waste dump.
He landed in a particularly radioactive puddle, writhing in pain as the highly toxic liquids seeped into his various lacerations.
"Great,"thought Charlie to himself."now instead of bleeding to death I can also get cancer. I hate cancer."
Charlie let out a disgusting gargling sound as the radioactive puddle began to take effect. He could feel his soft, fleshy insides starting to expand, but he was simply in too much pain to molt. Luckily, his shell was just messed up enough to shatter at the rapid expansion. As Charlie grew, he also rolled around and writhed in pain, further compounding the problem, as he kept rolling deeper and deeper into the waste yard.
As he expanded, Charlie's shell was constantly growing back and re-shattering, causing him unrelenting agony. He let out one more bloodcurdling gurgle, this one heard by everyone thanks to his increased size, and passed out in a puddle of radioactive bile and blood.
Author's Note
One time, when I was five, I found a crab scuttling around on the beach. But it was weird because it was all soft and squishy. I asked my mom what was wrong with the crab, and she said, "oh nothing, some crabs just come pre-cooked." as a joke.
Unfortunately for her, I was five, so I immediately ate the crab. It tasted terrible.
I like crabs.
