"Of course they are. Ugly people make ugly children, and no one wants ugly kids." She ran a hand through her hair and motioned toward a woman three rows in front of them. "Look at her. That fat chick wearing flannel. She's alone, and do you know why she's alone?"
I know you're going to tell me, he thought.
"She's alone because she's hideous. Seriously. She's overweight, she's not wearing makeup, her hair looks like a squirrel's ass. If you don't put any time into looking your best, no one else is going to pay attention. I'm not being shallow," she said. "I'm just telling you the way the world works."
She raised her cell phone, took a quick photo of the woman in question, and posted it on her timeline for her friends to see. Greg couldn't help but wonder if this was the highlight of her day.
"Just look at me," she continued. "I don't leave the house unless I look absolutely stunning. I wouldn't be caught dead in public if I looked like her. Don't people understand that we can have our photos posted on Twitter at the touch of a button? I mean... how embarrassing!"
"Not everyone can be beautiful all the time." He said it before he thought about it and felt his chances of getting in Lizzie's pants slipping away, but when she looked at him, she was smiling.
"Not everyone can... but I can, and that's all that matters to me."
Greg slid a few inches away as Lizzie went back to her phone to comment on her friends' reactions. When he thought about asking Lizzie on a date, he had no idea how awful she was. She was a poster child for everything wrong with the girls in his school - stuck up snobs sucking on silver spoons and looking down on anyone who didn't fit into their idea of beauty. All thoughts of getting her in bed slowly evaporated.
Then she turned to him and said, "But I think you're pretty cute in your own way."
"In my own way?"
She leaned toward him and whispered in his ear. "It means I'll blow you when the movie ends if you play your cards right."
Greg stared at her vacantly and felt his eye twitch. He understood why girls like Lizzie always got their way. They could be monsters whenever they wanted, but a promise of sexual favors would make any guy suck it up and deal with it. A sexual conquest of that caliber was worth its weight in gold.
"But only if you play your cards right," she repeated.
What fucking cards? I don't even know what the game is.
Lizzie stood, brushed the creases from her skirt, and said, "I'll be right back. I want to check my makeup before the movie starts."
Check your makeup? You're going to be sitting in the dark in fifteen minutes.
He assumed in several minutes Lizzie's Facebook feed would be filled with pouty-lipped selfies from the classy confines of the Silver Screen bathroom.
She slid down the aisle, stepping on toes as she went. A teenage boy near the end of the row watched her pass and smiled at Greg as if they shared a private joke. If they were sitting closer, Greg could imagine this kid giving him a high-five for scoring such a fine piece of upper-class ass.
"What have I gotten myself into?" he mumbled as he checked his watch.
A blow job from the teen queen of Ditchburn High School, the voice in his head responded.
He nodded, took a deep breath, and waited for his date to return.
***
After ten minutes, Greg began to worry that Lizzie had ditched him.
The theater was packed and the previews had just begun as Greg stood and shuffled his way to the main aisle. If Lizzie was going to the bathroom, she was clearly taking the monster shit of her teenage life, but Greg knew that girls didn't shit. Especially the really pretty ones.
When he got to the lobby it was empty except for the guy behind the candy counter who was busy straightening boxes of Goobers like he expected a military inspection.
"Did you see a girl out here?" Greg asked. "Blond, really pretty, blue sweater?"
"I see a thousand girls come and go every night, buddy. We're all looking for a pretty blond."
Greg went to the entrance and peeked outside, but still no sign of her.
"She said she was going to the bathroom. Can I just knock on the door and see if she's okay?"
"She's probably checking her hair. You know how girls are."
"Yeah, I do, but you didn't answer my question."
"Do whatever you want, but make it quick. I don't need to get in trouble from my manager because I let some guy spy on girls in the potty."
"I'm not fucking spying... jeez... it'll only take a second."
The man shrugged, waved a hand dismissively, and went back to the task at hand.
Greg quickly found the door to the restroom and knocked before asking, "Lizzie? Are you in there? You okay?"
"Uh, yeah, just... just give me a second."
He noticed a slight tremor in her voice as if she'd been crying. His instinct was to go in and check on her, but his common sense kept him rooted to the floor.
"I just wanted to make sure. The movie's going to be starting in a few minutes."
"I said I'm fine. Go back inside... I'll be there in a minute."
Greg leaned against the wall and heard the muffled strains of the 'Fox Fanfare' bleeding through the doors to the theater. He grew more irritated as the seconds passed. He'd paid for two tickets to a damn movie he didn't even want to see, and here he stood outside the restroom while Lizzie powdered her nose.
A woman approached the restroom, looked Greg up and down, and scowled. "Are you lost?"
"No, ma'am, I'm just waiting for my girlfriend."
"Well, can you wait somewhere else? You're blocking the door."
"Sure. Sorry..."
The woman brushed past and entered the bathroom without a second glance. Now Greg felt like a pervert which only made him angrier. Suddenly, getting in Lizzie's pants didn't feel like it was worth the hassle.
When Greg heard the scream, he couldn't tell if it was part of the movie. He listened closely for the sound to be repeated. A loud metallic bang sounded behind the door to the bathroom followed by a second, even more piercing wail.
"Yo, man, what the fuck? I told you not to go in the bathroom," the man shouted from behind the counter. He dropped a bag of Skittles and looked as if he was personally offended by the interruption.
"I didn't," Greg said. "I've been out here the whole time."
The bathroom door swung open and banged loudly against the wall. The woman ran toward him like a linebacker before turning the opposite direction and falling on her face in the middle of the hall. She lay motionless on the carpet, clenching her hands and trying to catch her breath.
"What the fuck did you do, bro?"
Greg was getting tired of the popcorn-slinger's accusations, but he was too scared to say or do anything. What the hell just happened?
"Lizzie?" he said. "Lizzie! Are you okay?"
Greg went to the door just as it opened and Lizzie bounded from the bathroom and knocked Greg on his ass. He rolled over and turned as Lizzie crossed the lobby and burst through the front doors. Her cell phone landed on the floor and tumbled after her.
He stood, brushed himself off, and ran outside, but she was nowhere to be found. If cheerleading failed her, there was a chance she'd be one hell of a track star.
"Lizzie!" he shouted. "Where the hell are you?"
To the left of the theater was the old drug store where Greg had purchased his first condoms. They'd been sitting in his nightstand collecting dust ever since. On the right was a parking lot where many of the teenage couples would make out in front of each other like depraved exhibitionists. This stretch of Block Street had been nicknamed the 'Stop-And-Fuck' by the locals - you stop, see a show, buy some rubbers, and screw your date in the back seat of your daddy's station wagon. There were no real places to pull over and park with your girlfriend around town, so the lot had become pretty popular over the last thirty years. Some of the true romantics even collected rocks now and then to bust out the bulbs in the overhead streetlights and do their deed in priva
te.
Greg walked into the lot with his head on a pivot, half-expecting to see Lizzie bent over the hood of someone's car. Everyone knew that Lizzie put out, and even though the prospect had lost its shine, he was damned if he'd let someone else steal his thunder after pissing away twenty bucks to see some asshole flying around in a fucking cape.
"Dammit, Lizzie, where did you go?"
Greg didn't expect a reply, but when Lizzie slipped between two cars and approached, he didn't hear a word she said.
He was focused on the undulating brown mass clinging to her face.
"Greg, help me," she said. "It's starting to burn."
"Starting to... what? What the fuck is that?"
"I don't know! Just get it off me!"
She staggered closer and tripped, snapping the heel on her left shoe. She looked down and started to cry as if this little embarrassment was the worst of her problems.
"Wait a second," Greg said. "Just stop. Stay there."
"Help me get it off!"
"I don't know what the fuck it is!"
"It doesn't matter what it is... just GET IT OFF!"
Greg stared and clapped a hand over his mouth as Lizzie stepped into the light. The pulsing blob attached to her cheek was growing right before his eyes. Glistening arms of brown slime reached from its body and wrapped around the side of her head. Her hair blackened and began smoking where the thing touched her. Greg had no other name for it... it was a thing. A nasty, formless, pulsating thing... and it was quickly turning her face into something you'd find in a gas station toilet.
He heard Lizzie's skin crackling and popping like raw hamburger thrown on the grill.
"Lizzie, stay back! I'm not messing around."
She wasn't paying any attention to what Greg had to say. She limped closer on her broken shoe and reached up to touch her head. Her hair had come out in patches, showing the pink flesh of her scalp beneath.
"My hair!" she wailed. "It ate my fucking hair."
It was doing more than that... in fact, Greg could see where the flesh had been seared away, exposing the white bone beneath.
"Don't touch it," Greg shouted.
"GET IT OFF! GETITOFF!"
The smell of burnt hair and cooking meat was nauseating. Greg wretched and stumbled back, making sure not to lose sight of Lizzie. He didn't want to be anywhere near her, or anywhere near the thing that had the ability to strip human flesh from bone.
"Greg, please..."
The brown sludge slid over her left cheek. Her eye popped and deflated as the steaming gunk rushed in to fill the void in her skull. It made a sound like a clogged drain suddenly opening... a wet, noisy, slurp. It wrapped a probing finger around her nose and squeezed. She whined like a beaten dog. Her good eye rolled in its socket as her nose fell from her face and plopped to the concrete.
When she opened her mouth to scream, it grabbed hold of her tongue and pulled itself into her mouth where her teeth exploded on contact. She held her arms out to Greg in a final plea as the left side of her face slid down over her jaw and dangled from her chin like a slab of undercooked steak.
Greg pissed his pants, then pissed them again. Lizzie's skin dangled from her skull like strings of melted taffy. She gargled the brown slime, choked on it, tried to spit it out through lips that had turned black and swollen. Chunks of her liquefied tongue dribbled from her mouth and ran down the front of her sweater.
Greg added his scream to hers and touched his face... just to make sure she hadn't gotten anything on him.
Lizzie was unrecognizable. Her head reminded Greg of chewed bubblegum.
With a wet burp, she lurched toward him as more of her face fell to the ground in bubbling sheets. He'd backed himself between two cars and searched frantically for a weapon, anything to buy him time to get away. He bumped into a metal garbage can and pissed his pants a third time before grabbing the lid and throwing it at Lizzie like a Frisbee. It sailed over her head and skidded across the asphalt. He leaned over, grabbed the can, and raised it over his head, waiting until she was close enough to inflict the most damage.
How is she still alive? he thought.
But was she alive, or was the blob controlling what was left of her body?
He brought the can down but missed his mark, only delivering a glancing blow to her shoulder. It staggered her just enough for him to get a second chance.
This time it connected squarely with the top of her head. Her skull folded in on itself like the soft flesh of a rotten gourd. Brains leaked from her ears in gray clots. She toppled back and hit the ground with a wet slap as her body sizzled and her internal organs leaked from holes that had been eaten through her skin and muscle. The slime swam around in the viscera and finished the job it had started. It stopped and coalesced into a solid form, and although Greg couldn't see if it had eyes, he felt it watching him nonetheless.
It squealed and screeched like a trapped rat before snaking toward him.
Greg hopped over the hood of the car and ran into the street where he was nearly run down by a passing bus. The air brakes hissed as the driver burst through the door and began screaming obscenities.
"Get the fuck out of here!" Greg shouted.
It was already too late. The brown slime attacked the driver, eating into his flesh and cooking his eyes like hard-boiled eggs.
The theater doors opened as a screaming crowd spilled into the street and melted before his eyes. No matter where they ran, they were quickly overtaken by the muddy blobs and turned into puddles of steaming, human goo.
Whatever the monsters are, they were quick.
Greg turned and ran from the carnage without a second look.
The shrieks of his neighbors and classmates followed him into the night.
Chapter 2
Greg ran for several blocks before stopping to vomit in the gutter.
What just happened? he thought.
All he wanted was to see a movie with one of the hottest girls in school, maybe get laid, and return on Monday with a story for his friends and nonbelievers. Instead, he was twenty dollars lighter and his date had been eaten by a blob of shit... a toxic piece of human waste that cried like a newborn kitten.
Not just Lizzie, though. It was eating everyone... and it wasn't alone.
Even this far from downtown, Greg heard the screams of those still trapped on Block Street. The night was alive with the sound of dying. Car horns beeped, sirens wailed, tires screeched, and dogs barked in a frenzy all over town. Dogs always seemed to know when the shit was about to hit the fan, and if what Greg had seen was just the beginning, there was going to be a lot more shit and a whole lot of fans.
Greg continued at a slower pace, frequently looking over his shoulder to make sure one of those globs wasn't silently tracking him. When he reached Grant Street, he turned left towards Brandon's house. He really wanted to get home and warn his parents about what was going on, but Brandon lived much closer. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his parents' number, but nothing happened. He had no cell service. Of all the times the network chose to be finicky, this was the absolute worst. What if those blobs had taken out the cell tower?
"That's stupid," he said. "They're balls of slime, not fucking aliens."
Or were they? Greg couldn't identify them let alone classify them as alien or otherwise. Maybe a botched military experiment? Only fifty miles to the north was the main office for Wildflower Pharmaceuticals, a worldwide conglomerate of facilities specializing in research and product testing. Greg had heard stories about the place his entire life, ranging from hairless, blind gorillas in the forest surrounding the facility, to experiments with time travel and wormholes. He'd always assumed they were nothing more than tall tales from bored small-town kids, but maybe there was some truth to it after all.
Maybe they'd discovered some way to weaponize human waste.
"That's even dumber than aliens," he said. "Get a grip, Greg."
Intelligent shit monsters. Greg laughed at that o
ne. He'd have to remember it for when the reporters arrived... or the Men In Black, whichever came first. He pulled his wet jeans away from his crotch and groaned.
Grant Street was a snapshot of stereotypical suburban life. Most of the houses were built around the same time, and the designers must have gotten together over a beer and said 'fuck it.' Other than a few varying color schemes and different lawn ornaments, each house on the block looked just like the one on either side. Brandon's was near the end of the row, distinguishable by the tall oak tree growing in the front yard. Three generations of local kids had flung their tennis shoes into its branches where they'd remained ever since. Greg had a pair of Nike's up there, hanging from one of the tallest branches. His father was rather pissed about that but too scared to climb up and retrieve them. Instead, they stood as a testament to adolescent stupidity - circa 2006.
Downtown, the sound of metal crashing against metal echoed over the darkening streets. Greg quickened his pace. His distance from Block Street had given him a false sense of security. Funny how the mind can see the worst of what life has to offer and still go on without a complete and utter meltdown. Well, except for Lizzie. Her meltdown was quite literal... and one she wouldn't soon be coming back from.
Greg's laugh sounded like a sob.
He jogged across Brandon's lawn, careful not to step in the piles of shit left behind by their mangy, blind, incontinent dog, Rambler. Greg rang the bell and waited patiently as he listened to the first strains of approaching police sirens.
It's about time, he thought. But time for what? Did the local cops have any idea what they were walking into? Would their service pistols and tasers be any match for the thing that charbroiled his date?
When the door opened, Greg pushed inside without being invited. Luckily it was only Brandon and not one of his parents, and God forbid it should be his sister, Denice. That kid was one step away from a kick in the ass. She chewed gum like a llama and had rust-colored bangs that hung over her forehead and covered half her face like some ridiculous character in a Japanese anime. It was a junior high trend that needed to stop yesterday.
"Close the door," Greg said, out of breath.
Melt Page 2