Monster
Brandon Barr

 

 

The rhythmic tremor

of footsteps wakes me from my dreams.  I right myself and scratch the crust from my eyes.  Dirt clumps tinkle down from the roof of my burrow.  The vibrations stop overhead…my stomach twists, nervous and hungry. 

 

From above I hear a non-synthetic voice call, “Come out, prison keeper.”

 

There is no defying that voice!

 

I scamper up a narrow tunnel and peek out from my hole.  It is dark.  The planet’s sole moon hovers overhead like a sightless eye, and the stars shine, cold and dim through the translucent walls of my prison.

 

Under the muted starlight stands a massive being.  Its skin glows faintly in the darkness.  A charcoal staff protrudes from its handless sleeve.

 

“Yes, my creator?” I reply as I slip out of the ground and stand on my hind legs.

 

“The time is come,” announces the voice.  “The mortals I have given you to tend are ready for inhabitation.  There are ripe minds among the watchers this hour.”

 

Feast of feasts.  To possess!  To inhabit!  My tail slaps the ground and I scuff the earth with my claws.  My long wait is over.

 

“Take heed, prison keeper.  The enemy has infiltrated the watchers on your planet.  Choose carefully which minds you sink your teeth into.”

 

I hold back a curse and hiss, “I will be crafty, master.”

 

The creator lowers his staff and tilts my head up with the crook.  “I have summoned the helper from her waiting place.  Fog waits outside the prison walls to cloak you.”

 

Fog!  She will help me get what I’ve been created to have.

 

The creator raises its robed arm and a finger slides from the sleeve like a delicate snake.  Its voice is even: “Your time is come.  Go forth.  Eat and inhabit.”

 

A pixilated rainbow of light flashes against the prison wall.  The tiny prisms of color part, opening a hole in the crystalline material.  The hair on my body catches the soft fingers of a breeze from the outside.  I smell wet, musty soil; grasses, pollens, animals, and ever so gently I smell the ripened minds of my watchers.

 

I move towards the opening, and as I do, my creator growls, “Show no mercy.”

 

I begin to run.  Sprint.  Gallop.  I leap through the shimmering hole.  I sense the change in my body as I pass through the containment field; feel dew and wet dirt on my fore feet as my claws dig into soft earth for the first time.  Breathing deep, I find, mixed in with the smells and sights and touches, a rush of emotion.  It is a gelling of freedom and destiny.  The moon is fading in predawn light.  Slowly a condensation builds around me, and grows denser.  Fog has found me.  I feel the thickness of her cling to my hide.  My breath catches in her cold air.

 

I hiss, “At last, we are together.”

 

“Yes, lover,” she whispers, “I am the harlot of a thousand worlds, but tonight, I am yours.”

 

I feel her swirl about me.  For this one moment I feel the rush of pure hedonistic passion.  Mine!  This evening’s dark delight.  Once the watchers have been inhabited, and their minds sit heavy in my stomach, I will have my reward of her.

 

She breathes words into my ear, “What is the name of our prey, beloved?”

 

I howl into her vapors, “Man!  They call themselves Man.”

 

~~~~~

 

Fog’s body surrounds me.  Trees, like great pale worms, materialize out of the mist as I maneuver through the woods.  I startle a doe and her yearling, and they bound recklessly away.  I come alongside a rusting barbed-wire fence and on it is a large sign that reads, “No Trespassing.”

 

If my throat were capable of laughter, it would thunder across the globe.  I am out!  The beautiful being that haunts man’s dreams, who shapes the desires of their hearts.  He is out!  And he is coming!

 

Countless hours have the watchers come and enjoyed my theatrics.  I have shown them what it is to love and be loved; I have given them a taste of paradise; and I have given them a glimpse of my creators’ power, and they are never satisfied, as it should be.

 

This is the cycle on every new world my creators find.  They arrive in secret.  Overnight scattering hundreds of thousands of traps, and after time, the natives find them.  At first they are curious.  They pick up the small crystal orb thinking they have found a precious stone, and carry it back with them.  Inside their homes, the orb begins to flicker.  Slowly an image appears.  Multicolored.  Dazzling.  They become entranced, unaware that they have brought a prison into their home.  The image comes into focus, and it is I who appears in the crystal orb.

 

And here is the lure of it all, for though I am hideous to look upon, the translucent walls disguise it.  Change it.  Instead of death they see beauty.  My body, and the bodies of thousands of monstrous things like me are transformed into lovely forms of the imagination—to each world his own.

 

Oh, the beings the creators have conquered in centuries past!  The variety of beautiful forms now brought under their control.  And here, now, upon this new world, I play my part.

 

As I stand before the watchers in their homes, baring my teeth, clawing at the invisible barrier, wishing to suck their brains from their skulls, they see only a composed, beautiful human—always a specimen of manipulated perfection—reaching out to embrace them, or kiss them passionately, or befriend them.  Whatever I see fit to show them.  The deepest, most well hidden desire in that person’s heart is cast upon the walls and I read from it like a script, pulling them away from truth and reality like a master puppeteer. 

 

Time works upon them.  They grow dissatisfied with the world they live in and fall in love with the perfect beauty of the world within the prison. 

 

And their minds ripen. 

 

Now I come for the fruit of my labor.

 

~~~~~

 

I see an old woman collecting wood.  Her unripened mind is a stench to me.  It is clear she does not possess a prison orb.  A homeless beggar no doubt.  I pass her by, a gust of wind through the trees.  She glances up, but sees only my wake, and returns to her gathering.

 

Fog whispers, “Can you keep a secret?”

 

My curiosity is piqued.  She knows I will not keep a secret if it is in my own self-interest to share it.  “Of course,” I hiss.  “Let me ease your mind.”

 

“I fear our war is coming to an end.  Our creators are losing ground to the enemy, to Death Slayer.”

 

“How can you know this?”

 

“There was a time when I concealed a hundred prison keepers a day.  Those numbers are falling.”  

 

“As long as prisons are made,” I growl, “mortals will be bound by them.  Death Slayer and all his immortal agents can never stop the damage we keepers have wrought.”

 

Fog’s vapors urgently caress my face.  “The enemy is spreading a new weapon.”

 

I snarl, “If it is higher beauty or more vibrant colors, then it will fail.  Death Slayer is bound by truth and reality, but I have no such restrictions.  Nothing surpasses the lusts of what one does not have.  As long as I cast impossibility upon the prison walls, watchers will continue to want.”

 

“It is neither beauty nor color.  Death Slayer has written a book.  Words are his new medium.”

 

“Words.”  I laugh.  “I can change a mortal’s emotion in a single image.  A book can never match that power.”

 

“One conquered world has been freed already be the use of words.”  Fog’s tone is almost a challenge.

 

“Impossible!”  But when I say it, I feel the sting of my own memories drag me back to long ago, before my skin had ceased to shed, when my body was softer—to a time when I hadn’t been so strong.  Once I had felt pity for the mortal watchers, and feared the dark desires growing inside me.  A hunger for power.  An appetite for cruelty.  I wanted to fight the tug of destiny that would enslave me behind those prison walls.  For a time, I wanted to escape to Death Slayer’s side.  All I had ever known was death, destruction, and deceit.  Year after year, these had passed by my own power into the mortals under my keep, but I wondered what it would be like to perform the opposite task; to give life and restoration as the agents of Death Slayer did.

 

But I held firm.  Time passed, and the desires coded into my genetics developed stage by stage, transforming me.  With each molting season I peeled off the old skin and found I was growing viler, not only in body, but in mind.  Over time, my pity for the mortals weakened, then disappeared completely. 

 

I growl at Fog: “On the planet that rebelled against our creators…did the prison keeper of that world free the mortals?”

 

“No.  It was the mortals themselves.  They turned against the keeper who enslaved them after reading the book.”

 

I stew over Fog’s words.  “I will mutilate the mortals given me this day.  I will shred them to pieces and swallow their souls!  Do you hear me Fog?  I own them.  My fangs are already deep in their minds.  Do you hear me Fog?   Do you hear me?!”

 

“Yes,” she says.  “I hear you.  And I like what I hear.”

 

~~~~~

 

The ground is changing.  Tinfoil wrappers, and plastic scraps dot the soil.

 

I am close.  I can sense it.

 

A large pentagon shape materializes from the mist and I freeze.

 

Before me stands a one-story house with beige stucco walls.  The windows are shuttered and the lights are off.  I crouch beside the mailbox and sniff the air.  My jaw relaxes.  The scent in that house is not ripe.  I do not desire that one.  Their minds would be thick and tough, for they have not fully succumbed to the prison orb.

 

But in time they too will ripen.

 

There are more houses.  I stop and sniff at each one.  Some smell ripe, but oh masters!  My creators!  What luscious scent that now touches my senses?  Sweet rot.  Fly-ridden sensuality.  Tender brains engorged like ticks!  How mightily they have sucked upon the bait I have laid.

 

“Conceal me in your arms,” I call to Fog.  “Cloud the vision of my watchers.  Fight the morning light.  Squeeze onto me like a fist as you bear its hot punishment!”

 

Fog whispers, “I will cling to you till the last.  The sun is my enemy, and the day our battle ground.  But hurry…the sun is rising.”

 

I scurry onto a dead lawn, move across an empty suburban street, and scale a chain link fence.  My paws land on plush grass.  A dog charges out from its pen, snarling at me.  With one swipe I cripple the beast.  It yelps pitifully, tearing at the silence.  I pull its head from its body. 

 

Silence.

 

I dart to the side of the white paneled house.  The smell seeping from within intoxicates me.  With a single claw I guide the window pane up and squeeze my body through the opening and land quietly on carpet, very quietly; the hooked bone at the tip of my tail slides the window back into place.

 

“My body!” cries Fog.  “My body is fading!”

 

My heart leaps, and I peer back through the window.  The rays of the sun are stabbing over the horizon.  I turn away and focus.

 

Gingerly I slink down a hall lined with photographs, listening for the sound of the watchers.  I stop at the third door on the right.  The screeching sound of laughter fills the room for several delicious moments. 

 

I give it a push, and it swings open.

 

It is dark, but my eyes adapt quickly.  A low table rests in the middle of the room, and behind it is a couch with four bodies slunk down into the cushions.  An effervescent glow touches them, like the muted moonlight coming through my prison wall.  They are in the very act of watching!  The prison box they’ve drug into their home sits god-like before them.  I curl my lips back and grin.

 

“I’m vanishing, my love!” cries Fog.  “They will see—they will see!”

 

Instinct takes over like a jolt of electricity.  I fire into the room and grab the mind of the youngest watcher, my snout passes through his skull like a breeze through a screen door.  In one sucking breath, the fleshy mass passes through my lips and slips down my throat like a thick pudding.

 

Fog screams out a countdown.  “Five…Four…” 

 

I leap and seize the mind of another small watcher with my fore teeth and suck.  She is soupier, but I finish her quickly enough. 

 

“Three!”

 

Only two adult watchers remain.  I seize the largest watcher and sink my teeth into his engorged mind—like a ripe, dripping cantaloupe—set my hind legs wide, and shove it downward using gravity to push the massive organ through my jaws.

 

“Two!”

 

I turn to the adult woman…

 

“One!”

 

…stretch out my claws to seize her.  Then I see it.  Something is amiss.

I freeze!

 

Her face is angled down, she is not watching!  Her eyes flick back and forth over something.  I follow her lowered gaze to her lap.  To the book.

 

I recoil in horror. 

 

Her mind would have shattered my teeth.

 

~~~~~

 

I let out a deep breath and lay back, reclining on the sofa, and stare ahead of me.  The leather feels cool on my shirtless back.

 

“I’m not sure about this dear,” says the woman beside me, frowning as she looks up from reading.  “Tif and Kiel shouldn’t watch this type of stuff.”

 

“Oh come on,” I say through the inhabited girl, Tiffany, and reach her hand into a bowl of popcorn.  I slide her tongue over her teeth, digging at a kernel, and taste the sweet residue of licorice.

 

“Ya, what are you talking about, Mom?” I say very delicately through Kiel.  “Isn’t it better if I see this stuff with you and dad here?”

 

The woman beside me sighs.

 

“The boy’s got a point there,” I say.  “Kid’s sharp as glass.”  I turn and wink at Kiel.  I slide my arm around the woman beside me.  “They’re good kids.  They know it’s only entertainment, hun, nothing more.”

 

The woman sighs again, and returns her attention to the book.

 

I want to ask her, “Aren’t you going to watch?” but I let it go.  I can see I’ve lost her already.

 

Her face darts up, and she catches me staring at her.  Her eyes bore into mine.

 

“What’s your problem,” I say.

 

She shakes her head. “Turn it off,” she says.

 

“What?”

 

“I said turn it off.”

 

I swallow the sour fury her words spawn inside me.  I breathe deep and squeeze her shoulder.  “Read your book, dear.”

 

In one swift motion she jolts up and moves towards the prison orb.  Astonishment binds me to the sofa.  I cannot move.  I stare at the image I have cast upon the orb.  The image is of Fog and me, but concealed as two flawless humans.  We embrace in the soft, manipulated light, preparing to perform our impossible crystalline dance.  Millions of watchers look on, readied for wanting, but never having.

 

The woman’s hand touches the screen and the orb turns dark.

 

She looks at me.  Me, the beast beneath her husband’s skin.

 

“It’s all in the book.  Your end draws nigh…prison keeper.”

 

       }
~~~~~ <~
       }

 

Brandon Barr has been writing since his early childhood days.  He was first published in 2004 in Gateway SF Magazine.  Since then Brandon has had a number of short stories published in Haruah, Christian Sci-Fi Journal, Ray Gun Revival, Residential Aliens, Nova Science Fiction, and Revelation Magazine.  He’s also written several editorials for the Wayfarer’s Journal.

 

Most recently Brandon has had his new novel published.  Co-written with Mike Lynch; a Sci-Fi epic called Sky Chronicles: When The Sky Fell, it was released just a couple weeks ago by Silver Leaf Books.  When The Sky Fell “Follows the adventures of Commander Frank Yamane and his crew as they struggle to determine whether this will be Earth’s finest hour, or the destruction of us all.”

 

For more information you can find Brandon at his website http://www.brandonbarr.com.