Women and Other Monsters

by Bernard Schaffer

She stopped at the janitorial supply closet near the morgue’s entrance. Greg was behind those doors, she thought. Doing God knows what and with whom. The doors were black and rubber-coated with smoked glass windows. She reached for one of the handles and pulled, but it was locked tight. She cursed and pressed the intercom, biting her lip nervously until Greg answered, “Yes?”

  “It’s me. Open up right now.”

  She could hear his shoes squeaking across the floor and she stepped back as the doors slammed open. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Susan inspected him. His face was red and sweaty. His hair was a mess. His lab coat was buttoned from the topmost button to the lowest. There was a diminishing protrusion in his pants that confirmed her suspicion, and she shoved the coffee into his hands with such force that the lid came off. Greg shook the hot coffee off of his hand and said, “What is your problem?”

  “Where is she?” Susan demanded, pushing him out of the way. The morgue was intensely cold and her breath appeared when she snarled, “Where are you, bitch? Come out.” She moved down the aisle of gurneys, ignoring the scent of dead flesh and escaping cadaver gasses that filled up her sinuses.

  Greg laughed in exasperation and said, “There’s nobody in here but me and dead people, Susan.”

  She turned on her heels, ready to fight. “I want to know who is in here with you! One of the nurses? That redhead whore?”

  “Yes. There’s a redhead whore in here. She’s an eighty-year old that choked to death on a chicken wing at her daughter’s birthday party. She’s an incredible shade of purple if you want to meet her.”

  “I don’t believe you! It all makes sense,” she said. “You don’t come near me anymore. You sleep all goddamn day. You barely say two words to me when we are together.” She passed an obese man’s corpse as she spoke, then a newborn, then a middle-aged woman. In the distance was another gurney sitting by itself, pushed into the shadows. Through the sheet, Susan could make out the silhouette of a curvy woman’s corpse spread-legged on the tray.

  He pulled her sleeve and said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you aren’t allowed to be in here. I could get fired.”

  Susan looked away from the gurneys and stumbled, putting her fingers to her temples. Greg led her toward the exit and said, “It’s just the smell. You get used to it. Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “I’m ok,” she said, shaking his arm off. “I guess I let my imagination get the better of me.”

  He watched her go down the hall. “Get some sleep, all right? I’ll be home in a little while.”

  Susan pressed the elevator button repeatedly until the doors closed and took her away.

  ***

  She found a good candidate on the street corner near the university bookstore. The girl was in her late teens, clutching schoolbooks in one hand and texting with the other as she waited for the traffic light to change. She was a pretty girl, Susan thought. Blonde and busty, the kind Greg dated in college before they’d met.

  Susan shifted her car into drive but kept her foot on the brake, waiting for the WALK signal to flash in the girl’s direction. It was late enough in the evening that any bodies brought into the morgue would be held for the midnight shift and tonight it was only Greg working.

  Within seconds the girl stepped down from the curb and began crossing the street. There were no other cars on the road. No witnesses.

  Susan pulled away from the curb and aimed her car for the girl as she was about to walk past the double yellow lines. The girl looked up just as Susan’s car’s headlights closed in on her too rapidly to escape.

  ***

  Greg would not pick up the morgue’s phone.

  Susan crouched low in the basement supply closet and scrolled down to his number on her cell-phone. She texted: NEED HELP.

  Her phone soon vibrated and she covered the mouthpiece to answer. Greg was yelling, “What the hell kind of help could you possibly need at four in the morning?”

  “I lost my purse,” Susan said quietly. “I think I might have left it at the gas station. It has all my credit cards in it and everything.”

  “When?”

  “Earlier tonight. I just woke up and realized I hadn’t seen it all night and now I’m really frightened, Greg. What do I do?”

  “Jesus Christ. Is there anywhere else you could have left it?”

  “The only other place might be the passenger side of your car? Can you please check?”

  “Let me get cleaned up here.” He said he would call her in a few minutes.

  Susan closed her phone and waited. She leaned her hand on the wall to avoid moving and bumping into anything that might clang against one of the metal buckets. The morgue’s doors opened and Greg stormed past her toward the elevator.

  She swiped his spare ID card and the doors unlocked with a click. She hurried down the aisle of gurneys until she found one pushed into the back and pulled up the sheet to reveal the blonde girl. “You dented my car,” Susan whispered.

  18-gauge syringes were the largest that the hospital carried. The needle’s steel tip was the size of pencil lead. Susan made sure the orange cap was on as she fit the push-stem of the needle into the opening of the girl’s sex. Susan pushed the needle in backwards with her thumb until it would not go anymore and pulled the cap off.

  She stuck her finger inside and could barely touch the tip of the needle. It was far enough back to remain hidden in case anyone looked, Susan thought, but shallow enough to surprise the person who put anything more substantial inside.

  Her pocket vibrated. That would be Greg leaving a message that the purse was not in the car. She covered the body and backed away from the gurney, ducking into the shadows.

  The elevator dinged, the morgue’s doors opened, and Greg came down the row of gurneys, stopping at the last one. He lifted the sheet, staring for a moment at the girl’s naked body before saying, “Now, where were we?”

  Susan watched Greg untie the drawstring to his pants and held her breath in anticipation.

  Nazareth

  Klatu looked down into the vortex of flashing colors. Winds whipped against his face as he strapped on his helmet and leapt into the portal. The ship’s deployment bay vanished around him and the vortex dropped him hard on the planet’s surface below. He bounced and rolled across a plane of green vegetation until he was lying flat on his back, looking up at the alien sun.

  The helmet’s face shield adjusted to the sun’s intense light, polarizing his view of the sky. A red box appeared around the sun displaying data across his visor that told him its size, age and temperature. Asymmetrical masses of ice crystals floated slowly across atmosphere. He whispered into his intercom, “L’aida, have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Most interesting, but do not be distracted.”

  Klatu pushed up from the ground and saw small aerial creatures darting between humongous growths of plant life that towered high over his head. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, focusing on the world around him. He reached out with his mind, seeking…seeking…His intercom buzzed. “Klatu, you have company.” It buzzed again. “Is your motion sensor on?”

  He flipped the sensor’s switch on his belt and a warning flashed across his visor that a bipedal life-form was closing on his location fast. Klatu moved into the woods and crouched, telling L’aida, “I feel it. It is hostile.” His suit absorbed and reflected the patterns of foliage around him. Roots and flowers appeared around his limbs in spiraling vines, as if growing over every inch of him.

  “Remain unseen,” she said.

  Klatu removed the weapon from his belt and waited, keeping his tendrils near the trigger. Something crashed through the brush and Klatu fired twice, dropping the creature before it reached him. It lay twitching on the ground with two smoking holes in its torso; a humanoid, mean-looking thing with misshapen features. He kicked it to see if it moved but there was no response. He zoomed in on the body with his camera and said, “That thing almost ha
d me.”

  “It looks small,” L’aida said.

  A much larger creature appeared at the wood line, calling out in a strange tongue. Klatu realized it was searching for the smaller being and he readied himself as it came closer. It screamed, racing forward as Klatu lifted his weapon and fired.

  ***

  Klatu hurried back to the portal and leapt into its spinning center. Winds tossed him as he was sucked upwards until he landed on the ship’s floor. He tore off the helmet and heaved, struggling to catch his breath. The suit stuck to his skin and he peeled it off, leaning over one of the floor vents to let cool air wash over him. The bay door opened, but he did not move from the vent. “Were you watching those things attack me? I barely made it out of there with my life.”

  L’aida stayed in the doorway. “Why did you terminate those creatures?”

  “They were hostile.”

  “One of them was clearly an adolescent and the other most likely its mother. You were invisible!”

  Klatu paused. “I sensed their intent.”

  “You sensed nothing,” she hissed. “You are not an Adept and you never will be. You do not possess The Sight. It is one thing for me to be mated to a telepathic impotent, but another to be mated to a deluded murderer.”

  “It is starting to work. I can feel it.”

  “If you felt anything would we be in this galactic junk heap? The Consortium does not waste potential Adepts on such meaningless tasks.”

  “The Sight can develop late in life for some. I understand you do not believe in me, but I do not care. You will feel very foolish when I prove you wrong.”

  L’aida pointed at him and said, “You will return at once to collect those dead specimens. The least we can do is salvage some usefulness from your senseless act of violence.”

  “But-“

  “At once.”

  ***

  He muttered to himself as he crossed the field, heading back toward the wooded area. Their research had already identified a thousand different insects that were superior to the humanoids in both number and resilience. There seemed to be no reason for concern about the loss of a few lesser life-forms.

  The scanner beeped and displayed the heat signature of another creature in the area. Klatu paused in the grass until his suit’s display calibrated to the changing daylight. He crept silently across the scattered leaves and branches on the tips of his tentacles.

  There was a larger male bent over the body of the female, holding her tightly to his chest. Klatu removed the weapon from his hip and quickly adjusted the settings. He pointed the weapon at the creature and fired. The male’s back arched when the beam struck him and he let out a long grunt that slowly became a faint wheeze. Klatu scanned the specimen, ensuring that his vital organs still functioned, and smiled. He dragged it by the hair across the grass toward the portal.

  L’aida was waiting in the deployment area when he emerged from the vortex and tossed the creature at her feet. “What is this?” she said. “I told you to bring the two deceased specimens and instead you bring me what?”

  “A live specimen,” he said. “Do you want it or not?”

  She sighed and told him to bring it to the examination room. Klatu lifted the male and carried it over his shoulder, following her until they reached a large bay with a slotted table at its center. He laid the creature down and went to clean his hands, disgusted at the rank odor left on them from touching its skin.

  L’aida cut away the drab colored tunics covering the specimen. She moved its limbs and touched its shaggy face. She inspected its genitalia and rectum then turned away from the table to select instruments from a tray. She cut the creature open along the length of its torso and peeled back the flaps of its chest to peer down at the squirming organs.

  L’aida was reaching into the exposed chest cavity, wrapping her tendrils around the rib cage to break it open, when the creature came to. It thrashed and convulsed furiously and the two of them had to pin it to the table with their tentacles. L’aida shouted, “Terminate it! Terminate it!”

  Klatu reached for his weapon, but the creature grabbed him and squeezed his tentacle. When he tried to pry away the thing’s fingers, it yanked him forward so that their faces were only inches apart.

  L’aida had the creatures legs held down and she yelled over her shoulder at Klatu, telling him to hurry. When he did not answer, she turned and fell silent at the sight of the two beings staring wide-eyed at one another. The male spoke softly in his garbled language and Klatu’s forked tongue made ridiculous attempts at repeating the words.

  L’aida violently shoved the male backwards and he fell dead against the table. Klatu yanked his tentacle free and collapsed onto the floor.

  ***

  It was a small enough box that it fit inside the center of his tentacle. Klatu ran his tendrils along its ornate golden surface and opened the lid, taking out the tiny data card. The card contained his people’s most sacred, ancient texts; the teachings of the earliest prophets who foresaw their journey into the stars, up to the personal accounts of those who witnessed the miracles of the Beneficent Redeemer.

  His mother had given him the box many years ago, and he held it to his chest when he sometimes became desperate enough to pray for The Sight. Other than that it mostly sat on a shelf in his sleeping quarters.

  The blue-green planet of the humanoids rotated miles below him, and he was so lost in thought that he did not hear L’aida slithering across the room. Her antennas brushed the horns dotting his neck. She pressed close to him and stroked the back of his head with her tendrils. “How are you feeling?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Do you think it was real?”

  He nodded slowly. “But then, of course I would say that. I’m just the fool who carries on like he’ll someday possess The Sight.”

  She looked down at the planet with him. “Why don’t you start by telling me exactly what you saw?”

  He told her in detail about the female and the small creature, who he now knew to be her daughter. They were playing, running through a field that led to the woods where he had found them. Klatu told her about the male now laying dead on their examination table; that he was their husband and father, and that he had told them he would be along soon. There was more that Klatu could not bring himself to say. When he made contact with the male’s mind, a debilitating sense of horror and grief latched onto him. He saw the birth of that child when it was just a tiny drooling thing that the mother caressed and fitted to her breast. He saw that same child lying dead in the grass and it was as if everything good had gone out of existence. And it was his doing.

  Klatu lifted the box of sacred teachings to his forehead and began to weep.

  ***

  They selected a less densely populated terrain. Klatu landed on the dry desert sand, feeling an intense heat that threatened to cook him alive inside the suit. He sprinted across the landscape and his suit took on the appearance of rock formations and small shrubs.

  The intercom crackled, “Straight ahead, just over the dune. Do you see it?”

  Klatu stopped running and peered over the sandy hill, seeing a small hut with a cluster of males assembled outside. “Abort the mission, Klatu,” L’aida said. “There are too many of them.”

  “No,” he said. “I can do this.”

  “I said abort.”

  He slid down the dune and went past them into the hut where a dozen females crowded around a small bed. He lifted his head to peer over them at the female specimen lying there, not moving. Her eyes were open and both of her hands were draped protectively over her round stomach.

  Klatu tried to translate the women’s words but his machine was overloaded with too many voices speaking at the same time. He closed his eyes and relaxed, deciding not to reach out for anything this time, but allowing them to reach into him.

  He received the thoughts of the eldest woman first. She knew the pregnant female on the bed was dying and had attempted to extract the ch
ild in a desperate attempt to save it. She failed. Klatu backed away, sinking into the furthest corner. The front door opened and the males came in from outside. Each of them carried their own memories, hopes, and pain that battered him.

  All of their thoughts buzzed through his mind like static until one voice broke through the others and struck him with so much force that he sank to the floor. It was the mother of the deceased female, and her grief was enough to make Klatu throw his tentacles over his head and beg L’aida to do something. “I will bring them all on board if I have to.”

  L’aida’s voice was soft, “Both the mother and child are past the point of sustainability. They are gone. It is no wonder considering the brutality of their medical practices.”

  “All is not lost. Give me time to think.”