The Monster Games

by Flint Maxwell

  “Which is…?” Zack’s fingers found his teeth and he began chomping on his nails. “Come on, the suspense is killing me!”

  “Task three was always a battle to the death,” Maddie answered. “The remaining monsters were thrust into some exotic location with limited weapons and resources and the Games weren’t over until there was only one monster left standing.”

  I thought of Vladimir Spires holding that troll head, the dark ichor dripping from the severed arteries and vertebrae. The blood.

  “Well, that’s kind of…crazy,” Zack said. “No way they still do that.”

  “What if they do?” I said.

  “Then we’re screwed,” Zack replied.

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  “And you are volunteering for that spot?” Zack asked.

  I shrugged. “Yeah.

  I only said this, I think, because I knew my father would’ve done it. He may have been a monster hunter, but he was not heartless. I believe he valued life no matter what the species was—and that included monsters. Because not all monsters are bad. Case in point: Fizzler Bondano. He could’ve easily ripped us limb from limb but didn’t. He was more polite than most humans. And I knew I couldn’t stand by and let their species be destroyed because of some bloodthirsty barbarian Monster Games committee.

  Even if it meant my death.

  Then, of course, there was the gold. What good deed doesn't deserve a reward?

  “But, if the Saber Corporation is lying low, they won’t want the Games to bring in any unwanted attention. They’ll keep them tamer,” I said.

  “Well,” Maddie said, “before Abe can volunteer for something as crazy as that, we’d have to get through the other two tasks.”

  “What kind of tasks are they?” Zack asked.

  Maddie shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. Not anymore, but in the Academy we learned they were just as barbaric as a Battle Royale—troll tossing, mermaid hunting, that kind of stuff.”

  I remembered something then, something I’d read in my father’s history books. “Don’t the tasks involve the elements of some sort?”

  Maddie brought a hand up to her chin. “I don’t know.”

  “Wow,” Zack mumbled, “something Maddie doesn’t know. Hell must’ve froze over.”

  Maddie hit him with one of the throw pillows. He laughed and retaliated by tickling her. Maddie, apparently, hated being tickled. Her whole body writhed and she jumped a foot in the air, her face beet red and her hair wild.

  We returned to the topic of the Monster Games. Maddie, smoothing her hair down, said, “I don’t know about the elements stuff.” She glared at Zack. “And that’s perfectly normal considering the Games have been nonexistent for over two hundred years.”

  Zack smirked.

  “We’ll have to find out,” I said. “But who would know?”

  Maddie shook her head. “We don’t have to find out. It’s crazy that we’re even having this conversation!”

  “Maddie,” I said, locking eyes with her, “their whole species will be wiped out. You heard him, they won’t survive another move.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Maddie said. “There’s a way. There’s gotta be a way.”

  “I’m in,” Zack said. “You and me can do it, Abe. We just won’t give Maddie any of the gold.”

  Maddie folded her arms over her chest, glared at Zack again with a look that could’ve melted ice.

  Zack put up his hands. “Joking, joking,” he said.

  “You better be,” Maddie said.

  “Maddie,” I said, “let’s at least consider it. We’re good at what we do.”

  “The best,” Zack added.

  I wouldn’t have gone that far.

  “Not only can we help ourselves by winning, but we can help a race of docile creatures. The gaslings don’t deserve to go extinct,” I continued.

  Her arms still folded over her chest, Maddie said, “Maybe they do. Maybe it’s meant to happen. You know, natural selection and all that evolutionary stuff.”

  On the subjects of monsters and monster hunting, Maddie was a genius, but I could tell she hadn’t been as well-versed in the sciences they taught in public schools. Which made sense, considering Maddie had come from a long line of monster-masters. In Europe, Octavius had once told me in confidence, the Peppers were practically royalty in the monster hunting community. When her family immigrated to the States, a long time ago, they had upheld their European ways. Public schools were shunned, instead replaced by a rigorous year-round education of coursework conceived by generations of monster-masters until it was time for their pupils to go to the Academy. The subjects taught in public schools—the maths, histories, English, foreign languages—all that was just glossed over and put on the back burner. So Maddie knew you could ward off witches with hag stones, but she probably couldn’t tell you the names of the people who’d signed the Declaration of Independence. She could do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, but ask her to find X and she’d probably wonder why the alphabet would ever show up in a mathematical equation. I wouldn’t blame her, either. Algebra always tripped me up, too.

  “It’s not natural selection if the committee can prevent them from going extinct,” Zack said.

  “Right,” I said.

  Maddie bowed her head, looked at the floor. The toes of her shoes rose up, tapped the carpet. “Yeah…I know, but I can’t lose you guys. And I don’t wanna die, either.”

  “We won’t die,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Zack added. “Were the motherfuckin’ Fright Squad! We’re so good at our jobs we told BEAST to shove it and opened our own place.”

  “That’s not doing very well,” Maddie mumbled.

  “Hey, we’re still alive, aren’t we?” Zack asked. He got up now and put his arm around Maddie’s shoulders, pulled her close. He kissed the top of her head. She smiled solemnly.

  “I don’t know,” Maddie said. “There’s gotta be another way.”

  “We’ll look for another way,” I said, but I didn’t think a monster would seek the help of humans without being desperate.

  “There is no other way, friends,” a booming voice said.

  We all jumped. My blood ran cold and froze in my veins. I turned around and saw Fizzler appear out of thin air.

  “Geez, Gilly!” Zack shouted. “You can’t just sneak up on people like that!”

  “How long have you been listening?” I asked.

  “Not long,” Fizzler said. “However, I have heard you express your doubts about our situation. I wholly understand, too. The elders would like to meet you. That is the only reason I’ve come back. Would you like to meet the elders?”

  “Fizzler,” I said, “we still need more time.”

  “I understand,” Fizzler said, bowing at the waist, “but I realized I can, as you say, kill two birds with one stone.”

  I didn’t like hearing a monster of Fizzler’s stature and ferocity talk about killing anything, especially with stones, but I was curious.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “If you come meet the elders, you will also see why we cannot vacate our homeland. It will wipe us from the planet,” Fizzler said.

  “Why is that?” Maddie asked. “You can just tell us.”

  Fizzler shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I cannot. My words will not do it justice.”

  I looked at Maddie and then Zack. We were on the same telepathic wavelength, I believed, as only the best of friends could be, but apparently, I was wrong because Maddie was looking at me like I was crazy and Zack wasn’t even paying attention.

  “Show us?” Maddie asked. “How are you going to show us?”

  Fizzler ducked his head so he was on our eye level. “Do I have your permission?”

  “Permission?” Maddie said. “Abe? Zack? Are you listening to this?”

  I said, “I—uh, yeah, I guess.”

  “So be it,” Fizzler said, and he clapped his hands together, bobbed his head
. Reminded me of that old show I Dream of Jeanie, but before the image could fully form in my mind, the apartment floor disappeared right beneath my feet. I heard Slayer oohing in amazement. Then I heard nothing but the rush of blood in my ears.

  8

  A Whole New World

  The feeling that had come over me is hard to describe, but I will tell it the best I can. At first it felt like each one of my limbs was being pulled, tugged on by greedy giants, then my world started spinning, first slow and then fast, like, too fast. I was on a tilt-a-whirl that had tilted right off the rails and was out of control. Where it was heading, I didn’t know, but I just hoped I got there soon or I was liable to vom—

  And then bam! There I was on the soft ground, throwing up.

  “Oh shit,” Zack wheezed. “Maddie, are you okay?”

  Maddie was coughing. Maybe she had thrown up, too.

  There was a smell, a smell of saltwater and swamp gas, and trees.

  “What the hell was that?” Maddie said between coughs. “Are we dead?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I was getting up on my knees now, the world had stopped spinning, but the urge to keep vomiting hadn’t totally passed, so I had to do it slowly.

  There was an eerie green light that didn’t go away when the spinning stopped. Then something blocked the light out, a dark shadow coming over me. I looked up even though my internal bearings were telling me to do anything but that, and there was Fizzler.

  He wasn’t alone.

  With him was another gasling. This one was even bigger and more menacing. Where Fizzler’s skin was a dark green, this one’s was almost black. Its face was a bit slack. Then when it talked, I realized the slack face went pretty well with the voice. It was, and I don’t mean this offensively, a voice belonging to someone that wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

  “Hiya, human!” the taller gasling said. I was pretty sure it was a male, but who really knew with this species? “Fizzler, I didn’t know we would be having company!”

  “Yes, Gizzler,” Fizzler said.

  “Jesus…Gizzler?” Zack said. He must not have registered the name when Fizzler talked of Gizzler earlier back at the apartment. He was up now, Maddie had her arm around him for support. But when he started laughing he almost took both of them down. “You do know what that sounds like, don’t you?”

  “Cut it,” I said, and I took Gizzler’s hand and shook it. “Hi, I’m Abe, nice to meet you, Gizzler.” I kept a straight face and that was quite an accomplishment, I thought, especially with Zack laughing right behind me.

  “Hi Abe, I’m Gizzler!”

  “I know,” I said, then to Fizzler: “Where the heck are we?”

  “Come on, Abe. I’ll show ya!” Gizzler said. Before I had a chance to say anything or protest, the gasling gripped my arm and dragged me through the reeds and and low, curling branches.

  We approached a squat tree with thick roots sticking out of the ground. In three quick strides, as the gasling still held on to me, Gizzler ran up the trunk.

  I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do much of anything, but I did manage a glance over my shoulder, now seeing I was about twenty feet off the ground and dangling there like a rag doll.

  “There!” Gizzler said. “We’re in the swampland!” His voice echoed far and wide, traveling for miles.

  I decided I couldn’t look down anymore. I had to look up, and that really wasn’t much better. Where Gizzler pointed offered a view of the surrounding forests. They were flanked by a great mountain range, one I’d never seen in any history books—not even my father’s.

  “Are those—” I managed.

  “The Rodanian Mountains!” Gizzler said. With a heave, he lifted me up higher and plopped me down on his shoulders. I was higher than the damn trees, on the back of some weird Creature from the Black Lagoon thing. To say I was out of my element would be an understatement.

  But, I will admit, once I got over the scared-shitless feeling, the view was quite beautiful. Well, probably the most beautiful view I’d ever seen in person.

  This place, the swamp, the trees, the mountains—it all had an odd and alluring charm to it. Almost as if it wasn’t earth—

  Shit, I thought, have I just traveled to another planet and not even known it?

  I figured that would be a totally Abe-thing to do, wouldn’t it?

  “Gizzler, uh, is this earth? Are we still on earth?” I asked. He was probably not the right gasling to ask this question.

  “Earth!” Gizzler said.

  I realized I wasn’t getting an answer.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said in a dreamy falsetto that went against his entire macho-monster appearance. “My home.”

  I stared out past the tree tops. Birds took flight and flapped their wings dreamily in the purplish haze of the setting sun. The sun was my sun, I’m sure of it, and it was framed by two mountain peaks. A picture-perfect image, one that would be burned into my brain for the rest of my life—and considering the Monster Games were right around the corner in my young life, there was no telling how much longer the rest of it would be.

  I know I’m sardonic sometimes. I know I’m a master of self-deprecation. But I mean it when I say this view I witnessed from the tree, on the shoulders of a gasling—a race of monsters I’d only just heard about an hour ago, no less—was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen, and I mean it when I say that any destruction brought on to this land, to this species’ home, would be a travesty.

  “I’ve been here all my life,” Gizzler said.

  Though I couldn’t see Gizzler’s entire face, I noticed that scaly skin bunching up again at the top of his head as I looked down at him.

  A strong gust of wind rocked the tree all around us. Leaves rustled and more birds took flight, their flapping wings like the snapping of newspaper. The breeze was sweet with the smell of saltwater and bogs and marshes, exactly how you wouldn’t expect a place like this to smell.

  How much longer the gaslings would be able to stay here, I didn’t know, but I knew I could help and my father would’ve helped if he could. His sense of doing the right thing had been instilled in me at a young age.

  “They don’t care ‘bout us no more, the committee,” Gizzler said as I watched a large-winged bird swoop down from the mountains, a speck growing bigger and bigger as it glided over the trees then disappeared. “We are not even monsters to them anymore. We’re bugs. We’re scum—dirt on the bottom of their shoes.”

  “Gizzler!” Fizzler yelled from below.

  His voice startled me. I had forgotten about everything on the ground. Up there in the not-too-cold, not-too-warm breeze, it was easy to forget about things.

  “Bring Abe down here. I have business I’ve yet to conduct with him and his associates,” Fizzler said, his voice carrying on the wind.

  “Fizzler says we gotta get down, Abe,” Gizzler said to me. “He’s such a bummer!” He'd said this loud enough for Fizzler to hear on purpose, I assumed.

  “I know,” I said.

  How we could call a gasling a monster was beyond me. Which got me thinking: What exactly constituted a monster in the first place? In BEAST, in the Academy, it was pretty simple. Any thing that wasn’t human fell under the umbrella of monster. Any thing that stalked the night and threatened the human race was a monster. I thought of my various instructors, the monster-masters, and I thought if they had seen Fizzler and Gizzler, seen all of the creatures’ mass and webbed-feet with claws at the end of each finger-thing, they would’ve raised their crossbow or sword or gun and tried bringing the gaslings a couple steps closer to extinction.

  Monsters exist, but not all monsters are monsters. Just like not all humans are human.

  “I like it up here,” Gizzler said, reaching up and plucking me from his shoulders as if I weighed nothing more than a silk scarf. “I come up here a lot and think about my daddy and wonder if he’s all right.”

  “Me too,” I said. Old Hercules Crowley
is always on my mind.

  “You think about my daddy?” Gizzler exclaimed. “You knew him.”

  I chuckled. “No, Gizzler. I think about my own father. He died when I was just a boy.”

  “Ah, that stinks.” The large gasling did not descend from the tree as quickly as he ascended, and more than once I heard a thick branch groan and protest Gizzler’s weight. I was okay, though. My thoughts were somewhere else. Far away and up at the top of the tree, which I felt would bring me closer to my father. Somehow. Someway.

  “Can we go back up some time?” I asked Gizzler. He held me with one arm. His massive muscles bulged and rippled beneath his oily flesh.

  “Yeah! That would be great!”

  We touched ground and Gizzler set me down.

  “I do apologize about that, Abe,” Fizzler said. He crossed his arms and glared over at Gizzler much like the way Maddie often did toward Zack and I. Gizzler was preoccupied with a bug that flittered by. I thought he was going to chase it, but decided he’d rather flip over a big rock at the base of the tree. Judging by the divots in the dirt this was a rock Gizzler had flipped over many times before. I would’ve wondered why had the answer not been given to us right then, and I would’ve been content with just wondering after the answer had become apparent.

  A large beetle, easily the size of my fist, skittered out from the dirt. It shook its wings, spread them. They started up like a boat’s motor, became a blur. But Gizzler was faster. He snatched the beetle out of the air and stuffed the bug in his mouth. A couple of loud crunches sounded as we looked on with equal disgust and curiosity before he gulped the rest of the bug down his gullet.

  “Oh man, I promised myself I wouldn’t throw up like you wussies,” Zack said. His face took on a greenish hue and his posture was bent, ready to spew.

  He didn’t.

  And Fizzler, completely oblivious to his kin’s disgusting display of bug-eating, went on. “Come, my friends, there is more I would like to show you.”