How To Train Your Kaiju

by Nicholas Knight

  The woman screams.

  I storm in. I have not been this furious since before meeting Dr. Warden. Maybe it’s knowing my outlet is gone. Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing the game so long I’ve gotten used to smashing things. Maybe it’s the way this woman talked to my mother the other day when I called. Maybe it’s the fact that after coming all this way after surviving that kaiju attack she shut the door in my face. Maybe it’s all of this combined. Whatever the case, I am done playing nice, pretending to be a good citizen. My anger rides me and I let it.

  “I was not asking your Goddamn permission,” I roar, stepping inside.

  The woman starts grabbing things and throwing them at me. Mom is screaming. Those are her knickknacks and possessions the woman is chucking. Being a traveler by nature, Mom never kept clutter. Each of the things that hits me or smashes against the wall behind me is something she kept for sentimental reasons. They’re her memories. And this bitch is breaking them.

  “Stop that,” I snarl, storming up to her. I grab her thick arm before she can throw something else. She lets out a whimper. I’ve terrified her. Good.

  “Aaron!” That’s Mom’s voice.

  I step back, releasing the hospice lady, and turn to find Mom in the living room. The walker’s gone, replaced with a wheelchair. She’s thinner, her face almost gaunt, though exactly how much weight she’s lost is hard to say because she’s wearing a thick cardigan sweater.

  We’re barely out of summer and it’s hotter than hell outside. I march over, ignoring her protests, and yank up her sweater sleeve. The skin underneath is a patchwork of bruises.

  Everyone goes quiet. I turn, shaking with rage, fixing the alleged care-taker with my gaze. “You’re fired. You have exactly ten seconds to get out of here.” I catch her eye. “I’ve got no problem going back to jail if it means putting you in the ground.”

  I don’t care that she’s a woman. I don’t care what kind of sentence a judge might pass on me. I don’t even care about what kind of trouble I’m already likely to be in from this exchange. No one hurts my Mom.

  The hospice lady runs.

  “Aaron,” Mom says.

  I think she would have said more, except that I drop to my knees beside her and throw my arms around her. “Mom.”

  We’re crying then. Me, because everything inside of me breaks all at once. Her…I don’t know. I can only hope that I haven’t disappointed her too badly again.

  “I saw the news,” she says. “The monster. I thought you were—and she wouldn’t let me…”

  I give her a gentle squeeze and pull back. “I’m okay, Mom. I’m okay. Things are going to change. I’ve got money now. We’re getting you out of here and someplace better.”

  “H-how?”

  How on earth do I explain this? “I’ve just got it, that’s all.”

  “Aaron, please tell me you didn’t do anything illegal?”

  The question shouldn’t hurt as badly as it does. It’s not only reasonable, it’s quite possibly warranted. “No, the money’s legit, Mom. Nothing illegal, I promise. It’s just really hard to explain.”

  I want to get Mom packed right away, but we don’t have anywhere else to go yet. I’ll need to fix that. Meanwhile, we need that door fixed. That’s going to cost something ugly. If it comes out of Dad’s expenses though I don’t care. How the hell could he let anyone like that woman near Mom?

  I’m about to start cleaning up and helping Mom pack when I hear footsteps approaching from outside. I’m up, ready to throw myself at whoever comes through that door. My nerves are so shot to hell, my adrenaline ready to go at a moment’s notice, that being ready for a fight somehow makes more sense than anything else.

  And that’s how Dad finds me when he walks through the broken door. I can only imagine how crazy I must look. His eyes take in the mess, take in my disheveled state, and then fall on Mom. I never rolled her sleeve back down and his eyes zero in on the bruises there, widening in shock before turning back to me.

  With dawning horror, I realize what this must look like. I can see in his eyes that I’m right. He thinks that I’ve broken in here, wrecked the place, and attacked Mom.

  He stares at me for a full moment, fists clenched and shaking at his sides. “Aaron, what the have you done?”

  Chapter Thirty

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  “Clarence, this isn’t what it looks like,” Mom says. Somehow, she manages to sound both pleading and exasperated.

  Dad is taken aback, actually doing a double take. It’s as if he’s forgotten she’s capable of speech. If he hasn’t been by in some time and the only real contact he’s had with her has been through that horrible hospice lady, he might actually think that it was beyond her.

  I go on the offensive before he can regain his momentum, thoughts of Mom’s abuser burning through me. “Did you know that the hospice nurse you hired was hurting her?” I point at Mom, glaring straight into his eyes.

  They widen in shock and confusion, darting from me to Mom. “What?”

  Mom looks away and, with a visible effort, grabs her sleeve and pulls it down. She doesn’t answer. Most people who have been abused or are being abused don’t want to talk about it or acknowledge it. I’ve never understood that. Then again, I’ve never gone through what they’ve gone through.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “It got hard to be around here so you quit coming by. You left her alone with that monster. What, called in once a week? Spoke for all of two minutes?”

  “Sh-she was tired,” Dad says. He’s not looking at me. He’s still staring at Mom. It’s like he can’t believe this is real. I know that feeling all too well. It gives me exactly zero empathy for him.

  “And who told you that?” I demanded, knowing full well who it was that would have limited his phone calls. That bitch would have had total control over Mom’s life while she was here. I am shaking I am so mad. Fortunately, there’s a convenient target for my anger right here. “You took the easy way out, like you always do. You left, and instead of taking care of what you’re supposed to take care of, handed the job off to someone you could pay.”

  He’s not listening to me though. I’ve been tuned out. Dad only has eyes for mom. Quietly, he asks, “Is it true?”

  Of course, it’s true! I want to shout. I just told you that! Why the hell do you always think I’m a liar?

  Slowly, Mom nods.

  Dad gives a little shake. He spins back to me and closes the distance between us. I throw my hands up, ready to throw all my anger into a good punch across the face. He ignores my fists, which makes me hesitate. The hesitation is enough. Next thing I know he’s got his arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest in an embrace.

  There’s a lot of hugging going on lately, I distantly think, so confused by this turn of events that my anger’s forgotten.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” Dad says. He’s crying. The bastard is actually crying.

  My anger returns, full force. I break free of his arms and shove him back away from me, hard. He’s shocked. I don’t think he’d realized how strong I’ve become. Or maybe he thought that somehow everything would magically be forgiven. It isn’t.

  “You don’t get to do that.” I’m shouting. My face is burning. I feel tears in my eyes and they only make me madder. He doesn’t get to see me cry. “You don’t get to hug on me and tell me how happy you are I’m alive after everything you’ve done.”

  “Aaron.” That’s Mom’s voice. She’s talking to me.

  I don’t know what she’s saying though. I’m overflowing, ready to explode and the words won’t stop tearing out of me. “You left her again! You let her get hurt! We’re through with you. Get out of our lives and stay gone. I should have been here with her and you pulled that college blackmail shit like you were trying to bribe a teenager with a car! We don’t need you anymore, I’ve got the money to pay for the docto
rs and I’ll be right here, not some stranger. Get out and don’t come back!”

  “Aaron!”

  This time Mom’s voice jolts me out of my rant. I’m panting, shivering. I feel like I’ve just sprinted away from that snake kaiju all over again.

  Both Dad and I slowly turn our attention to Mom.

  “I asked him to send you to college,” she says.

  The words hit me like a bucket of ice water to the face. “What?”

  Tears are glistening in her eyes. Have I made her cry again?

  Her voice is unsteady when she speaks. Mom has never been a woman to use tears to get what she wants. Seeing her weep now sends a sharp pain shooting beneath my ribcage.

  “He did everything, everything, because I asked him to.”

  It takes me several seconds to process this. “You asked him for help with the medical bills?”

  She nods. “And he agreed to help without hesitation. He didn’t have to, Aaron. He doesn’t owe me anything.”

  That’s bullshit, I want to scream. He owes you everything. But the words won’t come out. The insides of my throat are frozen.

  “I asked him to make sure you went to college, to get into a university,” she goes on. “It was never a real condition that he would only pay while you were attending.”

  What? Now my whole body is frozen. Not my mind though. That is racing, trying to make sense of this. I feel like I’m stuck in a mental hamster wheel, running in place, getting traction but going nowhere. Pieces slowly fall into place. Piece by tiny, painful piece.

  There is something fundamentally wrong with the idea of paying to send me to college as a way of me paying Dad back for taking care of Mom. I was still thinking of Dad like a young teenager, not considering the real implications of that. How much money he was spending. That’s way too much to spend in an effort to try and make me more like him. His whole deal never made any real kind of sense.

  My anger made me blind.

  I make my mouth and throat move. The effort hurts so much that I feel like I must be bleeding. It’s all I can do to utter the question, “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to waste the best years of your life watching me die,” Mom says, choking down a sob. “You have so much potential, Aaron, I couldn’t bear to see you waste any more of it.”

  The first part sinks in quickly. It makes sense. When I’m sick, I want to be left the hell alone. ALS is a degrading disease. I understand, empathize even, with Mom’s desire to be left alone while it takes its toll on her. It’s the other part that strikes me so hard it nearly bounces off.

  Wasting my potential? Is that really how she’s seen this whole time? I look over to Dad. He was willing to play the bad guy in all of this, for her? Technically for me as well but I never wanted any of this or asked for it. He gives a nod, understanding what I’m asking without speaking.

  I slowly shake my head. I start moving into the house.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asks.

  “To take a shower,” I say. “I can’t handle the two of you right now and I’m still wearing the same clothes I was yesterday.”

  If they say anything else after that I don’t hear it. My brain shuts off. It’s been overloaded in the past twenty-four hours. My Dad’s not the monster I thought he was but other monsters are real, both human-shaped and building-sized. The world doesn’t make sense any more.

  I don’t know how long I’m under the water. When I’m done though I have a problem. The kaiju attack destroyed my dorm room, burying all my clothes beneath a mountain of rubble and I don’t have anything to change into here. I have to put my grimy clothing back on after drying off, making me feel dirty all over again.

  I make a mental note to buy new clothes as soon as possible. I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do with myself now.

  No one’s in the living room when I walk out into it. My eyes go to the door I broke. A project is just what I need. When something is broken, I do my best to fix it.

  There’s only so much I can do with the limited tools and materials at hand, but I make it work. The door’s not pretty and it takes extra effort to open, but some time later it’s back in place. The latch won’t catch properly so the deadbolt has to be turned to hold it in place. Not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll still replace it with a proper door soon.

  I turn around after admiring my handiwork and find Dad standing there, watching me.

  “You really are good with your hands,” he says.

  I grunt. It could mean, thanks, it could mean, I know, or it could mean, fuck off. Maybe it means all three. Right now, I don’t actually know.

  Neither does Dad. He shifts uncomfortably in place. There’s something he wants to say and is working himself up to it.

  I stay silent. No need to help him along.

  “I didn’t divorce Emma because I don’t love you,” he finally says.

  I roll my eyes. “Really? You want to do this now?”

  “Aaron, you almost died yesterday. A giant fucking monster came out of nowhere and nearly crushed you! Do you understand that?” He’s nearly shouting, his voice picking up in pitch and speed. With every word he draws a little closer.

  “We’ve both made stupid decisions,” Dad says, stopping within arm’s reach. “I’ve been willing to play the bad guy this time around because you were already so mad. I thought sending you to college was the best thing for you.”

  “You and Mom both,” I say. My voice is flat and cold.

  He nods. “Yes. And you would never have gone on your own.”

  “I should have been here,” I say. “This would not have happened to Mom if I’d been here.”

  “We don’t know that,” he says.

  “We do! Because it would have been me taking care of her and not some stranger!” I’m shouting.

  He shouts back. “She didn’t want you here!”

  I recoil as if slapped.

  “Your mother loves you, Aaron,” Dad says, speaking in a normal voice now. “She loves you so much, and she doesn’t want you to remember her like this. Dying. And she wants you to have the best of life.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t know what I can say.

  “And, I know this doesn’t mean much to you,” Dad says. “But so do I, son.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

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  Nearly a week later no one in the world has any idea where the giant snake’s gone, where it came from, or why it attacked. The world, save for me, the other players, and Isabella, are completely clueless. Speculation is rampant. The only thing that’s known for sure is that it hasn’t been seen since destroying Ole Miss.

  People are saying anything and everything. Scientists scream that the creature defies the laws of physics and debate everything they thought they knew. Several doomsday cults have sprung up, each proclaiming the kaiju heralds something different, usually a variation on the end of days. And the politicians…well, they are politicking like nobody’s business.

  I tune most of it out, instead focusing on keeping busy and helping Mom. Just because she tried to get rid of me doesn’t mean I don’t have a responsibility to take care of her. Dad and I are splitting the cost of her medical expenses and I’d hired some new help. Help that I carefully screened and vetted. After what had happened last time I go so far as to hire a private security firm to perform an in-depth background check. I have the money now, which is a weirdness unto itself. Even with Mom’s medical expenses I have no idea what to do with the substantial amount of remaining cash.

  Nor am I sure how to feel about it. It is, technically, blood money.

  I fixed the door properly, got new tools, and kept myself busy taking on local mechanic jobs. I’m considering hiring out to a local shop or maybe using the money to fund my own. Only I have no idea how to actually run larger a business and spending that money on anything aside from Mom’s c
are feels weird.

  Keeping busy helps keep my mind off Kaiju Wars Online. Every time I glance at my phone, the app is there, begging to be activated. It is insidious. Even getting too close to the television or a computer makes it show up. And every time it’s an effort not to activate it, to not log in to the game and become Taisaur again.

  It’s like being an alcoholic constantly tempted with beer every time I so much as look at a screened electronic device and giving in means more death. Human or alien, I don’t know or care which. It isn’t a game anymore. And Brett had been right. It was addictive. So I keep busy to keep my mind off of it because otherwise I am going to give in and crack.

  I become surly, snapping at everyone. Cold showers become a staple. Oddly, so do text messages with Isabella. And no, there’s no relationship between the texting and showers.

  I’m not a texter. Hell, I’m not even a good communicator. Maybe if I’d gone to high school like a normal teenager this would be different, but nonstop texting is a new experience for me. Whenever I’m about to give in and push the Kaiju Wars app, I text her instead.

  She almost always texts back right away. I find myself eager for them. This is a whole new level of weirdness. I’d much preferred to talk to her in person face to face. Failing that, this is a good substitute. I don’t think I’ve ever texted so much in my entire life.

  Through her texting I learn that she’s joined the volunteer efforts helping out survivors of the attack. There is a lot to be done and every time she described how a home near Ole Miss had been demolished or how yet another body of a faculty member has been discovered, I feel a stab of guilt in my gut. The Ole Miss would never have been a target if Lusitania and I hadn’t been there.

  And Lusitania hasn’t stopped playing the game. So far nothing has come of it and she hasn’t encountered Tatanocobra in the game again. Every time Isabella mentions it though I feel my breathing quicken. I try convincing her to leave several times. She isn’t having any of it. I quit after the third attempt when she doesn’t text me for a full day.