The other elders mumbled their agreement.
“Thank you,” I said.
Fred didn’t seem to hear me. He was now looking up at the high ceiling, into the shadows.
I turned back to the queen and nodded. “You have nothing to worry about,” I said.
It was all I could say. I’ll admit that I was a little nervous. How could I not be? I’d never been in the presence of royalty before, gasling or otherwise.
Before I could say anything else, the doors behind us burst open.
A clamoring of voices echoed among the hall. My first instinct was to go for the weapon on my hip, but then I realized I had no weapon. Fizzler had whisked us off before we’d even had the chance to stock up. I was pretty sure we weren’t going back home anytime soon, either.
I guess it didn’t matter that we didn’t have our weapons, really. In the old days of the Games, you couldn’t bring your own. You could select one from the Games’ armory. So no tricks. For a competition containing a couple dozen monster species, you need more than just one weapon. You could chop a werewolf’s head off with a silver sword, but you couldn’t stab a ghost with it. You could kill a vamp with a stake, but if you tried staking a werewolf, you’d only piss it off.
“What’s going on?” Maddie asked.
The voices that had filled the hall belonged to a sea of swarming monsters.
I took a step back, almost tripped over the platform and landed in the king’s lap. That would’ve been pretty awkward.
“Don’t worry,” Fizzler said out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s just the press.”
But it wasn’t the normal press. CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News employees weren’t among the various creatures holding video cameras and microphones and notepads.
No. This was the monster press.
15
Selfies Kill
A banshee in a cloak unhinged her jaw and screamed at Maddie, “How does it feel knowing you’re going to die? What do you have to say for yourselves?” Then she screeched, signifying an impending death. We didn’t really worry about it. It wasn’t like we had a choice, though, because a barrage of different creatures were shoving microphones up to our faces and clamoring. I could hardly think.
Fizzler stepped in front of us. “Please, please, one at a time!” he shouted.
The crowd quieted.
A different gasling, which one, I didn’t know, ushered us to the platform where the elders sat, where we stood and had questions fielded to us.
A zombie raised his hand. He held a microphone. But a vampire behind him tripped and nudged his back, causing the arm to fall out of its socket. It landed amongst the feet and claws with a wet slap.
“This is crazy,” Zack muttered.
Flashbulbs went off, blinded us. The monsters clamored. The crowd grew larger and larger. When a cyclops rumbled through the front doors, I was pretty sure we were at capacity and if a fire marshal had seen all the monsters crammed inside, stretching the length of the hall and knocking against the stone columns that held it up, I was pretty sure the gaslings would’ve been given a pretty hefty fine for allowing such a fire hazard.
“What is your strategy for survival?” a headless horseman asked me. He held his head in the crook of his arm, wedged up against his hip.
“Uh,” I said.
Maddie interrupted. “We’ll just survive, that’s it.”
The headless horseman, judging by the frown on his face, didn’t like this answer.
“Next question,” Fizzler said.
“Is it true you hate all monsters?” a ghost asked.
“No,” I said, stepping forward. “Of course not.”
“We only hate the monsters that try to kill us!” Zack said, grinning.
The crowd erupted. More flashes. Monsters scribbled on their notepads. Some of them jeered and growled. The werewolves in the hall emitted a stench. The vampires hissed.
“I am sorry,” Fizzler said. “No more questions.”
He escorted us through a back door behind the thrones.
“Geez, that didn’t go too well,” I said.
“Better than I expected,” Fizzler said.
“What did you expect?” Maddie asked.
Fizzler’s face remained stoic. “I was sure they were going to kill you.”
Great, I thought.
“But there is still the Games for that,” he added. He stopped suddenly. All three of us ran into his massive, slimy bulk. “Excuse me,” he said. “This is for authorized personnel only.”
I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Zack was looking at me like maybe Fizzler had gone crazy.
Then there was a creak, like rusty hinges opening on some gate. Except, it wasn’t hinges.
We were looking at an old haggish mermaid. She sat in a saltwater bathtub on wheels, her human-like part of her body sticking out of it. She smiled a sly smile at us.
“I am authorized,” the mermaid said.
Fizzler bowed. “Marena. I’m sorry.”
Marena Psydin. That’s who the mermaid was. I’d heard of her. In our research after the attack at Val’s I found out she was one of the executives of the Saber Corp now.
“No problem,” Marena said. She wheeled closer. “I just wanted to meet our human Champions.”
“Here we are,” I said. I wasn’t too fond of Marena. Many years ago, she’d orchestrated a genocide in the Pacific. Her reasoning? The place was too crowded. With fish. With mermaids. Mermen. You name it. She was never brought up on charges by BEAST because she took the exec job with Saber. Which really meant she hid.
“Abraham Crowley,” Marena said, smiling. She stuck out a hand.
I just looked at it.
She withdrew it. Still smiling.
“I’m so honored to meet you. Not many people live to say they’ve survived a run-in with Doctor Blood.”
Maddie and Zack shifted uncomfortably. Doctor Blood was a trigger for me. Usually. But I kept my cool.
Marena said, “Will you be strong enough to survive the Games?”
I didn’t answer. I left. The rest followed me, leaving Marena behind.
Fizzler and Gizzler took us to our quarters. It was just a tent outside of their swamp palace.
The tent had a bed, a refrigerator stocked with almost every known food, a separate space for our bathrooms, and a television in front of each bed. At first glance, it really wasn’t much, but it was still better than my apartment. By a long shot. Not to mention that there wasn’t any ghosts in any closets mocking me.
“This is where you will come rest after each event,” Fizzler said.
“Can I stay with them?” Gizzler asked. “I wanna watch the moobies that Abe likes!”
“No, Gizzler, you must stay in your own quarters,” Fizzler said and Gizzler lowered his large head so he was looking at his feet.
“You can visit, buddy,” I told him. “We can watch movies and play games and stuff.”
He looked up and smiled at me. “You mean it?”
“I do.”
“Gee, Abe, you’re the best. I really hope you don’t die!”
Me, either, I thought.
We stayed in that tent for a couple of hours. The Fright Squad didn’t talk much.
I wound up falling asleep and not having any dreams. I guess that was pretty nice.
The next day, was the Opening Ceremonies and then we’d have a feast—a monster feast with a bunch of foods we humans probably wouldn’t find appetizing—and then the Games would begin the following day.
As to what the first task was, we still had no clue. Fizzler said he was trying to find out, scrambling around and asking for intel, but the gaslings weren’t well-respected in the monster community beforehand. Now that they’d found and took advantage of a loophole that let humans take their place in the Monster Games, they were almost as hated as we were.
During that first night as we stayed in the tent, I heard a soft hissing, as if someone had been slowly letting the air out of a ball
oon.
I stood up, listened closely.
The noise seemed to be getting louder and louder. I tiptoed across my third of the tent and peered into Zack’s. He and Maddie were asleep on the bed.
The hissing grew closer.
At the tent’s entrance, the tarp started moving. I froze. Now the hissing seemed like it was wrapping around the place.
Rustling outside, too.
Whatever was out there sounded like it was both very close and very far away, almost like it was everywhere.
And here I was with no weapon, no plan—a sitting duck.
“Gizzler?” I called out, thinking it was the gasling taking me up on the visit.
No answer.
“Gizzler, if that’s you—”
I didn’t get to finish whatever I was going to say. The tent buckled in as something vicious struck my side.
Cold. Wet. Slimy.
I hit the ground hard and clocked my head against the metal refrigerator door. My vision jolted, sputtered, went out, and came back fuzzy.
Then I saw it, what had attacked me. It was a snake, but not just a normal snake. It was a basilisk.
Luckily, I hadn’t seen its face, just the long curving body, the thick scales, and the tail that ended in a point. If I stared into the basilisk’s eyes, I would die.
Fighting with one’s eyes closed is not easy.
But that’s what I had to do.
If you are unaware, a basilisk is a large reptile, usually a snake, that is hatched by a serpent from a chicken’s egg, which is, when you think of it, weird as hell. The basilisk possesses a deadly gaze. Meaning: If it looks at you, you are probably going to die.
The basilisk hissed and lashed at me again. I had to rely on my hearing to anticipate where the strike would land. I zigged left toward the tent’s opening while the basilisk apparently zigged right. All the air whooshed out of me as its cold, slimy body smacked into my stomach. I doubled over, wheezing.
This scuffle, as you may think, was not loud. Basilisks have the gift of silence, the better to sneak up on their prey that way. But I was trained to hear silence even though each movement was as soundless as socked feet walking on sand.
But if I had any chance at surviving the attack, I had to make noise and I had to make noise now.
The problem: I could hardly breathe, let alone scream. When I tried, the noise that came out was as loud as a whisper.
Zack and Maddie, I knew, were heavy sleepers.
The snake slithered somewhere behind me. Coldness rolled over my ankle.
“Help,” I wheezed.
“Go ahead,” the snake said. “Ssssss-scream if you want.”
I realized the sound of his voice was fading. He drifted away from me. The cold-blooded bastard must’ve sniffed out Maddie and Zack in the other part of the tent—or probably had just known of their presence. I mean, we were public enemies one, two, and three in the monster world at that moment.
I clawed at my throat, flicked my Adam’s apple with the hope I could jar my vocal cords back to life.
No luck.
And I dare not open my eyes.
Noise, I was thinking. Noise.
But how? How do I manage to make noise when I could barely breathe?
“Kill them now and be a hero,” the basilisk said. It drifted farther away from me. I tried screaming again, sounded like a tea kettle.
My back was up against the fridge, the fully stocked fridge. I reached up and grabbed the handle, trying to pull myself up. The door unlatched, I fell forward into cold food. Then it hit me—I knew how to make noise.
If Bubba, the fat agent who used to work with us at NOD, was still around, he’d think what I was about to do was sacrilegious.
I plunged my hands toward what I thought was the top shelf and pulled everything I touched out and onto the hard floor. Jars shattered, eggs broke, a jug of lemonade splashed over my socks. I didn’t think I could’ve made any more noise unless I’d thrown a stick of dynamite inside and let the explosion do all the work for me.
Then the smell hit me, the combinations of pickles and lemonade and mayonnaise, pungent, nose tickling. I coughed silently.
The monster had come back. “Stop that,” it hissed. “Stop that or I’ll keep you alive while I digest you.”
I gulped. That didn’t sound very fun at all. I’d rather avoid that if I could.
“What was that?” Maddie said from the other room.
Finally.
The snake darted away from me again.
“B-B-Basilisk!” I said. “Close your eyes!”
“Shit!” Zack added. “I can’t see anything.”
“That’s the point,” Maddie said.
A sound like the television falling over and shattering, followed by another sound—swish-swish. The snake came back toward me.
I felt its large head pummel into my legs as I tried to stand. I sailed through the air and hit the bed I should’ve been asleep on. Tried getting up. Wasn’t very successful.
“Abe?” Maddie called.
More racket. Zack and her stumbling around sightless, wobbling like drunk people, I was sure.
“Must kill you!” the basilisk said. “Crush you. Eat you!”
My hand closed over something familiar as I tried to get up. It’s a known fact that these days it is almost impossible to lie down for bed and not browse your smartphone as you try to drift off to sleep. While I like to think I’m not a brainwashed drone like everyone else, I’ll admit that, like you, I am one of those people that scrolls through the social media apps while my eyes fry and my brain gets tired and the hours tick on. Even though we were somewhere far away from regular cell phone towers and I didn’t have any service, old habits died hard. I was flipping through a book of poetry I’d downloaded to my Kindle app, looking for a poem I would one day recite to Lola before I proposed marriage to her. I know, I know. It was a long shot, but I figured it paid to be prepared.
So there my phone was, in my hand, and I knew what I had to do.
A whip-crack. Zack screamed.
“Zack!” Maddie yelled.
He didn’t answer. That wasn’t good. If he was still unconscious, he’d undoubtedly have something smart to say. Alas, no words came out of his mouth.
“Let go of him!” Maddie screeched.
She must’ve had her eyes open.
I hoped she didn’t have her eyes open, but the hissing behind me let me know that the basilisk’s head, the dangerous part with its deadly eyes, was right behind me while the back half of the large snake stretched into the other side of the tent where Maddie and Zack were. The basilisk was pretty large. I guessed it was anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length. Maybe even more. I really didn’t want to open my eyes and find out.
But I had to. Had to open them and hope the basilisk wasn’t in front of my face. Luckily, my sense of hearing was starting to make up for the fact that I couldn’t see. The hissing was loud behind me. That was good, but it didn’t mean that the snake couldn’t strike out in front of me in the blink of an eye, stare at me, and then turn me into stone.
“Abe! He’s choking! Zack’s dying!” Maddie shouted. She heaved like she was lifting some great weight, no doubt trying to pry the snake’s cold flesh from Zack. But she’d probably have more luck with lifting the back end of a semi-truck with her bare hands.
So time was running out.
Against all the fear, I opened my eyes. There, in front of me was the phone. Not the snake.
I swiped sideways and opened the camera. That was the hard part. The rest was gravy…or so I thought until the snake hissed and wrapped its body around my neck, squeezing tight, cutting my breath off so fast that I’d felt little veins burst all over my face. My hands shook and I almost dropped the phone behind the bed, on the mayonnaise and lemonade covered floor.
“This is better,” the basilisk whispered. Its tongue flicked out and rubbed against my ear. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking of the penis-t
entacle. That dreadful night in Woodhaven will haunt me for the rest of my life.
But if I wanted to survive I had to forget about penises and tentacles.
I had to take a damn picture.
Wheezing, I shoved the camera next to my face. The snake was hissing and spitting nonsense into my ear. I heard the shutter click through the rush of blood. The hissing stopped.
“What?” the basilisk asked. It let up on its grip.
“A picture,” I wheezed. “It’ll last longer.”
With a crack and a screech, the basilisk opened its mouth. He knew he’d have to kill me now. No more playing with his food.
I shoved the phone back farther. As I did this, I felt the snake go slack. The hissing stopped, the spitting stopped, and the grip around Zack and I eased up.
“Are you okay?” Maddie was asking Zack.
His voice was scratchy and he breathed heavy but he answered with a “Yes…I think.”
I opened my eyes. Didn’t look at my phone.
The basilisk was dead on the floor, like stone, around my feet like some great reptilian skin I had shed.
Maddie and Zack came over and helped me up onto the bed.
“How?” Maddie was asking me.
It felt so nice to be able to breathe again. We don’t know how much we take that simple act for granted until we no longer have it.
“My phone,” I managed after a few moments. “Took a picture.”
“Gave him a taste of his own medicine,” Zack said. He raised his hand for a high five but only got it up about halfway before he winced.
“Delete the picture,” Maddie said.
I did. With my eyes closed, this wasn’t an easy task.
“Probably should burn your phone,” Zack added. He looked down at the basilisk. I wasn’t surprised to see its eyes had burned out of their sockets. All that was left in the hollow holes was a bit of ash with flecks of gold.
“I hate snakes,” Maddie said. “And that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, babe, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Zack said and winked.
Maddie didn’t find this as amusing as Zack and I did. Maybe it wasn’t the time for a colorful comment like that or maybe Maddie had just found it plain gross. I don’t know. But I do know it felt good to laugh right then. We needed that laugh.
The Monster Games Page 11