PWOT JDatE Index JDatE Forums

The moment arrived as big moments always do, without slow motion or dramatic music. The door raised, and there he was, revealed from the shins up. Jeans and shirt and- Oh, holy shit. Justin looked mostly normal, skin pale under the moonlight, blonde hair rustling in the stiff breeze, a pimple on his chin... except that both of his eyes were protruding about six inches out from his skull. The pupils at the end of their new white and pink stalks twisted horribly in our direction, staring at us for a very long, terrible moment. We were so caught off guard by this that it killed our momentum, all of us frozen and expecting the person next to them to make the first move. To Jennifer's credit, she broke the paralysis by weakly tossing a flaming bottle at Justin. He watched is it missed, bounced harmlessly to the ground and rolled to a stop. The wick flickered and went out. Shitload curled his twin optical skull-erections down and looked at the sad bottle draining its contents into the dirt. After a moment he turned back up to us and said, "put that shit down and come with me, fools." We sat there for a moment, then did what he said. He backed away from us, suddenly realized his eyes were dangling, and in a series of sickening, jerky neck movements sucked them back in. It was a windy night and in small-town Nevada that apparently means dust. The hybrid demon hive/Limp Bizkit fan led us across a dusty yard, onto a paint-peeled dusty porch where a pair of ancient and very dusty shoes sat mummifying in the dusty desert air. The door was ajar and had only a perfectly-round hole where the knob should have been. Propped next to the door was a dust-covered but new FedEx box which almost certainly was a delivery mistake since this place looked to be in its tenth year of vacancy. Justin pushed in through the door, indifferently kicking the box inside as he passed. I noticed for the first time that Justin had an old, mud-smeared glass jar in his hand and I vaguely remembered seeing it or one just like it in the Jamaican's makeshift basement. With his other hand he pointed to Jennifer, looked at me and said, "yo, she'll be allowed to walk up outta here if you cooperate. I enjoy boners. If you give me static or try to play the motherfuckin' fool, you'll watch as I melt her body from the feet up. Bit at a time, first the skin, then muscle, then bone, joint by joint, over the next twelve hours. You feel me, dude?" Big Jim said, "yeah, but what happens to us? I mean, either way?" "That's a stupid question. The same thing happens to all you people, fool. Regardless of what you do." He pointed to a floor that was covered only in chunks of yellow carpet padding and said, "sit your white asses down." We glanced at each other, everyone expecting someone else to make a move. No one did and one by one we sat, in a circle. Fred turned to me and whispered, "so, is this part of the plan?" I heard the door creak in again and saw Molly push her way through. She found a spot on the floor among us, rotated on it three or four times, then settled in. I looked around the dim group, saw moonlight from the window cracks reflected off tears on Jennifer's cheeks. Big Jim had his eyes closed, maybe in prayer. Fred Chu looked around as if uninterested, stroaking his goatee with one hand and figeting with a strip of carpet foam with the other. John was staring vacantly at a spot on the other side of the room, already distracted into a dull stupor. Molly licked her crotch. Ladies and gentlemen: The Rockville Hell-Conquerer Strikeforce! Shitload said, "this world is shit, yo. How do you people be gettin' around in this, all in these bodies and shit? You act all scared that I'm gonna kill ya, when it's the best thing I could do for you, yo. Deadworld, man, it's alternating layers of rot and shit and shit like that." "Deadworld?" I asked, "is that where you're from?" "No, dude. That's where you're from. This place, it's a horror show. If the guy next to you decides to knock you out of this world forever, he can do it with just a piece of metal or, hell, even his bare hand." He gestured toward me, said, "well, you know. Right?" "I've never killed anybody." "Well, Justin White's brain thinks you did. We're all in here together, you know. In his blood, in his mind. A big family, rollin' as one. We're like Voltron, yo. Though I can't quite get a picture of what a Voltron is, I think we've already eaten the part of his brain that knew that. It probably has something to do with sex or death. Those two concepts seem to occupy you people 24-7. You blobs sit there, chillin' in this room, and I can smell the rot of dead creatures soaking in the acid of your guts. You suck the life from the innocent animals of this world just so you can clock another day. You're machines that run on the terror and pain and mutilation of other lives. You'll scrape the world clean of every green and living thing until starvation goes one-eight-seven on every one of your sorry asses, your desperation to put off death leadin' to the ultimate death of everybody. Dude, I can't believe you ain't all paralyzed by the pure, naked horror of this place." After a long, long pause John said, "uh, thank you." John's eyes never moved as he spoke, and suddenly I saw a look there in his eyes, a confidence. I followed his gaze, saw what he was seeing, and then quickly looked away again. I glanced back at the Justinmonster, wondering if he had caught on, but he was busy. He twisted the lid off the old pickle jar, and a small, shrivelled thing like a dried-up earthworm dropped out and landed quietly on the floor. Shitload went to the kitchen and I heard him messing around with the sink in there. No water. He came back, studied our faces, and pointed to Fred. "Piss on it," he commanded. Without hesitation Fred shrugged and said, "okay." He stood, urinated on the floor, zipped up and sat back down. The little black dried-worm sliver sat in the middle of the puddle. Nothing for a long time, maybe a minute. And then, it twitched. Jennifer screamed, everybody jumped. The shriveled nothing grew, and grew and grew. A hand formed; a human hand, pink and the size of a baby's. Stretching out from behind it, instead of an arm, was something like an insect leg. It was a foot long, springing out to length before our eyes like a radio antenna. Something like a shell took shape. I saw an eye, red and clustered like a fly's. Another eye, this one with a round pupil, like a mammal, grew in next to it. Then another eye, yellow with a black slit down the center. Reptillian. The thing grew and grew some more, grew to the size of a rabbit, then a small dog, then stopped when it was about a foot and a half high and maybe three feet wide, probably the same overall mass as Molly. I wish I had a photograph of the thing, because describing it is a bitch. The thing seemed to be assembled from spare parts. It had a tail like a scorpion curling up off its back. It walked on seven - yes, seven - legs, each ending in one of those small, pink infantile hands. It had an inverted heart-shaped head, a bank of mismatched eyes in an arc over a hooked, black beak, like a parrot's. On its head, no kidding, it had a tuft of neatly-groomed blonde hair that I swear on my mother's grave was a wig, held on with a rubber band chinstrap. What was strange about it, or rather, what was stranger about it was that the two sections of its body, the hind quarters and the abdomen, were not connected. There was a good two inches of space between them and when it turned sideways you could see right through the thing. The little monster stood twitching there on the floor like a newborn calf, still dripping with urine. Fred said, "guys, can you all see that thing, or is it just me?" The beast moved around a bit, looking about the room. Justin said, "don't move. It won't kill you unless I ask it to." The thing turned and turned, looking at each of us, its dozen eyes each blinking at different intervals. It finally stopped, looking my direction. Molly stirred nervously behind me, a low growl rising from her. The thing crouched, then vanished in a blur. I threw myself back, expected the thing to suddenly be on me, but it wasn't. Then I heard a horrible, high-pitched yelp behind me, and turned to find the monster on Molly's back, its legs wrapped around her body, dug into her fur like steel cables. Jennifer screamed, everyone stirred. Justin shouted at us to stay down, stay down. I watched as the thing whipped back that scorpion tail (did I say it was like a scorpion? The freaking tail had hair on it) and with a flick the end was buried in the dog's hide. The length of the tail started pulsing and twitching in a reverse-swallowing movement. It was pumping something into her. And then, it was over. The thing jumped off. Molly looked terrorized but kept her feet. I saw the tip of the thing's scorpion tail and noticed a drip of thick, black fluid trickling out. Suddenly, I understood. Then there was a burst of movement behind me, shuffling feet and shouts and I saw John was making his move, diving in the direction we had been looking earlier. He skidded on the floor and seized the white FedEx box. Shitload was on him fast, Bruce-Lee fast. He delivered a kick to John's gut that actually knocked him back a couple of feet and wrenched the box from his arms. Shitload looked baffled, moved to throw the box aside, and stopped cold. He looked at the label, then at John, then at me, then at the label again. I stood, and moved slowly toward them. Shitload stared at John and said, "what's in here?" John said nothing, looked like he wasn't too sure himself. I moved closer still, not understanding. Shitload stiffened his arm toward John in a 'Heil Hitler' motion. This confused us for a second, before a slit appeared in his palm and something like a mouth puckered there. A thin stream of a thick, yellow liquid dripped out onto the floor, gathering in a small, smoking puddle that quickly ate through the floorboards with a soft hiss. "Tell me." I looked down at the label on the box. The package was addressed to John's real name, to this house in this Nevada town. It was dated yesterday, sent via overnight delivery, with John's own small, neat handwriting. "Tell me, or I'll melt your face, yo. What is it, like a bomb?" John shrugged said, "why don't you open it and we'll both find out?" Shitload sat the box on the floor, said, "take it outside." "Okay." John bent over to pick it up. "Stop! Leave it where it is." "Okay." He pointed to the wigmonster, said, "open the box." The thing apparently understood, because it trundled over and started tearing at the flap with its beak. After several long, clumsy minutes of this, during which I tried to show it the little tear strip all FedEx boxes have, it finally stuck its snout inside and pulled out a sheet of wrinkled notebook paper. Shitload picked it up, saw scrawled on it in big ink pen letters: "JOHN LOOK BY THE BUSH IN THE FRONT YARD" The Justinmonster turned to John and said, "what's out there? A weapon? You tryin' to gank me?" John didn't answer. Shitload pointed to the Wigbeast and said, "if any of you try to move, that thing will rip off all of your limbs, leave you alive and plant five hundred eggs in your belly. You down with that?" We were. Shitload tossed aside the note and strode out the front door. We could indeed see a bush out there, shivering in the breeze. The creature formerly known as Justin White walked out to it, looked down, kicked around at the base of it with his feet. He stood there for a moment, hands on his hips. He finally turned to walk back and was blown off his feet. A thunderous boom echoed in the desert air, followed by a faint mechanical ka-chunk of a pump shotgun. A second shot sounded, and a third. We all were desperate to jump up and go watch our salvation, but a slight shift of a limb would cause the wig thing to spin our direction, as if desperate to eat some manflesh. I saw a figure move past the open door out in the darkness and after a minute or so, in stepped Detective Lawrence "Morgan Freeman" Appleton, loading shells into a pistol-grip riot gun. He started to say something when his eyes caught the jumbled creature on the floor. He raised the gun. The thing turned toward him, meowed like a cat. It crouched, leaned his direction and vanished right as John screamed, "MOVE!" Morgan spun and ducked off to his right just as the wigmonster appeared right next to him in mid-air. The thing flailed its seven limbs awkwardly and tumbled to the carpet. Morgan lowered the shotgun, and a blast thundered in the room. Bits of monster flew up and splattered back to the floor. Morgan racked the shotgun and a blue plastic shell flipped out the side. He looked right at me and said, "there any more of 'em?" "No, but that that guy out in the yard ain't dead." "What, we need to put a stake in his heart?" We all stood and John leaned over and picked up the FedEx box. He peered inside, turned it over. A pack of cigarettes slid out into his hand. He plucked one out, lit it, gave another one to Jennifer. He reached into the waistband of his hospital pants and pulled out a little bottle of some kind of brown liquor he had lifted from the truck, took a drink. Morgan went out the door first, leading with the shotgun. I followed, careful not to step in the wigmonster chunks scattered on the floor underfoot. The cop was a lot more surprised than I was to see the Justinmonster was no longer on the desert floor. He poised the gun in front of him, turning like a turret, then spun on the beer truck as it rumbled to life and rolled onto the road. Morgan ran, ripped off three shots as the red tail lights shrank into the distance. He stomped back toward us, said, "shit." "I know where he's going," I said. "And I'll tell you if you promise to take us with you. And to not to shoot me again." "Okay." "Luxor Hotel." "What, he got a reservation there?" "There's something like a massive seance planned, being led by an internationally renowned expert on carnivorously angry beings from the realm of the undead." "Oh. Alright. Follow me." We all jogged toward a sedan parked alongside the road about a block away. Thirty seconds later we were piled in the rental Ford Taurus Morgan had taken across the country. Me and the cop were in front, Molly sitting heavily on my lap. John, Fred, and Jennifer were crammed in back like sardines, Jen on Big Jim's lap. The sedan squealed onto the blacktop, growled down the pavement. "This thing have a siren on it?" asked Fred. "You're a cop, right?" Morgan didn't take his eyes off the road, said, "man, you think I'm here on official police business? Shut the fuck up." I said, "those things you saw take over Justin... they're looking for hosts, okay? Now there was a drug that the guy, the one who exploded, was-" "-stuff is black, right?" "Oh. You're, uh, familiar with it?" "Sounds like you and I both got long stories to tell. So anybody that takes this stuff is a potential host for those flying wormy things?" "Oh. I dunno." I actually hadn't thought of that. "It was stupid luck," said Morgan, presumably to me, all ten fingers clamped around the steering wheel as the speedometer crept upward. "Brock Wholesale reported the liquor truck missing yesterday. I happened to catch word of a gas station attendant in Missouri who said a beer truck driver told him he needed directions to Las Vegas, then punched him in the balls and told him his daughters would be live meat cocoons for the leech pool. Man thought that was strange, phoned it in. I just followed the same directions he gave Justin, drove balls to the wall and happened to find you on the interstate. Beer truck just ramblin' along, the driver with a massive headwound flappin' in the breeze." Molly pushed past my face, stuck her head out of the window, squinting and sneezing against the rushing wind. I said to Morgan, "you been following us ever since? How'd you make that drive straight through? You have to have been up for like 50 hours now." This seemed to take him by surprise, like he hadn't considered it. "Eh, adrenaline, I guess. I ain't really been tired. The thrill of the hunt." We drove in silence for a moment, saw red tail lights up ahead. Morgan said, "that, and those loud, piercing voices in my head..." I said, "what kind of-" The cop's eyes exploded. He shrieked as two sprays of blood flecked over the windshield. Jennifer screamed from the back seat, John and Fred bellowed "OH, FUCK" simultaneously. Little white rods poured down the cop's face, swirled around inside the car. He let go of the steering wheel, I reached over and grabbed it, we left the road. We shook, rattled, bumped. The horizon and sky swapped places in the windshield and the roof of the car bashed me in the shoulder. Glass bits rained down in my eyes and ears and up my nose, the dashboard punched me in the forehead, the roof hammered me a second time, Molly's furry ass rolled over my face. Finally, the car banged to a stop. Silence. Only a soft chittering over the desert breeze. And then, came the voices. 13 ->