by Green Dc
Waving at Lord Boron and Lars, I broke into a run.
Phew!
I entered my quarters.
Erica surged to her feet, jolting candles from my dining table. ‘Ogre Pope be praised!’ Her great hands squeezed my shoulders like I was a bothersome pimple about to become mirror road-kill.
‘Ow.’ I burst into a grin. ‘I did it, Erica! I actually pulled it off!’
Erica shook her massive head. ‘How did I let you talk me into this insanity?’
‘I didn’t talk you into it – my allowance money did!’ My grin widened. ‘Oh, Erica, the school was incredible! I learned more about Monstro City in a single day than Lord Boron taught me in a year! Doctor Franken’s a genius. His swamp monster suit tricked everyone! I even made some friends! Well, PT made some.’
‘Friends can be more dangerous than enemies.’
‘Don’t be a worry-warthog. Everything worked perfectly, from the secret tunnels you showed me to the stench mixture we painted over my monster suit. Though some of the monsters at school smelt–’ I paused.
‘What?’ Erica frowned. ‘Some of the monsters smelt what?’
‘Smelt … pretty rank. Almost as rank as that revolting fish and reed sandwich you insisted I take!’ I turned from Erica’s probing eyes, deciding my over-protective ogre likely wouldn’t appreciate the news that a vampire and zombie smelt something human about me. She definitely wouldn’t appreciate the possibly-joking accusation that I was a spy, let alone the dozen totally-non-joking goblin death threats I earned before lunch!
I crept to my study door and peered inside. My robot double sat at my desk (his desk?) doing homework with excellent effort. I shut the door and headed for my kitchen, chuckling. ‘How could Lord Boron fall for that mechanical fake?’
Erica followed, her frown deepening. ‘You are moving unnaturally. You’ve been injured!’
‘Just my shoulder. Tackling practice. I–’
‘I forbid this insanity!’ Erica spoke so fiercely I fumbled the peanut butter. ‘If you are seriously injured, I will lose my job – and my reputation as a bodyguard!’
‘Why don’t you come to school too? You’d blend in okay. All the important goblins have their own bodyguards waiting outside class.’
‘Forbidden,’ said Erica. ‘All ogre bodyguards graduate from the same college. If I entered Lower Castle Mount with you, I would be recognised immediately. In addition, Lord Boron would wonder why I was not here, guarding the well-behaved robot double he believes to be you!’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ I shrugged. ‘Ow. But I’m not completely isolated. My swamp costume still hides that emergency plastic thingy you made me take.’
‘The pager? Yrrr.’ Erica’s frown became a full-blown grimace. ‘Even if you activated that relic, it would take me twenty minutes to descend to the school. In a life-threatening situation, I might well arrive too late.’
‘Don’t burst a vein, big lady. You know I can talk my way out of anything.’
‘Yrrr.’
‘Anyway, I’ve been taught how to wrestle by the greatest bodyguard in Monstro City and–’
‘Halt,’ said Erica. ‘Your sucking up is making me nauseous.’
‘So I can keep going to school?’ I asked.
‘Do you know–’
‘Or would you rather return the bribe money I paid you in advance?’
Erica glowered.
I bit into my sandwich to hide my smile.
Lost in the pages of Professor Greengoblin’s Monster Guide (especially the dragon section), I stayed awake for hours. When sleep finally descended, its mists swirled with nightmares. Monstro City blazed! Shadowy figures screamed and died. Flames like hungry tongues licked at the stars.
I awoke, sweat-soaked, the flapping of giant wings echoing in my ears.
Horrible irony!
7: DIGESTIONS
The next three days at school went pretty well. I learned about the geography of the Ex-Human Quarter and its mysterious crater. I discovered how to write my name in gnomish runes and how to paint a portrait of a grim-eyed goblin girl with rat’s blood. I even memorised five snappy giant spider comebacks (and nine new goblin curses).
I wasn’t sure if the Dead Gang called me their friend yet, but they were the closest thing I’d ever experienced.
Every school day, I dipped my swamp monster suit into a bucket of rancid fish noggins and non-human sewage, tried not to throw up, and sneakily changed in the storeroom. By each day’s end, I was super-tired and needed to drink two jugs of water to replace the sweat I’d lost inside my monster suit. A small price.
I arrived early on Friday and met the gang in their dorm room. My fear levels towards the giant spider had dropped considerably since I’d learned his primary expressions: hunger (extra saliva). anger (extra extra saliva), boredom (outer eyes darting), contentment (inner eyes partially closed, usually during and after a meal), and joker mode (the rest of the time). I still hadn’t worked out Greta’s range of subtle glares, unless she actually was in a permanent state of grumpy sarcasm. Scarab’s face was bandaged, but her eyes invariably matched her actions: brave and kindly. I preferred to avoid Stoker’s creepy red-eyed stares, not to mention Zorg’s skinless nostrils and thirst for brains. But hanging with either of them beat being caught alone by the Viethes or Klusks in a darkened ant tunnel.
While I was swapping greetings with Scarab, Stoker strolled towards me.
The vampire’s nose twitched. ‘Human rissoles for breakfast again?’
‘Human omelette.’ I coughed. ‘With a swamp moss side salad.’
Greta glanced up from her bunk, one eyebrow cocked like a crossbow.
Stoker’s humourless smile set my skin crawling. ‘You must bring some to school one day.’
‘I can’t.’ I sweated so hard I felt dizzy. ‘Whenever my mother cooks rissoles, they’re always gone in minutes.’
‘Rissoles, Swamp?’ Stoker’s eyes lasered. ‘Yet you said you broke your fast with omelette.’
‘Yet you said … you didn’t chomp food. You only drank … blood.’ Something brushed my foot. I looked down and almost leapt out of my monster suit.
Zorg was licking my swamp monster toes!
‘Um, hello?’
Zorg grinned, his black tongue licking where his lips used to be. ‘Zwamp Boy iz zmelling zo bad. But tazting zo nom-nom!’
Bruce dropped from his hammock. Despite his terrifying appearance, the giant spider had become my favourite monster. He kicked Zorg across the room. ‘Score your tinea hit elsewhere, Z-grom!’ He jabbed Stoker’s shoulder. ‘You back off Swampy too, Buckfang. Ain’t you late for your twilight emo Goth party?’ He whacked me on the chest, pushing me toward the doors. ‘Let’s leg, Reek-dude. You’ve scored the winning appointment in my private office.’ He wrenched open the middle door. ‘Adios, bipeds. Peep youse in class.’
I waved at the others and shuffled after Bruce, relieved to escape Stoker’s insinuating eyes, Zorg’s creepy tongue and Greta’s deadly eyebrow. ‘You, um, have a private office?’
Bruce swung along the corridor tunnel.
‘Wait,’ I cried. ‘You sure it’s safe out here?’
‘Don’t stress your ugly little weed-head.’ Bruce jabbed open a door.
I shuffled into a tiled room full of cubicles and wash basins of varying sizes. ‘Um, this is a bathroom.’ Remembering Bloody Mary, I steered clear of the mirrors.
‘You mocking my office?’ Bruce’s eyes narrowed. ‘You? The suss new grommet who borrowed a Monster Guide, straight after our booting outta Biology, straight after I shut down the wuss-assed teacher who wanted to blab ’bout my biology? You didn’t figure I was trying to hide something, huh? Hide something so gnarly you hadda read ’bout it yourself? Huh?’
‘I haven’t read about giant spiders yet.’ I coughed. ‘Honest.’
‘So giant spiders ain’t kick-buttly enough for PT?’ Bruce crouched as if preparing to pounce. ‘Brace yourself, grommet. Here comes a biology
lesson that’ll bust your nightmares till your dying day! Which might be any killer minute now!!’ The spider swung his bulbous lower section, bowling me over. ‘You were just smashed by my abdomen, also known as my butt or bad-ass. Like most spider posteriors, mine’s equipped with kick-ass, web-shooting spinnerets.’
I rolled to my feet.
Bruce pointed his buttocks. Webs fired through openings beneath his stinger, yanking my legs from beneath me. ‘But being a giant spider, I scored eight bonus shooting options.’ He flipped and fired a second round from his pincers, pinning my arms, legs and back to the tiles. ‘Teach you to stare at my butt!’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I squeaked, glad I was wearing a mask.
‘Becoz we figured out what you really are!’ Bruce shrieked, break-dancing around my struggling body.
I was totally at Bruce’s mercy, or lack thereof. He’d clearly seen through my stupid disguise, and lured me into his trap like I was a fly and he was some kind of … spider.
Der. What an idiot I’d been!
I braced myself. Bruce pounced, speed-punching my stomach so hard I gasped, winded. ‘The eight sexy legs I’m whacking you with are attached to my cephalothorax. It’s my thorax and head cunningly combined!’ Bruce whirled so his eyes shone centimetres from mine. ‘Non-giant spiders own just two to twelve eyes, but you’ll note I scored 128! All the better to peep the real PT!’ He slapped me with the two saliva-drenched mini-arms jutting from his mouth. ‘These’re my palps. Now meet my cute but killer chelica.’ Two longer mini-arms snaked towards my eyeballs. The barbed ends dripped. ‘They inject venom.’
I gushed sweat and choked on bitter fumes. The bathroom walls seemed to twist and distort.
‘I’m packing litres of the stuff. Ample to dope even mega enemies into the looonnngest snooze. Or the morgue!’ Bruce’s mouth snapped open, revealing a half-digested hippocow leg and enough teeth to shred the rest of the herd.
I writhed, half a threat away from soiling my monster pants.
Bruce coiled back and … bellowed with laughter! ‘The horror on your face! Bummer I can’t see the butt-ugly thing through those cheek-weeds!’ Spider pincers clicked. ‘But I can totally smell you, sweating like an ogre in a sauna! I totally freaked your ass, huh, dude?’
‘I … I thought you were going to chomp off my noggin!’
‘Puke city!’ Bruce dry-retched. ‘I only chow humes, gobs and pretty much anything with meaty bits. You’re half-plant, Swampy! Do I peep like a vego-tarian? Not only am I totally sure you’d taste like seaweed sprinkled with dung, but you ain’t on the menu for the finest reason of all.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re my bud!’ Bruce’s serrated legs flashed down my sides, slicing me free of his webbing. ‘And now you own zilch reasons to read ’bout giant spiders. Yo?’
I nodded so hard I feared my monster head might fly off. I would have admitted to starting the Giant Wars and killing all the elves to escape that toilet block alive.
‘Swear?’ asked Bruce.
‘I swear.’ I wobbled to my feet. ‘In future, if you want something, can you just … ask?’
‘That’d be so borrring!’ Bruce fake-yawned. ‘B’sides, I’d zilch choice. I hadda put you under pressure. Better me than Bitey Dude. If you were a shape-shifting spy, you’da freaked with my ass in your face and displayed your real self. But you passed! Natch. And now that snarky gob missy owes me five crowns!’
‘Uh, cool.’
‘Shuffle faster, chlorophyll-butt!’ Bruce rolled into the hall tunnel. ‘You ain’t wanting lateness for your first Vemrin class!’
Bruce and I shared Tessa the troll’s huge empty seat. We were early, so I couldn’t resist whispering, ‘Why do you hate humans so much?’
‘You should bust outta the swamp more,’ Bruce snorted. ‘Every monster hates humes!’
‘Why do you hate them?’
The spider rubbed his palps together. ‘First up, they taste fine. They’re also evil, ugly, wussy disease carriers who smell like Zorg’s butt.’
I gulped. ‘Have you chomped many … humes?’
‘Too many to count!’ Bruce’s gloating dropped to a whisper in my ear. ‘Seriously? I ain’t ever seen a hume. They totally ain’t a public appearance species. But I dig old hume comics! They’re a knee-slap of humorous farm animals and old school abbreviations like “YOLO!” that totally confuse your modern monster!’
‘Cool.’ I think. ‘What would you do if a hume walked into this class?’
Bruce hooted. ‘There’d be a hungry stampede, yo! With my kick-butt speed and webs, I’d win the race, natch, swing to the rafters and hail chowed hume bones onto cranky gob heads!’ The spider’s eyes closed dreamily.
A jack-o’-lantern floated towards my desk, grinning at my discomfort. I wrenched my gaze from its jagged-eyed visage.
At the front of the class, the stumpy goblin teacher unrolled a map of an area I’d never seen before and drummed his skinny fingers until every voice fell silent.
‘I note we have two new students today.’ The teacher curtly indicated Greta and me. ‘My name is Professor Vemrin.’ His gravelly voice pronounced each syllable distinctly. ‘Welcome to the world o’ unbiased history.’
‘Uh, thanks.’ I nodded back.
Greta just folded her arms.
‘For the benefit o’ our new and doubtless ignorant students, I will summarise from the very beginning–’
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It sounded like an army was attacking our classroom doors with a battering ram!
‘Enter!’ Professor Vemrin shouted, only his eyes betraying his anxiety.
The largest door swung wide.
‘Oh, it’s you … Tessa.’ Vemrin’s lips thinned.
‘It’s our gnarly, killer, garbage-crunching, word-mangling bud!’ Bruce grinned at the goblin sections. Their cockiness stocks plunged.
The largest doorway was big enough for a double-decker train to rumble through, yet Tessa only squeezed in on her hands and knees. The troll girl wobbled to her feet and wiped her table-sized hands on her overalls. The classroom roof was so high that I doubted I could hit it with a slingshot. Tessa’s hair scraped a path of cobweb strands as she stomped across the room.
‘Me sorree me away bin, Protester Vemmin.’ Tessa’s rough-hewn face loomed over the professor. ‘Me tummy sick bin. For weeks! Me tink me more okay this mornen. But me kin stand barely.’
‘Well, aye,’ the professor retreated to his whiteboard. ‘Sit, Tessa. Please.’
Tessa wobbled towards us.
‘Yo, that’s our bud,’ Bruce’s voice accelerated. ‘Our terrifyingly gigantic-assed bud bearing down on this very seat! Great web, Swampy!’ His voice climbed to a squeak. ‘We gotta leg! Before we end up as butt-pancakes!’ The spider grabbed my arm, swinging me at an empty seat.
PHOOOM!
Tessa sat, blocking the light.
‘Hi, Tessa,’ said the Dead Gang.
‘Hi-lo.’ Tessa beamed at the Dead Gang, wriggling her goblin-thick fingers. Her beam faded when she noticed me. ‘Has me seen that salad lump treatie afore?’
‘That is Swamp Boy, friend Tessa,’ said Scarab.
I dimly heard Professor Vemrin aheming uselessly.
Tessa’s eyes squinted. Leaning sideways, her head towered over mine. Her log-lipped mouth rained tankards of saliva, rattling desks and sizzling the floor. Before I could leap out of my chair and sprint screaming from the room, the troll’s hand closed around my body, chair and all. She lifted me dizzyingly high. Tilting her head back, she lowered me into her dark mouth pit. Hydrochloric breath blew back my weedy dreadlocks.
Spider webs fired past, as effective as whipping an elephant with string.
I tried to scream, ‘I’m animal, not vegetable!’ Yet only a strangled gurgle squeaked out. Horrible irony: I’d disguised myself as a swamp monster to avoid being gobbled as a human. Now I was about to be gobbled because of my moronic disguise!
Dimly, I heard shouting.
Tessa’s head tilted back to normal. ‘Mean you me kinnot eat Swampie Boy salad treatie?’
‘That is so, friend Tessa.’ Scarab spoke loudly and calmly. ‘Swamp Boy is our new friend.’
Sweat gushed from my every pore. I felt like a squeezed eel.
‘Mean you Swampie Boy not salad treatie?’ asked Tessa. ‘Not garbidge?’
‘Swamp Boy friend,’ repeated Scarab.
‘Oopsy,’ said Tessa. ‘Me sorree.’ She lowered me to the classroom floor, clumsily straightened my desk, and faced the front of the class.
‘I figured you were troll dung, buddy!’ Bruce slapped my back.
By the time Professor Vemrin ahemed the class back to a state of relative order, I’d calmed my heartbeat to jackhammer speed.
‘The Great Goblin God created the world in five and a half days.’
8: REVISIONS
‘The Great Goblin God shaped the world in five-and-a-half days from the corpse o’ the Elf God, whose name is long forgotten.’
Professor Vemrin paused, as if daring contradiction. When none came, he continued, his spine broomstick-straight. ‘In the first era o’ history, we monsters ruled a planet completely different to the reduced orb on which we crowd today. Forests, mountains and plains rolled beyond every horizon. Oceans existed in numbers greater than one, subdividing continents. In short, the world was perfect.
‘Then came the sickness – human so-called beings.’ Vemrin’s tone darkened. ‘These barbarians bred and spread rapidly, hacking down forests, building up their artless towns and cities. Some argue their science and arrogance affected the magic at the very core o’ the world, plunging the monsters into decline. Outnumbered, the survivors hid, literally underground. For a candle flicker o’ time, humes claimed to be the alpha species.
‘Did the hume-orous disease achieve anything worthwhile in this dark age? As a historian, I would have to say, “No brawn!” Certainly, they created nothing worth grasping.’ The professor paused to sip liquid cheese.