r/SignalHorrorFiction
Black Rose [Broadcast] by reddit user Danceswithstorms
When I hit the lottery a year ago, I knew what I was going to do. I’d always kept a saltwater tank, and loved the different fish and corals that were available, so my dream had been to have a small store of my own to sell them.
I built myself a small bungalow-type house, and attached to that I had a huge stockroom. I hired a team of plumbers and electricians, bought the equipment I needed, and set to work. After everything was plumbed and wired, I had a team of saltwater maintenance guys come in to help me get the tanks up and running. One section of the building was for fish and inverts, and the other section was for the varieties of corals I planned to grow out and frag to sell.
Because it was such a vast operation for one person, I did hire on a few people to help. Students from the local college mostly, looking to earn their degree in marine biology. I knew how to grow and maintain my stock, sure, but I was looking to produce new things too. Their education would help with that.
It took six months from the start-up date before we were able to start fragging the colonies we had grown out or purchased outright. I had acroporas, euphylia, leathers, plates, zoas, palys … I went far and wide adding to my collection. Some of my favorites were the deep purple torch corals with the bright green tips, and the flower pots. Flower pots were delicate corals – in the beginning we had lost a couple to brown jelly disease before we found the right lighting, flow, and feeding schedule for them.
Another six months past that, and we had built up a tidy little customer base. The fact that we provided pest-free, healthy stock, along with flyers we printed up on the specific care of said stock, probably attributed to that. Well, when you raise something, you want to make sure the new owner takes good care of it, right?
Even the local fish stores were buying from us, something that made me proud. I had built a good repertoire with the owners and employees intentionally; for one, they ordered the fish and inverts for me, and for two, I didn’t want to take away from their business in the process of building up my own.
“I’ve been in a lot of show rooms over the years,” Gerald told me one day, “but none of them come close to this. Be proud, Jade.”
One of my supplies from Japan called me one evening, saying he’d found something he thought I might like. I asked him to send me a photo, and the second I laid eyes on it I said yes.
It appeared to be a type of palythoa coral, but it was unlike any I’d ever seen. The “eye lashes” were very long, and as black as sin. That black bled inwards towards the base, merging with a red so intense it looked like someone had bled onto the coral. The mouth was mottled, and my first thought was that it looked like it had teeth.
Noboru had it sent to me overnight, but the enclosed letter he attached gave us all pause.
He had lost two of his men, just by touching it.
Now, I knew that palys and certain zoas contained palytoxin. Palytoxin was a lethal poison that was protein-based, and it worked by destroying cells. For you science nerds out there, palytoxin targets the sodium-potassium pump protein by locking it into a position where it allows passive transport of both sodium and potassium ions, thereby destroying the ion gradient that is essential for life. Because palytoxin can affect every type of cell in the body, the symptoms can be very different for the various routes of exposure. The most common exposure in humans is by ingestion or inhalation. The onset of symptoms is rapid, and death usually follows quickly. Treatment in humans is symptomatic and supportive. In other words, there is no treatment or cure for this.
