stegrossaurus

[stegrossaurus]

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

by Emerson

The first thing I notice is how cold it is. Then I notice that it’s dark. And empty. And my wrists hurt. Then I notice how odd these thoughts are. Did I expect any different?

With nothing better to do, I start walking. When my bare feet start slapping against linoleum tile, I suddenly have the wherewithal to wonder what I was walking on before. A second before I wonder how I can see my own body in this pitch blackness, I notice shadows on one side that lead my eyes to a light source on the other: a floating string of circular lights a foot higher than me. An awful, mildewy smell fills my lungs as I start to question what I’m breathing. 

Every question and theory shifts and shapes the shadowy world, as if my eyes are adjusting the darkness. Floor, walls, and a door all familiar, solid black, and barely illuminated by the flickering light bulbs above a countertop sink. The bathroom in my house is far too small for all the walking I’ve been doing, but I guess that doesn’t matter here. It’s not like it’s the real bathroom, anyway.

I stare into the mirror above the sink and hate the ugly, fragile, stupid thing I see in the black glass. I hate its bulbous nose and sagging chin and whipped-dog eyes. When I raise my hands and look at the slices on the wrists, I hate those, too. I’m going to spend the rest of eternity in this room relieving my suicide, aren’t I?

“Well, this sucks.”

“The door’s unlocked, idiot!” a raspy voice screams from beyond the door. “And I’ve got plenty more to do today so how about you hurry up!”

After what feels like hours of silence, I startle at the sound of the voice. Even though I’m sure I’ve never heard it before, it feels as familiar, and unwelcome, as the bathroom. It’s like something from the background of my entire life, like–

“No soliloquies, kid! Move your ass!”

A lifetime of doing what I’m told snaps my muscles into action and I go for the door. As promised, it’s unlocked and nothing stops me from leaving the room. The thing on the other side of the door, slouching impatiently in the middle of a solid black version of my high school’s cafeteria, almost makes me turn around. 

It’s rotting; even from all the way over here, I can tell it’s rotting. If it pulled itself to its full height, it would be about six feet, but it hunches as if its misshapen, oozing body is too heavy for it. When the fluorescent lights start flickering, I’m terrified that it will disappear in the split seconds of darkness and reappear right in front of me. 

But it doesn’t move. It just stands there, staring and waiting for me. I could just stay in the threshold between my home bathroom and school cafeteria. Or, knowing that I’m already dead and have probably nothing to lose, I could move my ass. Maybe I can start my afterlife off on a better note that my life had.

I take a step. Then another. Then another. 

“Attaboy,” the rotting thing sneers as I inch closer. “Feel free to move a little quicker. Like I said, you’re not my only job.”

It (or he; the nametag on its moldy, ragged shirt says Michael) looks like an angel dipped in tar and acid. A decaying, pale humanoid body is barely attached to a pair of filthy black bird wings. His wide, cruel smirk is ringed by something more like broken bird beaks than teeth.

“Name?” he rasps.

“What?” It takes me a second to register what he’s asking.

“Whu?” the ugly thing mocks. “What? Is? Your? Name? Moron!”

I’m a little taken aback, but I catch myself before I react. It never pays to let them see you sweat. “Emerson Everson.”

“Ugh, ‘Emerson’,” the creature groans, writing something down with a pencil and clipboard that he pulled from his broken, bug-infested wing. “And alliteration, too? Your parents must have been dicks.”

I know better than to disagree (not that I would), but I still feel the need to correct him. Class tryhard habits, I guess. “Actually, alliteration is for consonant sounds. Assonance is for vowels.”

“Akshully, alliteration’s for consonants!” Michael mocks again. Not the kind of behavior you’d expect from an eldritch nightmare from beyond death, but there you go. He marks something else down and says, “So let’s see. So far I’ve got you as wimpy, annoying, dumb name, and since I doubt anyone misses you back home, I’ll mark that off, too.” Another check. I’m beginning to hate the sound of pencil on paper. “Not an impressive showing so far, Mr. Everson.”

“Showing for what?” For the first time, the coldness of the place makes me shiver.

Michael leans closer and whispers in my ear like a coffin creaking open. “For your evaluation to decide where you go next. How did you think we picked?” 

Of course. More judgments, more assholes, more opportunities for failure and humiliation. What else did I expect? I can’t even pretend to be surprised, there’s just a familiar hollow feeling. No wonder I got used to Michael so quickly; he’s the same kind of bastard I’ve dealt with all my life. 

For a second, the beast looks at me like he’s waiting for me to say something, maybe to answer his rhetorical question. But I say nothing because I know there’s no point and he sighs in disappointment.  

“Let’s get this over with. Why do you think you deserve to go to a ‘better place’?” He punctuated the phrase with sarcastic air quotes.

The only thing I can think to say is, “Because I really want to?” The thing grumbles, rolls his onyx-black eyes, and writes something down. “What I mean is–”

“Too late, kid,” he snaps dismissively. “If you go to the better place, what can you contribute?”

Contribute? You have to contribute in Heaven? They kind of left that part out of the Bible.

“I can cook.” Why did I say that? No, I can’t.

“No, you can’t,” Michael says without missing a beat. “Your drawing and storytelling are also pretty weak and I’ve seen your report cards. Hopefully, they need a C math student up there.” He writes something down and continues. “Now, Mr. Evanson, why should you get a spot up there instead of a woman who died saving her kids from a fire?” My mouth opens and shuts as I try and fail to think up and answer. Michael’s smirk turns even meaner. “Nothing? Well, how about the fellas that cooked up the COVID vaccine? I can give you one of their reserved spots. No? Still no reasons? Okay, how about this factory worker who worked himself to death putting his younger siblings through college? No reason he should be allowed to meet up with his parents up there. You want his spot?” He keeps bringing up names while I flounder. I don’t want anyone else getting cheated out of eternal peace.

“Can’t we all get spots?” I ask. “Doesn’t Heaven have infinite space?”

He chirps with mock delight and slowly writes something down. “‘Expert…in…celestial…affairs’. Oh, they’ll love that, Emerson. I’m sure it’ll give you an extra point.” He winks at me, making me wish a face like that couldn’t wink. He flips through a few pages on the clipboard. “All these guys are a little advanced for you, huh? Well, how about this one? 17 years old, reasonably healthy, smart, and non-hideous. Killed himself because no one at school likes him.” His eyes narrow, making me almost long for the winking. “How about it, Emerson? Does this kid deserve eternal peace?”

My stomach freezes and my brain clenches, a reflex from being alive. Never let them see you sweat. They’ll hurt you no matter what, but the less weakness you show the better. But I don’t know what else to say or do. Should I agree with his implication that I don’t deserve Heaven? He has to already know that I haven’t done anything particularly saintly, so what’s the point of all this? 

In the end I just shrug.

Michael rolls his eyes. “Ah, a shrug. The mating call of the common emo. Too pouty and prissy to even try to talk your way out of Hell.” He sounds angrier than I’d heard him sound before. “Seriously, kid, that’s the only other alternative. And this other brat’s meeting with another agnel right now and so are the others. If you want to make your case, now’s the time.”

What is he waiting for? Should I tell him that I’ve suffered enough in life and I’ve earned a bit of peace? He won’t care any more that the suckhumps back on the other side did. And honestly, I don’t think I can listen to the standard excuses from this thing. ‘You’re being too sensitive’, ‘Just ignore everyone’, ‘It’s just high school, it’s not a big deal’, ‘If you tried harder people would like you’; hard no to all of that. 

People always talk about death like it’s some mythical, unknowable force or a comfortable rest after a long journey. But it’s just more of the same. The bullies, the rules, the need to impress unimpressible dicks. All of that. For eternity.

“Aw, is my widdle buddy gonna cwy?” the angel sneers at my long silence. “Need a hug, kiddo? Maybe a hanky? I think I’ve got a dead therapy dog somewhere around here.”

“Jesus Christ, can you please just stop?” I hiss with a shaky voice. “What exactly do you gain from being such a dick? If you’re trying to be clever and original, you’ve already failed. I’ve heard all of this before.” 

A few sentences really shouldn’t make me so exhausted, especially since I’m dead, but they do. I catch my breath (which I don’t think I should technically need) and wait for Michael to mock me again.

He raises the place that would be an eyebrow on a less rotten face and write-mumbles, “A…little…sensitive.” Then he asks, in the least sarcastic tone so far, “Let’s move on Emerson. What’s the real reason you killed yourself?”

I freeze up again. Like I’ve said, I know better than to let people see me sweat. No emotion, no crying, no asking them to stop or telling the teacher. I endure until the asshole in question loses interest. It’s a policy that has served me well…up to the point where I killed myself.

I guess I can bend that rule a bit.

“I stink,” I say. The angel says nothing, so I continue. “I shower and put on deodorant and wear clean clothes but nothing seems to work. I still have to listen to everyone complaining and ragging on me and patronizingly explaining what soap is. The principal actually held an assembly on personal hygiene because of me.” I think back to the look that bitch gave throughout her whole speech on the importance of washing your genitals. “And it’s not just that. I’m ugly no matter what I do with my hair or clothes. I’m fat no matter how much I diet. I’m stupid no matter how much I study. I’m a bully magnet whether I stand up for myself or lay down and take it. Seriously, Bernie Paxton’s been a dick since third grade and I almost got expelled for pushing him once.” My voice is getting a little shrill, but I don’t care. “And I strongly doubt it’ll get better in adult life; my parents and teachers are strong evidence against that theory.”

“So what did you expect to find here?” Michael asks. No sarcastic or expectant tone, just an honest question.

“Something better. So you can probably add ‘stupid’ to that list.”

“Oh, believe me, I already did. ‘Emo’, ‘pouty’, and ‘sensitive’ are here, too, but I think I can find room for ‘stinky’.” He snickers but there’s less bite to it. “So you realized everything sucks and wanted off the ride. Super original. Must have been a treat to know the ride never really ends. On Earth as it is in Heaven, as they say.”

Yeah, I probably should have–wait. Heaven? Did he say Heaven?

“Does that mean I pass? I get to go to Heaven?”

“Just an expression, Emerson,” the angel snorts. “No, you’re too much of a little bitch to go to Heaven and I somehow doubt Hell will like you much, either.” He taps a chipped talon on his chin as he thinks. “How do you feel about just going back? I’ll lose the paperwork somewhere. It’ll be like this whole thing never happened.”

“What? Go back? Is that even a thing?” Didn’t sound possible.

“Whu-whu-whu? Go back? Is dat against da wules?” His mocking tone is back in full force. “Come on, kid. I don’t have all day and neither do you. Do you want to live or not?”

I think for a second. Life sucked, but apparently so does death. But it sucked a teensy bit less when I told Michael to shut up. And again when I was actually pleading my case. Not that those things ever work back home. Although…Michael said the ride never really stops; life and death are just the same terrible loop. So if the level of suck never changes and it can suck less here…

“Oh, what the hell. I’ll go back.” I square my shoulders and get ready. “What do I have to do?”

The rotting creature smiles and not in a mocking way. “Just open your eyes and stand up.”

The dark room and the dark creature start to blur until it’s all the same color as the back of my eyelids. I open my eyes to the blinding light of my bathroom light bulbs. It really is that simple. 

I take a deep, mildewy breath and heave myself to my wobbly feet, prying my wrists from the red stickiness adhering them to the linoleum. The cuts there are a lot more shallow than I thought they were.

“How is this possible?” I ask softly.

“Because you’re a little pussy who’s more interested in getting attention than actually offing yourself!” I turn in the direction of Michael’s harsh voice, but there’s no one in the room but me. “60 or 70 more years, you little moron. Best of luck.”

And that’s that, I guess.

I steady myself and look at the puddles of blood on the floor. I’m not so woozy that I can’t think it’s a little too much blood for superficial cuts. Cuts which look like they’ve recently healed. But I’m not bold enough to question it out loud.

I look from my mostly healed wrists to my ragged reflection. I wish I could say that I learned how amazing and totally worth the trouble life is, but really all I learned is that death is just as bad. Not the best reason not to kill myself but whatevs.

I clean myself up (already knowing it won’t be enough), put on clean clothes (careful to hide the cuts), and head downstairs to eat something (so my family can talk about how fat I am when they see me).

“Well, 60 or 70 more years,” I mutter to myself on my way to the kitchen. I don’t know why I’m smiling a little, but I am. “Think I’ll need some chocolate.”

[stegrossaurus]

Blue Stop Signs

Blue Stop Signs

What would you do if you saw a blue stop sign? It would probably be weird and a little off-putting to the point where you’d find yourself puzzling out how such a thing could exist. And then you’d shrug and move on with your life. Blue stop signs: weird but not a big deal. That’s what I call the things in the forest near my home.

I’d just moved to town when I saw my first blue stop sign. I was exploring the forest and I was willing to ignore or rationalize the glassiness of the trees or the sounds that couldn’t possibly have been cackling from between the black smeared rocks. But the lizard, sunbathing on a horribly malformed tree and staring at me with a hairy human-like face, was too much. I decided to avoid the forest. I didn’t know what that thing was and I didn’t want anything to do with anything like it. 

But I couldn’t stay away for long. My parents were always fighting, school was stressful, and I needed any kind of distraction. So I went back into the forest where you can see your reflection in some of the tree trunks and hear harsh laughter in some of the stones. I was a good mix of curious and cautious, so I learned how to enjoy the forest safely. I stopped trying to figure it out or look it up early on and just let it be a little patch of fun weirdness.

Like I said, the blue stop signs are harmless. A shallow pool of crystal blue water that dries up when you get close, leaving a small depression filled with spiky black grass. Red and yellow mold that engorges when it senses your strong emotions until something like eyeballs start to bud. A silvery thread binding a group of leaves together into a child-sized dress. On an average day I can see these and more. Strange, interesting, maybe a little ominous, but harmless.

As long as you don’t touch them. I’ve only tried once which is probably why they haven’t hurt me. I said the blue stop signs are safe and I stand by that, but come on. You wouldn’t eat a normal mold or touch a normal spiky plant you found in a normal forest, would you? Things are safe if you let them be safe.

If a tree's branches lower or secrete something that smells like glue when I get close, I don’t get close. If I see a pig-shaped pendant laying in a circle of dead grass, I don’t go near it. I don’t bother the pink and black butterflies nibbling on a squirrel carcass or the foxes that creak as if they’re full of metal gears. When the floor of dead leaves and dirt under my feet is suddenly dotted with slivers of asphalt and I see a street lamp out of the corner of my eye, I give it one glance and I keep moving. I don’t answer the voices.

A month ago, I was feeling brave and I touched a bright yellow flower growing out of a dead tree. It closed up and the sun immediately went out. I bolted for the path, begging for nothing to wake up in the freezing darkness. The voices started to get louder. By the time I got out a minute later, the sun was out again and, of course, no one else had noticed anything strange. That was the first and only time I’d deliberately touched one of the blue stop signs.

The knife came a bit earlier. 

My parents were giving me such a headache that day. I stomped into the forest, too angry to enjoy or look for blue stop signs. Until my foot sank in a patch of mud. I’d seen boulders with inky black figures drawn on them make awful sounds as they sank in mud pits, so I quickly yanked my foot loose. It came away caked in yellowish mud and followed by two things bubbling to the surface. A red candle and a gray knife. So average and normal and way too perfectly red and gray for things that were at the bottom of a mud pit. I went back home immediately, not believing for a second that their appearance had nothing to do with my anger at my parents. The mold was proof enough that the forest responded to my emotions. I try not to go into the woods when I’m too worked up now. 

Just like going to the zoo; everything’s safe if you stay on the right side of the enclosures.

But that’s not what you want to read about, is it? You want to read about the things that don’t want to be ignored or avoided. The ones that make me run for home or for the dirt path where the blue stop signs are less likely to appear. You want to know why I don’t want to be in the forest at night.

Once, and only once, I went into the forest in late afternoon. The sun was setting, crickets were starting to buzz, and the trees were starting to develop a pressure, something like being in an elevator that isn’t moving. The voices became louder and more frequent, as they seem to do when it gets dark, but I ignored them. I heard a hooting sound behind me, so loud and sudden that I couldn’t ignore it. I turned around and saw a monkey-shaped bundle of dead leaves dissolve off of a tree branch into an unformed clump of the forest floor. Its curled up leaf of a finger was a few inches from my head. Would it have touched me if I hadn’t turned or was it even moving in the first place? I’ll never know. Would it have hurt me if it was moving? I can guess.

I turned and headed for home, keeping the pile of leaves in my sight for as long as possible as I scooted backwards. The sky grew darker, the pressure grew heavier, and the buzzing (most decidedly not from crickets) got closer. Not louder; closer. Right behind me.

My entire body shook as my foot tried to step on open air. I jolted myself forward and turned around before I could fall into a small, shallow valley that I knew wasn’t there the day before. The buzzing, pitiful and ugly as a dying fly, paired with the struggling neon signs on a dilapidated minimart. It wasn’t in any language I could read and plenty of letters were missing anyway. But the purple sign I’d just noticed leaning on the tree next to me was in plain English: Dinner. Something shifted in the flickering fluorescent lights inside the crumbled ruins of the mart. I ran, not stopping until I was at my front porch.

It was almost a week before I went back into the forest. As you can imagine, I have an out-of-there-by-5:00 policy now. Yes, I said the blue stop signs are odd but harmless. I just never said they were the only things in the forest. After all, a stop sign isn’t meant to be dangerous; it’s meant to warn you of danger.

Does anyone else know about the blue stop signs? No idea. I’ve never brought anyone with me and I’ve never told anyone about them, not directly. Every now and again, I’ll drop my forest walks into conversation. I’ll mention that there are some weird, cool things in the forest and I’ll scan for narrowed eyes or quiet gulps or some other sign that I’m seeing and talking about things I shouldn’t. But I never see them; people just assume I’m talking about a normal forest.

You probably want to see some blue stop signs for yourself now. You might be lamenting that your neighborhood forest doesn’t have them because you would solve the mysteries and fight the monsters and keep a mechanical fox as a pet. Well, you might have your chance. Because those voices that I sometimes hear in the dark corners or the dark hours, they’re yours.

From a shadowy interior of a willow with branches that look like hung clothes I hear you asking your sister to borrow some pants. From the perfectly rectangular opening under a black bush I hear you grumbling about dropping your phone under your bed. From the dark corner lit only by an incongruous streetlamp I hear you assuring your friend that the alleyway is safe to walk through. So many ages and languages but they always get stronger and closer in the dark.

Maybe the forest near my home is where all the scary and unnatural things you hear about come from. Maybe every spooky laugh behind you or unexplained face in the mirror leaks out from the darkest parts of the forest. Maybe you can leak right back in if you want. You’ll have your own chance at adventures and exploration if you just keep looking. 

As long as it’s dark.

So come on by if you can. Maybe I’ll see you in the forest and we can compare notes. It would be nice to talk to someone about all of this. There are plenty of blue stop signs for everyone and they’re all a lot of fun. 

Don’t worry, they’re harmless.

[stegrossaurus]

Yule Cat

Yule Cat

by Gunnar

“We should be getting pretty close by now,” Ari says, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazes at Mt. Strandertindur. He looks back at the town, does some quick calculations, and conforms. “Yep. Gryla’s lair is close. We can make it there before dark.”

I follow his eyes from the mountain to home. I don’t think we’re actually very close to the mountain or very far from town, but that’s okay. Going on an adventure with Ari is always fun enough. Besides, I don’t think I really want to find Gryla. Nothing Ari has told me about the giant child-eating woman makes her seem very friendly, especially for a 7 and 10 year old.

But Ari said Gryla only eats naughty children and we’re not, so we should be safe. Strictly speaking, we’re not supposed to be so far from home without Mom and Dad’s permission, but I know Ari will keep me safe, so it doesn’t count. And like I said, we’re still close enough that I can see the town. 

We keep trekking up the slope leading to the mountain, with Ari finding large dips in the ground and broken branches that can only come from the feet of a hungry giantess. According to Ari, at least. I’m not sure why these footprints aren’t spaced out more evenly like footprints normally are, but I trust my older brother. Mom and Dad let him watch scarier shows and read scarier comics than me so he knows all about these myths and legends.

“What are we going to do when we find her lair?” I ask as Ari leads me to a small forest just a few trees thick on the slope. Creatures like Gryla love forests, Ari had said.

“We’re going to find where her yule lads keep their gifts and take some home,” Ari says confidently. “Not all of them, just what we deserve. We’ve been good all year, right, Gun?”

I nod eagerly. My teacher says I’m one of the smartest boys in class and I never get in trouble. Ari gets even better grades and is the best at everything. Sometimes adults yell at him for little stuff like arguing with his teacher or starting little fires, but Ari says they’re just taking stuff too seriously. There’s no way he deserved that rotting potato in his shoe.

“And just who are they to judge us anyway?” Ari snaps, getting a little frustrated now. “You remember I told you how they’re always licking spoons and stealing candles and whatever? And their mom and cat are always eating people. That’s a little worse than putting a lizard in the principal’s coffee, but I bet they don’t get any rotten potatoes in their shoes.”

I nod in agreement until I realize what Ari said. “Wait, they have a cat?” I try not to sound too excited because I know Ari’s not a fan of cats, but I can’t help it. If it weren’t for Dad’s allergies, I’d ask my parents for a cat every Christmas.

Ari grimaces. “Trust me, Gun, the Yule Cat isn’t the kind of cat you’d want. It’s large and ugly and mean even by cat standards. It’ll gut you as soon as look at you.” He says that kind of thing about all cats, but then again, this cat apparently kills people. “When its blood-red eyes lock on you and it sees that you’re not wearing proper winter clothes, you’d better hide.” 

“Why would the cat care about clothes?” I ask. Do cats even know about things like sweaters and mittens?

“Because it’s a jerk, that’s why,” Ari says. “It belongs to an evil child-eating giant; what did you expect? Gryla sends the stupid thing out at night to hunt all the kids who don’t get winter clothes for Christmas and bring them back for her to cook.”

“I didn’t know you could train cats to do anything,” I say, unable to hide how fun a giant trained kitty sounds. “I thought they just did what they wanted. But my friend says her cat always brings her dead stuff from outside, so I guess that is what they want.”

“Which is why I don’t like cats,” Ari grumbles. “But you don’t need to worry, Gunner. Any cat that gets close is gonna get an eyeful of this.” He hefts the rusty iron spade borrowed from our neighbor’s shed, filed to a point which he swears can pierce a car door. “Mystic beings like Gryla and her cat hate iron.”

We walk on for a while, with Ari occasionally telling me that we were almost there even after we leave the tiny forest. He finds more footprints and claw marks and weird plants that he says are clearly warped by her ancient magic. I feel safe with my older brother and I’m sure he knows what he’s doing, but I’d still rather be home before the sun goes down. If the Yule Cat, Gryla, and her yule lads don’t kill us, Mom and Dad will. As the sun gets lower, I clench my jacket tighter and Ari holds his spike higher. I’m a little relieved when Ari says it’s time for us to head back.

“Gryla probably hides her lair with magic,” Ari explains. “We’re probably not going to find her. Let’s get home before it starts…wait, hold on.” His eyes narrow as he sees something up ahead. The slope gets a little steep here and there’s a short stone cliff face in front of us, but I don’t see whatever he sees and I tell him so when he asks.

“You really can’t see it?” Ari asks. When I shake my head, he points at the invisible thing and says, “It’s a door knocker, like the one on our front door.” 

No matter how hard I look, I don’t see it. But when Ari gives it an experimental poke with his spike, a shimmer ripples out and suddenly it’s there, nailed to the rock like it’s always been there. Everything else in the little forest feels like it’s moving away. It feels like magic.

“Your spike!” I realize with a shout. “It’s messing with the magic hiding the knocker! But why could you see it in the first place?”

Ari doesn’t answer me. He just pauses for a second, grinning at the knocker. It’s the same grin he sometimes gets when he sneaks out of the house or sneaks something into his pocket at the grocery store. Then he reaches up and gives it three very loud bangs. Far louder than I think they should be. So loud, the rest of the world seems to run away as the rocky cliff expands. In a second, we’re not standing in front of a cliff on a slope with our home at our backs. We’re in front of the massive wooden door of a house as big as a neighborhood in a dark, frozen land.

“Ari, where are we?” I whisper, looking around. Everything off of the lawn-sized front porch is nearly pitch-black, but I can make out snow. A lot of snow and nothing else.

“I don’t know, Gunnar,” he says, holding me closer. His teeth are already chattering. “We need to get somewhere warm before we freeze.” He looks around, too, and points to something I’d missed: a patch of light the same color as that tiny forest in the afternoon light. “There! That’s our world! We need to get back there and–oh no.”

Once I see what he sees, I don’t know how I missed it. At the very least, the sound of its massive footsteps in the snow should have been hard to ignore. But, then again, cats are known to be silent. Ari gets in front of and waves his spike as the blood-red eyes of the Yule Cat get closer. When the rest of it is in the glow of the giant porchlight, I can see that Ari was right; I don’t want to be anywhere near this large, hideous, hungry dinosaur of a cat. We press ourselves against the door as the thing comes closer, its sparse black fur bristling on its warty gray skin. Before it can strike, the door swings inward, releasing fiery warmth and the sounds and smells of cooking dinner.

“Is someone there?” a loud, ancient voice howls from inside the house. “Yuley, did you knock? Who taught you to do that?” There’s a loud whiff above us and then, “Do I smell something…naughty?”

Neither of us stop to think. We just rush into the house, dodging the gigantic, bare feet on our way in. Ari doesn’t let me stop once we’re away from the cold and the cat, though. He pulls me across the wooden floor to the first piece of massive furniture we can hide under: a cushioned couch holding another giant. The Yule Cat isn’t far behind and I beat its paw under the couch by a second.

Yowling and moaning, the awful creature keeps trying to stretch its monstrous paw to us. We bolt in the dusty darkness to the other side of the couch, but after a few ground-shaking thumps, Gryla’s warty, wrinkled feet are planted there.

“Leppalúði! Leppalúði, get up!” Gryla screeches. “Yuley found a child! It’s under the couch! Get up so he can kill it!”

The occupant of the couch above us grumbles like an avalanche. “Just get it out with a broom or something, Gryla. I’m tired.”

Gryla groans loudly as her Cat meows for its mistress to do something about its missing prey. The two giants start arguing.

“We’re wearing our jackets,” I mutter in a daze. I can barely form a thought but I know this much. “We’re wearing our jackets. Shouldn’t that be enough? We’re wearing winter clothes so why is it trying to kill us?”

“I don’t know, Gun, but please shut up!” Ari hisses back. He takes several deep breaths, then gets a look on his face. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a second.” While Gryla and her cat yell at her husband, Ari peels off his jacket, inches closer to the edge of the couch, and throws it to where the Cat could reach it. Then he scurries back to me. “The scent’ll keep the Cat busy while we run. Gryla left the door open.”

After a few failed attempts to move her husband and the couch, Gryla stomps off, grumbling about getting a broom like he suggested. The Yule Cat stays, and I can already see how Ari’s plan won’t work. The Cat can’t reach us, but it can see us well enough to not bother with the decoy jacket. Those blood-red eyes locked on my brother, but I’m certain it’ll go for me, too, jacket or no jacket.

Gryla comes back quickly and crouches down on the other side of the couch. She starts probing a tree trunk-sized broomhandle under the couch, forcing us closer to the Yule Cat.

“Come here, little naughties,” she croaks as we try to avoid the broom. She takes another long whiff. “Strayed too far from home.” Another whiff. “Disobeyed the teacher. Stole from neighbor’s shed. Got your brother in danger. No wonder you found your way into my world, little naughty." The spike looks laughably small next to the Cat, so Ari scrambles in his backpack for anything else to use as a weapon. “Did you see my door knocker, little naughty? Sometimes the bad ones can find it. But only the dumb ones actually use it.”

The Yule Cat’s pupils widen in anticipation of its meal. While Ari’s rooting through his bag, I see his phone and get an idea. Before I can stop myself, I grab Ari’s phone, run forward, and show the bright screen to the Cat’s wide eyes. Did you know that cats have very light-sensitive eyes, especially in the dark?

With a yowl, the Cat pulls back. Ari bolts forward, kicking the jacket out from under the couch. Too blinded and angry to think straight, the Yule Cat swipes it across the floor and pounces on it. This is our only chance.\

Ari grabs my wrist and we race for the door while Gryla crowds around her pet to see its prey. We’re almost halfway there before we hear, “There they are, Yuley!” I turn to see the ugly thing coming at us like a freight train and just barely yank us both to the ground in time. But now the Yule Cat’s in between us and the door.

“Good boy, Yuley,” Gryla huffs, clearly worn out. Seeing her for the first time, I’m not too surprised to see that she’s very old. Much like her pet, she’s covered in stone-colored warts and her face looks as much dinosaur as mammal. She looks like something that existed long before humans. “Now hurry up and kill them!”

The giant cat locks its eyes on us again, crouched for a pounce that I know we can’t dodge. Ari holds me and waves his tiny weapon. I can hear him fighting back tears. The Yule Cat bristles up its scant remaining fur and…pulls itself upright. It looks from my brother and me to Gryla a few times, as if unsure what she said.

“What are you waiting for?” the giantess screams. “Attack, already!”

This time, the Yule Cat lets out a harsh snort and fixes its mistress with a glare. It gets up and walks lazily over to Leppalúði on the couch, letting him idly scratch its head. 

Gryla lets out a frustrated howl. “Why does no one in this house do what I say?!” Defeated, she storms over to the door.

Not waiting to see if she attacks us or just closes the door, Ari and I run into the cold and dark. We clear the porch and trudge into the knee deep snow, with Ari pulling me along as quickly as he can to the patch of afternoon light, waving his spike in front to make sure Gryla’s magic doesn’t block our way. It’s not too far, but the snow makes the journey a little longer.

“I told you!” I shout, a little too gleefully. We’re both giggling like maniacs now. “I told you cats can’t be trained! They hate being told what to do!”

“Congratulations, Gun, you were right!” Ari laughs back. “And your idea with the phone was genius! Now let’s get home and never tell Mom and Dad about this!”

The little doorway of light ripples as Ari swipes his spike at it. We cross the barrier to our world and immediately everything shrinks back into place. The trees and the mountain and the town all rush into their proper places. The freezing world behind us turns back into an invisible knocker on a rock. Ari and I hug each other and whoop with delight before running back to town.

We’re almost to safety when another fact about cats dawns on me, one that I remember when I hear something thumping quietly behind me. And hear a quiet moan. And feel an icy breath on the back of my neck.

Cats like to play with their food.

[stegrossaurus]

Halloween Zodiac

Halloween Zodiac

by Boris

“It’s the Howling Moon that did it!” the old homeless man hollers, jabbing his knife at one of the symbols. “I thought it was gonna blast laser beams or turn me into a wolf or something! I didn’t read the other side. You always got to read the other side. You know that, right, kid?”

I nod quickly as he whirls his manic eyes away from the large stone altar and onto me. The rag he tied around my mouth isn’t very tight, but I’m too afraid to answer or call for help. I could easily get my hands out of the loose ropes, but running or fighting is also out of the question. Even if I wasn’t terrified, this man is a foot taller than me and clearly has the strength and speed of the insane. I don’t know my way through the forest and he clearly does; he found this large altar easily. He’d catch me if I ran and there’s no one here to hear me scream.

The old man grabs my shirt and pulls me closer to the altar so I can see it clearer. It’s a large table of black stone with 13 dinner plate-sized discs of gold set in a circle around a jagged hole in the center. It’s pitch black in that hole and I can’t see any hint of the forest floor. It might just be the reflection of the fire-colored autumn leaves (brighter than the leaves anywhere else in the forest, it seems), but the 13 discs look like they’re glowing orange. He jabs his knife at the disc featuring a screeching bat. Then the hanged skeleton. A blazing jack-o-lantern. A leering cat. 

“I survived everything until the Howling Moon!” His knife once again finds the disc of a large full moon hanging over howling beasts and cowering humans. “I didn't understand! It doesn’t kill you, it just drives you crazy!” He stops yelling long enough to take several deep, shuddering breaths and starts again, quieter and slower. “It was another homeless man for me. We heard the rumor, we wanted the power, we fought…” His rambling trails off into despondent mumbles as his grip loosens. I still don’t run away. “I killed him to wake it up ‘cause I thought I could beat it. And now here I am holding a teenager hostage and I barely remember why.”

He starts to cry and, with a sudden burst of energy, he yanks me forward and forces me to lean down of the altar. “It shows up every October.” He holds his knife to my throat as I start struggling. “It demands a sacrifice and it offers power.” He ignores my garbled pleas as his blade pierces my shoulder. “If it doesn’t get one, it stays asleep and nothing happens.” Something rumbles hungrily in the pit a foot from my head as my blood drips on the stone. “I’d love that, but the Halloween Zodiac wants to come out. It wants to play. So it will do anything to get the sacrifice.” He lets me go, jumps up onto the altar, and walks forward in a daze. He walks shakily and almost giddily, like a kid playing Don’t Step On The Crack. “Learn the rules. Beat it before October ends. Don’t look at the Moon. Best advice I can give you, kid. Good luck.”

He falls into the pit so quickly, it looks like he was pulled. I don’t hear anything hitting the bottom. This time, the rumbling coming from the pit sounds…satisfied.

I pull myself up, undo to the rag and ropes, and inspect the cut. It’s not very deep, but that knife looked filthy, so I should get it cleaned. 

I can’t believe that happened. I’m still not sure what happened. That man just grabbed me as I was walking home from school and pulled me into the forest. He just muttered ‘Halloween Zodiac’ as he dragged me farther and farther from the road.

I keep the altar, specifically the pit in the middle, in my sights as I back away. He said it only appears in October, which would mean it appeared today. But he couldn’t have been serious, right? The man was clearly insane. But I heard that rumbling when he cut me and when he jumped in. And now, as my eyes drift away from the hole and to the little pool of blood, I see movement. The blood is moving, forming itself into letters.

Boris Bane. My name, drawn in blood like a signature. Or a target.

“Oh, God no,” I moan in dread. “What is this? What’s happening?”

As if answering my question, the blood changes again. Choose. 

“Choose what?” I ask a split second before a glow catches my eye.

 One of the discs is starting to shine, a little brighter every second. But it’s not so bright that I can’t make out the image: a fat, goat-legged creature smiling as people are impaled on its horns and pitchfork. The inscription on the bottom reads: Hungry Devil. 

“No no no. Not that!” I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t want any kind of Devil anywhere near it.

I scramble around looking for a way to change the selection and notice a small white skull-shaped rock set into a groove outside running outside the discs. It’s set next to the glowing Hungry Devil disc, so I pull it away. The glow immediately transfers to the next disc and the next as I move the skull. Not that any of the discs seem much better. The Witch’s Mirror, the Haunted House, the Forbidden Road, the Living Mask, and more less than pleasant names adorn the discs on the altar. I’m not sure what I’m looking for and it doesn’t matter. I lose my grip on the skull in my haste and it slips up the groove, bringing the brightening glow to another disc. Before I can get a hold of it, the glowing stops and I can tell the choice has been made.

“Black Cat?” I read the inscription on the chosen disc. A cat perched arch-backed on a fence glares menacingly at me from the metal scene. I try to remember the old man’s words or think of something that will put this nonsense into place, but I can’t. “I can’t do this. I don’t know what this is. I don’t want to know what this is. I just need to go home.”

 I pick a direction and run, hoping I’ll hit the road eventually. Then I can go home and just forget about all of this. 

The forest has an unnatural type of silence as I run. The kind where the softer sounds of the leaves falling on the forest floor are louder than the snapping branches and crunching twigs. Falling leaves, the slowest breeze, and a clacking, scraping sound, like claws on wood, all of these quiet sounds smother my panting and crashing through the woods.

Something black jolts through the orange and yellow forest and I jump as far away as my legs will take me. My foot snags on a root and I tumble towards a tree. My shout of pain as my shoulder cut echoes through the forest, but it still doesn’t drown out the scratching. Or the soft laughter.

It’s dark by the time I find the road and the backpack I’d dropped (with my wallet, cellphone, and homework inside) is gone. I barely care about that since I’m just happy to be out of the forest and away from the altar. When the moon starts to become visible in the sky, I remember the old man’s warning and I keep my head down as I walk. And then I hear it again, a long, deliberate scratch. I veer slightly away from the sound and hit a mailbox that I hadn’t seen with my head facing the sidewalk. I don’t hit it hard, but it’s enough that my foot hits the pavement oddly and my ankle surges with pain. Now I have to hobble home with a bloody shoulder and a sprained ankle.

Just as I put the key in the lock of my front door, a yowling screech like a car crash comes from somewhere in the bushes. I lurch forward on my sprained ankle and tumble into the door. It comes off its hinges, the key breaks in the lock, and my forehead meets the banister. 

Mom is less than thrilled when the world stops spinning. I prop the hat rack against the door so that it stays in the frame, but we might need to buy a new one, which Mom makes clear is coming out of my allowance.

No one asks about my head or my shoulder or my missing backpack as I trudge up the stairs. No one suggests that I reheat dinner, not that I’m willing to risk going into the kitchen with all the terrible things that can happen with all those knives and appliances. I go slowly, waiting for the sound of scratching or hissing. Then the banister of the stairs or ceiling will start to crack and I’ll wake up in the hospital. If at all. Mercifully, I make it to my room without incident.

My basset hound, Holly, is waiting for me under my bed. She perks up a bit when she sees me, but doesn’t get up. She just waits for me to sit down next to her so she can lick my hand. Mom and Dad suggested a more energetic dog breed when I asked for a pet, but my little lazy floppy girl is so much less stress. 

I rest my throbbing ankle, head, and shoulder as I rub Holly’s head and alternate between trying to forget the day and trying to piece it together. I’m not an idiot; I know what’s going on. I’ve had nothing but bad luck since what happened in the woods and it can’t be a coincidence. 

The Halloween Zodiac is real. And it’s coming for me. But I don’t know how to stop it. What did the old man say?

“Don’t look at the moon?” Well, that’s no help. The Moon isn’t what’s attacking me, the Black Cat is. That whacko said so many things, but how many of them were useful? Eventually, I land on, “Read the other side? Maybe there are instructions on the other side of the altar? Oh God, I’m going to have to go back to the altar, aren’t I?” Holly, of course, doesn’t answer. She just looks up at me and lolls her tongue out. “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want any of this. But I need to know what’s going on. You believe in me, right, Holly?”

I cup her head and let her lick my face, but immediately, I hear the awful scratching. Holly tenses and whimpers as I look around for the source of the sound. 

“Where are you?” I whisper.

In the space of a second, my lamp’s lightbulb goes out with a pop, Holly’s bark makes me twist in a way that bursts my scab with a fresh surge of pain, and a hiss draws my attention to the doorway. There are two pinpricks of green light hovering a foot off the floor in the slab of darkness where the exit should be.

“Holly should not believe in you, Boris Bane,” a soft, mocking voice says. “Because you are going to fail and die. Simple as that. And if your dog does believe in you, then she must not have a good head on her shoulders.”

Something rumbles and creaks in the walls, pipes or the structure settling, most likely. But it’s enough to startle me into backing against my bed. A bolt or screw pops audibly and I feel the frame give. With far better reflexes than I ever thought possible, I twist around and shove my arms under the bed. Just in time to stop the frame from crashing down and decapitating my dog.

Holly races out from under the bed just before its weight becomes too much and it pins my forearms to the carpet, but she goes no further. The Black Cat is still here. I painfully turn as much as I can and see it still blocking the doorway. Its body is now visible, an unnervingly normal feline body silhouetted against a halo of purple energy radiating around it. It looks like it’s trying to spread towards me, but something barely keeps it curling inward.

A low, bone-rattling growl shakes the room…and then stops. Everything stops. The Black Cat, with all of its darkness and terrible sounds, vanishes.

When my parents and sister come upstairs to check on Holly’s barking, I just tell them about the lightbulb and the bed. Luckily, my arms aren’t broken when they help me pry the bed frame off and Holly is unharmed. I know this should be a victory, but the Black Cat was so angry and not knowing why it didn’t kill us doesn’t make me feel any safer.

That settles it. I need to go back.

I wake with a headache, swollen foot, and pus-oozing shoulder cut. I’d barely slept huddled in the corner of my room with Holly waiting for that thing to come back. I’m late for school, but I’m not really planning on going anyway. My sister’s already headed to school and my parents are already at work, so Holly and I have the house to ourselves. 

I look up the Halloween Zodiac and, to no real surprise, I find nothing useful. Then I put some antibiotic cream on my shoulder, already knowing that it probably won’t work. But I can’t stall forever. I hobble around the house collecting a compass, flashlight, hunting knife, my sister’s mace, bicycle helmet, bugspray, and everything else I could need. Dad once said that he didn’t believe in luck, just preparation, so I’m preparing for everything.

The walk to the forest is painful and every sound makes me jump, but I get to the spot where I was kidnapped without incident. I keep expecting the scratching sound as I walk through the forest, but it doesn’t come. Why won’t it attack?

I put stickers on the trees as I walk to mark my way and avoid bushes where snakes could be hiding. I keep an eye out for the eye-searing reds and golds that surround the altar and when the brown-hued oranges and yellows of the trees begin to ignite, I know I’m getting close. Soon after, I find myself back at the black stone table among fire-colored leaves.

I scan the rim and base of the altar and find nothing. I hoist myself onto the altar and peek at the pit. Still nothing and I’m not willing to risk a closer look. All the leaves on the altar make a perfect opportunity to slip. 

Next, I check the discs. I spend a minute to look at the other 12 dreadful sounding options and wonder if any of them would have been a better choice than the Cat. But I know I’m just stalling. I swallow my fear and fiddle with the Black Cat disc until it twists clockwise and inch and flips around on a hinge. This side of the disc is simple bronze with black letters engraved on.

The Black Cat is the sign of misfortune and manipulation; the unfortunate possibility made into dreaded certainty. It is death by pure happenstance and is undone by caution.

It can be defeated if it is undone seven times.

“Undone by caution?” Dad was right; if I’m careful and smart I can avoid the Black Cat’s bad luck attacks. I reread it a few times until I realize something. “That’s why it hasn’t attacked again. It doesn’t want to risk being undone again.” The Black Cat won’t attack until it has a sure thing.

The second I say that, I hear the clacking scratching sound. And then I hear the leaves crunch under the feet of something big. I turn slowly and my blood freezes.

A bear. A large black bear is coming towards me. Not quite running but certainly not hesitantly. I can barely breathe. I can barely think. I can’t believe this is happening. But it is. Bears live in forests and sometimes they attack people; an unfortunate possibility made into a dreaded certainty.

 A soft laugh (slightly) draws my attention away from the beast and to a patch of shadow with two pinpricks of light in between two trees. 

“I await your undoing, Boris Bane,” the mocking voice says as the bear wanders closer. It doesn’t look very hungry or scared so I try to keep my head. “Truly. How will you escape? What bit of caution and preparation do you have in your pockets that can fight a bear?” 

I scoot away from the edge of the altar while minding the pit behind me. The bear’s close enough that it can jump up if it wants to.

My mind spins looking for something to say or do and quickly lands on, “If I die, your game ends.” I’m rasping a little, trying not to spook the bear, but I’m sure the Black Cat hears me. “You need me alive to sacrifice me next year. Otherwise, you won’t be able to wake up and play.” 

I have zero idea if this is even remotely true. The old man said that the thing needs a sacrifice to wake it up and the Moon drove him crazy so that he’d sacrifice himself. I don’t know what the Black Cat will do to sacrifice me next October, but it won’t work if I’m eaten by a bear today. 

I hope.

I chance a look at the catlike being barely visible in the blob of darkness. It waits and so does the bear. Then the thing laughs.

“Foolish boy. Do you really think we need you? We find our sacrifices one way or another.” The bear’s lips raise in a low growl as the Cat continues. “We appear in books, nightmares, and prayers. We are in the ramblings of lunatics and the visions of seers. We whisper everything you need to hear at a party or in a classroom, and your tiny mind does not even try to remember where you heard the rumor.” The bear rises on its hind legs and roars. I fumble backwards, my heart in my throat. “We will have another sacrifice. You, Boris Bane, may die.”

The bear swipes its paw, but without being on the altar with me, it only grazes me. And where else but my wounded, most likely infected, shoulder? I’d worn the most padded sweater and jacket I could find, but the burst of pain still makes me scream. It spooks the bear back a bit, but I take a step back too and trip on some leaves. I have just enough presence of mind to fall away from the pit. I try and fail to get up before the bear clamors onto the altar.

I fumble in my pockets, but I’m too scared to tell the mace from the bug spray. The bear lowers its head as it straddles me, opens its jaws, and without thinking I shove both cans into its mouth.

Roars turn into chokes and into bangs as its teeth puncture the cans. I feel a little bad for the bear as it bellows in pain and tries to get poison and metal out of its mouth. It’s not the bear’s fault that the Black Cat used it as a pawn. But I can’t do anything to help. I need to run.

I ignore the pain in my foot and shoulder and bolt for the trees, aiming for the sticker I placed on one of the trunks. I give my compass a glance and head in the opposite direction that I came in. I keep an eye out for falling branches, sneaky roots, hidden snakes and beehives, and more stickers. I try to tune out the bone-rattling angry thrum followed by the clacking scratches as the Black Cat tries to curse me again.

When I make it to the road, the Black Cat is waiting for me. Once again, the black shape is surrounded by a nimbus of malignant purple light that looks like it desperately wants to kill me. Once again, I hear the deep, snarling boom of defeated anger. And once again nothing happens, the Black Cat disappears. I’d escaped the bear and being lost in the forest. Two more victories down and just four to go.

I’m not very relieved, though. It’s going to step up its game and it can make almost anything happen. And what if it does nothing? The old man said I have to win by the end of October, but he never said what happens if I don’t. Will the game be over or will the Cat keep coming after me no matter how many times I beat it. If it doesn’t attack for the rest of the month and I can’t undo its bad luck, I’ll lose by default.

I hobble to a bus station, sit on a bench and force myself to calm down.

“I can do this. I did it three times and I can do it again.” I mumble this to myself a few  times until I almost believe it. But I can’t risk going home until the Cat is gone. “I can’t go anywhere that I don’t want torn to the ground by that crazy thing. Maybe I’ll hide out at school.” 

I laugh a bit at my gallow’s humor and spend a few minutes morbidly guessing all the ways the Black Cat could cause a building collapse. Then I start to think of something the old man said and something I read on the disc. By afternoon, the Black Cat still hasn’t attacked and I have a plan.

I hear the scratching a few times while hanging around the front of the school waiting for the last bell. But other than the one football striking my infected wound, nothing happens. The Black Cat is laying the groundwork for something and I don’t think I’ll enjoy what it is. 

It’s already the last period so the end of the school day ends quickly enough, but I don’t go inside. I don’t need to in order to see how many people are still in the building. After-school clubs, administrators still working, people who missed their rides or stayed behind to get something, all potential collateral damage for whatever the Black Cat is planning next. I suppose that’s what it was doing. I’m not happy that I’m taking such a risk with their lives, but I need to end this.

After about an hour, I see my parents’ car and a police cruiser pull up. My blood chills, but I manage to avoid running to them or inside the building. That’s what it wants. There’s going to be hell to pay if I survive this, but I can’t let them stop me. I circle the school and head to the football field earlier than I’d planned. I’d hoped to wait until practice was over, but if I stay away from the bleachers, players, and lights, I should be fine.

I wait for another hour until practice ends, anticipating something awful that never comes. The people in the school and the possibility of me going back must make the building too tempting of a target. But that won’t last. If this plan doesn’t work, it’ll be a miracle if I’m the only one who dies.

The last of the people leave and I quickly enter, making a beeline for the center of the field, out of range of any falling bleachers or stadium lights. I stand and wait as the sun starts sinking and a presence wells up behind me. The Black Cat is there when I turn.

“What are you planning, Boris Bane?” it asks. There’s no mockery in its voice, only suspicion.

“What are you planning?” I return. I recite the reasons I’d given myself for coming here, as much for myself as for it. “There’s nothing to fall on me. The grass is too green for a fire to spread. And even if the guards come, they don’t carry guns.”

“I will find a way,” it snaps, harshly and maybe a little desperately. The aura of blackness flickers purple. “Maybe one of the boilers in your school will explode and a shard of metal will find its way here.”

“You’ll have to put your back into that one. It’ll take a pretty big explosion and the school’s not even a decade old.” I’m fairly certain the Cat can manage it, but I don’t say that out loud.

“I can easily make that happen,” the Cat hisses. The purple aura starts to billow. “Clogged plumbing, loosened screws, and the whole building collapses!”

“But I’m not in the building,” I say, trying to sound smug. It’s trying to hold everyone hostage, but I won’t let myself be baited. “Destroying it will just be another failure.”

“I can send owls to peel your face off!” it shouts. The aura swarms around its arched feline body. The scratching sound mixes with far off hooting.

I’m scared but I stand my ground. “You couldn’t get me with a bear and at least those will actually attack humans. You’ll never make an owl attack me.”

“I can make anything possible, brat!” The aura almost surges outward as the monster bellows in anger. “How would you like a sinkhole right under your feet? You can suffocate in agony, unable to move! I can make it last hours!”

“It hasn’t rained in a month!” I shout back. “You can’t just retroactively make water underground or erode soil. That’s not how it works.”

“I decide how it works!” the Black Cat roars. The aura, so purple and bright that looking at it is like a punch in the eyes, finally storms forth. It sinks into the ground and saturates it with water. “I have choked people with four-leaf clovers and made them bludgeon themselves with horseshoes.” I sink to my knees as mouse-sized green beetles crawl from the soupy mud. “I have trapped people in the basements of collapsing skyscrapers and had them drown in deserts and given them food poisoning from their own chewed off tongues!” The purple waves strike out at the stadium lights. They explode into flames which race down the wooden poles and surge across the lawn. “I’ll give you gangrene and cancer and dementia! You won’t even remember your name as you excrete your last drop of blood! You! Will! Die!”

I try to wade out of the mudhole and swat away the biting insects, but it’s no use. The Black Cat’s aura shoots into the sky like a rocket. The clouds rush away to reveal the impossible: a fiery meteor headed right for me. The booming of the meteor and the laughing of the Cat and everything else almost drives me insane within a second. 

And then a second later it’s all over.

The surge of purple light snuffs out, the mud dries in a heartbeat, and beetles and the fires and the meteor all vanish. What stands before me as I pull myself out of the loose dirt looks like a normal black cat.

“What? No! What happened? What did you do?” the Cat sputters in terror. It arches its back, trying to reignite its power, but nothing happens. No scratching sounds or sudden bad luck or ominous aura, black or purple. By the time my legs are free and it gets the idea to run, it’s too late. “You cheated!” are its last words before my foot lands on its head.

The Cat’s mangled corpse evaporates into dust. The swelling in my shoulder and ankle start to lessen almost immediately. I flop down on the grass and breathe for what feels like the first time in two days. It’s over.

The old man said to learn the rules. The disc said ‘death by pure happenstance’. But a conjured meteor isn’t something that just happens like a sprained ankle or a hungry bear in the woods, so it doesn’t really count as happenstance. The Black Cat broke the rules and my guess was on the money. How lucky of me.

I start to head home before anyone comes to check on the noise. Facing my parents and the police is not going to be fun and being linked to a disappearing meteor won’t make it easier. But I don’t make it out of the stadium before I hear it.

It’s not the scratching sound, though it sends the same shivers down my spine. The harsh grind of stone against stone comes with an image in my mind: a skull-shaped white rock sliding down a groove. Away from the disc of the Black Cat and next to the disc labeled the Howling Moon. The old man may have said something about facing more than one sign of the Halloween Zodiac.

My breath quickens as I remember the discs he pointed to: the Vampire Bats, the Baleful Boneyard, the Wicked Lantern. If the stone keeps sliding, I’ll have to face all of them eventually. How far was the Hungry Devil from the Black Cat? 

The sky darkens much quicker than it should and I hear and feel as much as I see a golden light rising in my periphery. 

“Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look,” I remind myself. I need to get to the altar and read the Howling Moon’s disc. I need to read all of their discs.

I run for the forest. I don’t stop when the voices from the school turn to howls or the lawn starts to ripple and warp like a wet painting. I don’t stop to wonder if it’s really happening or if the Moon is already driving me insane. And when the Moon’s light becomes so thick and heavy at my back that I swear that massive ball of golden rock is an inch behind me and all I want to do is turn and let the light sink into my eyes and gums and nail beds…I don’t. I keep going for the forest. I’ll find the Howling Moon’s inscription and I’ll figure out how to beat it.

If I’m lucky.

[stegrossaurus]

The Tale of Tony Thompson

The Tale of Tony Thompson

by Ray

The week before I was to start high school, my mother and I were at the open house. Mom decided we should take a look around, which amounted to her dragging me up and down the halls while she oohed and awed at lockers and classrooms. I dutifully followed her, idly dragging my hand against the locker bank, when the row of sleek metal stopped and my hand hit something rougher.

It was a door, but it didn’t match the others in the school. It was dented and chipped metal instead of varnished wood. No window or label and it looked like it was wedged in between the locker banks haphazardly.

“Ray, keep up!” Mom snapped up ahead. I hurried away from the door and caught up with her. “Don’t walk behind me. I don’t like it.” As if she wasn’t the one leading this excursion. Did Bill have to deal with this when he started high school?

“Ooh, look at all these lockers. I wonder which one’s yours.”

“Oh, a science lab! You were always so good at science.”

“Ooh, so many fire ext– Ray, keep up!”

I’d fallen behind again, looking at a trophy case. Given how empty it was, I wasn’t too surprised that Mom hadn’t cooed over it, but there were still a few things in it. I told Mom I’d be there in a second and went in for a closer look. There were no traces of sports or clubs in the case. There was a picture of a class in front of a school bus near a large building and another picture of a severe-looking man in a lab coat. A big, plain-looking trophy was awarded to Tony Thompson for World’s Biggest Nerd.

Wait, what?

“Ray, hurry up!” Mom shouted, as if we had somewhere to be. 

I ran to catch up again, giving one last glance to confirm that I had imagined the words. The name was the only thing left on the trophy, everything else was smudged.

When classes started a week later, it was a relief to get away from Mom. She’d always been a bit exhausting but recently I could barely put on clothes without her squealing with delight or snapping at me for doing it wrong. I thought it might’ve been about the accident, because I caught her glancing at my cast every so often. Dad and Bill were no help; Dad just watched TV and Bill was busy with his own school work.

I’d almost forgotten the door until I came to the place where it used to be on my first lunch period. A few more lockers stood where they most certainly hadn’t been a week ago. That brought the trophy case to my mind. I went to check it out and it was full of new, shiny plaques, pictures, and trophies. Tony Thompson’s trophy for Chemistry (no other context, just Chemistry) was then the biggest and gaudiest one. I tried to find the pictures of the club and the man but when I found them, they were mostly hidden behind everything else.

I leaned in for a closer look when the fire alarm screeched to life and scared me out of my skin. I spun around, looking for the fire and clutching my burnt arm under the cast. A teacher bolted out of his classroom and ran up to me.

“Was that a drill?” I asked. “Should we evacuate?”

“We’re fine, it’s just a glitch. But you shouldn’t touch that,” the teacher said rapidly. “The glass is fragile. Now come away from there and go to class.”

For a second, I considered asking about the hidden pictures or the door. But the teacher couldn’t hide the way his eyes darted around. And I didn’t believe for a second that the alarm was a coincidence. I wasn’t sure I’d like any answer he’d give me.

I asked Minh and Johnny, two friends from middle school, about it in Math. They both said the exact same thing: “It was a glitch, it’s no big deal.” Johnny sounded half asleep when he said it. Minh’s smile twitched and her eyes unfocused. Again, I didn’t press the matter. 

After school let out, I went back to the locker bank where the door was, just to be sure there wasn’t something. To my surprise, there was: the lockers pushed out an inch or so further than the others and I was sure I could see the top of the metal door behind them.

“We had to cover that door.” I spun at the voice behind me. A faculty member stood there with a plastic-looking smile. I hadn’t heard her approach. “It’s an old boiler room, but we don’t use it anymore and it’s dangerous.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I said, trying to match her smile. “Thanks. I was just wondering.” 

She nodded and I walked as quickly as I could out the front door. It was already weird that she’d just been there to answer my unasked question. It wasn’t until the bus ride home that I realized how many people in the hallway had been staring at us. I was home when I questioned if the metal door had been tall enough to crest the lockers when I’d first seen it.

The second I walked through the door, Mom was right there asking questions.

“How was school, Ray? Did you make any friends? Do you like your teachers? Are there any clubs you want to join?”

“School was fine, Mom. Hey, Dad,” I called to the living room.

Dad, in a rare moment of action, looked away from the TV and said, “Hi, son. How was school?”

“Not bad. Is Bill around? I was hoping we could toss the football around.”

“Bill’s fine,” Mom said quickly. “But, Ray, I think you should focus more on school. This is a very important time in your life. Now what about friends and clubs?”

This was getting weird. “Mom, it was the first day of school. I didn’t really have time for any of that.”

“Well, you need to make time, Ray,” Mom pressed, her voice sounding strained. “You have to make the most of this opportunity.”

“Right. Okay. I’m going to go do homework now.” I raced upstairs before Mom could get more worked up. High school was a weird thing to refer to as an opportunity. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but Mom was acting like I was blowing a job interview or something.

I didn’t actually have any homework, but Bill must have. He was sitting at his desk when I knocked on his doorway. 

“Do you want to play football once you're done with your homework?” I asked from the doorway. I’d never been afraid to go into his room before. I wasn’t sure why I was anxious about it now.

“What about your arm?” Bill asked in a quiet voice that didn’t match the energetic brother I knew. The way he stared at my cast wasn’t the way Mom did; with concern and worry. Bill looked disgusted.

“It’s fine,” I said, edging into the room. “Just a little itchy. I can catch and throw with my left one, anyway.”

Bill smiled and got up to get a football from the closet. I inched to the desk to see what he was working on. Keeping an eye on Bill, I nudged a book with my pinkie to see the papers underneath. When I glanced down, all I saw on the papers was the name Tony Thompson, over and over. The book, however, is what scared me. A picture of the man in the lab coat and GoodLife Labs written in green at the top were barely visible beneath the sloppy, red RUN splashed on the cover.

I managed to keep my composure and Bill and I played catch for an hour. He didn’t call me dweeb or make fun of me for dropping the ball or say much of anything. Bill didn’t act like Bill at all.

“Mr. Montgomery, would you like to solve the equation on the board?” Mrs. Peaks asked in Chemistry the next day, snapping me back to reality.

I’d been thinking about the trophy case. Tony Thompson’s trophy had changed again. It was less baroque than before, like someone didn’t want it to attract too much attention, and it was for Creative Writing. The other photos were buried behind even more awards and plaques, but whoever wanted them hidden so badly had never thought to just remove them.

I put it out of my mind, focused on the board, and was immediately stumped. The chemical formula she’d written seemed too advanced for the first week of 9th grade. And what did she mean by “solve the equation”? Was it incomplete or something?

“I’m pretty sure it’s flammable, but I can’t tell anything else about it,” I said.

Mrs. Peaks’s smile melted and half the class started fidgeting like I’d said something scandalous. The other half just stared at the board. 

“Go read the book, Mr. Montgomery,” Mrs. Peaks said nervously. Her smile looked like it was trying to come back, but her eyes glazed over. “Study until you understand.” Then she turned to the board and stared, as if she was as confused as I was.

She didn’t say which chapter or subject and I didn’t ask. I grabbed a textbook from the shelf and started flipping through the pages, trying to ignore how quiet the room had gotten. I leaned in on the book and tried to block out the prying eyes and Mrs. Peaks’s feeble attempts to teach. Then I flipped to a page that had a photo taped to it: the metal door, this time attached to a concrete wall. Welcome to GoodLife Labs was written on the photo in marker. With trembling hands, I went to the back flap to see the author’s picture, with a hunch who it would be. The name matched my assumption: Tony Thompson, but the picture was just a square burn mark. I felt an itching under my cast and smelled something burning. I slammed the book shut.

I walked home afraid that day. I’d spent the rest of the school day feeling like I was being watched and that feeling hadn’t gone away when the bell rang. The man in the photo, Tony Thompson, had something to do with it but I didn’t know what or why or if anyone else knew or not. The people at school, the ones who didn’t act lifeless, flipped between cagey and confused. All I knew was that I didn’t trust them enough to be on a bus with them. But the mostly empty, eerily quiet street wasn’t much more comforting.

“I wonder where all the people are,” I thought out loud. I had a theory.

And just like that, three front doors opened and three neighbors gave three robotic “good afternoons”. I ran the rest of the way home.

Just like yesterday, Mom was right there at the door to ask me about school. And just like yesterday, I had to tell her that I hadn’t joined a club or made twenty lifelong friends or been elected prom king or anything else. After the day I’d had, I wasn’t in the mood for her weird obsession.

“You need to start doing better,” Mom said in a strained voice. And then I saw it: the same twitch and unfocused eyes that I’d seen in school. Cagey and confused. “You need to make the most of this opportunity.”

Bill had gotten home before me and was staring at us from the kitchen along with Dad, and they both had the same lifeless expression.

I knew I might regret this, but… “Do you know Tony Thompson?”

The effect was immediate: Bill and Dad squared their shoulders while a look of terror washed over Mom’s face. But only for a second.

“Wasn’t he an old friend of yours from middle school?” she asked in a desperate squeak. Her eyes darted and twitched a bit.

I didn’t respond. I went upstairs and tried to Google Tony Thompson. The name felt familiar, but not in a good way. None of the people that came up matched the man in the photo. Next I tried GoodLife Labs. The search engine took a long time to load the results. When it finally did, they weren’t results for GoodLife Labs, they were image results for stop signs. 

The word STOP was repeated all over my screen. The smell of burning filled my nostrils and the itching flared up. Then a voice came through the speakers, raspy but clear.

“Stop looking, Ray.”

And with that, the laptop fizzled out and died.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept waiting for someone to burst through the window or the door and drag me away for asking too many questions. I kept peeking between my curtains, looking for something I didn’t know. I tried wracking my brain for Tony Thompson and GoodLife, but the only memories I could grasp were burning smells, screaming voices, and my pain-wracked arm.

How did I hurt this thing? I thought, not trusting that spoken words wouldn’t be overheard. I know there was an accident, a fire, but I can’t remember anything else. Other people were hurt. Everyone on the bus– the bus! The one in the photo! I was in that group!

 How had I forgotten that? We were on a field trip…to GoodLife Labs.

After a few hours, my eyes drifted upwards when I looked out the window. The moon looked so big and bright and the stars looked so sharp and clear. I opened the curtains fully and squinted at the night sky. Those bright, perfect stars curved. The sky looked like a dome.

 Suddenly, I was far less scared than I was angry. Home, school, and maybe this whole town was just an experiment or game or something and everyone was in on it but me. And Tony Thompson must have been the one behind it all. Was he a scientist who’d captured us and was observing us like mice in a maze? Was he some lunatic who got off on mind games? Was he something worse? I was going to find out what.

My arm started to burn under the cast, but I ignored it. I threw on some clothes, opened the window, and tried to reach for the oak tree near the house so I could sneak out. I grabbed a branch with my left hand and swung my body out of the window and to the trunk. I wasn’t even half way down the trunk when I felt the wood shift beneath me and the smell of charcoal filled my nostrils. The tree didn’t burn or break; it suddenly was burnt and broken. The leaves disappeared and so did the ends of the branches, which then ended in splintery shards. The trunk turned into a black skeleton of burnt wood and a squealing creak told me that it wasn’t very stable.

I jumped off just before the tree hit the side of the house and bolted. I wasn’t sure where to go; maybe the school or GoodLife Labs if I could find it. The light in my parents’ room went on and heard them get up, woken by the falling tree. This was my chance.

I raced to the front door, went inside, and grabbed Mom’s car keys. She noticed me and shouted at me to stop just as I ran for the car.  But when I tried to get in the car, it got the same treatment as the tree. No noise or flash of light or anything; just windows that were instantly broken, tires that were instantly melted to the driveway, and a body that was instantly burnt and dented. And my arm was still burning under the cast.

My arm that I don’t remember injuring. My arm that detected the metal door before my eyes did. My arm that I’d touched to the trophy case and the book and paper in Bill’s room and the chemistry textbook at school and my laptop before I’d noticed something strange about them. I started frantically sawing at the plaster with the keys. Something was wrong with my arm. Someone had done something to it and it was connected to all of this.

“Ray, stop!” Mom screamed from the porch. “You’re not supposed to take it off! You’re ruining it!”

“You’re ruining everything.” The same tinny voice from the laptop hissed from the car’s melted radio. “You’re ruining everything. You’re ruining everything.”

“Ruining what?!” I shouted back, feeling my nerves fray. I didn’t stop trying to get through, even as Dad and Bill and even some of the neighbors came outside and made a beeline for me. “What’s going on? Who is Tony Thompson? What’s GoodLife Labs?”

“I don’t know!” Mom sobbed. “I don’t remember, either, but– No, don’t hurt him!”

Dad had reached me and tried to grab me, but I was done with all of this. I grabbed Dad with my right hand and in an instant, he stopped. The man who’d raised me became a burned carcass and fell to the ground. Bill and the neighbors stopped where they were, but Mom ran down to the car and hugged her husband’s corpse.

After a few seconds of crying, she looked at me and said through sobs, “Thank you. I don’t remember everything, but I know your father is supposed to be dead.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. I’d seen his corpse and Bill’s before everything changed. I’d seen the neighborhood ravaged by fires. I’d seen the school bus explode and Tony Thompson burned to ash. The memories started coming back and none of them were good ones.

“Stop it, Ray! I mean it, just stop!” the voice said, from the radio and my brother’s throat and the wind and everything else. “Do you want your dad to be dead? Do you want everyone to be dead? That’s all that’s left, you know, just death! I changed that!”

The voice, Tony Thompson’s voice, didn’t match the severe looking man from the photo. Because that wasn’t him, that was our teacher, the one who’d taken us on the field trip. Tony Thompson…

ran out of the school bus desperate to be the first in the building. Our AP chemistry teacher, Mr. Dreiss called him back, said that there was no hurry and we’d get our chance to see everything inside. Some of us rolled our eyes or sniggered at our class tryhard and the world’s biggest nerd, Tony Thompson. Honestly, I wanted to see what GoodLife Labs was working on, too, but Tony was such a dork about it. He’d made it to the glass doors, ready for the tour, when the alarm blared to life. Shutters closed off the front doors, but a metal emergency exit door nearby burst open. A group of scientists scrambled out, followed by a loud boom and a cloud of yellow gas before they could close the door. Even if they had, it wouldn’t have stopped the explosion in the building that punched through the shuttered doors and windows and even the solid concrete walls. We were knocked off our feet as the gas flooded the parking lot. Mr. Dreiss screamed at us to run but it was too late. The cloud was filled with arcs of green lightning. I saw Marcy crawling in agony as her back burst into green flame. Pauline and Fred made it to the bus just as a bolt of lightning blew it to shrapnel. Johnny moaned piteously as his face dissolved, blindly grabbing for help. Mr. Dreiss took a shard of metal or glass to the throat and gurgled to death next me on the pavement. Even as my arm started to burn, I couldn’t pull my gaze away from his lifeless eyes. And Tony Thompson, the closest to the building, was just a burning pile of ash. The lightning didn’t last, but the cloud only got bigger and it was very flammable. With my arm full of pain and my head pounding with terror and adrenaline, I don’t remember getting home. I just remember walking in a daze between burning buildings and screaming neighbors. Mom was there, trying manically to wake up the roasted flesh that used to be her husband. She didn’t even notice me. I walked up to the charred remains of my room, past the burning smell in Bill’s room, lay down on the carpet, and waited to die.

“But I didn’t die,” I said in a rasp. I was wearing the same roasted clothes I’d been wearing that day. My right arm was the same twisted, painful lump of muscle and bone that the lightning had burned it into.

“You don’t have to die,” Tony said from the radio. Not angry anymore, just desperate. Pleading. “None of you have to die. Just please stop digging and we can have our lives back.”

“Tony? What happened to you?” It was hard to get the words out.

“I don’t know. You were so good at chemistry, I was hoping you could figure it out.” I remembered the formula on the board in Mrs. Peaks’s class. “I’m sorry I scared you. I just needed you to stop asking questions.” I remembered how the door was covered up in a way that explained the cover up. If I hadn’t seen some evidence of the door behind the lockers, I would have been more suspicious. “It’s that stupid arm of yours. I got zapped enough so I was…changed and everyone else got just enough to die or none at all. But you just got zapped a little.”

“I can change things,” I finished his thought. “Whatever you’re doing, whatever you make or change, I can change it, too. Or unchange it.” I looked over the car, freed from Tony’s strange influence and put back the way it was after the explosive gas.

“Is that what you want?” Tony asked softly through my brother’s throat. 

Did I? What did I want? I could undo Tony’s illusion and restore reality, he sounded so defeated that he might let me, but what would I be restoring? My mother sat with my dead father, ignoring all of this. Neighbors, real living ones, came out of their houses and watched their reanimated loved ones crowd around me. I thought back to the raging fires and the dying people.

My arm pulsed with pain, but I powered through and said, “I have a few requests.”

By the time I start for home from the academy, the trams have all been shut down. As the only True Caster, I stay late for magic lessons every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Anyone can ask the Tone for spells, potions, or charmed machines, but only I can cast magic on my own. I don’t mind walking, though; the attention on the tram is a little overwhelming. Everyone wants to ask about the blessed markings on my arm and my plan for the Outsiders and my lessons with the Tone of the Green Pyre.

Yeah, I thought the name was a little ostentatious, too, but Tony likes it. He offered to just give me control of his false world, but I asked him to create a system of “magic” instead. The psychic energy leaking from my arm can still change things, but having something to learn and practice makes it more fun. But, of course, that’s not the main purpose of the lessons.

Before going to the large mansion Tony had offered me, I stop at the beautifully kept graveyard that I’d insisted on. There are a few other people there, mourning loved ones lost to the Outsiders’ invasion last year. The gas leak was actually a month ago, but people seem to take to these false memories just fine. Letting the dead rest is, I think, a big part of that. Reanimating them did nothing more than dredge up hurtful memories, which is why “necromancy” is strictly forbidden. Mom’s definitely doing better. Sometimes I think she remembers a bit more than she lets on, but it doesn’t hurt her as much as it used to.

I find my father’s and brother’s large beautiful mausoleum and I sit on the steps, casting a spell on the nearby tree to bear a few apples for me. 

“I miss you both so much,” I say to the large crypt. “I know you weren’t fans of these types of fantasy books, but I think you’d have gotten a kick out of this.”

Privately, because I’m certain Tony is still listening and I don’t want him getting any ideas, I think about how I’d trade all of it to have them back. The mansion gifted to the mother of the True Caster, the enchanted technology, the occasional Outsider let in the dome so I can have an action fight. I’d give it all up if my father and brother could be truly brought back to life. But Tony can’t do that.

I look past the village to the ancient ruins that used to be GoodLife Labs right on the edge of the dome. Every so often, the Tone of the Green Pyre sends me there to find more scrolls or spell tablets (formerly notebooks and computer files) so we can decipher the eldritch lightning that blessed my arm, and I could sneak a peek through the dome’s wall. I could see the desolate landscape of massive craters, bursts of lightning, and shadowy Outsiders trying to break in. And if I squinted, I could see the real outside, with all the scientists and military personnel trying to find a way into the strange dome that popped up around our city. 

But if Tony and I keep studying the chemical they were using in GoodLife, the compound branded on my slate-gray right arm like a sigil, we’ll learn how to make more. Tony will get stronger. He can expand our dome or maybe even bring back the dead for real.

I know how scary that sounds, trust me I do. But you didn’t see what our town was like before and you don’t know how amazing it can be with the Tone of the Green Pyre in control. We can give you carriages and trams that drive themselves, crystal balls that beam television programs right into your head, large seeds that let a new house grow from the ground in minutes. And you won’t even remember the old world. The Tone will give you new memories, better memories.

Trust me, it will be a good life.

[stegrossaurus]

Troll-Twisted

Troll-Twisted

A long time ago, a young boy hoped, as young boys often do, to prove himself a man. His method was to walk into the troll forest with his father’s sword and walk out with a troll’s head. 

He went in the early morning, when his parents were still asleep and the trolls were just nodding off. Armed with his father’s magic sword and his brother’s adventuring supplies, he marched into the woods and left the trail once the trees thinned out. He headed for the mountains to the west, certain he would find a troll before he reached the base. His parents would be angry until they saw the warty, green head they would mount next to the others.

The boy walked and wove between trees and bushes and rocks until his feet were sore and his ambitions weighed down, but he pushed on. As is often the case for the fae, the trolls he sought were one second beyond the temptation to say ‘They’re not here’. When the bright greens and comforting browns of the forests turned to all-consuming blacks and bloody reds, he knew he was close.

 The boy’s doubts turned to fears in that dark, quiet forest, twisted with troll magic. He unsheathed his father’s sword and let its soft white light try to illuminate the trees. Then, the quietest rustle of leaves, the softest growl, and the boy knew he was not alone.

Without another thought, he plunged the glowing blade into the only moving bushes in the still, shadowy forest, and a scream echoed through the forest. The boy stumbled back in a panic, forgetting all about bravery and honor. Through the terror, he thought that scream sounded almost familiar. And so did the bellowing from behind him.

When a large, three-headed troll burst through the trees, ripped up the bush, and cradled the smaller, single-headed troll, he recognized the sound of an injured child screaming for his mother. He wasn’t the only young boy in the forest looking for adventure.

The troll mother tried to heal her son’s wound, but the magic in the sword trumped her own at every turn. She prayed in every language she knew, mashed trees and shrubs into a poultice, and peeled some skin from the human boy to act as a bandage. All this did was slow down the troll boy’s injury.

The troll mother wailed with her three heads, creating a hollow, unholy sound. She put all of her grief, pain, and fear into her wail, chilling every human in the village and, hopefully, drawing her massive, powerful husband from his mountaintop. Father trolls and their daughters rarely strayed from the mountains, but the troll mother knew the injury of his son would be enough.

She waited for the thundering footsteps and volcanic smell that would herald her wonderful nightmare of a husband. He would bring the power she needed to heal their son. But instead she heard the humming movements and smelled the sweet oleander scent of her three daughters. 

Three young troll women, human-like if not for their moon-white skin, 8 foot stature, and unearthly beauty, came to their grieving mother and dying brother. Their father, they explained, was fighting human warriors in the mountains but he knew of his son’s injury and would come soon. All they needed to do was wait and keep the troll boy alive.

One sister started a campfire. One sister skinned the still-living human boy to make a blanket. One sister conjured a book of stories. The mother held her son, fed him rabbits and the human boy’s tongue, and read to him while they waited.

They kept the troll boy fed and warm, used their magic to keep him alive, and read scary stories to him to lift his spirits. At a particularly scary part, one of the sisters would stick sticks, stones, beaks, and bones into the skinless human boy’s agonizingly raw body.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

It gave the story an extra kick and the troll boy would laugh and laugh.

After three slow, sad days, the sisters began to worry. They gazed into a pool of human blood and saw a sight they’d never expected: their father’s mountainous carcass being carved up by troll hunters. The troll women knew there would be no rescue or cure. The troll boy would die.

One sister dug a grave under the warm campfire. One sister lured in a few more boys from the village to skin for a burial shroud. One sister gently placed the book of scary stories in the troll boy’s frigid hands. The mother was almost out of tears as she placed her little boy into the ground. No longer caring for tradition, the troll mother went to live in the mountains with her now fatherless and brotherless daughters. The other troll mothers and sons moved from that part of the forest.

And the boys, skinless and troll-twisted, were left to live in the forest alone. They tried at first to go home to their village, but they were chased out with pitchforks, swords, and crucifixes.  Occasionally, a loving mother or protective father would try to welcome their son into their home, but they could never handle the screaming, smells, and sobbing for long. 

Driven to madness, the troll-twisted boys had nothing but pain, each other, and the whispering of the dead troll boy. Yes, the fae die as easily as any of us, but they linger like nothing else. He whispered his final thoughts over and over and the lunatic boys heard what they wanted to hear.

They started fires and let themselves sizzle in the flames. They shoved sticks, stones, beaks, and bones into their raw muscles and laughed at their own agony. Sometimes, they would lie still enough for moss to grow over them, telling themselves that it was a mother’s love. Sometimes, they would stare at the small mountain of boulders they buried the magic sword under, and convince themselves that it was a father’s protection. They no longer understood what these things were. When they finally returned to their village to make more blankets from their skin and swords from their bones, they barely recognized their friends and family.

The troll-twisted boys impaled each other over and over again with those bones, looking for the one sword that would undo the troll magic keeping them alive. They knew the sword was around somewhere, they just needed to find it. They searched for years, decades, over a century to this day. 

And so they come. On any night and from any forest, studded with everything sharp the forest floor has to offer, they come. They travel as far from the cover of the trees as they can until the break of dawn whisks them back. 

On occasion, they seek out mothers who grieve for their children or fathers who didn’t make it home in time. The boys drag them back to the forest and beat them to death, not remembering why they wanted them in the first place. Mostly though, they seek out swords, blankets, warm campfires, and scary stories. And they kill whoever they find near them.

You can tell they’re about when the air stills, the food starts to taste like dirt, and the plants nearby turn red, black, and sharp. You’ll hear them moaning, sobbing, or even laughing. Then the sounds and changes will stop and the shadows you saw stretching on the walls will disappear and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that they have moved on.

Because, as is often the case for the fae, the troll-twisted boys seeking you wait to  strike one second beyond the temptation to say ‘They’re not here’.

[stegrossaurus]

Prisoner Camp

Prisoner Camp

Coach Waller steps up with her back straight and her eyes hard. “Mr. Winneck, this has gone on long enough! It’s time for you to grow up and stop—” 

WHAM!!!

She got further than I thought she would. She probably thought Joel needed a bit of tough love. It was a stupid and final mistake for her, but to be honest, I doubt he would have let her live anyway. She hadn’t been the nicest person at Camp Nightshade and she’d given Joel plenty of reason to dislike her.

“I do not kiss boo-boos, hold hands, or dry tears!” Coach Waller shouted at the group of waiting kids. “I will be pushing you to your limits and showing you what you’re made of. For some of you, that won’t be anything impressive.” She leveled a sneer directly at Joel Winneck, who lip quivered slightly. “But that’s just life! Now get moving!”

I’d been to Camp Nightshade last year, so I knew not to take her speech too seriously. Coach Waller made it sound like we’d be wrestling bears, but we’d be jogging, hiking, rowing boats, and other camp stuff. She just liked to sound tough. And the best way to do that, I think we all know, is to find someone who is decidedly untough and remind them constantly. So during our first jog of the summer, she zeroed in on Joel Winneck, wheezily bringing up the rear. He was a return camper, too, and made a pretty good victim the first time around. Good enough to keep Waller off of me, at least. This year was more of the same. More teasing and taunting and generally being a bully as he struggled to keep up with the others. If Mr. Lair, our head counselor, had any problem with this as he supervised the activities, his permanently sour face gave no sign.

Most of us had no room to talk about that, of course. Like I said, Joel was a pretty good victim and plenty of us had availed ourselves before.

And now, here we all are. Karma, I guess. 

The microphone regrows from the dirt in front of Joel and the line shuffles forward. A girl, Sarah something, trembles forward. She mumbles out a flimsy apology for laughing at Percy’s prank. She never would have done it if she’d known he’d take it too seriously. Big mistake. No one likes being told that they’re taking their pain “too seriously”.

CRNNCH!!!

Sarah something is flattened into Sarah nothing. Barney, Luna, and Jerry all try the same tactic with varying amounts of tears, kneeling, and insistence that they didn’t mean to hurt his feelings. And they all have the same result. Luna gets almost a minute and a half before Joel kills her; maybe he has a thing for her. Daganyah Levi seems to have a similar notion; I can see her frantically adjusting her neckline from my place in line.

Daganyah wasn’t the prettiest or most popular in school or at camp, which is why her part in Percy’s prank worked. She wasn’t so far out of Joel’s league that he felt suspicious. Still, she was pretty and popular enough to be nasty to anyone who wasn’t. So when Percy invited her to our cabin to talk about his plan, she had no issue participating.

“Just make sure the little twerp’s out of his cabin for about 10 minutes,” Percy said after the plan had been finalized. “That should be enough time for you two to get something from Lair’s office.” He nodded to Sidney and Cindy. “Blaine, do you have an idea for an idea for a distraction?”

Blaine didn’t take his eyes off his Zippo lighter when he answered. “I’ve got something in mind. It should keep everyone occupied for a while.”

Everyone knew Blaine was a lunatic and I dreaded whatever he considered to be a distraction. And honestly, I didn’t know why Percy was so determined to get revenge. Joel had tattled on Percy at school last year for something or another, but nothing had come of it. No detention or suspension or anything; just like at Camp Nightshade, no one cared enough to punish people who might actually deserve it. 

But no one asked my opinion and I didn’t offer one. I didn’t ask to help with the plan or threaten to tell Mr. Lair or laugh along with the others. I minded my own business and stayed out of everything. That last bit was something Percy and I had in common. He was smart enough to get a pyromaniac, a pair of kleptos, and a prissy mean girl to do his dirty work. He barely even offered suggestions, not directly anyway. About 85% of the plan was thought up by someone else and his hands were as clean as possible.

Didn’t save him. Percy was Joel’s first victim before he lined us all up to beg for mercy. Sidney had been next when he jumped the line to say that the prank had been Percy’s idea and Cindy had followed him shortly after, throwing rocks at Joel demanding that he spit her brother up. Now Daganyah steps up to the plate.

“Joel, it’s me Daganyah. Do you remember?” Rough start; that patronizing tone got two counselors squished. “I know what I did was really, really naughty, but I only did it because I like–”

SSHHLUURPP!!!

A pink tongue that could comfortably fit a minivan emerges from one of the many skulls and slurps Daganyah up. Guess he likes her, too.

More people step up to the massive beast that used to be Joel Winneck and plead their cases into the microphone. The PA system broadcasts their futile attempts and the awful crunches and slurps that come after.

It’s been about 15 minutes since Percy had died and this whole thing had started. Well over thirty people are dead and one girl, about 9 years old, cowers in the safety of the mess hall. Her name is Hannah and if I recall correctly, she hadn’t been at the bonfire during Joel’s final humiliation. She’d told Joel as much and when a large warty arm emerged from one of the skulls’ eyehole, it formed a pointed finger instead of a fist. Hannah ran for the mess hall when she’d realized that she was safe. The next victim had made the same plea and was pounded into the dirt. Either, Joel didn’t believe her or he hated her regardless.

Blaine steps up as the mic regrows and doesn’t get one word out before Joel kicks him into a bloody trench right next to Coach Waller’s. I’m not surprised.

I wasn’t too surprised when the bonfire surged out of control. Blaine must have put something flammable in the woodpile or on the nearby grass. He’d promised a distraction and he provided. Mr. Lair and a few counselors tried to beat back the flames while shooing back the campers. Blaine made no effort to hide his glee and I doubted anyone was watching him closely enough to notice.

I went with the crowd towards the camp quad before laughter drew our attention away. Campers and at least a few adults ventured to the southern edge of the camp, far enough from the bonfire and the cabins to function as a private getaway for campers. I should have resisted the pull of the crowd and gone back to my cabin. But I didn’t.

Joel was there, shirtless, gagged with tape, and tied to a tree. Daganyah and a beefy guy I was certain was her boyfriend flanked him, laughing and encouraging others to join in.

“Can you believe he actually thought he had a shot?” Daganyah shrieked with delight. Her boyfriend pinched Joel’s flabby, exposed gut, laughing uproariously, but Joel didn’t squirm or try to call for help. He just stared ahead, with tears streaming down his face. “And all the things he said? He actually told me he’d…” 

I didn’t stick around to hear the rest. I didn’t want to know any of this. I headed back to the camp, passing Percy cursing under his breath. A distraction where everyone knows Joel wasn’t sneaking into Mr. Lair’s cabin kind of defeats the purpose of the plan. The roaring inferno, still growing and spreading in our direction, was probably a problem, too.

“It’s getting bigger! Get to the other side of camp!” someone shouted from the bonfire’s direction. 

We all ran away from the heat as the flames got closer. That got Joel struggling, but no one moved to untie him. I’m not proud to admit that I didn’t, either. I looked at him fighting to loosen his ropes, told myself that I didn’t have a knife and wouldn’t be able to help him, then I ran.

He’d survived, of course, and so did the camp, but I’m sure we all deeply wish they hadn’t. 

But I need to focus. I block out the screams, whimpers, crunches, and memories and try to plan out what I’m going to say when it’s my turn. Begging just barely slows him down and reasoning seems to be a mixed bag. Threats, bribes, and seductions are definitely off the table. An apology for not helping and a reminder that I hadn’t bullied him might work. What about commonality? If I tell him that I was bullied too, would that encourage him to take pity on me? Or would it come off as patronizing? 

It might be my only option. Every death closes off another choice I could make to save my life. 

“I was always rooting for you.”  CRRNNCHH!!!

“You would have done the same.” WHAM!!!

“I have a family.” SSHHRLUUPP!!!

Counselor Wayne apologized for not doing nothing to stop the bullying and died, but I try to see it objectively. Wayne had been there when Joel was tied to the tree and made no move to help. As an adult, he could and should have, but didn’t. I’m the same age Joel is so I have a reasonable excuse. If Joel’s feeling reasonable, of course.

“I know what it’s like to be picked on,” an older, fatter camper named Troy starts. He’s telling the truth; lots of boys in the showers had unkind opinions to share about his body. “But this won’t help. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

That’s it from Troy. No apology or begging. I watch with laser focus; this is what I’ve been waiting for. After about a minute, an arm oozes out of one of the massive skulls that make up Joel’s new body. Troy flinches backwards, but the hand at the end of the arm points to the mess hall. A smattering of gasps and even cheers rise up from the line as Troy bolts for the hall. It worked! And if it worked for him, maybe it can work for me.

Another boy rushes to take Troy’s place. “I was picked on, too, back home. That’s why I laughed, but I know–” WHAM!!!

He was lying. And he admitted fault. That’s why he died. I won’t lie, I’ll just leave out the parts where I knew about the prank and didn’t save him from the fire. He doesn’t need to know those parts. I’ll be fine. I have a plan. I’ll be fine.

“Mr. Winneck!” Mr. Lair’s voice, unshaken and commanding, booms through the speakers. “I know what’s happening to you and I know how to make it stop! You have my amulet, correct?”

Murmurs and whispers rumble through the line. Was this amulet what the twins had stolen from his cabin? Joel’s body shifted and a massive leg swept out for a kick, but in a heartbeat, an arm jetted from an eye socket and pinned the leg with a ground shaking thump. Joel howled in pain as he fought the rogue limb. Did he not want to do any of this? Is that why he hesitated some times?

“Let me explain,” Mr. Lair says.

“Something very important was taken from my cabin recently,” Mr. Lair said to the assembled campers and counselors. He’d gathered us all in the quad and seemed in a worse mood than normal. “I won’t explain what it is and I won’t ask who took it. If the thief gives back what they’ve stolen by sundown, I’ll forget the whole thing. If not, then camp is over for everyone!”

Was that meant as a threat? I wanted camp to be over. There was a fire two nights ago and I haven’t seen Joel since. I heard Percy laughing about how he’d run off into the woods, but that was the only confirmation I had that he’d survived the fire. Was he still alive? Was anyone looking for him? Mr. Lair had said at the beginning of the summer that he wasn’t interested in coddling or protecting the campers from their own actions, but it seemed like someone should’ve cared that Joel was gone.

“Hey, look! Joel’s back!” a camper shouted. All of us, including Mr. Lair, followed her finger to the edge of the camp where a shambling figure emerged from the trees. “Is he okay? He looks kinda…”

Swollen and lumpy were the words I would have used. Even from a distance, Joel’s shirt was visibly straining against football sized lumps in his shoulders and torso. He held a duffle bag limply in his hand, so he must’ve packed before running off.

“I’ll check on him!” Percy shouted, sprinting to Joel before the counselors could stop him.

I couldn’t hear what Percy said. Maybe a threat to keep quiet and give back the stolen thing that was snuck into his bag? But whatever it was, Joel didn’t like it. 

A large hand sprung out of some place other than Joel’s shoulder and squeezed Percy with a wet crunch and the bully fell motionless to the dirt. His body ballooned into a tarry black blob, scaring away the counselors running towards him. With a scream that multiplied and lanced to my bones, human skulls, deformed, cracked, and the size of a woodshed at least, emerged from the mass. 

We ran for the forest, not looking back as we heard thumps and dragging sounds that meant the thing was moving; not stopping as the sky started to blacken and the treeline started to blur. But our running was a waste. By the time we made it to the edge of the forest, the world beyond the camp was a solid wall of green, black, and brown blurs. It was like a canvas of runny paints and there was no gap to squeeze through.

“Line up.” A horrible, wheezing parody of a human voice echoed through the camp. The thing that used to be Joel had dragged himself to the center of the quad. “Line up now.”

No one moved at first and one of the skulls on Joel’s body opened its jaws. A blob of green flame belched from the bony mouth and soared to the far side of camp, torching a cabin. We understood and began forming a line to the awful thing, everyone trying their best to be last. Except for Sidney; he ran forward, screaming that Percy had initiated the prank. Once he got close enough, a hand wormed from one of Joel’s many eye sockets and flattened him. We all started to run again, but another cabin was incinerated, stopping us in our tracks.

“Line up.”

“The amulet you have was designed to draw strength from hatred,” Mr. Lair says, calmly and academically as if discussing a math problem. Props to him for not accusing Joel of stealing it, that would have been an automatic failure. “I had actually taken this awful job to build up enough hatred to use it, but you beat me to it. In a matter of days, no less.” 

More murmuring and whispers. What had Lair been planning to do with the amulet? What would he do if he got it back? Joel continued restraining his leg and listening intently.  I don’t care what Lair wants with the amulet as long as he gets it away from Joel.

“I know it’s forcing you to do this and I know it’s painful,” Lair continues. “But I also know how to turn it off. I can help you. All you need to do is–”

A spurt of green napalm from one of the mouths cuts him off. His agonized screams mix with Joel’s and our own, as the best chance of ending this melts away.

Joel wails and cries tarry tears for a few minutes before he’s ready to continue. None of us even think to run in the meantime. It was the offer of help that did it, I think. Mr. Lair should have been helping him all along but he was just interested in the amulet. The trial continues, but is there even a point? If Joel has any amount of hatred for you, nothing you say and nothing he actually wants will stop him from killing you.

There are about ten people ahead of me and that number’s shrinking fast. A female counselor claims she talked to Lair on Joel’s behalf and is spared. A boy with Down Syndrome cries and says he doesn’t understand what’s going on. Joel lets the counselor take him to the mess hall. Those are the only survivors. 

Now the boy in front of me steps up, wipes his tears, and starts.

“You’re a monster,” he rasps into the mic. I recognize him as Daganyah’s boyfriend and get ready for my turn in a few seconds. “Daganyah was a bitch and so am I and so are the rest of us, but you’re a flat out murderer! Maybe we all deserve to die, but so do you! And you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life!”

I can’t believe he got this far. Is Joel actually considering what he said? A pained growl and a large fist rise from the blob of mucus-smothered skulls, but instead of swinging straight down, it curves. With a screech, the fist completely shatters one of the skulls. Another punch and another skull is gone, with a few more being fractured. The boy tries to flee, but the next punch is for him.

My legs are stiff and heavy. I wait a second to see if Joel’s going to continue attacking himself, but he doesn’t. It’s far too late to change my strategy, but I can��t ignore what just happened.

“Joel,” I start, not trying to keep the squeak out of my voice. The more pitiful I sound, the better. “Before you moved here, Percy and the others picked on me a lot. And no one ever helped. I know I should have tried to help you, but I was just relieved that they left me alone.” I’m not dead, so I keep going. “I’m sorry. But I never hurt you and if you keep hurting us, then you’re not the victim anymore. You’ll be worse than Percy ever was.”

He already is worse, but that’s what I’m counting on. If I can get Joel to hate himself more than he hates me, he’ll hurt himself. Maybe even kill himself. This whole nightmare can be over.

He raises a fist and a mouth fills with green fire. Does he remember? When I saw those tear-soaked eyes in the light of the out-of-control bonfire, did they see me watching? Is that fist for me? Will he burn off his own heads? Will he point to the mess hall? Should I run if he strikes? How many hits will it take to kill himself? What will burning alive feel like?

Joel pauses for a second. Then he moves.

[stegrossaurus]

Punishment

Punishment

Once upon a time, there was a boy who was sent to bed without dinner. A common enough occurrence, one that happens all over the world for countless reasons. This one argued with his mother and was sent to bed with an empty stomach, sore bottom, and angry heart. And, of course, he’s not alone.

Some of the older or smarter ones might fully understand the hypocrisy and unfairness of their punishments. They might ask, “Why can they hit me when they’re the stronger ones?” or “Why do they get away with the same stuff I get punished for?” But even the younger ones like the boy at 9 years old can feel the injustice. If anything, they feel it a little stronger, but not for as long.

And so they sit in the dark, sore, hungry, and filled with the kind of hot and quick burning anger children feel so easily. They can’t act on it or fully articulate it, so it dies in their hearts quickly enough. And like all dead things, it passes on to somewhere else.

If you were to ask her, she’d say she granted a wish. She’s not entirely wrong. No one said the words specifically, which is the only reason it worked. Angry, vengeful feelings curdled and died in minds too young to give them words, and found themselves among other unformed things in an unformed world. You can find shrugs, clenched fists, bitten tongues, and aching hearts there, too, but those weren’t what she was interested in. She collected those childish frustrations for over a century, stewing and boiling and distilling them into what one could consider to be a single, powerful wish. The boy would never know that he gave her the last drop of power she needed.

If you were to ask, she’d say she’s a fairy godmother.

Two weeks later, the mother was making dinner while the son watched TV, their fight mostly forgotten. Her son’s groan and the words “Special report” from the TV called the mother’s attention to the living room.

There had been rumors and sightings for two weeks, but now there was definitive proof. A couple honeymooning in Amsterdam recorded their time at the tulip festival, when the husband accidentally stepped in a puddle and swore lightly. The reporter warned the viewers that what was coming next might be a bit of a shock.

It rose from the ground behind the man like a plume of smoke to stand at eight feet tall. Huge sharp teeth, plated with melted gold and oozing with black saliva, took up all the space on the massive, lumpy head. There were no eyes, nose, ears, or even mouth, just the teeth. The wife screamed as the being grabbed the husband in its arms (thin compared to the head, but well-muscled by human standards), threw him to the ground, and started pummeling him. The video cut out as the being started laughing.

For the next few days, the video was considered a hoax, a maniac in a costume, and a strange movie trailer. But more incidents, some recorded, some not, made themselves known around the world. Creatures with massive heads, gold-plated teeth and arms, and gossamer wings emerged from the shadows to attack people or break their possessions or throw them in closets and hold the doors shut for hours. And then they disappeared. By the Amsterdam video’s one week anniversary, everyone knew it was real. And by the next week, everyone saw the pattern.

Swearing. Sarcasm. Arguing. Smoking. Eating junk food. Staying up too late. These and more like them are what attracted the Beings. Their punishments started to feel familiar, too. Now you know how it feels, some random child posted on some random site and any attempt to pretend otherwise died. 

“But we’re adults!” the objectors cried. To children online, to other adults in war rooms, even to the Beings when they came. “We know better!” “We can handle more!” “We have different rules!” “We don’t deserve this!”

“So what?” the more thoughtful Beings might answer in their voices like rotting trees. “If you know better, then you should be punished more.” “If you can handle it, then you can be punished more.” “Why should you have different rules?” “If you don’t deserve it, why is it happening?”

Sometimes they could be swayed, but those times were few and far between. The world began to crumble as police, teachers, and employers became too afraid to step outside. Quarantines, martial laws, and restrictions were implemented and discarded in rapid succession. Priests, occultists, and folklorists were consulted as much and scientists, military officers, and world leaders.

“They’re only attacking adults,” one such person said. “Why not change the age of adulthood so that we’re all children?” She barely got the words out before a Being rose up behind her. She didn’t survive her Punishment for trying to skirt the rules, but her idea did.

For almost a month, most countries were populated with children up to the age of 100 and the Beings left them alone. But many of these children were unhappy to part with their right to drink or vote or have children themselves. Children had no right to trade or negotiate or go to war with their neighbors, something other countries were willing to risk Punishment to exploit. The laws were changed to add a new station of life between 17 year old childhood and 100 year old adulthood, but the Beings weren’t fooled. Once they returned, the idea was scrapped.

“We have to fight!” another person said. “If we stay armed, then we can defend ourselves when they come.” He didn’t survive but neither did the Being that came.

The government posted a photo of the dead Being with an iron knife in its throat. People started carrying spikes, clubs, or religious icons made of iron. They sprinkled salt, sugar, or glitter everywhere to distract the Beings when they arrived. Parties were held in construction sites and junkyards, with so much swearing and drinking and name-calling that the Beings materialized in those iron-filled areas for an ambush. The Beings stepped up their Punishments in response, but not as much as one might think. The threat of death didn’t deter, frighten, or anger them as it might for a human. They happily continued their task, ensuring that many of their Punishments were fatal. Notions of luring them into a nuclear strike began circulating.

“They’re not going away and they’re numbers never go down,” yet another said. “We need to accept that.” This one survived and everyone present took that as a sign.

People kept their weapons and precautions but also learned when the Beings were most likely to appear (dawn, dusk, and midnight) and which places they might avoid (wastelands, power plants, or churches). They learned of the Beings’ willingness to be bribed or tendency to be tricked. Religious icons, armored pants, and emergency rations became fashionable. Care-givers loosened their rule and restrictions on children, hoping that the Beings would do the same. Nothing stopped them, but their attacks became less frequent and fatal.

Now a 10 year old boy asks his mother for cake for dinner. His mother fingers her cross necklace, shifts to her uninjured leg, and asks him if he’s certain he wouldn’t like something healthier. He refuses to budge. He may not understand everything going on in the world, and he surely doesn’t know his role in it, but he knows his mother is unwilling to argue or command him too much. For almost a year, he and his friends have misbehaved while their parents and teachers meekly asked them to stop, casting worried glances at the shadows. The mother caves, trusting a stomachache to teach her son better. But as she leaves to get the cake started, she tells him, “You’ll be an adult in 8 years. You’d better fix yourself by then.”

She doesn’t reach for her knife or cross when her threat draws a sinister chuckle from behind her; she wants her son to see what awaits him.

All the while, the self-proclaimed fairy godmother watches from the unformed liminal world, proud of her accomplishment and the children she’s helped. But what to do next? When a child’s unspoken fear and regret at the world they helped make floats into the world of the fae, she grabs it. Then she shucks off the boring regret, collects the fear, and eagerly waits for more. After a century or so, all of the fear will make a fine wish.

[stegrossaurus]

Hello and Goodbye

Hello and Goodbye

by Dale

HELLO

I barely noticed it at first. Missy was at the age when she loved leaving little messages with the fridge magnets and she could’ve easily left that one before she and her mother had gone out of town. 

“Hello,” I absently said back to the magnets. It was quiet with my wife and daughter visiting family, so I sometimes talked to myself. I got what I needed from the fridge and closed the door.

HELLO               HELLO

           HELLO

Those got my attention. “How many of these magnets are there?” Two of the Hellos were higher that Missy could reach even with her step stool, which was another weird thing. “I guess Shelly did those.” I pushed on the door a bit to make sure it was closed (there was a bit of a chill in the air) and started making lunch.

The chill didn’t go away at all. The summer sun and the heat from the stove did nothing to stop goosebumps from rising on my arm. At first, I thought the stove was broken and that scratching sound I was hearing was something out of place inside. But the range under the pan was still red hot and the scratching was in the walls.

“Rats? Didn’t we get rid of them?” 

I tried to follow the sound as it moved in the walls towards the window. Then I noticed that the light from the window seemed a little dimmer than before. The sun was clearly still out and there were no clouds that I could see, but there was somehow less light coming through the glass.

I got closer to see what was happening when more scratching, louder and fiercer, shook the cabinets. The stove rattled a bit as the sound moved past it and the fire sprung up from the range. I turned off the heat, but before I could put it out, I saw the fridge.

WHO ARE YOU?               TOO FAST    WRITE IT DOWN

                            DANGEROUS                                     IT WANTS TO KILL YOU

SHE’S ASLEEP         HA                                   IDIOTS

                                       HA             LUCIFER            HOW LONG?

                 4                         HA

Who could have written that in the seconds since I’d last looked at the door? We didn’t even have that many magnets. The scratching and the rattling got stronger.

“Who are you? What’s going on?” I shouted, spinning around, trying to catch whoever was in my house. The room darkened further and the microwave jolted on. “Whatever this is, it isn’t funny! You can’t just come in here! This is my house!” 

Something wet and purple started spreading on the walls as the magnets swarmed across the fridge door, making messages I couldn’t interpret. The soup on the burning stove started accordioning, soft and sponge-like, out of the pan. I backed away from the counters, too afraid to grab a knife.

 Then my phone started to chill like an icecube in my pocket. I pulled it out my shaking hands and looked at the weird, gray static flowing across the screen. 

“What’s your name?” a soft, raspy voice echoed from the phone.

“Dale,” I choked out, too scared to do anything but answer.

The static rushed in one direction until some gold came into view: a large eye with a rectangular pupil surrounded by matted gray fur. 

“Are you pretty, Dale? Will you help me?”

I found the feeling in my legs, dropped my phone, and ran. I bolted down the main foyer to the front door, with darkness and high laughter following me. I ran like I never had in my life, but the trip from the kitchen to the door had already taken over 30 seconds when the darkness overtook me. The family photos on the wall changed like molding slabs of meat, showing creatures like out of a nightmare. Snarling fangs, curved horns, oozing tentacles, hideous faces surrounded by snakes. And they were all talking.

“Solve the equation.” “Who does he love?” “We know you’re there.” “What do you look like?”

Their voices were like records skipping, nothing was coming through perfectly. Not that I wanted to listen. The door was still getting closer, the new longer hallway didn’t go on forever. I ignored the screeching and laughing from the monstrous pictures on the wall and kept running.

I got closer to the door. The frosted window looked dark, but I could tell the world outside it was bright and normal. I’d just put my hand on the handle when something slammed against the glass from the outside! I could almost make out angler fish fangs and octopus tentacles as I scrambled back.

“LOOK!” it shouted as I scrambled to the now-tainted living room. “Blood! She’ll be soaked!” It laughed cruelly as the living room darkened and started to shrink.

It wasn’t my living room anymore. A new, worse world was taking it over. The walls were turning that rotting purple, the windows were rearranging, images of teeth and eyes played on the TV. Random letters and mathematical formulas burned into the hardwood. As I skittered around to avoid them. The portrait of my family melted into another demonic beast: a rail-thin, green-skinned man with a cruel grin and a black fiddle.

“Are you the one doing this?” I asked. No answer. “You can’t stay here. This is my house.” The answer I got was harsh laughter.

The furniture moved closer as the walls closed in, warping and growing new layers of fabric like a fungus. I went for the fireplace poker, but every trace of the fireplace was gone, replaced with a large square opening leading somewhere even darker.

“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.” I whispered it over and over as the room kept slowly pushing in. 

The love seat, couch, and recliner, covered with fur and scales and slime, closed in tighter as the laughter got louder. I tried to remember every exorcist movie I’d ever seen. Crosses, holy water, prayers; all of it slipped through my mind like water. A blob of blue ooze rose up at my feet, forming a candle, and a form shimmered into existence right in front of me. A thin, humanoid figure with a head full of horns and three golden eyes surrounded by matted gray fur kneeled next to the candle.

“Do you like Rowena?” a mocking voice asked. “Will you marry Rowena?”

The creature on the floor hissed, but didn’t acknowledge me. 

“Is that what you want? To marry me?” I was baffled. The whole situation was flooding my brain. What would happen when I said no? What would happen to Shelly or Missy?

That thought crystallized in my brain. Shelly and Missy. When they came home in a few weeks from visiting Shelly’s parents, they’d be in the middle of all of this. Whatever this was would attack them. If it really wanted me to marry this Rowena, it would kill them.

“Get out,” I said, clearer and stronger than I’d felt in the last several minutes. “NOW!”

I kicked over the candle and shoved the mutated furniture out of my way. I swiped at the oozing picture of the demon man and tore it off the wall, which started turning white again. The laughter turned to screams as I kicked the recliner away and marched over to the former fireplace.

“Get the hell out of my house! I don’t want you!” I reached into the darkness, felt some kind of fabric, and yanked it out. “I don’t need you!” I tore out more fabric and kicked over a dresser that was changing into some kind of altar. “I have Missy and Shelly!”

With every second I fought, my house turned a little back to normal. The altar reverted to a dresser and a small crucifix fell out of the drawer. I picked it up, and started the only prayer I could remember.

“Our Father, who art in heaven.” 

The screaming turned to pleading as I continued and the room changed more and more back to normal. The ghostly figure on the floor was long gone, but it and others were visible on the TV, backing away in fright. They kept shouting something: Goodbye.

So, I finished my prayer with, “Forever and ever. Amen. Goodbye!”

And with that, it was all over. The fireplace was back. The floor was unmarked. The TV was showing the news. The family portrait and the dresser were on the floor and the furniture was out of place, but there was no sign of the haunting.

I took a breath, letting the adrenaline drain out of my body before I started cleaning up. Missy and Shelly didn’t need to know about what happened, whatever the hell it was.

“What the heaven was that?” Babylon yelped as she lay on the floor. When she sat up, her tentacles were wobbly, but the mouths on both sides of her head were smiling maniacally. “Did we actually contact a mortal spirit?”

“Of course it was, Babs! What else could that have been?” Crowla snapped shrilly. She scooted from the ouija board, now with a cross burned into the wood, and marked three 6s over her chest with her paw. “I told you we should’ve done this, Rowena. That ouija board’s a tool of God!”

Echidna tried to scoff like she always did when Crowla did her dead-again Satanist thing, but we all felt the spirit shove us to the floor when they crowded around the board. We all saw it smash the candle, turn the walls white, throw my clothes out of the closet, and tear down my Nicky Nero concert poster. We all heard that Christian prayer and saw that…thing in my scrying mirror. It was like another world was coming into ours and it hadn't seemed like the mortal plane. What if Crowla was right and we’d contacted someplace…else?

“Guys, keep it down,” I hissed, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “If you wake up the neighbors, they’ll tell my parents when they come home and they’ll crucify me.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Crowla asks, her eye sockets gaping. “Because I don’t think that spirit came from the mortal world.”

“OMS, we contacted Heaven, didn’t we?” Echidna dropped her cool act and let her snakes frizz out. “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?”

“We’re gonna be fine. I ended the session, he said goodbye, and he’s gone,” I said. But was he?

I looked over the notepad I’d written the responses “Dale” gave us on. They came so quickly, I had to write them down.

how many are there? 

get rid of them. 

who’s there? 

come here. 

this is my house. 

are you the one? 

stay. 

marry me now. 

want you. need you. 

i miss hell. 

He’d gone crazy when Babylon joked about him marrying me. Thank Satan I’d ended the session before something worse had happened.

I heard a sharp grunt and jumped to my hooves before I realized it was just Batibat. I knew she slept like she was at peace but I still couldn’t believe she hadn’t woken up through all that. She hadn’t even disturbed the bowl of blood Babs had put her hand in. Once Babylon had stopped chattering with Crowla, she’d be gratified to see the wet spot spreading on Batibat’s sleeping bag.

“You know, there are easier ways to find out if Lucifer Baal likes you. You could just ask him to the solstice massacre,” Echidna said, trying to sound playfully jealous. She’d been sneaking hemlock into his lunch since second grade. But I knew she was just trying to get things back to normal.

“You’re probably right. I might just study for my math test, too. Million times easier,” I said nonchalantly, hoping to put the whole thing out of my mind.

But I couldn’t. A dead spirit wouldn’t miss Hell if it was at peace in the mortal world. Right? So “Dale” must have been from Heaven. And if he ever finds a way back here, my parents, my math test, and Lucifer Baal will be the least of my problems.

[stegrossaurus]

Childish Things

Childish Things

by Lars

You wouldn’t think there’d be real magic on the internet. I sure didn’t after so many of the spells I’d found there didn’t work. I’d been looking for years, ever since I’d realized that the world’s a piece of crap and I wanted more out of it. 

But there are always certain parts of certain spells on certain sites that correlate with real mythology or practices. It took a while, but I put those pieces together into something that works. Something that takes emotion and turns it into power.

“One day you must leave behind childish things, but childish things may not want to be left.” I trace the tip of my staff clockwise around the circle I’d drawn on the wooden cutting board. “Tfel eb ot tnaw ton yam sgniht hsidlihc tub, sgniht hsidlihc dniheb evael tsum uoy yad eno.” 

And now, counter-clockwise. I repeat the spell over and over until the black candle in the middle of the chalk circle lights up. Then I grab a spool of thread, two nails, and four black buttons to put in the bowl at the top of my staff. I don’t let myself flinch at the gelatinous feel of offal.

“Let the anger of abandonment fill these tools and let these tools fill my vessels. Slessev ym llif sloot eseht tel dna sloot eseht llif tnemnodnaba fo regna eht tel.”

Again, I repeat the spell until the fire extinguishes and the trail of smoke coils up the wooden staff and settles in the bowl. Then I lean the staff on my desk so that it’s where the moonlight shine be in a few hours. Then I go downstairs to remind myself why I’m doing this.

Mom, Dad, and Osmo are already at the table. The three of them barely notice me, of course. Osmo’s busy moping over Glinda and Mom and Dad are too busy comforting him. I’d taken her a week ago; you’d think they’d just get him a new pet.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Oz,” Mom says. “You know how good at hiding she is. Nothing will find her before we do.”

I don’t even try to suppress a snort. They keep babying him over an animal. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to tell him that she’s not coming back. My snort draws their attention, the first indication that they even notice I’m here. They glare at me but say nothing, so I ignore them and help myself to some of the spaghetti. 

“If you’re done crying over a rodent, can someone pass me the parmesan?” I ask. 

That gets their attention. Osmo clenches his fork like he wants to shove it in my neck and Dad grips his shoulder tightly. 

“What’s the matter with you, Lars?” Dad hisses. “You know how much your brother loves Glinda.”

“Wrong with me? She’s just a pet,” I snap back. “She was going to die anyway.”

“So will you one day, jerkface,” Osmo growls, still squeezing his fork. “The only difference is someone will actually miss Glinda.”

Mom grumbles as she slams the can of parmesan down next to me. “If you’re just going to act like this, why don’t you eat in your room? None of us are interested.”

Fine then. I snatch the can and my plate and go upstairs. This is what I’m talking about; no one gives a crap about me. They’re too busy with precious Osmo or Glinda or their jobs or something. People only notice me when I’m being a dick and then they get upset about it. Osmo actually used to be fun to pick on, but now he just ignores me.

I eat my dinner and head to bed. The moon’s starting to rise and the bowl of Glinda’s organs will be in the moonlight soon. My homemade staff, decorated with her bones and with her skin wrapped around the hilt, will take in the moonlight and complete the spell.

It was quick for Glinda; I just used chloroform. It’s not going to be quick for anyone else.

I wake up just before the sun crests the horizon and check the bowl of ferret entrails. The objects I’d put in the bowl are humming softly. I pick up one of the buttons and immediately feel something large and bitter fill my stomach: a dose of my own anger. The spell worked and now I just need the vessels.

It had been easy picking out these four toys from all the ones Osmo’d had as a kid. They just need to be the ones he’d played with the most. The more love he’d poured into them, the more resentment they’d feel at being left behind. I take them from the basement and into the forest where we won’t be disturbed.

I sew a black button onto a macrame Luna moth our grandma made while she was in the hospital. Osmo used to swing it around by a string and pretend it was flying. I nail a button to the plastic triceratops that we used to bury and dig up in the flower bed. Another nail and button goes into the wooden girl puppet grandpa made that I’d splattered black paint on. Osmo cried for a day, then decided she was a witch who’d escaped from being burned at the stake and played with her as happily as ever. Guess who still got in trouble. 

The last button is sewn into a large stuffed bullfrog with a plastic gold crown attached to its head. It was Osmo’s favorite and the little freak would actually practice kissing it. 

I weave the tip of my staff between the effigies as I start my spell.

 “Take my anger and draw breath. Let your hearts beat and be real. Find me at midnight. Thgindim ta em dnif. Laer eb dna taeb straeh ruoy tel. Htaerb ward dna regna ym ekat.”

The staff, buttons, and eventually the toys themselves begin to glow in the dying afternoon light. It’s working. In a few hours, I’ll have my first followers.

The bushes behind me rustle and something squeaks from inside. I put down my staff just in time for Osmo to come through, holding a bag of ferret food and Glinda’s squeaky mailman toy. He passes a look between me and his old toys. If he sees the staff, he doesn’t say anything. Then he goes back to rustling the bag and squeaking the toy.

“You know Glinda’s probably dead by now, right?” I shout after him.

Osmo stops and turns to me. His eyes are still red from crying, but he looks angry. “Why are you desperate to hurt me, Lars? Do you think you’re funny or something?”

“I’m just telling you the truth. It’s not my fault you’re too much of a baby to handle it.”

He gives another look to the toys and snorts. “Whatever you say, Lars. We all stopped caring what you think a long time ago. And I’m sure as hell not afraid of you anymore. But if you’ve done anything to Glinda, I’m calling the police.” 

He goes back to searching for his pet, completely ignoring me. Like always. A few years ago, Osmo would have cried or yelled or something. We would have had some kind of fight, but now I guess he’s just too cool for me. 

Whatever. I gather up everything and head back. It won’t matter by tomorrow.  

I don’t bother sneaking on my way out of the house at 11 pm. Mom and Dad don’t even poke their heads out of their bedroom as I walk out the front door with my staff. They don’t ask me where I’m going or when I’ll be back or anything because they don’t care. Unless I’m my little brother or a ferret, no one cares.

I head to the school, the site of many of my humiliations and the first place my army is going to destroy. Maybe I’ll turn the remains into a work camp or a prison. I might even hold executions here. That’ll be a great way to let everyone know who’s in charge.

The moon is rising and I let my anger and bitterness rise with it. Glinda’s bones at the top of my staff start to glow and I know it’s only a matter of time. A part of me worries that they won’t be able to get here, but I push that part down. I smother it with my rage. And pretty soon after, I hear small footsteps behind me.

I turn to see the four toys in the empty lot, the buttons I’d attached glowing blue. The moth’s wings are actually carrying it in the air and the witch is floating a foot off the ground. The triceratops’s legs bend like a real animal’s and the bullfrog’s webbed, fabric feet make little squelching sounds. They aren’t just moving around, they’re becoming real.

“It worked,” I say, amazed. “It actually worked.”

I look over my little army. They aren’t the most imposing, but I can feel the power rolling off of them. Their shadows stretch out long and sharp on the asphalt, a chilling preview of what’s hiding in their soft bodies. Their power’s still growing and once we reach midnight, they’ll take on their real forms. Then the fun will really begin.

“And this is only the beginning,” I say to the four toys, standing at the ready. “We’ll find more allies. More outcasts and victims of abandonment. Thrown away toys like you and thrown away people like me. We’ll band together and finally we’ll be the ones in charge.”

“What does that mean?”

For a split second, I think someone’s snuck up on us. The toys hadn’t spoken and I wasn’t sure until now that they could. The one who’d spoken, the bullfrog, continues asking in a soft, low voice.

“How do we be ‘in charge’? What are we in charge of?” The stuffed creature cocks his head to the side as he thinks through his questions. The other toys seem confused, too. Do they really not understand what I summoned them for?

“We’ll be in charge of everything,” I clarify. “With my magic and your power, no one will be able to tell us what to do. We’ll be the one telling them.”

“What will we tell them to do?” the moth asks in a delicate voice. 

“Anything we want,” I say. The toys look unconvinced, which shouldn’t be a problem; they should be under my control. I grip my staff tighter. “I’ll run things a hundred times better than the idiots running it now. I’ll make better laws, I’ll punish anyone who ever hurt us, and I’ll make sure we all get the respect we deserve.”

The toys all share a look and the witch asks, “But how do we make people do what you want?” I’m not sure I like the emphasis she put on ‘you’. Do they want to be in charge? Can I stop them if they do? “Will they just let us do things?”

“No, we’re going to force them,” I say, getting annoyed. “We’ll threaten them and hurt them and make them do what we want. We’re going to be conquerors.” Maybe using toys wasn’t such a good idea; they probably don’t understand anything but playing and make-believe.

The plastic dinosaur squares himself, looks me in the eye, and says, “That sounds mean. I don’t want to do it.”

“Me, either,” the bullfrog croaks slowly while the moth on his head nods. “You’re not supposed to be in charge.”

“None of us are,” the witch says simply. “We’re toys.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I gave these things life and magic power and they don’t want to do anything mean? I point my staff and say, “You’re not toys anymore. You’re my creations and my army. I command you to obey.”

The ferret bones hum with blue light and the bowl of entrails bubbles murkily, but the toys are unmoved.

The bullfrog shrugs and asks, “Why should we? If we’re not toys anymore, why should we do what our owner says?”

“And you’re not our owner, anyway,” the moth says primly. “Osmo is.”

“Osmo abandoned you!” I shout. “He doesn’t want to play with you anymore! He left you in the basement because he doesn’t care about you! But I do want you. And I know what it feels like when no one wants you around or respects you. Work with me and we can have our revenge.”

The toys stay quiet for a second and I seek out the connection. If I can find the sense of abandonment that links their artificial existence with my will, then I can take control of them. But I don’t feel any anger from them. They all shake their heads, gently and pityingly.

“We were never abandoned, Lars,” the bullfrog says. “Osmo just grew up and didn’t need us anymore. And we’re proud that we were able to help him grow.”

“It’s just a shame no one could do the same for you,” the witch says with pity in her voice. 

“Help him grow? How, by playing make-believe?” I roll my eyes, but I can’t help but notice that the toys look a little…bigger than before. And they’re coming forward.

“We helped him feel better when you were picking on him,” the moth answered. She’s the size of the kite and her formerly macrame wings are spinning with mind-numbing designs.

“And when he was big enough to stand up to you, we gave him the courage to do that,” the dinosaur adds. His plastic body’s turned to hard, rocky scales and he lumbers forward at the size of a dog.

“We showed him that creativity and fun can make anything bearable, including living with you,” the now-human-sized witch sneers, letting her black and blonde hair coil like snakes as flames flicker off them.

By now, I’m backed up against the glass doors of the school, clutching my staff and silently begging it to work. A bus-sized bullfrog with a massive crown and golden warts edges closer, cutting off all escape.

“We gave him something to love, so that he could love something real when he was ready,” the frog croaks, letting swamp water gush from his lips. He turns his head and focuses one red eye on my staff. “Until you decided to take that away. I suppose our boy still needs a bit of our help.”

I drop my staff and try to run, but it’s pointless. I’m surrounded.

“If you weren’t so mean, people might want you around more,” the triceratops rumbles in a new, harsher voice. “At the very least, they’d probably miss you.”

“It’s a shame,” the moth says mournfully. “Osmo is going to be crushed. He really loved Glinda.”

The bullfrog and triceratops nod glumly, but the witch digs her claw into the sloppy, barely living mess of Lars. “Well, am I a witch or aren’t I? I’ll just bring her back.”

She pulls out Lars’s heart and pumps it until what was left of his life and soul squeezes out. Her long, delicate nails pluck off the soul, put it away, and put the life in the small bowl of organs. The moth spits out a few fine strands of silk that the witch uses to sew the ferret’s skin, bones, and entrails back together, taking bits and pieces from Lars when needed. 

“Let love fix what anger broke,” she hums, stroking the reassembled ferret. “Ekorb regna tahw xif evol tel.”

Once everything’s in place, the bullfrog puckers his gargantuan lips and kisses the tiny creature, calling her soul back to the world of the living.

“I love when I get to be the hero,” the witch cackles gleefully, holding tight to Glinda with one claw and tighter to Lars’s soul with another. “I think it’s time for us to go home. All of us.”  

I can’t see or hear very well during the day. A side-effect of having fabric for eyes and ears. I can twitch a little, but my new stuffed body doesn’t have muscles. I can feel, though. I can feel Glinda’s teeth and claws as she drags me around or buries me in her cage or tries to rip my limbs off. Whenever Mom or Dad or Osmo picks me up to toss me for Glinda can fetch, I try to yell for help. But they never hear me. 

The triceratops was right. They were delighted when Glinda scampered up the basement steps in the morning. But they barely mention me and they didn’t put a lot of effort into looking for me when I was declared missing. 

As bad as days are, nights are worse. I can see, hear, and move, but not speak. And the other four come alive, too. Sometimes, we stay inside and they force me to have tea parties or tow them around the basement in the wagon. If they’re in a good mood, we go outside so they can transform and chase me around. They let me be human for these chases, but they won’t let me die ever. They’re very clear about that.

“Toys aren’t supposed to die, Lars,” the bullfrog tells me when I beg them to let this end. “You’ll be playing with Glinda for the rest of her life. We’ll put you back together every night. And if they don’t bury you with her when she passes, you’ll have the four of us to play with. Forever.”

[stegrossaurus]

Yeti in the Basement

Yeti in the Basement

by Dolores

Mom and Dad brought home the monster in early September. They’d left earlier that day talking about a tip they’d received a while ago. A few hours later, the van had pulled into the garage and Mom had come upstairs to tell me to stay in my room and not look out the window. I’d done as I was told, but I could still hear them pushing something heavy and loud through the garage-basement door. They never said it was a monster, but I heard Mom tell Dad that the neighbors would freak out if they saw the ‘specimen’, so it had to be.

They’d brought home plants and animals and stuff before, but this was the first time it was something alive. They were really excited. Dad had said that it would make them rich and famous and that they’d be the first ones to prove it existed.

“Remember, Lolo, do not go into the basement for any reason,” Mom had said. I’d known the rules about the basement, but this time, she’d sounded really, extra serious. Maybe even a little scared. “No matter what you hear, don’t even open the door. Understand?”

The basement doors all had keypad locks on them, so I didn’t know why Mom was worried. But I’d promised not to go near the door.

That was months ago. Like Mom said, they are muffled noises coming from the basement door: zaps and hums from all the machines they bring down there and roars from the monster. The basement’s soundproofed, but I can still hear it when I’m in the kitchen. It’s scary and sometimes I feel sad for whatever’s down there, but Mom and Dad told me that they’re being as nice as possible to the monster and their work will help a lot of people. So I guess it’s okay, even if the roars sound like crying sometimes. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

They’ve both been working so hard on the specimen, that I don’t see them a lot. When I do see them, they’re a little grouchy. While I’m eating lunch in the kitchen, Dad stomps up the stairs and out of the basement, slamming the door behind him. He looks angry, so I guess whatever experiments he’s running didn’t work. He doesn’t even look at me as he goes to the fridge for a beer.

When he notices me, he asks, “Dolores, where’s your mother? Did she go to the store?” 

“I think she went to get more equipment,” I say. I don’t actually know where she went, but their lab in the city is the only place they’ve gone in weeks. 

Dad grumbles and sits down to drink. He doesn’t ask me how school’s going or why I has bruises on my arm or anything, they can get a little serious when they’re working, but for a while now they’ve been a little mean. I’m afraid to talk to him, but I try anyway.

“How are the experiments going, Daddy?”

His eyes narrow and he makes a sound like a growl. “Why do you want to know? Have you been spying on us?” His voice starts getting louder and he stands up.

“No, I was just curious,” I say quickly. “I wasn’t spying, I swear.”

“Good! Just stay out of this! Understand?” Dad storms down to the basement. I can hear him through the open door a little. “What are you laughing at? How about I get some of the big toys? Maybe you’ll think that’s funny, too!” He runs back upstairs, gets his coat, and heads for the door. “Your mom and I will be back late,” he says before leaving.

I should be sad that my parents spend so much time gone, but I’m actually relieved. They’ve been jerks for months now, everyone’s been. I was so happy to start third grade, but most of my classmates are bullies and I’ve got the bruises and stolen homework to prove it. Mrs. Buchannon’s no help, she either ignores us or is just as awful. The neighbor kids throw rocks and their parents threaten to call the police on me just for walking by their houses, so going for a walk is out. It’s gross outside anyway, it’s freezing cold, the sky’s solid gray like it’s trying to rain, the plants are all dying, and there’s roadkill everywhere. It’s like the whole world just decided to be trash all at once. I keep telling myself that it’ll all be worth it when my parents’ discovery makes us rich, but I’m not sure that I believe it anymore.

“This sucks. What is going on with people?” I mutter to myself. I don’t let myself cry, but I kind of want to. “I wish at least one person could stop acting like crap and just be a human being.” 

“Dolores?” a soft voice whispers. It’s so quiet, I’m surprised I can hear it, but it feels like it’s right in my ear. “Dolores? Do you want to come down here?” Suddenly, I realize that Dad never closed the basement door. “It’s okay, Dolores. You don’t have to answer now. The code for the keypad is 559345 in case you change your mind later.”

I don’t answer or close the door, I just run upstairs and lock myself in my room. How did it know my name? It probably overheard Dad when he was in the kitchen, I tell myself. But the door wasn’t open then. Had my parents just said it while they were down there? That was probably it. The rational explanation calmed me down a little. Even if it does know my name, it’s probably locked in a cage so it can’t hurt me. 

“So I guess I can go down there. For a bit.” The idea gives me chills. I’ve never had a chance to see their lab before and after them being pubes for so long, breaking their number one rule would be pretty sweet.

“Just a little peek,” I say as I go back to the kitchen. I’m whispering and tiptoeing as if there’s anyone to catch me. It makes everything feel more fun, like sneaking down for a late-night snack and hoping Mom and Dad don’t hear me.

I hold my breath as I open the basement door further and creep down the steps. The walls and ceiling are covered with metal and those zigzaggy tiles that Freddy’s dad has in his recording studio. There are hazmat suits and gas masks hanging on the stairway wall. The basement itself is full of machines that I can’t even guess the purpose of hooked up to the walls or to large computers. There are beakers full of foul smelling chemicals and a fridge cabinet with even more. Papers and folders are thrown around everywhere. All the grief they used to give me about keeping my room clean and they work in a pigsty. Then I hear the whispering again.

“That didn’t take very long, naughty girl. What would your parents think of you being here?” Uh oh. If the monster decides to tattle on me, Mom and Dad will kill me. But then the creature laughed, not a mean or sinister laugh, a friendly one. “Don’t worry, Lolo, I won’t tell. There’s nothing wrong with a little rule-breaking now and then, right? Now come closer and let me see you.”

I’m scared, but I came this far. Behind a row of the large computers is a big glass tube hooked up to a buzzing antenna. At first, I think the monster in the tube is just a blob of flesh, but when it shuffles around to see me, I can see that it’s human-shaped. Its head and the entire back of it are almost skeletal, with bones visible under tight skin and patchy white fur. But its neck, chest, stomach, and even the front-facing side of its bony limbs hang down in jelly-like droops like in those weight loss shows Mom likes. It lowers its ape-like face to me and stretches its mostly lipless mouth into a smile.

“Hello, Dolores.” Its mouth barely moves but I can hear it perfectly.

“Hi, Mr. Monster,” I say as bravely as I can. I’m not sure what else to say so I just ask the question that’s been on my mind. “What are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“What do you think I am?” it asks, cocking its head. “I’m sure you’ve heard of me. Your parents found me near the mountains and captured me while I was sleeping. I was too weak in the summer to fight them off and they’ve used that to keep me weak ever since.” It points to the antenna, giving off a heat haze as it buzzes noisily. “Any ideas?”

I think for a minute. A large, white furred mountain creature that doesn’t like heat and was already well-known? Then it hits me. “You’re a Yeti! You were hibernating in the summer just like bears hibernate in the winter! Am I right?” The monster smiles. “Everyone thinks you’re a myth. No wonder Mom and Dad were so excited to find you.” The Yeti fidgets and his gray eyes narrow. Of course, they didn’t just find him, they kidnapped him and have been holding him here for months. “I’m sure they’ll let you go once they finish their tests and prove you exist.”

“Sweet Dolores,” the Yeti says softly. “Your parents are trying to vivisect me. They’ve tried scanning me with every machine they have and they haven’t found what they’re after. Now they’re starving me hoping that my body will become fragile enough for them to cut open.” Vivisect is starting to sound like a bad thing.

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Yeti,” I say as nicely as I can. What else do you say to someone your parents are torturing? “Everyone’s been acting like monsters lately, but I didn’t think they’d hurt another person.”

The Yeti smiles again. “You still see me as a person? You’re such a good girl, Dolores. You don’t deserve the way your parents treat you any more than I do. And please, call me Nick.”

After being ignored and snapped at for so long, it feels nice to hear that. “You’re a good person, too, Nick. And you shouldn’t be locked up here.”

I try and fail to open the tube or shut down the antenna, and after that, I promise to visit him whenever I can until I can set him free. With Mom and Dad out of the house a lot and Nick’s sharp ears and nose to tell me when they were coming back, I have plenty of chances. Mrs. Buchannon lets us out early a lot and doesn’t show up almost as much, so school’s not much of an issue, either. My parents sometimes leave money for pizza or takeout, but sometimes I go to the store to buy the sweets Nick likes. 

“You went to the store today? I thought it was too dangerous to go outside,” the Yeti says as I open the little hatch at the base of the tube and slide a cookie in.

“I’ll be fine. The neighbor kids have pretty bad aim,” I say, hiding a new bruise on my arm. “And it’s nothing compared to being stuck in a tube for months. I can handle a few bullies.” 

And I do. I start riding my bike faster and dodging rocks better and, if I get cornered by older kids who want what’s in my shopping bag, hitting and biting harder, too. It doesn’t always work; I still get hit or have my groceries stolen sometimes. But each time, I do a little better and I feel a little prouder. I feel like I found a part of me that’s been missing for months. I didn’t realize that the weird gloominess was affecting me, too, but now I feel like a fog is lifting. 

And it’s not just my fog, either.

“Mrs. Buchannon actually assigned some homework today,” I tell Nick after the first full day of school I’ve had in a while. “And one of the bullies on the way home told his friend that I wasn’t worth it. That’s what jerks say when they want an excuse not to be jerks. It’s like people are getting back to normal.”

“Goodness is contagious, Dolores,” Nick says happily. “The braver and kinder you are, even when it’s hard, the easier it will be for you and everyone else to do.” He’s gotten a lot better in the week and a half we’ve known each other. He can stand up a little straighter, his fur is starting to grow, and his rolls are filling out.

The world outside the basement seems a little brighter, too. The sky’s still gray and the trees are still bare, but something about it seems less scary and creepy. Maybe it’s the neighbors being a bit nicer or maybe it’s just that missing piece thatI’d found.

Unfortunately, Mom and Dad’s gloominess seems to still be in place. They barely talk to me and spend all of their time at the lab downstairs or the one in the city. They’re still crabby and they haven’t given up on chopping up Nick.

“Are we sure the scrambler’s working?” I overhear Dad say one night. He and Mom are in the living room, too focused on their work to notice me on the stairs. “He’s getting stronger.”

“I can see that,” Mom snaps. “If he breaks out, he’ll kill us. But if we just knock him out and release him in the mountains, maybe he won’t remember the way back. He’ll go back to his life–”

“And our funding and credibility goes down the drain. We need to get something out of this. I say we take him to the main lab. Even if they can’t break him, at least we’ll still get the credit for finding him so this’ll all have been worth something.”

After a minute, Mom agrees. “Maybe we can even find a way to let him escape. He’ll kill all the other scientists while we sneak out the back. Then we’ll definitely get all the credit.”

They start laughing like supervillains, sending chills up my spine. They’re talking about tricking Nick into murdering people like it’s a game they’re winning. I go back up to my room and start planning. I need to get Nick out of here before they do.

By the next day, the only idea I can think of is to just get an ax from the garage and cut the antenna’s cable. The cable’s bolted to the wall and I don’t think I can break the tube or the antenna with the ax, so cutting it’s my best shot. Then he’ll be strong enough to break out on his own and I can replace the broken cable with an unbroken one from the storage closet, so Mom and Dad won’t know I did anything.

When it’s time for me to go to school, I sneak back into the garage to swipe the ax, then I wait by the basement back door for Mom and Dad to leave. But the front door doesn’t open and the cars never start. I’d gotten so used to my parents leaving every day, I didn’t think that they’d stick around. I wait for almost a half-hour before I hear something in the garage. I peek in through the garage window and see Mom and Dad doing something in the back of the van. There are large gas tubes by the basement door. 

They’re going to bring Nick to the main lab today! If he’s asleep then breaking the cable won’t matter. I have to hurry!

My nerves start jangling as I punch in the code for the basement back door. If I do this, there’s no way that I’d get away with it. Mom and Dad will be furious and I don’t know what they’ll do to me. I hesitate, but then I remember what Nick told me. Being brave and kind even when it was hard made the world a little better. I just need to be really brave.

“I can do this. I’m coming, Nick!”

I burst through the door just as Mom and Dad come in through the garage. I go straight for the cable and swing the ax. Either the cable’s too tough, the ax is too blunt, or I’m too weak because the first hit isn’t enough. Mom and Dad drop the tubes and run for me.

“Dolores, what the hell are you doing?”

“Put that ax down and step away!”

“No, you get away!” I shout, brandishing the ax. I don’t know if I’d be able to actually use it on my own parents, but I had to keep them away. “I’m helping Nick get out of here! And you can’t stop me!”

“Nick? Dolores, this thing is–” Mom pauses and realizes something. “You’ve been feeding him, haven’t you?” 

“Dolores, this creature is tricking you,” Dad says, inching closer. “He’s manipulating your mind.  The scrambler stops him but not at close range. Whatever he told you, he’s just trying to get out.”

“And once he gets out, he’ll hurt you and everyone else,” Mom adds, also tiptoeing forward. “Sweetheart, trust us. We’re your parents.”

Could they be right? They seemed to think that he’d kill the other scientists and there are many stories of Yetis becoming very violent. But Mom and Dad were willing to kill people, too. So which one do I trust? I look at Nick, but he doesn’t say anything. He just looks back at me and waits for me to make a decision. As Mom and Dad lunge, I make it.

Again I swing the ax and again the cable doesn’t break. Mom grabs me around the waist and Dad wrestles the ax from my hands. I failed. I tried to do the right thing and I failed. Now they’re going to take Nick to the lab and starve him all over again until they can kill him.

“Dolores, I know it doesn’t seem like it, but this is for everyone’s good!” Mom shouts as I try to get free.

“‘Everyone’s good’? How nice of you!” Nick booms, louder than I’d ever heard him. We all stop struggling and look at his tube and the rapidly growing Yeti inside. “And I thought you were just interested in your own good. I’ll have to update my list.” 

Nick’s flabby body quickly fills with muscle, but mostly fat. His bony ape-like face plumps out to a warm, friendly, bearded human appearance. He shoves out his arms and the glass tube shatters in a burst of frigid wind. Mom covers me with her body as frosted shards of glass rain down. 

I hear Nick’s footsteps as he makes his way over to one of the cabinets, but I barely notice. Those missing pieces that I’ve been rediscovering suddenly come back in full force. They feel like gingerbread and peppermint and snowmen. I can feel wrapping paper tearing in my hands and see evergreen trees filled with lights and hear hoofbeats landing in the snow. I don’t think I forgot any of this, really, I just couldn’t…feel it. But now it’s all back and when I pull myself away from Mom, I can completely see who’s pulling on the big red coat from inside the cabinet.

“Santa?”

Nick looks at me with a twinkle in his eye. Mom steps in front of me and Dad holds up the ax, but Santa Claus just smiles and holds out his hand. He squeezes his fist like he’s crushing a can and then something cracks loudly behind us. We turn and see the antenna lying broken and frosted on the ground.

“Kindness, bravery, and the faith that it will all be worth it in the end,” Santa says. “That’s what I give to the world and that’s what I receive in return. Especially at this time of year. But that scrambler stopped it from reaching me.” He takes a deep breath like a man who almost drowned and his body and beard fill out even more. The twinkle in his eye grew as he looked directly at me. “But you, my sweet Lolo, were willing to stand up to your parents to do what you knew was right. You have my thanks.” Then his eyes and voice turn icy as he turns his gaze to Mom and Dad. “You two will have my boot in your—”

“Santa, wait!” I shout. My parents cringe back a bit, but still try to put themselves in between me and him. “Please, don’t hurt my parents. It wasn’t their fault. The scrambler stopped them from feeling your kindness and stuff. You said so yourself.”

“They set the scrambler up, dear,” Santa says gently. “And someone has to pay for the three months I spent in that tube. You think I want to explain to Mrs. Claus how I disappeared on our vacation?”

“It wasn’t personal,” Dad rasps, clenching the ax so tightly his knuckles are bone-white. “We got a tip about the resort, but we didn’t know it’d be you until—” Dad’s words catch in his throat and nothing but white frost comes out of his mouth.

“I’ll be having a talk with Krampus about his pranks, believe me,” Santa says sternly. “As for the two of you… I suppose I can’t leave your little girl orphaned. She doesn’t deserve that.” He scratches his beard for a second. Then he gets another twinkle in his eye, a darker one. “How do you two feel about working off your debt?”

That was a week ago. Christmas break starts tomorrow and Nick (he still wants me to call him that) says I can stay at the mountain resort he and Mrs. Claus go to every summer until school starts again. Mrs. Buchannon tried to make this week as fun and educational as possible to make up for the last few months, but I think a few weeks off will do everyone some good.

I see a few scant decorations on my way home as people suddenly start caring about Christmas again. I can smell gingerbread and hear a few Christmas songs and just feel the holiday spirit in the air. I think by New Years, everything will be back to normal.

When I get home, Miss Judy, the elf Nick sends over some days, has made me some cookies to eat as we wait for Santa to come pick me up for the resort.

“Do you think Mr. Nick would let me visit the North Pole?” I ask Miss Judy. I’m careful not to mention Dad, since I’m sure she and all the other elves are still mad at him, but she sees through me.

“Don’t worry about your father, dear,” she says with just a hint of wickedness. “The other elves will be sure he has plenty of work to do in the factory. Ah, here comes your mother and Mr. Claus now.”

In a flurry of snow, a sleigh towed by a team of reindeer lands in my backyard. I’m not sure which one is Mom, so I say hi to all of them as I run to Nick for a hug.

“I know Christmas without your parents will be a little rough, Lolo,” Nick says as we take off. One of the reindeer moos irritably but doesn’t break ranks. “But don’t worry. Mrs. Claus will be at the resort if you need anything and I’ll swing by on Christmas. And maybe your parents, too, if they’ve worked hard enough.”

“I’m not worried, Nick,” I say, trying to be brave. It’s a little scary and I know Mom and Dad have a lot of hard work to do making up for the next few Christmases they almost ruined, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end.

[stegrossaurus]

Capes and Cowls

Capes and Cowls

by Lyle

Arty was a great friend when we were little kids. We met in kindergarten and clicked in that way that only little kids do. I think he’s the one that got me into superheroes. We spent the next few years with paper masks on our faces and towels tied around our necks playing in my backyard. 

I’d like to say that I don’t know why we grew apart, but I know it was mostly on me. Still liking superheroes and comics and whatnot is fine, but at a certain point, wearing a domino mask to school and publicly geeking out about the new Superman movie stops being cute. His ill-fitting hand-me-downs, perpetually broken glasses, and greasy hair didn’t make him any more popular. It wasn’t Arty’s fault that his family was poor, I know. But the fact is, you’re only as safe as you make yourself and when you cut off deadweight, you can run from a bear a lot faster. So when Arty and I graduated to high school, I left him behind. 

“Oh God. Arby’s Olsen is sitting right next to us,” Sheila hissed not-so-quietly to us at lunch. We called him Arby’s because he was greasy and undesirable. Not the most clever of nicknames, but it was nasty enough that we used it anyway. “I can smell him from here. Is he even allowed in the lunchroom?”

“Well, there goes my diet,” Yumi sighed loudly. “I can already taste the food getting greasier.”

 Parker flicked a fry at the neighboring table, hitting Arty in the head. “Hey, greaseball! If you're going to be here, you could at least take a shower first!”

The rest of the popular kids laughed. I’m not proud to admit that I did, too, but like I said, you’re only as safe as you make yourself. I don’t want to make things worse for Arty but I want things to get worse for me even less. I tried to avoid looking in my former friend’s direction, but when I couldn’t resist and turned my head, I saw his thick glasses aimed at me. Then he got up and walked over to our table.

At 5’2” with chopstick limbs, Arty didn’t cut a very intimidating figure. But he walked with enough confidence that we all quieted down as he approached. He paused at my seat for a second then pushed by me to get to Parker.

“You dropped this,” he said, flicking the fry in Parker’s face.

In all the years of Arty being picked on, I don’t think I’d ever seen him retaliate. Parker’s stunned face told me that he hadn’t, either. Unfortunately, he wasn’t stunned enough to stop him from grabbing Arty by the throat and tossing him to the ground. He gave Arty a few sharp kicks, while the rest of the kids cheered. I didn’t join in, but guilt burned in my chest as I watched.

Arty managed to pull himself to a sitting position and gave me another glare, his eyes wet but sharp behind his thick glasses.

“Not gonna help me up, Black Drac?” he wheezed. “Some hero you are.” He didn’t sound disappointed, though. As the lunch monitor hauled him away for “fighting”, he was smiling.

“Black Drac? What the hell was that dweeb talking about, Lyle?” Yumi asked.

It was the favorite of the superhero identities that we’d made when we were kids. Black Drac, the vampiric vigilante, and Zodiac Man, master of the 12 powers. Of course, I didn’t tell them that. I just said, “No idea. All that family moonshine must have gone to his brain.” Everyone laughed and I tried to join in, but the guilt burned hotter when I did. 

And it didn’t stop there. When Parker tripped a few freshmen in the hallway and I laughed, the burning came back. When Yumi showed off the bracelet she stole from a classmate and I complimented her, it came back again. At the end of the day, when Bart and Parker shook down some nerds to do our homework for us, it happened once again. But this time, Arty popped up behind me.

“You could intervene, you know,” he said, almost smugly. “It’d be the right thing to do.”

Bart, Parker, and even the kids we were bullying looked at me expectantly. Arty was right, of course, I could intervene and it would be the right thing to do. Instead, I shoved Arty to the ground.

“And you could take a shower for once, Arby’s!” I snapped. I thrust my math homework at the nerds and said, “If this doesn’t get an A tomorrow, you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

I walked off without looking back, hoping that sent the right message to Arty and the others. Almost immediately, the burning sensation came back with a vengeance. It hurt so bad, I wouldn’t have been able to walk home if it had lasted more than a minute. The first thing I did when I caught home was check the mirror. I pulled my shirt down and I saw it: a blackening, green-tinged lump of raised flesh in the clear shape of a V. Far from faint or invisible but not quite to disfiguring or concerning levels. If I’d had an explanation for it, I wouldn’t have been worried. But I didn’t have an explanation, not for the bruise of the burning that I’d felt all day.

It didn’t take a genius to grasp how it worked, though. Watching my friends do something nasty made it burn a little, doing something nasty myself made it burn a lot. And the fact that it started happening after Arty pushed by me to get to Parker wasn’t lost on me, either.

For a half hour, I tried ice packs and antibiotics to make the bruise go down, but nothing looked like it was working. I knew I was just stalling. Arty had done something to me and I needed to know what. Steeling myself, I decided to go visit Arty.

I didn’t want anyone I knew seeing me entering the trailer park, so I went through the forest. His family’s trailer was right on the edge of the property, so I could easily go from the trees to his front door, mostly unseen. Walking through the forest brought a wave of nostalgia as I remembered all the fun we had playing there. Arty’s parents were pretty harsh and mine were pretty controlling, even back then, so the forest is where we spent most of our time. Not for the first time, I started to regret cutting him off, but I shut that thought down.

“It’s not my fault that Arty never grew up and it’s not my fault that his family’s trash,” I said softly to myself. “He was deadweight and I cut him loose.” The second those words were out of my mouth, the V started to burn. It was really starting to hurt.

While gritting back the pain, I heard something through the trees. It sounded like a blowtorch flaring up and it went down just as the pain did. As quietly as I could, I crept through the bushes towards the noise. 

I recognized the clearing a split-second before it came into view. It was one of our favorite spots. The large boulder at one end was always our superhero HQ (or Pride Rock or Arctic fortress or whatever) and the shallow, rocky ditch on the other was the bad guy’s lair. 

Both of those areas were smeared with blood. The boulder had a large H painted on it surrounded by other smaller bloody drawings, and the ground around it was littered with bones. The ditch had a V painted in the center of the dying grass and flyblown entrails everywhere else. One of the rocks had a single black candle with a sickly green flame stuck to it. That unnatural fire somehow commanded more of my attention than the gore around me. Until another blowtorch hiss came from the boulder and I turned to see a blue flame rising out of a red candle that I hadn’t noticed before. Then I heard something else, a loud crunch of wood and stone as something large started coming closer through the trees.

On second thought, I decided to confront him at school the next day.

The bruise was still there when I woke up and it only got worse by lunch. Helping Bart sell his brother’s meds to burnouts. Setting up a prank for the pep rally with Parker. Taunting the special needs kids with Sheila. Giving Yumi the idea to blackmail her history teacher with some doctored photos. Every time the pain came back. I knew I should have stopped, but I couldn’t find a way to do it without wimping out in front of my friends. Still, I was swiftly caring less and less about that as the pain grew and by lunch, I had no problem leaving them to go corner Arty.

“Whatever you did, make it stop, Arty,” I said, once I’d dragged him to a quiet corner.

“You make it stop, Lyle,” he sneered smugly. “If you stop being garbage for 24 hours, the mark will disappear. Of course, it’ll come back if you start up again, but at least it’ll reset.”

I was about to ask what he meant before I remembered how the bruise worsens with each act. I checked on it before lunch. It was close to pitch black and the green veins were almost glowing. If I stopped being a bully for a day, according to Arty, it’d go back to the start, but wouldn’t really go away.

“I’m not being garbage. You’re just being too sensitive,” I snapped. “Are you seriously willing to kill me just because I won’t play Power Rangers in the backyard with you anymore?”

“You abandoned me for those scumbags,” Arty hissed. “And now, you’re the same as them: just a piece of crap that deserves to be punished. And you know that, don’t you?” His smirk came back. “That’s why you just sit back and watch when your new friends are being turds. You think it’ll keep your hands clean.”

“I’m just adapting!” I shout. “I didn’t want to ditch you, but this was the only way to get through life. My parents, the kids at school; none of them would have left me alone if I stayed your friend. I did it to keep myself safe. And you obviously know that or I’d see you sticking up for people like you seem to think I should do. Don’t act like you’re any better than me.”

We stood in silence for a bit. Then he nodded solemnly.

“So will you stop this?” I asked again.

“I’ll undo it after school. Just behave until then. Your candle’s almost melted down so I know you’re getting close.”

“Will this kill me if it keeps going?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

Arty’s watery gray eyes lit up. “So glad you asked. Come with me, Black Drac, I want to show you something.” 

He wandered into a stairwell, digging through his backpack. He smiled wanly as he yanked down his shirt with one hand and pulled a stretch of fabric free of the backpack with the other. On his chest was a deep red and blue-veined bruise in the shape of an H. In his hand was a big leather cloth crudely stitched together. The back of the cloth was red fabric except for a rougher part towards the top where Arty was holding it.

“I made part of it with my old towel cape,” he said, wrapping what I then realized was a cape around his shoulders. “The rest is made from my parents’ old curtain and my parents.”

It took me a second to process what he said and a second more to take in that the leather parts of the cape were surprisingly flesh toned. In those seconds, Arty’s thin, short, weak body changed. His Martian Manhunter shirt turned to indigo form-fitting fabric, which immediately ripped under the weight of fur-covered muscle. His sneakers became combat boots that tore around prehistoric reptilian hooves. Avian claws ripped out of leather gloves. His gruesome cape strained as his shoulders separated to make room for the 12 monstrous heads, most of which were wearing domino masks.

“Say hello to Zodiac Man,” the pig, tiger, rabbit, and snake heads said at once. The dragon head laughed cruelly and the baboon head screeched hungrily. The massive ox head extended its thick neck to give my head a sniff. All of his eyes glowed with blue fire. “Doesn’t last long. But once I have my villain, it’ll be permanent.”

“Villain?” I whispered. I was too scared to even try running. I slowly raised a hand to the V blooming under my shirt.

The rat and rooster heads nodded while the dog and horse heads said, “Well, yeah, every hero needs a villain or we’re just weirdos in spandex.” He thoughtfully stroked the ram head’s chin and said, “Dead parents help an origin story, too. You used to know things like that, Lyle. But you were right.” His voices grew pensive. “I’ve been more focused on getting back at you than I have in being a hero. And you were just trying to survive. You’re not my enemy, Lyle, and I don’t want you for my villain. I want you for my partner.”

As promised, the 12-headed nightmare in front of me shrank back down to my former best friend a few seconds later. He left me in the stairwell with a promise to remove my candle after school. I didn’t join in anymore bullying for the rest of the day. I never felt good about being a bully, but after talking with Arty, I wasn’t sure what to feel.

I thought a lot about what Arty had said and what it meant before the bell rang. His parents were always hurting him in one way or another and they thought our friendship was making him “fruity”, so I couldn’t say I’d miss them. My own parents only talked to me when they wanted to tell me how disappointing I was and they thought our friendship was holding me back. Probably wouldn’t miss them, either. I kept that thought with me as I went to the clearing.

Art was there chiseling off the black candle with a knife. Once it came loose, I immediately felt a heat extinguish on my chest. When he saw me, he smiled and walked forward, holding the knife and the old gray towel that Black Drac wore.

We talked for a while about what it meant to be a hero (strength, bravery, dead parents, cool costumes) and a villain (cruelty, selfishness, greed, cool costumes).  How hard it is to sew skin to cloth and how bones would make great helmets. How villains are designed to lose no matter how powerful they are. He never told me how he made all this happen (I still don’t think even he knows), but it was fun talking to him after years of trying to shut him out. When I went home for the night, it was with the knife.

The following week was rough. Lying to the police about my parents’ disappearance was a one-time thing; there’s no way they’ll believe the business trip excuse a second time. Rekindling my friendship with Arty meant a fair bit of bullying for both of us but it’ll be worth it.  The ditch’s black candles far outnumber the boulder’s two red ones (all it takes is a touch from either of us), but Arty told me not to worry.

“Every new villain just makes us stronger,” he said. “Remember, villains always lose.”

And so here we are at the school pep rally. The laxatives Parker put in the cheerleaders’ drinks start to take effect at the same time the brown dye-packs hidden in the marching band instruments go off. An overhead projector starts playing footage captured from cameras he’d hidden in the bathrooms and the crowd erupts into laughter and taunts. Followed quickly by yelps of pain as over twenty people, both students and faculty, rub their chests and start choking.

“It’s happening, bud,” Arty says excitedly. “A lot at once, look like. Capes and cowls, quick!”

We pull our gear out of our backpacks. The cowls made from scalps and skulls were my idea. We put them on and start our transformation just as our villains start theirs. In all honesty, we’re just as monstrous and frightening as they are, but there’s something sickly about them. The fur under Parker’s ragged spandex is patchy and mangy. Sheila’s six buglike limbs look too frail and skeletal to hold her laser guns properly. Yumi’s second and third heads are practically vestigial, so only her main head has a psychic enhancer helmet. Bart actually shrank a bit as his body broke out in warts and was covered with a bloody lab coat. Compared to them, my thick midnight fur, upturned snout full of fangs, and massive leathery wings look gorgeous.

The villains start attacking the normals who haven’t run away yet. I adjust my skull mask, now transformed to match my new face, and summon ectoplasmic energy to my claws. Zodiac Man readies his cosmic sword and levitates into the air.

“Good to fight alongside you again, Black Drac,” his dragon head shouts over the din.

“Same, Zodiac Man,” I rasp. “It’s good to feel like a hero again. Now let’s have some fun.”

[stegrossaurus]

Gramma Spoonbender

Gramma Spoonbender

by Silas

“Is this really me?”

The creature in front of me was a giant, ragged old woman in a torn back dress with a sapphire in the middle of her forehead and a large golden spoon in her right claw. The real old woman next to me was cracking up.

“It’s what you’d look like as a monster,” 10-year-old me said confidently. “Gramma Spoonbender! Look, her brain gem has a spiral in it just like your tattoo. And she has a gold spoon like your necklace. And look, a monkey like the one you used to have!” I pointed to the crudely drawn monkey head popping out of the hag’s hump. “He grows out of her back like a Surinam toad!”

Grandma clapped with delight and laughed at her monstrous doppelganger. The lake water bubbled a bit in time with her laughter. Water did that sometimes around Grandma.

“Well, I hope I’m a nice monster,” Grandma said.

“You are,” I assured her. “You only kill the mean ones.”

She laughed again and gave me a hug. “That’s a relief. Your Grandpa’d never let me live it down if I was a mean one.” She let the golden spoon necklace that Grandpa gave her orbit around her fingers and looked pensively at the monster’s spoon. “Gramma Spoonbender. Much better than Levitating Luna.”

Her stage name was the one part of her time in the circus that she didn’t remember fondly.The lake was her favorite part. It’s where she met Grandpa after she joined. It’s where he gave Grandma her necklace, her pet monkey, and her powers. I never told her that the lake creeped me out with its too-blue water and icy stillness. It reminded me of a glass-colored jellyfish with something rotting inside. It was better when Grandma bubbled it, so making her laugh when we went to visit it was always a good idea.

 “Seriously, Silas, you have a talent,” Grandma said. “Taking something strange and ugly and making people love and appreciate it is a gift. Your Grandpa had it and I can see so much of him in you. So you keep doing it, understand?”

I nodded proudly. Grandpa Morris died when Mom was a year old, so everything I know of him is second-hand. His parents immigrated from Italy and were very religious, so they wouldn't have approved of their son working as a sideshow purveyor. Mom never appreciated my monster drawings much, either, so knowing that I had this in common with Grandpa gave me a sense of kinship.

“I’ll be just like Grandpa when I grow up,” I said with the certainty of a 10 year old. “I’ll make a bunch of monsters and show them to everyone in a wagon just like Grandpa did.” 

I immediately started on some plans for a giant wagon. It needed to be large enough to hold all the taxidermied and pickled fake monster parts I was going to somehow create, so dragon steeds to carry it were a must. And all the while, Grandma laughed and bubbled the water with her mind.

When she died 8 years later, it hit my Mom and me very hard. Mom wasn’t extremely close to her for a variety of reasons, but that just makes it harder. Being the daughter of two circus performers must have been hard for her, and inheriting her father's looks instead of his powers can't have made it easier. I'd like to think Grandma understood when Mom had plastic surgery when she was 18, but I also think it drove a wedge between them.

They found her necklace in the hand of the robber, having been knocked out by a frying pan from the kitchen several feet away. It was too late to stop him from stabbing her, though, and so I lost the person who encouraged and appreciated me all my life. I thought Mom would want to keep it, but she insists I have it.

“I know how close you were to your Grandma, Sye,” she says softly. “I think you should have it.”

I stroke the golden spoon as Mom walks through the empty house. I try to pretend I don’t hear the crying but since I’m crying, too, it doesn’t quite work. 

Putting on the necklace makes me feel a little better and I tell Mom that I’d like to go for a walk. Thinking about Grandma as my feet move, I quickly find myself heading for the lake. I consider turning around, but I keep going. The lake meant a lot to her and I figure I owed it to her to be there for a bit.

I still don’t like the lake; even in my melancholy it just looks wrong. From my angle, its shape reminds me of a lion’s head and the shapes underneath with the reflections on top come together to make a terrifying face. Nevertheless, I sit on our favorite bench and try to feel some part of my grandmother in the place where she had her happiest moments. "I hope you and Grandpa are happy where you are," I say to the lake, hoping she can hear me. "I wish I could just…" Have you back? Hug you again? Show you how much you mean to me? I'm not sure, I just want to do something.

I squeeze the golden spoon necklace and remember her story of how Grandpa gave it to her. “We’d been dating and working together for a year when he took me to the lake to ask me a question,” Grandma had said. “He wanted my hand in marriage and he offered his powers as dowry. At first, I thought it was some kind of mutant tradition, but really, your grandfather never liked his powers. His parents had him thinking they came from a bad place. He thought they’d be safer with me. So he slipped that necklace around my neck and I felt a doorway open in my brain. And Levitating Luna (ugh, still hate that name) was born.” 

I hold the spoon and try to find that door in my own brain. I try to make the leaves float or the water bubble or something. But instead of any of that, I have an idea.

"Grandma, I know you kept my old drawings," I say, squeezing the necklace. "And I have a project coming up for my digital art class. I think I could recreate them. Maybe make a book or something."

It could just be the excitement, but I start to feel something strange. Something that makes me feel something warm and wet on the back of my ribs. It feels familiar and as it settles on my heart, my sadness starts to lift. When you grow up with a psychic grandmother, you learn not to ignore these feelings. But it can't really be… 

As if sensing my thoughts, the lake water starts to bubble. Was that me? Or…

"Grandma?" The water bubbles more forcefully. It starts to froth a little. "It's you, isn't it? Don't worry, Grandma, you'll love it, I promise. And so will you, Grandpa."  

I run away from the bubbling lake happier than I’ve been in weeks. I go back to Grandma’s house, tell Mom about my idea, and ask if I can go through some of Grandma’s stuff. I think my excitement is contagious, but Mom perks up a bit at the sound of my project.

“Sye, that sounds like a great idea. I know Grandma loved your monster art.” Her tone darkens a bit, but only for a second. “I think she would have wanted you to do something with it. She kept a bunch of mementos and stuff in the closet. Maybe you’ll find them in there.” The water glass in her hand bubbles a bit and she smiles softly.

After a bit of searching in the closet, I find a large box of photo albums and circus mementos. Posters for the Astounding, Mind-Bending Levitating Luna are rolled up with flyers for Quasi-Morris's Wagon of Oddities. A young woman with a spiral tattoo on her forehead danced with a muscular man whose face looked like it was carved (badly) out of wood in the photos.

Eventually, I find a thick portfolio of my childhood drawings. Gramma Spoonbender's snaggletoothed face greets me as I open the cover.

"This is going to be so much fun."

I start with the Church Worms, ghostly aquatic worms that harmlessly and invisibly inhabit holy places. I design them and Photoshop their image into a photo of the local church.

Normally incapable of (and uninterested in) eating anything. But if a red-haired young person is buried or given funeral rites on their territory, they might attempt to inhabit and animate the corpse as a vampire.

I'd decided to make it a sort of field guide, with notes and theories and diagrams. I figure that'll be more fun than just pictures. I move on to the Vileoraptors, large ugly raptors with rare flowers and fungi growing in the cracks of their branch-like limbs.

I believe they have a connection to the local fae, given that they are found near fae territories in the woods. Fair folk have been known to use transmogrification as punishment and the iron collar that they seem desperate to remove could support my theory. Meat dipped in milk may dissuade one from attacking me so I can remove the collar while it is eating my companion.

I place a bug-headed creature with octopus suckers on its four insect arms and its strong kangaroo legs near a photo of the lake.

Blue Bloodhoney Bugs are strong but slow swimmers that prefer to hunt on land at night. Squeezing their prey creates a chemical change that transmutes blood and organs into a honey-like substance that the Bug eats. They have ignored any of my test subjects that I've doused with bug spray, sunscreen, make-up, or anything else that irritates their suckers.

I stretch out a lion image to painfully human proportions, give it glowing red eyes and a sharp smile, and have it scale up my dorm building to my window.

The Broken Lion can be summoned to our world through a simple ritual. Dig a shallow puddle as close to a lion’s face as possible and use 13 sharp rocks to fill in a smile. Allow it to fill with rainwater naturally and bleed into it while saying ‘Take what’s mine and come to find this world of fools and upright swine’. The Lion will come the following night and might attack any one person of the summoner’s choosing. It cannot be controlled, however, and may attack anyone it pleases before it decides to go back.

And, of course, a feral, simian hag with a savage baboon head growing out of her hump, a golden spoon in her hairy hand, and a sapphire in the middle of her forehead. Her entry is next to one for a large wagon with thick, scaly flesh interwoven with the wood and a set of legs instead of wheels.

In the 40s, a group at the local university purchased many monkeys and later orphans, using them as bait for monsters and test subjects for psychic experiments, eventually creating a psychic gestalt called Gramma Spoonbender. Clearly born out of the test subjects’ need for a nurturing figure, Gramma Spoonbender’s presence awakens psychic powers, allowing the subjects to survive the brutal experiments. She was reported to kill and eat other monsters, but never humans. Thus, the eventual deaths of the group must have been from the empowered children or her companion, Grandpa Sideshow.

It’s the most fun I’ve had with an assignment and I think it shows in the work. With every monster I bring back to life, my heart surges and any water in the room bubbles. Of all the powers I could have gotten, mediumship isn’t my favorite, but it’s growing on me. 

The rest of the class loves the field guide and I’m pretty sure an A is incoming. When one of my classmates asks me which is my favorite, I say Gramma Spoonbender and Grandpa Sideshow. When I return the question, she says, “The Broken Lion. I’ve always been a cat per–”

BLAAMM!

A sound like a gunshot echoed through the room and everyone jumped to their feet. Our eyes raced from the door to the windows before we realized it was the instructor’s water bottle. The bottom of the plastic had practically exploded, spraying water all over her desk. We all calm down after we realize we aren’t in danger, but my nerves are still tense. Like I said, I know not to ignore certain feelings and now I’m beginning to wonder if Grandma’s as happy with this project as I thought she was. 

By nighttime, I’d mostly forgotten about the incident. But not entirely. Nothing like that had happened after my digital art class, but then again no one had mentioned the book after that. Or the Broken Lion. I’d based it off of the lake, with its lion-mane shape and its otherworldly stillness. I never liked the lake much, and the way Grandma’s spirit acted, maybe she liked it less than I’d thought. 

I squeeze my necklace and wonder for the first time if Grandma’s spirit is really here or I was bubbling the water. I try to sense Grandma’s presence, bubble a glass of water, or levitate a chair with and without the necklace on. I focus all of my mental energy through the spoon until I hear something rattle outside my window.

Something big.

I scooch closer to the edge of the window, tense my legs to bolt to the door, and carefully edge the blinds away from the glass. After stealing glances at the lawn, sidewalk, and trees outside for about a minute, I can conclude that I may have overreacted. I open the blinds fully and tell myself that there's nothing out there.

"Besides, it hasn't rained in weeks," I say to myself. "No one could have summoned it."

I keep hearing something outside the window that sounds like claws lightly scraping something and hungry wheezing. I should turn away and leave the room. I should listen to the rattling sink and water pipes that are clearly warnings from my grandmother.

And I do.

I bolt out of my room and fly down the stairs, yelling and banging on doors, hoping for help. But I never stop to see if anyone answers, I just keep moving and trying to remember everything I wrote about the Broken Lion.

Incredibly fast and strong. Can darken its vicinity. Hypnotic eyes. Roar induces pain and paralysis. Immune to magic and most weapons.

Did I remember to give this thing a weakness? Wait, I think I did.

The Broken Lion can be forcibly set back to its world just as it arrives: through water. 

I'm already in the basement once I remember and I sprint to the laundry room. Grandma's ghost or my own power or whatever it is isn't enough to burst the pipes but it does set off the sprinklers. 

I crouch in a corner of the room' shivering and terrified, and try to remember the incantation to send it back.

You've had what's mine, now leave behind this world of fools and upright swine.

I mutter it over and over as I hear the thick footsteps and frenzied sniffing even over the sprinklers. I nearly vomit as the door creaks open, but I can tell the creature entering stands on two legs not four. Two thick, powerful legs attached to a stout fish tail and a bony, chitinous torso. The large human nose in the middle of its waxy face sniffs the room and its massive compound eyes scan everything.

For a second, I'm relieved before I realize that this is not a good thing. The Blue Bloodhoney Bug can be unsummoned and the only weakness I gave it is salt or sunscreen.

The Bug spots me quickly, but advances slowly, perhaps confused or intrigued by the sprinklers. But it still comes forward and I can't think of a thing to stop it. I press myself against the wall and start praying as the steps squelch closer.

"I made you, go away. I made you, go away. I made you, go away." I squeeze the spoon necklace and pray. Whatever power I inherited created this thing so it can get rid of it.

"I made you, go away."

sqwwch sqwwch

"I made you, go away."

Sqwwch Sqwwch 

"I made you, go away."

SQWWCH SQWWCH

"I made you, please go away."

SQWWCH SQW--CRRRNCH!

For a second, I feel like the Bug ripped my frontal lobe open. But that tingling sensation in my brain isn’t a breeze, it’s power. It feels like a door opened in my mind and what came through had enough force to smash the Blue Bloodhoney Bug on the far wall.

But that isn’t all. The water on the floor starts to bubble and steam. A few of the machines rattle or spin as the psychic energy leaking from my mind touches them. And then I see her; eating the Bug, loping across the floor, entering the room with her monkey head sniffing the air. It happens in reverse in my mind’s eye a few seconds before the real Gramma Spoonbender walks through the door.

As she edges closer to me, she points her spoon at the feebly moving Bug, dragging it over to us. A burst of psychic energy dismembers the creature as the baboon head leans down to eat. Her forehead gem, ocean-blue with a white spiral etched into it, glows as she says, “Your grandmother would like to talk to you.”

The doorway in my head surges before I can react to what she said, and I can feel myself leaving my body. The laundry room fades away and I find myself in a large empty space that smells like an abandoned bookstore. There are colors and shapes and sounds in the distance, but nothing I can make out clearly; it’s not for me to see or hear yet. I wonder what the old woman in front of me sees.

Grandma wraps me in a hug and tells me, “Oh, Silas. You shouldn’t have made that Lion.”

I pull back. “What? The Broken Lion? What does he have to do with this?”

“Your Grandpa could explain better, but he can’t be here yet. Too much paperwork.” she smiles wryly for a second. “You have so much of your Grandpa in you, Silas, and I’ll never see that as anything but a gift. But a beautiful gift can still be used in ugly ways. Read your grandfather’s letter, Silas. And be careful what you make from now on.”

Before I can ask anything, the land of the dead fades back into the laundry room. The Last of the Bug’s yellow blood flows down the drain with the sprinkler water. Gramma Spoonbender’s long gone, taking her borrowed psychic powers with her. But I can still feel something there in the back of my mind.

Fishing through my things, I find the letter from Grandma’s house. I’d forgotten about it and it had never occurred to me that it wasn’t from her. I open the envelope and have the closest thing to a conversation with my grandfather that I’d ever had.

Howdy, Grandkid! Precognition was never my strong suit, so I can’t see exactly who you are or how your life’s going. But I can see enough to know that you might need this explanation. Your Gram Gram always thought my powers were a gift, but really they’re a job. My parents worshiped a dark god, Moraghandr. If you haven’t heard of him, then good. It means he hasn’t escaped his world and gotten a grip on ours yet. I was born with psychic powers and this gorgeous mug to spread his influence and help him enter our world, but I don’t want that. No one will want that. But he’s getting harder and harder to ignore. Soon he’ll have his way. Today, I’m going to ask your Gram Gram to take my powers and my hand in marriage. She wasn’t a part of Moraghandr’s cult so they’ll be weaker with her and he won’t be able to use them. I can see that the baby girl growing inside her will reject his gifts, so he’ll try to find a way through you. He loves stories and art, the darker and uglier, the better. Be careful what you make. I wish I could say that I’ll be there to help you, but I don’t think he’s going to be happy that I gave away his powers. I don’t see myself in your future. Best of luck, Grandkid. Stay careful and stay smart. I love you.

I read the note a few times trying to figure out what it meant and why Grandma warned me about the Broken Lion. It wasn’t the most powerful monster in my book and I think Moraghandr can bring any of them to life, so why just mention the Lion? But now as I stand on the bank of Grandma’s lake, I think I have an idea.

The Broken Lion comes to our world from a dark and ugly one and can travel between them. But I never specified which dark and ugly world. One could easily make the argument that he comes from whatever world Moraghandr lives in. 

 It means he hasn’t escaped his world and gotten a grip on ours yet. 

Yet. 

I can feel that heart surge that I felt while creating my book and suddenly, it doesn’t feel welcoming. It feels like something thick and leathery stroking my heart from an angle I can’t reach. It feels triumphant. 

The water bubbles a bit as Grandma’s spirit reaches into our world, snapping me out of my dark thoughts. I need a plan. I don’t know if I can control this “gift” that Moraghandr gave me, but…

“I think I should make another book,” I say. “One with a few more benevolent monsters. We’re going to need them.”

[stegrossaurus]

The Omphalos Stone

The Omphalos Stone

by Mary

They say Zeus was the youngest of his siblings, all of whom were eaten by his father, Chronos, the Titan of time. When Chronos tried to eat baby Zeus, his sister/wife Rhea tricked him into swallowing a stone instead. Zeus remained free and was able to free his siblings from their father’s stomach. The stone was liberated too and became the Omphalos Stone, the center of the universe.

I didn’t care about any of that, but Tomáš loves mythology and history. He always wants to study the lore of what we steal. It’s a little annoying how he can go on and on, but it makes him happy. The money and the thrill of being an infamous outlaw couple is what I’m all about. Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if that’s enough.

We visit the museum where the newly discovered artifact is being displayed. While Tomáš sneaks off to hack their security and copy a keycard, I stay behind to case the area and plan the heist.

The Stone itself isn’t all that impressive, honestly. It’s a perfectly round gray rock about the size of a soccer ball. If you looked at it from the right angle, you could see something glossy on the surface shaped like the continents. That alone made people question its legitimacy as an ancient artifact, but all I care about is that the buyer pays for it.

I get to work figuring out the guard rotations, escape routes, and security systems to trick. It’s a lot of work and sometimes I wonder if the pay-off is worth it. Tom and I have been stealing things since high school and it never seems to be enough. So much of our money goes to our fencer, launderer, student loans, and the rest we’re too scared to use for anything big or extravagant. We actually got married in a hotel lobby with almost a million dollars stashed in our closet at home.

The night of the heist, I’m reminded a bit of why I love the job so much. Everything goes off like clockwork. Tomáš remotely hacks the security from the van and sends the guards on a fake emergency to the other side of the building. I walk through the neutered laser wires, grab the Stone, and I’m out in less than five minutes. An hour later, we’re in our apartment with the Stone.

“Can you believe it, Mary?” Tomáš laughs, rolling the large stone around the countertop. “This is gonna make us rich!”

A year ago, I would have shared his enthusiasm. The hour-long drive to make sure we weren’t followed would have done nothing to dampen my fun and I’d have been right with Tomáš gleefully planning what to do with the money. But now, the drive, Tom cheerful energy, and the stolen rock in our kitchen just exhausted me.

“You’ve said that before, Tomáš. We both have,” I say, cutting across his ideas of buying a giraffe.

“No, Mary, I suggested buying a hippo, but they’re too dangerous. I don’t remember you wanting a giraffe.”

“Not that, Tom.” I tried not to shout but I was getting frustrated. “‘This will make us rich’. ‘We’re going to be rich’. ‘This will be our last job’. How many times have we said that?”

“I never said we would quit and neither did you,” he says, a little defensively. “Is that what you want?”

“Well, don’t you? Are we supposed to do this forever?”

“Mary, where is this coming from?” Tomáš asks, sounding a little concerned. 

I can’t quite blame him. The Stone isn’t the first or even most expensive piece of stolen property we’ve had in the apartment, so why am I acting like this?

I look at the Omphalos Stone. Somehow, it was positioned exactly as the Earth was, tilted axis and everything. But it wasn’t moving. Kind of like us. We’re not moving or going anywhere. We’re just doing the same thing over and over. I reach out and gently spin the Stone backwards. What would it be like to go back and do things differently?

“I want more,” I say quietly.

“You mean a bigger score?” Tomáš asks.

“No.”

“A bigger apartment?” He was getting annoyed and so was I.

“No, Tomáš! You know that’s not what this is!”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s not the baby stuff again, is it?”

I start seeing red. “What if it is? You promised you’d think about it!”

“I did and I decided I wasn’t sure!”

“That’s not an answer!”

This was an old argument. I didn’t want to be a thief forever. I wanted to be a mom and I'd seen Tomáš with his nephews and the kids at the elementary school he works at. He’d be a great dad. But he won’t even discuss it. Frustration becomes anger. Anger becomes shouting and insults. Shouting and insults become ‘I wish I’d never met you’ and ‘I wish I’d married Darla instead’. Then I pick up the Stone, ready to throw it, not caring about the lost pay day or potential damage.

“I wish you were dead!”

I try to throw the Stone and Tomáš instinctively dodges, but nothing goes flying. The Stone is stuck to my hand. And it’s glowing. The weird embossed continents shimmer green and brown. The rest shines like blue glass. Patches of white slide in and out of visibility on its surface. Then, still attached to my hand, it begins to spin backwards.

“Tom, what the hell is this thing doing?” I ask, trying to pry it off. “Help me with this!”

Tomáš rushes forward, but he barely makes it a single step. His whole body explodes into cubes and chunks of matter, like a LEGO castle kicked by a child. Before I can even scream, the apartment, the building, the city, the world, the universe all follows Tom. An entire universe of matter, energy, and life deconstructs into cubes that can fit in my hand and soared around me counter-clockwise.

I stare in horror at the cyclone of existence around me, certain I’ll be next. I am. I can feel myself shattering, just not as quickly. And then, suddenly, everything stops. And reverses. The building blocks of reality reform and in between those blocks, I see things.

I see blackness bubbling up from the Earth’s core. A colony of bats circling a dying village. An exhumed grave with something laughing inside. A student screams as a skeletal, sand-clogged foot clicks on the linoleum floor. Scientists gasp as green fluid from a syringe fills a dead and empty vein, bringing an arm to twitching life. Crying and gunfire give way to meat, blood, and bone passing between sharp teeth.

In less time than it takes to tell it, existence is back. But it isn’t the same.

I stand up on shaky legs in an apartment that’s been stripped bare and decayed. Exposed wiring and woodwork, remains of a hobo fire, dried blood and worse. Flies buzz around something in the corner near a window that was in the process of being boarded up. Tomáš stands where he was a minute ago, with his back to me.

“Tommy? Baby?” I call out, inching towards the door. I can feel in every nerve what I’ll see when he turns around. But I have to see. “Are you okay?” Hoping to get an answer, I instead get a moan.

Tomáš lumbers around on his rotting legs. Half his face has already decomposed, exposing solid black bones. The remaining scraps of flesh are girdled with glowing green veins. Teeth like jagged finger bones ensure that his mouth will never fully close. Oozing hands twice as big as they should be reach out for me.

I bolt through the door and he follows on all fours. Tomáš’s zombie body is faster than it looks and is unbothered by smashing through part of the door jamb. If I hadn’t jumped left at just the right time, his flying leap would take both of us out of the hallway window instead of just him. The thick smack of him hitting the pavement is easily the least disturbing sound coming from the world outside. 

The rancid air makes it hard to want to catch my breath, but I try to anyway.  I fidget with my backpack and notice for the first time that I’m wearing one. It feels heavy, but my arms are thicker and stronger than they were a minute ago.I just sit on the floor of the abandoned hallway in a broken world, trying to cry. My husband’s dead and my heart feels shattered, but I can’t cry a drop. I feel like every tear I’ve had was used up a long time ago. That’s probably why I’m able to look out the window.

A small clutch of humans run from a pair of decaying hyenas with gorilla-like arms and legs. They laugh high and manic as they pounce and rip two of the humans’ intestines through their backs. The rest don’t get very far. Black mist floods from the alley and condenses into a three-story skeleton thrumming with shadowy energy at the joints, blocking the crowd’s way. It picks up one human from the crowd and cocks its head to the side curiously before squeezing him to a pulp. The crowd is then penned in by zombies. Tomáš is there, no worse for the fall and acting like an obedient sheep dog. The zombies, ghouls (how did I know that’s what they were?), and giant skeleton escort the humans back the way they came.

The world is overrun with the undead. I think it has been for some time. My body’s new muscles and scars told a story of years spent dodging zombies, hiding from ghouls, begging for sanctuary from wraiths, and watching friends drained by vampires. That part of me knows what to do, so I let it guide me. 

Down the stairs so quietly it’s like I’m not wearing boots. Out the backdoor with my ears open for the sounds of giant leathery wings. Through the alleyway with a silver blade in one hand and a map to a human stronghold in the other. My guess is that the me from this timeline was traveling to the stronghold from wherever I lived before. 

My memories of this world trickle in a bit as I travel, enough to know that I have no one to look for or go back to. I’m not sure I want the rest. 

When I realize that the stronghold marked on the map used to be the same museum I’d stolen the Omphalos Stone from, I curse myself. My instinct was to travel as light and quick as possible, so I left the Stone in the apartment. That stupid Stone is the way to fix all of this. I can try to go back, but the undead are still rounding up humans and it’s a miracle that I made it as far as I have. If I’m going to get it back, I’ll need help.

The stronghold welcomes me after a thorough decontamination. Life there is hard, but so is life anywhere. Life support systems and food need to be maintained. Defensive walls, weapons, and enchantments constantly need repairs and upgrades. Day or night, there was always something trying to break in. 

While training to be a scout, I’m allowed to work with orphaned children. Even under awful circumstances, it’s great to feel like a mother. And teaching them about the dangerous world of the undead helps the rest of my memories surface.

About 5 years ago, a zombie was caught on a police body cam attacking and eating an officer. Law enforcement tracked it back to a local laboratory, but something went wrong on the night of their raid. An explosion tore open a side of the building, letting a swarm of zombies loose on the police, the news crew, and civilians. The news camera fell to the ground as the operator was torn to pieces, and was picked up by one of the scientists who pointed it at himself and smiled. His eyes turned black and his teeth turned sharp as he showed the camera the carnage behind and around him. 

“Cat’s out of the bag a little early, I guess,” he hissed. “Oh well. Buffet’s open, everyone.” A spade-shaped snout exploded from his face and the camera barely caught a man-sized bat taking to the air before it dropped.

The floodgates opened wide after that. Before all the news stations went out, there were reports of ghouls pouring from graveyards in droves, wendigos invading any settlement neighboring a forest, will-o-wisps leading whole buildings of people up to the roof and over the ledge. Mummies waited at the sidewalks below to put the newly minted zombies under their mental control. None of it was random; the undead had been planning this for God knows how long. I’d just barely escaped my neighborhood before a lich cursed the whole place. I don’t know what specifically it did, but I remember the screams as I drove away. I’d never even met Tomáš in this timeline before I took shelter in that abandoned apartment.

And now I’m stuck with the knowledge that I’ve caused all of this. I don’t know how far back in time the Stone had reached and how much it had changed to grant my foolish wish. Maybe these creatures don’t even exist in my world, or maybe I’ll fix everything only for the same apocalypse to happen a few years later. 

But I have to try. And I have a plan. It’s risky. If I’m caught, the stronghold will exile or kill me. If I fail, I’ll just get a lot of people killed. 

A few months later, when I’m certified as a scout, I already have what I need: a vial of green liquid and a fake report of a possible pocket of survivors. I slip the report into Commander Ruiz’s to-do pile. When he calls me into his office, I know this is it; he’s either going to assign me to the mission or have me executed as a traitor.

“Private Galuska, are you familiar with this territory?” he asks me, showing me a map of my former neighborhood.

“Yes, Commander,” I say. “I hid out there briefly before coming here.”

“Did you see any evidence of other humans?”

I consider telling him the truth. The corner of the military Commander Ruiz hails from seemed oddly prepared for a supernatural invasion, though no one had questioned why out loud. Maybe he’ll believe me.

I don’t, though. I just tell him of the hobo fires and lie about glimpsing a few possible humans. I’m assigned to a regiment of soldiers, scientists, and other scouts. Armed with binoculars, a radar, and a sniper rifle, my job is to wait by the truck and pick off any zombie that comes too close to the advance team. And there are plenty of zombies to pick off. The higher undead let them wander loose in the city to ferret out survivors.

They spot us quickly enough and swarm like beetles. Now or never.

I guzzle down the vial of green fluid; concentrated zombie enzymes kept for study. It will start turning me instantly, but without having to die like with most zombie infections. I break ranks and run for the apartment building, ignoring the shouts from my fellow scouts. The first few zombies I run into turn their eyeless sockets to me, but then they all ignore me. Just as I planned, I’m already infected enough that they don’t see me as prey.

My limbs start to loosen and grow flaccid before I even get to the stairwell. By the time I reach the fourth floor, my teeth and hair had fallen out. Blood pours from every orifice in thick, heavy splashes, making room for the green enzyme my blacking bones will start producing. I try to keep ‘Room 406’ in my mind as everything else drains out.

406. Need to find it. Get the Stone. 

406. Do the…stuff…with the Stone. What was it again?

406. Wish. make a wish. Go…there and wish for…the stuff? What’s going on outside?

406. Food! There’s food outside! No! Go to Stone. Make wish. Wait, who’s that?

406. Can’t go outside, yet. Need Stone. Who are…oh.

406. A mummy. Talking in my mind. Can’t make me do stuff. Not yet. But changing quick. Run. find Stone. Wish. Get Tomáš back.

Yes. Tomáš. Think about Tomáš and the Stone. Mummy mind strong. But I want Stone! Eyes fall out. Zombie sight bad. Still want Stone! 406! Found it! Grab Stone. Mummy still in my mind. Say to wish for more mummies. But I know what to wish for.

“Wish never anyone use Stone!”

World goes away. Good. Don’t want it anymore. World changes. Get Tomáš back? No more undead? Changing. Wait; this not right. Not changing back. This is…

“Bad rock?” I hold with both flippers. Weird rock. Very smooth. Very round. But why bad? “I need this?” Do I? Is good rock? It make me think of stuff. Dead people and crying. But also Tome. “This good rock.” I know it is. But why?

“Maar!” Tome shout. He come to home cave so happy! “Bed, Maar. sleep for eggs.” he touch my stomach, with all our eggs in it. They come out in a few days and hatch later. We be mommy and daddy! Then he see rock. “Rock?” 

“Good rock,” I say. “Not remember why, but good.”

Tome look with why-face. But then say, “Think of eggs? Happy for eggs?”

“Yes!” Well, maybe. Rock look like egg. So maybe.

Someone bark from outside. “Tall Ones! Tall Ones here!” 

Everyone leave home caves and go outside to look. There they are. Over lake, playing on grass. One baby and one mother. Can tell; man Tall Ones got hairier horns. They look at us over lake and talk and play with little shiny tools. We look and talk, too.

“So big. Want!” Orgg say.

“Two legs. Want!” Torr say. He try to do it and fall. We all laugh. Fun game but sad game. Tall Ones have lots we want.

“Fur. Want!” Lake and caves cold sometimes.

“Looong neck and legs. Want!” They see so far and get fruit right from branches.

“Good flippers and shiny tools. Want!” They can hold things easy and build shiny tools. We use sticks and rocks.

“One baby. Very want!” Djou had many eggs. Two hatched.

“Very smart,” I say. “Wish!” Wait, why wish? What wish? I think of good rock back in home cave, but not know why. Everyone giving why-face. Say something. “But they not swim good.” More why-face. “They not, though! No tail and no flippers.”

Then Tome say, “Maar right. Tall Ones no swim. And no dig for clams. Good flippers not good for that. Ha!” 

More people say good stuff.

“Lost of fur messy. Not want!”

“One baby boring. Not want!”

“Two legs fall easy. Not want!”

Everyone happy a little. Me, too. Love and happy with Tome. Still think of rock and what ‘wish’ is. And other things: moving dead people and green juice and stealing something. All of this I think about and not know why. I know one day, though. I wish I do.

[stegrossaurus]

They'll Drag You Down

They’ll Drag You Down

By Em

Our parents’ promotions at their work meant that we’d be moving north in a week. With the increase in money, they decided to buy the family a few new luxuries before we moved. To help my sister and me get used to our new, better lives, they said.

The last few days at my old high school weren’t very fun. At least, not for me. My sister, Lily, thrives in any kind of attention, including bad. When our soon-to-be former classmates would call us sellouts and race-traitors, she’d just laugh and wave. She flaunted the new outfit our parents bought for her and munched on the salty garlic chips she’d quickly grown fond of, blowing her pungent breath in any green-with-envy eye that looked her way.

“They're just crabs in a barrel, Em,” Lily would tell me. “We have something they want and instead of going after it themselves, it’s easier for them to blame us. They’ll drag you down if you let them.”

I knew she was right, so I tried to follow her example. I ignored all the nasty, jealous comments from my former friends and reminded myself that they would happily take these luxuries if they were offered. I had nothing to be ashamed about. That’s what I kept telling myself.

By next week, that school was a memory and I was enrolled in a high school in Zimbabwe. As wealthy as I had felt in those last days, being in that school with its air conditioning, uniforms, and computers made me feel like I was back at square one. I knew this would take some getting used to, but I was determined to make it work. Lily was right: these people could only drag me down if I let them.

 Of course, every school needs a popular crowd and mine was headed by Danai and Miriro Chauke, a pair of twins who were rich even by my new standards. Their necks, wrists, and fingers carried more jewelry than most of the school combined (more than the dress code permitted, I’m sure) and they were always dropped off and picked up by limo. 

They singled Lily out on our first day, practically cornering her after the last bell with their group of girls while I watched from the hall. Danai, the alpha twin, stepped up to Lily, tapping her manicured claws on her painted lips like she was appraising meat. Miriro hung back with her arms folded as if she was the only thing keeping the other four girls from attacking. They looked intimidating, but Lily looked bored. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen sharper claws back at our old school.

“Where are you from, new girl?” Danai asked, her voice clipped. I think she picked up on my sister’s lack of fear and was a little unnerved by it.

“A village down south. You probably haven’t heard of it,” Lily answered simply. 

“Oh. Somewhere in the boonies? Probably one of those places without electricity?” she sounded the word out mockingly. Danai’s nerves must have settled a bit at the reassurance that we were lower on the social ladder. “Don’t worry about that loud sound, it’s just the air conditioning. I’m sure it’s a new experience for you.” 

Her crew sniggered obediently, but so did Lily.

“Don’t worry about me. I can take the heat. They raise us to be a bit more...” she gave the girls an appraising look of her own. “durable.” She laughed a bit as she breezed by the clique, then she shouted over her shoulder. “Good luck with Masimba! I’m sure he’ll be a great father!”

One of the nearby football players (Masimba, I assumed) looked as confused as Danai did, and Danai’s boyfriend, another player, looked ready to kill them both.

“How’d you know she was cheating on her boyfriend?” I asked her later. “Or that she’s pregnant?”

“Didn’t,” she shrugged. “But it should be fun watching her try to prove she isn’t.”

Apparently she couldn’t because her boyfriend dumped her very publicly a few days later. A few rumors of her mother buying every kind of pregnancy test under the sun surfaced a bit later. The Chauke twins tried to retaliate once, but my sister was right about being hardier than them. The two chicks the twins sent after her limped away with bloody noses.

I, on the other hand, was fair game.

“He’s a good choice,” Miriro said to me one day at lunch. I’d been staring at Takura, a handsome boy from my coding class, for the third lunch period that week. “If you want, I can introduce you. I know for a fact he’s single.”

“No, no. Thanks but no,” I stuttered. That was a mistake. Her grin widened as she found something to sink her claws into.

Her voice turned syrupy. “It’d be no trouble. In fact, Emma”-- I don’t bother to correct her when she gets my name wrong --“why don’t you hang out with my sister and me on the weekend. We’re having a little party in the cemetery. Takura and a few others will be there and you can get to know him a little better.”

“Sure. Sounds fun,” I answered without thinking. There was no way this wasn’t a trap of a prank. But I was in it now. If I backed out, I could kiss my social life goodbye. “So what exactly are we doing?”

Miriro’s smile widened. “Summoning the Yumboes.” No surprises there. Teenagers rarely hang out in cemeteries for book clubs. “You do know what a Yumboes is, right?”

I nodded. “African death fairies. But I thought they’re supposed to live in Senegal.”

Miriro snorted. “And what? They can’t move somewhere else? Look, if you’re scared...”

“No, no. I’m in,” I said, erasing my chance of backing out. “What time?”

“Em, I don’t know what you want me to do here,” Lily sighed when I told her about the problem. “If you don’t want to go, just don’t. You’re not proving anything to these skanks by doing exactly what they tell you to.”

“But if I don’t go, my reputation will be shot,” I said. “But if I walk into whatever they’re planning, it’ll be shot anyway.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have a reputation. We’ve been at that school for like two weeks.” She sighed again. “Look, if you insist on going, take some mace or something in case they attack you. If they’re planning a prank, beat them to it.” She handed me a bag of those garlic salt chips. They must’ve reminded her of how far our family’s come. “But whatever you do, try to remember: these assholes can only drag you down if you let them.”

I showed up at the cemetery a little before 7, when Miriro told me to come, and I waited outside the stone walls. Unseen by the twins and the other kids already there, I watched them set everything up. 

Miriro put radio pills in the bushes, one of the boys dug a pentagram around an unlit bonfire, and a few others put on black clothing and white gloves and shoes. In a dark and spooky atmosphere, their hands and feet would be the only things visible. They brought out candles, corn, a stark white Halloween ghost, a bag of something that rattled, and a Bible.

By the time the black-clothing people and the ghost were hidden and I was ready to go into the cemetery, I had decided that I would take the prank in good humor. Trying to outflank them and prank them back wouldn’t endear me to the twins but this will let them know I’m not overly sensitive. 

The rest of the kids showed up soon after, totalling six not including the five kids now hiding among the graves. When Takura arrived, Miriro made sure he sat right next to me. The graveyard darkened and Danai lit the bonfire, then leaned back in the large recliner she’d brought. That was where the Halloween ghost was hidden and would fly out of when their prank got started. We passed around a bottle of whisky which I only pretended to drink from. Luckily Danai was quite a drinker and I didn’t need to pretend for long before it was empty.

“So, Em, where did you live before?” Takura asked.

Danai’s slurring saved me from having to fumble through an answer. “Some crappy little village down south. Prolly never even heard of...the Yumboes.” She left a little pause in there for dramatic effect. “What do you have down there, Emmy? Ghost with a goat’s head and hook hands? A scary grass hut that used to belong to a witch doctor? What terrifying legends do you have down there in the boonies?”

I took a breath and stood my ground. Lily was right, I can’t let her make a fool of me. “Nothing quite as scary as a two-foot fairy, I'm sure.”

Danai paused for a bit, taken aback. Then she sneered, “They’re more than just that. They’re guardians of the dead. They can reach into the other side and pull people back into ours.”

“And what do they do to them?” I asked, as if I couldn’t already guess.

“They chop off their hands and feet and enslave them,” Danai said menacingly. “The hands and feet, I mean. The Yumboes just throw the rest of the ghost back to suffer on the other side for eternity.” I wasn’t sure that part of the legend was true, but I let myself look scared anyway. “But when we summon one, you can ask it all the questions you want.”

The “summoning ritual” was simple: five of us stood in one point of the pentagram with an ear of corn (the Yumboes’ favorite food) while a sixth wandered around the pentagram throwing bones into the fire and reading Bible verses. Once spiritual forces of the Bible and the bones (or whatever) weakened the walls between the living and the dead, the corn would lure the Yumboes to us.

I did my part, standing with my back to the graves and an ear of corn thrust towards the fire, which popped and changed color with each bone Miriro threw into it. They must have been coated with something to react with the fire. Somewhere along the way, someone activated the radio pills and growling, hissing, and chattering echoed out of the bushes. I caught a glimpse of the “servants” with their white feet and hands wandering in the distance. Even though I knew it was all nonsense, a chill went down my spine every time Miriro walked behind me chanting.

I waited for the Halloween ghost to spring out from under Danai’s chair or for white hands to grab at Miriro. Maybe I’d try to be heroic and “save” the others. Miriro threw her final bone and the fire rose higher than ever, colored a bloody red. The flames darkened quickly but didn’t die down. It started to look less like a bonfire and more like a column of black tar with ruby red heat shining through the thinner parts. That’s when I got really scared.

“What the Hell? Mirry, what’s going on?” Danai shouted to her twin. The howling from the black fire pierced my ears like the radio pill never could. “This isn’t supposed to happen!”

Before Miriro could answer, the column lit up with red lit, still girdled and wound with thick strings of black tar. We could see shapes inside. About our size, but sharper and crueler. Ugly bastardizations of human and animal shapes.

Demons. 

They reached their claws, hooves, and even a beak out of the red light, trying to break through the tar and grab us. Until one of them, one that stood on four bony legs, noticed me.

“It’s her!” he howled to the others. The others turned their attention to me. He jabbed a skinless canine snout as far as he could through the tar. “Found you, bitch! Let’s see how uppity you are when I peel all that pretty skin off!”

The others had managed to get away and I tried to follow, but Marchosias managed to reach his head through the tar just far enough to clamp his jaws around my ankle. I fell to the dirt and tried to kick him off.

“Marky, get off now! I’m serious!” I shouted at him but he didn’t let go. If he damaged this new body permanently, Dad would kill me.

“Still think you’re better than us, Empusa?” Apuch hissed. He and Baal tried to pry to the tar apart with their thick scaly paws. “I know you do! You think you’re better just because your parents are better ass-kissers!”

Melinoe chewed on the tar with one head and spat every name she could think of with another. Her third head hadn’t fully developed yet.

Whatever spiritual force they’d taken advantage of the open a portal was beginning to die down. The portal began to shrink and would soon turn back into regular fire. I needed to get him off before he dragged me partly or wholly in. Otherwise, I’d be trapped in Hell or cut in half.

I grabbed what remained of Lilith’s chips and started chewing. These new human bodies could handle salt and garlic, demon bodies can’t. I spat out a blob of chewed chips and pressed it to Marchosias’s eye. He howled as his exposed muscle and bone baked under my hand and he released my ankle. The other demons tried to reach through but quickly gave up as the portal shrank. A second later, a perfectly normal orange and yellow fire flickered and died in the kindling.

I laid there for a bit, catching my breath. I inspected my ankle and found that it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Marky still hadn’t grown all his fangs.

I munched the rest of the chips on the way home. I tried to figure out what to say to the others on Monday, but I couldn’t bring myself to care too much. Caring about what they thought almost got me dragged back to Hell.

Lily greeted me on the porch. “So, how’d it go?” She noticed how dirty I was and that I was limping a bit. “Are you alright? What’d they do?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Some assholes from our old school opened a portal and tried to get me.” I tried to sound nonchalant but I knew Mom and Dad would want to hear about this. I just hope they don’t kill my classmates. It wasn’t their fault really and I still had hopes for me and Takura. “You were right, by the way. Some people will just drag you down. If you let them.”

I took another bite of the chips, knowing my old classmates may never know how they taste. They really were very good.

[stegrossaurus]

The Rat

The Rat

By Scotty

Twelve years ago, I took a ride to the strip mall a few miles from my school. If my father or my oldest brother had been the one driving me to buy a late twelfth birthday gift, this would have been fine. But it wasn’t; I’d never met the man in the driver’s seat before that day.

He showed up at my school after the bell rang and walked up to me. His brown eyes turned a dark green, like the deepest part of the forest where shadows and trees mix, when he told me to get in the car, my body obeyed. He told me to put my bag in the back, buckle up, and don’t yell for help. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t resist.

The hypnosis wore off by the first traffic light and I tried to jump out. The door handle was freezing cold and ice crystallized around the door’s edges, sealing it shut. I turned back to the man, his eyes green and his grinning teeth as sharp as his reptilian pupils. What I’d thought were tattoos on his arms looked like scales. He winked and changed back to normal. I didn’t try again. I just sat quietly as he sang to the radio and told bad jokes like this was just another day for him. Maybe it was.

“My family doesn’t have any money,” I said shakily. Maybe he’d confused me for someone richer. But from the looks of his car, he hardly needed any ransom. 

“Don’t need any,” the man said cheerily. “You need to relax, Scotty. That is your name, right?” He turned down Stacy’s Mom and said,  “Look, kid, I get that this isn’t how you wanted to spend your Friday. But don’t worry. It’ll all be over soon.” 

That didn’t fill me with confidence.

Soon enough, we pulled up to an abandoned department store. He kept a firm hand on my shoulder to remind me not to call for help or run away as he steered me through the doors and behind empty shelves. There was a space near the back of the store where the shelves were arranged in a wide circle. Once we were securely out of sight of anyone outside the glass doors, he sat down and started fiddling on his phone.

“Take a load off, kid,” he said absently. “We’ll begin in a bit. And stop looking so glum.” His voice sharpened for a bit, but softened right after. He sounded a little glum himself when he said, “You’re gonna be just fine. You just need to see something and then you can go home. You’ll even get to drive if you want.” He smiled humorlessly.

So I sat. He’d left me my phone, but I was too scared to try to call for help. My kidnapper’s mood seemed to have soured a bit and I didn’t want to risk his anger. I just waited on the floor, trying to control my breathing and not panic. He’d said I’d be fine and he had no reason to lie. I just clung to that thought.

After a while, he stood up and put his phone away.

“It’s time, Scotty,” he said, still unnervingly gloomy. He ushered me into a corner, where I had a view of the circle between two shelves a few feet apart. He forced his frown upside down. “I’m sorry about all of this, bud, seriously. But you are gonna have so much fun, I guarantee you that.” He ruffled up my hair and smiled that forest creature’s smile. The hand on top of my head grew hot and the air around me hazed and shimmered like summer asphalt.

“So the others won’t see you,” he explained. “Just stay put. It’s almost over.”

People started showing up soon after. Most walked through the front door, but others simply materialized in bursts of smoke or dust. A rat crawled out of the overhead air vent and transformed into a girl my age who floated gently to the floor. A severe-looking woman in army fatigues walked through the wall behind me. As my kidnapper (Kenji, according to one of the others) had promised, none of them acknowledged me.

The group of twelve chatted and caught up with each other. I caught a few snippets of what they said. A young man used his magic to get his girlfriend’s jewelry business going. The army lady smiled as she recounted all the lives she’d saved and taken with her power. A gentleman in an expensive looking suit credited a woman who looked like a model with teaching him a spell to keep his mother alive for years. They also mentioned a ritual; something about expanding their power or maybe just keeping it from fading. 

A man in a fluorescent construction vest shared a knowing look with Kenji and I was certain he pointed me out to an older married couple. Whatever Kenji was planning, I was certain they were in on it. But no one else.

Eventually, they all took their places around a pedestal that the couple had brought and started chanting.

Bare your spirit. Sell your soul. Paint your life, complete and whole. Paint it black and don’t look back. They all go to the Zodiac.

The ceiling above them faded into starry blackness. Set against those stars were twelve massive shadows with cruel eyes that glimmered as each person chanted their own verse.

Beat by ram.

And bit by dog.

And gored and chewed and ate by hog.

The tiger wakes from hungry rest.

The rooster claws you, heart from chest.

The snake that makes your organs writhe.

The rat that eats your brain alive.

The rabbit chases you for miles.

The monkey sees you die and smiles.

Outfought by ox.

Outran by horse.

Undone by dragon’s deadly force.

I expected more; more chanting or more action from the shadow beasts. But the monstrous creatures just faded silently.

And then the twelve people died. It was not painless.

A rough-looking biker chick was smashed into paste by invisible hooves next to the suited man who was nearly beheaded by a vicious unseen headbutt. A lady who’d happily chatted about her kindergarten class was mauled with the fury of a jungle predator. Kenji gave me another wink before he disintegrated into ash and blood. He fell next to the army lady, now bloated with the venom of countless snake bites. It took about a minute for all of them to die. The longest was the college student next to Kenji whose groin was scooped out by large leporine incisors. He screamed the loudest.

After a few minutes of shock, I walked forward numbly. Kenji’s clothes were undamaged by the phantom fire, so his keys would still work. I was too young to drive but I wasn’t thinking about that. Or anything else. I just wanted to go home and forget everything.

I tried to ignore the married older couple laying side by side, his throat and her heart forming a bloody soup on the linoleum. I stepped around the man who looked almost like my grandfather. I’m sure a coroner would say a baboon had done the damage to his skull.

But I couldn’t ignore the girl, the one close to my age. She lay in between the beautiful woman gored by horns and the construction worker disemboweled by tusks. Her brain leaked out of bite marks on her head and standing on the pedestal between us was a rat that easily looked large and feral enough to be the culprit.

We stared at each other for another minute. Then the creature gave me a smile that only a rat can (one promising virulent bites in the dark and laughter as you died) then disappeared.

My vision started to fade in and out. I couldn’t breathe. My knees felt weak. I forgot about the keys and I just stumbled out of the store. I was willing to focus on anything on the walk home to help me forget.

I didn’t tell my parents why I had taken so long coming home. And when the rat reappeared at the dinner table, I didn’t tell them about it, either. Not even when my brother, who was trying to swipe my dumplings, pulled back his hand and said something bit him. No one else could see her, anyway.

She said her name was Josie, but she didn’t say anything else. For about a month, she invisibly bit and scratched anyone near me who made a nuisance of themselves, smiling that snaggletoothed grin. Every time she did, I felt a tingle in my fingers. It felt almost like extra muscles. One day, I tried to flex them. With a nasty tearing sound, the bedsheets right next to my fingers were shredded.

I jolted up and turned to Josie, who was waiting placidly on my desk. Before I could ask her anything, my attention was drawn to the mirror on the wall. My irises were solid gray and so large they nearly filled my eyes.

“What is this?” I asked Josie, not really expecting an answer.

But I got one. “This is your magic.” Nothing more. She disappeared.

I stood silently for a bit, but that reminded me too much of that day. I needed to do something. So I pointed at my desk and tried to flex those extra muscles. Scratches and bite marks appeared randomly in the wood, but only the corner I’d pointed to.

Magic. Real magic. And that was just the start. 

I practiced and exercised just like with any muscle. I learned to make bite marks appear in metal and stone, even from a distance. After a while, I could control the little scratches and bites perfectly, but they were always fairly small.

“Smallness is one of the strengths of the rat,” Josie had told me, on one of the rare occasions when she talked. “How much damage is done to whole cities because we were too small to catch and too subtle to notice?”

She was right; as small as my magic was it could do a lot of damage. A bite on a human could make them sick or hallucinate. A scratch on a machine could make it malfunction. I spent all of September making Principal Hallsworth think he was being chased by clowns and giving bullies diarrhea. People twice my size helpless to the power of subtle destruction. I learned to turn invisible and inaudible for a few seconds, then a few minutes. It was like holding my breath, but I held my color and sound instead.

By the time December came around, I could spend as much time as I wanted in the form of a little white rat.

In January, Lyle, a boy in the grade below me, said he saw an ox in the halls. My insides froze when I heard that story.

In the days after, people found hoofprints in the halls and massive gouges in teachers’ cars. The skinny kid put on pounds of muscle in days, though not enough to explain shoving a bully through a locker the way he did. People made their rationalizations (hormones and steroids and such), but I knew what was happening. And judging by how much she laughed, Josie did, too.

I followed him invisibly into the forest one day. He kicked cat-sized rocks out of the way with his bare feet and laughed with someone named Winterlynn. A force I couldn’t see brushed aside trees and bushed, but not all of them. Josie was the same way: she touched some things and passed through others ghostlike.

 “So what did you want to show me, Winterlynn? Was it this?” Lyle slammed his foot down on a tree stump and splintered it, showering pulp and larvae over his leg. Winterlynn must have been more talkative than Josie because he listened to something then laughed. “Alright, alright. Like this?” He turned to a thorny bush and, after a second, concentrated.

His eyes turned a large, watery brown as he flexed his magic. The leaves grew thicker, larger, and spikier. The branches thickened and strengthened as the unyielding power of the Ox filled them.

I left the forest.

“Did you know that would happen?” I asked Josie when I saw her next. “That Lyle would get the Ox magic, I mean?”

She nodded. “She told me before she left. I liked Winterlynn. She said she’d help me pick out dresses and earrings when I was old enough.” Josie wasn’t smiling.

I looked up any Winterlynns that had died recently. My first impression had been right, she was a model. Winterlynn Burnett, age 23, found dead in an abandoned Sears in New Hampshire, gored by what seemed to be the horns of a wild animal. She was known as a bit of a diva in the modeling circuit, kicking holes in walls when she was in a bad mood and bringing gluten-free cookies when she was in a good one. 

After I looked her up, I did the same for the others. I figured it was the right thing to do. There wasn’t much on Josie; she’d been too young for there to be anything of note. But even accounting for that, there really wasn’t much; not even a last name. I didn’t bother asking her. 

I thought about reaching out to Lyle, but honestly, he kind of scared me. Maybe it was the skittish Rat in me or maybe it was because he put three people in the hospital playing football. Lyle didn’t seem like a supervillain is the making, but he didn;t seem particularly safe to be around, either.

The year after that, a classmate said her little brother saw a talking tiger in the forest. Then a teacher laughed about his daughter’s imaginary rabbit friend. Then a neighbor got into a very public spat with her wife about whether dragons were real. The left side of their house caught fire by the end of it. I didn’t talk to any of them, either, but I kept an eye on them.

Year after year, as my magic grew, so too did the list of people who shared it. At first, they were as invisible to me as they were to anyone else, but like I said, my magic grew. By the time I was ready for college, I could see Mrs. Fleming’s dragon. A sharp-toothed, almost prehistoric smile and eyes like the deepest part of a forest entrenched in black scales. He noticed me staring and winked. But he wasn’t all I could see.

When I look at the solid black new moon sky or into a darkened room before turning the lights on, it appears. First, the eyes so gray that they stand out against the blackness. The same gray as Josie’s eyes and my own when I use my magic. Then the teeth, so jagged and sharp that they hurt to look at. Bloody drool so virulent that it made my organs prickle. The snout and tail, both bald and festooned with sores and blisters absolutely teeming with disease and bacteria. Then I turn on the light or look away from the sky and it’s gone.

“It scares me, too,” Josie said the first time I saw it. It had been six years since we’d first met. She spoke more now, even about her old life. I could tell she’d been waiting to say this. “That’s why I did what I did, Scotty. And why you and the others will do it, too.” Then she explained. She didn’t get mad when I interrupted in anger and she even nuzzled my cheek when I cried. “You have six more years left. Don’t waste them.”

And I didn’t. I went to the best college, racking up a student debt that I’d never have to pay. I made ATMs release hundreds of dollars every week, payment in advance. I had many girlfriends and boyfriends. I even found a way to take diseases out of one person and into someone more...deserving. 

I got in contact with the others. Whenever a new host was found, I made a point to reach out to them, too. We’d need each other in the end. Some of them had already known about me, told by their predecessors. 

Jerome McMillan, the new Snake, gave me an anaconda-strength hug when he met me.

“Thanks to you and Sergeant Cole over there,” he gestured to a dusty brown constrictor coiled around a streetlamp. “my old basketball injury healed almost overnight and fire barely tickles. Aced the firefighter exam in one try. Thanks, kid.”

He was so happy I didn’t want to tell him, but I didn’t have to.

“She already told me, Scotty,” Jerome said when I tried to bring it up. “I can’t say I’m thrilled, but I didn’t get into this job thinking I’d live forever.”

I couldn’t believe how well he’d taken it. Mrs. Fleming, too. Even after her wife had divorced her and taken their son, she still wanted to protect them.

“I’ve lived a full life, Scotty. And if I can leave this world a safer place for my son and for Marcie, I’m going to. Besides, how many people can say they can fly or set things on fire?” her eyes turned forest green and a fireball crackled in her left hand while icicles clung to her right. “It’s a fair enough trade.”

Lyle and Caleb, the new Tiger, had already met and were happy to have a third magic friend. We talked a lot about forming a superhero team, but I don’t think even Caleb was serious about that. Until they learned the truth, that is. They disappeared for a month before Asterion and the White Tiger made their first public save. They said they didn’t hold the truth against me, but they never asked me to join them, either.

I had fun and I lived a life that I could be proud of. But I never forgot what I had to do. Or what was waiting on the other side if I failed or refused.

I’m 24 years old now and 2020 (the year of the rat) is almost over. The Rat, the true Rat, the avatar of inescapable disease and survival at all costs, has almost broken through. The whole planet has seen the result. No more procrastinating.

“It’s the rat’s job to find new hosts,” Josie had told me. “The others follow you from the other side and seek out new hosts in the people around you.” Like a rat spreading viruses. That explained why the people around me had been chosen. “Then, when it’s time, you seek out the new rat. I would have brought you to the store myself, but I couldn’t drive.” She’d spoken so casually. Josie had been a baby when she was chosen and she had grown up with the Rat’s magic and full knowledge of what to do. If she’d ever felt any doubt or resentment about her 12 year lifespan, I’d never heard about it.

I was scared, but if she could be strong, I could, too. This is what rats do, after all: show our strength when there’s no other choice. And there really isn’t. Hira (or the Wildwoman, as she called herself after joining the super-team) and Lyle have been studying the Zodiac and magic and everything in between for years. Arnie, the previous Monkey, helped her a lot, but we’re out of time. We’ll make sure the new Monkey finds their research.

I’d been following Caroline around for a while, hating myself for every second. She’s a female born in the year of the Rat, so she passes the preliminary. She’s also nice and smart and loves her family. I used my magic to hack into her phone, pretending to be her boyfriend and asking her to meet at the old factory that they first met. She’s spying on me from behind some rotting timber when the others show up. When famous actor couple Radka Beránek and Marcelo Stone teleport in, I know Caroline will be too curious to leave.

We all know what we’re doing and while none of us are looking forward to it, we’re all here. We all have people we want to protect. It’s part of why we were chosen. 

Josie told me that it isn’t necessary to tell them, but I disagreed. They deserved to know. 

Zoe’s the last to show up and for a second, I think she flaked. When she shows up, her eyes still red, we all give her a hug. 

Once we’ve talked and drank and used up every excuse to put this off, we chant around the pedestal that Lenore brought. The previous Dog had worked at the police station where it was kept and helped her steal it years ago. 

Beat by ram. Radka had given all her money to charity and proposed to Marcelo when she found the truth.

And bit by dog. Lenore tried so hard to reconnect with her children. I hope she succeeded.

And gored and chewed and ate by hog. I’m a little surprised that Mimi showed up after only a year of holding the power. But she lived fully and met her challenge head on, like a true boar.

The tiger wakes from hungry rest. I was so worried Caleb hated me, but he was the first to give me a hug when he showed up.

The rooster claws you, heart from chest. Marcelo accepted without a second thought and spent the rest of their time making Radka feel happy and loved.

The snake that makes your organs writhe. Jerome single handedly stopped countless forest fires.

The rat that eats your brain alive. I can feel the monstrous Rat’s power. I refuse to flinch.

The rabbit chases you for miles. Zoe’s the youngest of us. She dreamt of joining the circus. 

The monkey sees you die and smiles. Hira got so close to figuring it out.

Outfought by ox. I can’t believe I was ever afraid of such an amazing friend as Lyle.

Outran by horse. I dated J.J. for a while. With his cancer, he was grateful to live as long as he did.

Undone by dragon’s deadly force. Ms. Fleming said Kenji was proud of me.

The power of the Rat, subtle and inescapable, funnels into my being at the end of the ritual. It will take another twelve years for the wretched nightmare to rebuild the power to escape. But I already have the power of the Rat and what I take from the source is too much.

At the end, then there’s only pain, darkness, and the memory of my parents and brothers to remind me of why I did this. Even as much of that memory drains out of my head along with my brain, there’s still Josie. Her human form, that little twelve year old girl from the store, waits for me at the edge of life.

“You’re being very brave, Scotty,” she tells me, smiling. I hadn;t spoken to her much after the reveal, but I couldn’t find any anger or resentment now. “Don’t worry. Caroline will be, too. Maybe she’ll find a way to end this cycle. And if not, there will be others.” She gives me a hug and passes fully into death. 

My eleven friends and I remain at the edge, but I can’t linger. I know what I did was a little...wrong, but if I hadn’t, the Rat would be free by the end of the year. And then, with no way for the others to find hosts, the Ox would break through next year. Than the Tiger. Than the others. Show of hands for that option?

When I wake up, I can feel how cool and smooth the pedestal is on my paws and bald tail. And I can smell the twelve corpses surrounding me, including my own. I can feel the land of the dead like you would feel a thunderhead just behind you. Just barely inside are my friends, each holding onto the power of one of the Zodiac, watching and waiting for Caroline to bring them to new recipients. 

Behind them is the Zodiac waiting for us to mess up so they can escape. All it would take is one of my friends not finding a host or one of the new hosts refusing or being unable to participate in the ritual. Then one of them will escape into our world. That escapee will kill the hosts and with no one to perform the ritual, all of the Zodiac would be free on the following Year of the Rat. Not that humanity would necessarily make it that long.

Caroline has approached in a daze and sees me. I wonder if I look as terrifying to her as Josie did to me all those years ago. Towards the end, my rat form was more Coraline than Ratatouille, you know. I try to smile reassuringly but I just end up scaring her into running. 

She’ll have twelve years to get used to it.

[stegrossaurus]

The Red Book

The Red Book

by Carla

I remember the night the Morgans died. My parents had been aggressive and on-edge for months; many adults had been. Everyone knew the Morgans were witches and that the livestock deaths and farming accidents were their fault. Then one night, they simply lost it; screaming and howling in fury before running out the door to join the other adults and older children in the mob. They couldn’t look my brothers and me in the eye when they came home the next morning. 

I creep up to the Morgans’ house in the fading moonlight, a little worried that what I'm looking for is already gone. I had to wait a few nights before coming. I didn’t want to risk any witch hunters seeing me. But they’re all gone, just like the Morgans.

The rest of the villagers must have been very determined. The front door is torn off its hinges and there are still pieces of the Morgan family on the floor and walls. All of the smears and flyblown lumps don’t seem to add up to four complete people, so the rest of their bodies must have been taken to the church or the city a few miles away. I hold my nose and search the rooms. 

I’m a little surprised to find what I’m looking for almost immediately after entering the master bedroom. A thick, black book with a Baphomet goat on the leather cover rests on the nightstand. Clearly, the mob was more interested in justice than protocol; I’m certain books like this are meant to be confiscated. 

I flip through the pages, but even in the poor lighting it’s clear that magic is more complicated than it looks. I can’t make heads or tails of most of these diagrams and formulas. It’s so full of spells and rituals and lore that I stuff the book in my pack anyway before I search the other rooms. It’ll probably come in handy, but I need something I can understand. Their oldest daughter (Lottie or Lucy or something) was my age, so if she has her own spellbook, it will probably be simpler and easier to understand.

I find her book, a smaller volume with a wolf’s head imprinted on the red leather cover, next to ripped up poppets and sticky, shattered glass. I can tell immediately that my guess was right: the diagrams and instructions are simpler and many ingredients have a list of potential substitutions attached. I take it and every other bit of magic I can find.

Before I go, I take one last look at the scene. All the red chunks and brown splotches were once people, until other people found out what they were doing. And I’m planning on doing that exact same thing.

“The Morgans were stupid,” I reminded myself. “I won’t get caught.”

Once I’m home, I start reading more thoroughly and I can tell I made a smart choice taking the red book. The spells are a little simple; opening locked doors, putting people to sleep, and other small things. But they’re also easy and don’t require many ingredients. Smearing crushed up flies into a symbol is enough to keep my brother asleep for about an hour. 

The black book is more like an encyclopedia. There’s more about spell theory, the mechanics of magic, and supernatural beasts than any actual spells. That symbol I used for the sleep spell, for example, is meant to bind the microbes in the flies’ exoskeletons to dark matter so it can affect the hypothalamus.

The self-teaching is hard and not just because of the material. Between school and chores on the farm, there is little enough time to learn anything, let alone something that will get me killed if it’s discovered. But when I finally cast my first transmutation spell and watch the old, rusty axehead dissolve into a few gold nuggets, I know the risk is worth it. I just need to be smarter than the Morgans.

The Barclays’ farm is close by and about as poor as we are; they’ll do nicely.

Over the next few weeks, the Barclays crops shoot up, their machines perform perfectly, and Mrs. Barclay’s cough disappears. I think I can even find a spell to give Noah Barclay sight in his right eye again. Meanwhile, every family around them, including mine, is suffering a bit of bad luck. Farming accidents and illnesses just like before with the Morgans.

Lottie (or Lucy, whatever) must have been a prodigy because her additions and notes enhanced the spells massively. A spell meant to make the Carmichaels’ sheep rabid instead made them cannibalistic. A potion to make Kimmy Barclay’s biggest bully wet herself in class made her lose every bit of moisture in her body from every orifice. She looked like a withered piece of wood when she finally died. I meant to make my family’s tractor malfunction but instead, every piece of metal in the barn disintegrated. 

The black book has all of the information on beasts, so that’s what I consult when I want to try summoning and conjuring. There are harpies that can blight an entire field of crops, were-beings that can sniff out magic and hunt down anything with a spell attached to it, even horned and tusked demons that can drive an onlooker mad. I decide on the harpies and a river hag. They’re easy enough to summon, devastating in a farming town, and they’ll leave on their own when they’re done.

So many horrible things all pointing to the Barclays. People are scared, but I need them to be angry. I’ve been turning metal and dirt on their property into gold and gems for a while now and when they’re dead like the Morgans, I can go over there and collect. But I need to get everyone riled up for that to happen. 

There’s a recipe for a sour jar in the black book. It’s supposed to make couples fight and split up, but with the red book’s substitutions, I know I can make my neighbors a bit more hostile. 

I spend the next few days sneaking into my neighbors’ houses to get hair and nail clippings. The recipe calls for cat and dog hair, but wolves and cougars are more violent, so I pay a visit to the taxidermist and snip a few hairs while he isn’t looking. I mix the hairs, clippings, and wolf fur into a paste made from every spicy and bitter herb I can find, adding aconite and ergut to make it stronger. I prepare another paste and mix the cougar fur and trimmings from the Barclays. I mix it with water from a forest stream and leave it to stew under the full moon.

By the end of the week, I’m watching the Barclays’ house from my window, the sour jar hot and bubbling in my hand. My parents are screaming at each other downstairs. Soon my parents and many other adults in town will storm to the Barclay house. When my brothers downstairs start screaming and I hear the door opening, I know it’s only a matter of time. I’m going to be rich!

But why are my brothers running across the lawn and not my parents? And why has the screaming turned to choking and rasping?

I get ready to go down the stairs to check when something lurches to the foot of the stairs. Something hairy, large, and wearing my father’s clothes.

I don’t think. I just run back to my room and slam the door before those creatures can get in. I start tearing through the red and black books, looking for an answer. When they start slamming and scratching at the door, I grab the red book and sour jar, open the window, and jump. The bushes cushion my fall and terror dulls the pain. I pump my legs away from the house. Howling follows me.

What did I do? What do I do now? What went wrong? They weren’t supposed to transform and they certainly weren’t supposed to chase me. But they did and they are and they’re not alone.

There’s howling from the Carmichaels’ farm up the road and from the Florences’ on the other side. The only direction not populated by howling is the Barclays’; the four figures coming from there are hissing and roaring instead. A family of cougars in a pack of wolves and they’re all focused on me. I’m surrounded.

I stop running; there’s no point. They’re not running anymore, either; there’s no need. I smash the sour jar on a rock. They stop for a second, then resume loping forward on all fours. I flip frantically through the book, looking for anything that can help. 

Nothing. No cures or even answers. Nothing I can find in time, anyway. 

They’re close enough that I can see drool dripping from the mother’s fangs. 

“Mama, wait,” I beg as she gets closer. She stops and so does Father. “You remember me, right? It’s me, Carla.” 

They start sniffing me, all of them, and I hold my breath. There’s a glimmer of recognition in my parents’ eyes. They remember! I’m going to be alright!

When Jeremy and Susan Oak wake up, the first thing they notice is that they’re not in their house. And neither are the neighbors next to them. They’re near the road in between their farm and the Barclays’. Their clothes are ripped and there’s blood and meat on their faces and hands. Nearby, there’s a smashed jar of fetid, sticky slime and a red book.

It’s happened again.

The rage, the pain, the lost time, and then waking up bloody in a strange place with an oddly full stomach. 

Neighbors and spouses comforted each other, animosity and blame forgotten. It was witches, they told themselves. Witches had cast dark spells on them and God had punished them through the good people in this town, just like with the Morgans. 

Clearly, that was it.

The Oaks limped home, sore and scared. Was this truly God’s plan? Or was it more magic? And how would they face their children again? Especially Carla.

She was so sweet they didn’t know how they’d stomach facing her.