The Monster Games

by Flint Maxwell

  “I don’t know if I can stand anything else,” Zack was saying.

  Maddie shushed him, but Zack was right. My head was still spinning, not only from our arrival at this strange place at the base of the Rodanian Mountains, but from Gizzler’s taste in food. I couldn’t imagine what it was Fizzler wanted us to see next.

  Nor did I really want to.

  But Maddie stepped forward. She had been sucked in now, her heart melting for the beautiful and exotic gasling homestead, and there was no going back. We were going to see whatever it was Fizzler wanted us to see.

  9

  Easter Eggs

  We followed a beaten path through the low-hanging trees. The ground sloped and sloped gradually, making the trees and bushes and hedges seem gigantic around us. Then my ears started popping and I realized we were well below where we had started, now at the mouth of a cave.

  The opening emitted a purplish-green light. It smelled of dirt and worms and moisture that reminded me of my grandparents’ basement. They had lived on a farm in a country town. Their basement floor was packed dirt and one would often find various creepy-crawlers down there if you weren’t careful—snakes, beetles, spiders, those types of things. No monsters, fortunately.

  Zack sped up, reached Maddie and I, and whispered between our shoulders, “Uh, dudes, I really don’t think this is a good idea. I didn’t pay attention in the Academy as much as I should’ve, but I think there was definitely—probably—a rule that said you should never follow a giant swamp monster into a dark cave that smells like a graveyard and is shining with eerie light. Am I right?”

  “Calm down,” Maddie said.

  Zack was probably right. If Octavius could’ve seen us then, he would’ve probably smacked us upside our heads—Slayer, too, but good thing he was back in the apartment, safe, watching Spongebob. Octavius would put us back on werewolf orgy cleanup crew for the next month or so.

  “If he was going to kill us or hurt us, he would’ve done it already,” Maddie said.

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe we pissed him off when we got all squeamish about Gizzler’s beetle dinner,” Zack said. Then, quieter: “Or made fun of his name.”

  “Relax,” I said.

  I really didn’t feel like we were in any danger. Maddie had made a good point and Gizzler was gone now. It was just Fizzler with us, and though he was a big fellow, he was still outnumbered three to one. If things went south, we had a better chance of coming out on top. Not by much, mind you.

  Fizzler now entered the cave, the purple-green mist hanging all around him. “Here, my friends, I will show you the reason why we cannot just up and leave this magical place we call home.”

  “He’s so gonna murder us,” Zack whispered.

  “No, Call-Me-Zack, I am not,” Fizzler said. “If you have not realized yet, my kind are not violent. Not in many centuries.”

  Zack flushed. “Yeah—no, I know. I’m just kidding.”

  “Not,” I whispered.

  Zack flashed me a menacing look. I flashed him the middle finger and a grin, which caused his menacing look to break into a smile.

  “Quit messing around,” Maddie said, and she stepped forward. There was iron in her voice.

  Fizzler nodded at us and stepped farther into the darkness.

  “Well,” I said, exchanging a look with Zack, “here goes nothing. I probably should’ve changed my will.”

  “You don’t have a will,” Zack said, widening his eyes. “Do you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know… You surprise me a lot these days.”

  Honestly, I’m not that surprising. I didn’t know what Zack was talking about.

  Maddie shouted from the mouth of the cave. “Are you guys coming or are you gonna stand around and flirt all day?”

  Zack dutifully ignored her. He was getting quite good at this, especially since they had become a quote-unquote thing.

  I turned and walked toward the mouth of the cave.

  Inside, Maddie and Fizzler stood with their backs facing us. “Wow,” Maddie was saying. “When will they hatch?”

  Hatch? I wondered. Zack and I exchanged a curious look. He just shrugged in reply.

  I guess we’d find out—

  Then Maddie moved and we did find out.

  Rows and rows of eggs lined the cave. They were half-buried in bubbling green slime, just the top halves sticking up. And they weren’t normal sized eggs, not like the kind you’d buy at the grocery store by the dozen. These eggs were as big as humans. Their shells weren’t white or yellowish; they were dark and porous. Through these pores, the purplish light pulsed from within as the shells rose and fell like breathing lungs.

  “Geez!” Zack said. “You could make one hell of an omelet with one of those.”

  “Zack,” Maddie warned. She was bent down and face to face with the closest egg, studying it like some zoologist.

  Fizzler reached out and gently placed a webbed hand on the egg. “This is mine,” he said. “I am going to name him Pizzler, like my father before me.”

  “Your father was the last gasling to compete in the Monster Games?” I asked, thinking back to Gizzler’s story.

  “Unfortunately, yes, Abe,” Fizzler responded. “Gizzler told you, did he?”

  I nodded.

  “It is a sad part of my family’s history. However,” he looked at the egg and the dirt covering it, “there is hope for our future.”

  “So you can’t move because of the eggs?” Zack asked. “Why can’t you just pack ‘em up and send ‘em out to someplace else? I’m sure UPS would give you a discount for a bulk shipment.”

  Fizzler opened his mouth, probably to ask what UPS was, but Maddie spoke before he could say anything.

  “That’s not the point, Zack. The point is, no one should be driven from their home. Ever,” she said.

  I watched the egg as Maddie spoke. The shell rose and fell, rose and fell. It was almost hypnotic, and then the light shifted from purple to green and as it did this, I saw the outline of the baby gasling inside of there. It was already as big as a full-grown Golden Retriever and getting bigger by the minute, I supposed. I hoped that whenever the eggs were lain they were much smaller than this. Otherwise…poor whoever laid them.

  “I wish we could move,” the gasling said. “But we cannot.”

  “Why?” Zack asked. He stepped closer to the egg and hunkered down beside Maddie.

  “I’ll show you,” Fizzler said.

  He was quite good at that, showing us things. Then I remembered how we had gotten here—by those same words, I’ll show you—and almost told him we’d take his word for it.

  But it was too late.

  Fizzler held out his left arm. The claws erupted from his right hand, extending longer and looking sharper, much sharper, than before.

  Maddie and Zack sprang up, Zack throwing himself in front of Maddie like a modern-day Prince Charming.

  I took a hesitant step back, and tripped over a rock, landed hard on my ass. A sharp pain exploded in my elbow, like maybe I’d chipped a bone or something. I touched the wound with my hand, pulled my fingers away and saw dark blood glistening on my palm.

  Way to go, Abe, I told myself.

  Because I was sure this would be the end. That we were stupid for trusting Fizzler. That he was going to kill us right now in this dark and smelly cave full of monster eggs.

  But he didn’t.

  Thank the sweet lord.

  He did, however, do something that shocked us all. With his claws, he raked them down his left arm, making a sound of pain that rivaled a dying elephant. The skin shredded. Bone exposed. A pouring of his inky-black blood came from the long gashes and Fizzler collapsed on his knees, his head bowed.

  “Fizzler!” Maddie said. “What are you doing?”

  She rushed over to him despite Zack’s protests and tried to help him up. Her lifting him up went about as well as you’d think, which is to say that it d
idn’t go very well at all. Fizzler was quite large.

  “No,” he moaned, “I am all right. Stand back. Let me show you.”

  Reluctantly, Maddie took a step back. Unlike me, she didn’t trip over any rocks and fall down.

  I managed to pull myself up, my hand pressed against my aching elbow the whole time. I was bleeding a lot, but that was nothing compared to Fizzler’s ruined arm.

  Fizzler now took a handful of slime from near the buried egg. With it in his right hand, he smeared it across the bleeding arm.

  A fizzling sound, like the burning of a firecracker’s wick, drifted in the cave. Purple-green swirls wafted from the slime as it absorbed the blood and buried itself into the gashes. Once the mist faded away, Fizzler showed us his arm.

  It was as good as new, as if he’d never been wounded in the first place.

  “Whoa,” I managed, my jaw dropping.

  “Holy shit,” Zack said.

  “The slime?” Maddie asked. “The slime heals?”

  Bet she never thought she’d say a sentence like that.

  Fizzler nodded. “It does more than that. It gives life.” He motioned to the egg. “Without the slime, the gaslings would no longer be here today.”

  “Where does it come from?” I asked. “The magic…or whatever it is.”

  Fizzler shook his head. “We do not know for sure. It is said the inside of the Rodanian Mountains are filled with aura rocks.”

  “Aura rocks,” Maddie said. “We read about those, too. The aura rocks are filled with the substance, aren’t they? You’re getting some kind of run-off.”

  Another day of the Academy I must’ve missed. Well, more likely that I just didn’t pay attention.

  “They’re a mineral used in a lot of dark arts. Witches, for instance, use them to power their brooms,” Maddie said.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember that,” Zack said. Maddie smiled at him, proud, but he looked at me and shook his head, mouthing, I have no idea.

  “Well, that would explain why the Saber Corporation struck out that deal with the Games’ committee,” I said. “Why their sponsoring the Games, too. They want the slime. But for what?”

  “Do they know about the mountains?” Maddie asked. She was now touching Fizzler’s arm. It was the same scaly, blackish green it had been before he scratched himself open, and Maddie looked as if she still couldn’t believe it.

  I rubbed at the wound on my elbow. Zack saw this and said, “Dude,” pointing at the blood seeping between my fingers. I shook my head. I was all right. I didn’t want to test out any weird slime. It worked on a gasling, but that didn’t mean it would work on me.

  “No, Miss Pepper,” Fizzler said. “They don’t know about the mountains because it is not confirmed. The Rodanian Mountains are not easily approachable, and those who have approached them never came back.”

  It was only slightly, but I noticed Fizzler’s shoulders twitch as if he was suppressing a shiver.

  “Let’s hope they never get wind of that theory,” Zack said. “Otherwise I think the swamps being drained would be the least we had to worry about. They’d blow those mountains to rubble and dust.”

  I stepped up next to Maddie and peered into the bubbling swamp water. It looked very thick, very viscous, like the kind of snot you’d see come from a giant’s nose. Each egg was housed in its pool of slime. How that slime could heal someone instead of hurting them was beside me. One look at this stuff and you’d think it was radioactive.

  Just then a bubble expanded in the slime and popped, releasing a stink that made my old gym shoes seem rose scented.

  “So, as you can see, my friends,” Fizzler said, “if we choose not to compete, our race is gone.”

  I pictured a hundred monsters coming in here with flamethrowers. I pictured them torching the eggs with streams of fire until the scaly shells bubbled and deflated, the little gaslings inside screaming before they died. I pictured industrialized machines coming down here and scooping the swamp slime out, bottling it up, selling it, weaponizing it—

  “Why?” I said. “Why does the Saber Corporation want the slime?”

  “That, Abe, I do not know,” Fizzler answered.

  I wracked my brain, thinking of a reason monsters would want healing powers. Some of them already had that ability.

  “Do you really think if we won the Games they’d let you keep the land?” I asked.

  “That was per our agreement,” Fizzler said.

  “I don’t think they will, I’m afraid. I think they’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on this stuff. Unfortunately. Saber Corporation, I’m guessing, isn’t exactly an upstanding company…”

  “Yeah,” Maddie said, nodding.

  “But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” Zack asked. “I mean, we still have a chance at winning their weight in gold. That would help.”

  “We’d have to win first,” Maddie said.

  “C’mon, Mads,” Zack said, “if anyone could win the Monster Games it’s three of Fright Squad’s finest hunters.”

  “Only hunters,” Maddie intoned.

  “Not the point,” Zack said.

  “You just want the gold.” Maddie walked over and put her arm around Zack’s shoulders.

  He shrugged. “Is that such a bad thing? I mean, don’t get me wrong. Gold is nice and all, but I really just want to help the gaslings and Gilly here.”

  “Thank you, Call-Me-Abe,” Fizzler said.

  Zack smiled slightly. “Yeah, Gilly, no problem.”

  “I agree,” I said, stepping away from the pool of slime. “The Saber Corporation may not let you keep the land after we win…” In my head, I was thinking: Listen to yourself, Abe—after we win, like we’ve already signed up for the damn Games. “But it’s worth a shot.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Maddie asked.

  “That you could really go for some bacon?” Zack said.

  “How the heck could you have an appetite down here?” I whispered. “No offense, Fizzler,” I added. The smell had faded, but not that much. It seemed like it was permanently coated on the insides of my nostrils.

  “None taken, Abe.”

  “No,” Maddie said. “Not bacon. I’m thinking that they’re up to no good, that they want this stuff for bad purposes.”

  “That’s obvious,” I said. “I think.”

  “Slime? They want the slime for bad purposes? As if having slime wasn’t bad enough,” Zack said.

  “Please,” Fizzler said. “It is more than just slime. It is the nectar of life, an agent of healing.” He bent down and scooped some up in his hands, took two long strides toward me. “You are bleeding, Abe. Let me show you. It will cure any ailment, any abrasion, no matter how deep,” Fizzler said.

  “Go on, Abe,” Maddie said. “You saw what it does.”

  I saw what it did to gaslings, not humans. This stuff certainly wasn’t FDA approved. Why did I have to be the guinea pig?

  “Unless you’re chicken,” Zack said. He then made a show of flapping his arms and clucking in an all too-terrible falsetto.

  “I’m not chicken,” I said.

  “No, you are human,” Fizzler added, oblivious to what jokes were. Still.

  “Fine,” I said. “Lay it on me, Fizzler.”

  “Certainly, Abe,” Fizzler said.

  His hands were cold, but the slime was colder. It felt like ice against my skin. Warmth replaced the iciness no less than five seconds later, the pleasant warmth of a heated blanket on a freezing January night, where you look out your window and all you see is snow covering everything. My muscles relaxed, my bones hummed, and slowly the blood that had escaped the wound on my elbow evaporated. What was left behind was a nasty gash from a jagged rock, but as I looked at this, feeling better than I’d felt in a long time, the opening in my skin closed. A white line, like a scar, stretched from the point of my elbow to the crease just below my forearm, but that white line didn’t stay for long.

  “Wow,” Zack said. “It really wor
ks.”

  I couldn’t find my words. I was staring at unblemished skin, at healthy skin. This slime made Neosporin look silly.

  “How do you feel?” Maddie asked.

  I flexed my arm a couple of times, which, had the gash still been there, would’ve hurt pretty bad.

  No pain.

  “I-I feel great,” I said.

  “As you should,” Fizzler said. “The proof is in the slime.”

  We stood there and looked at each other. A smile slowly transformed Fizzler’s face into something resembling a monster on laughing gas.

  “Was that—did you just joke?” Zack said, incredulous.

  Fizzler nodded fervently. “See, it was a play on your human colloquialism ‘The proof is in the pudding’—”

  Zack raised a hand. “No, no, I think we got it, Gilly. Nice job, but just so you know, explaining a joke kinda zaps the humor out of it.”

  Fizzler nodded, a student of comedy already.

  “The proof is in the slime,” I said and looked from my elbow back to the gasling.

  Fizzler lurched forward. Before I knew it he was wrapping his massive fishy arms around me and pulling me in for a hug.

  “Oof,” I managed, but he was squeezing me so tight I could hardly breathe. “All right, then, Fiz—”

  He let go. I sucked in a great breath. Oh, thank God I was free.

  “Why does he get a hug and I don’t?” Zack asked. When Fizzler lurched toward him, Zack stepped back. “Actually, never mind. I’ll take a raincheck.”

  “This means you’ll compete in our stead?” Fizzler asked.

  Maddie, Zack, and I all shrugged simultaneously. It was almost as if we had rehearsed it. This shrug didn’t really answer the gasling’s question so I asked. “Maddie?”

  She said, “Yes, I’ll help. I’ll compete.”

  I looked at Zack.

  He nodded vigorously. “I’m always down for a boatload of gold. I could finally get that motorcycle— Ooh! Maybe even a leather jacket! And new shades!”

  I laughed. “I’m down, too.”

  “No, you are standing,” Fizzler said.