Not Your Average Monster: A Bestiary of Horrors

by Pete Kahle

  What the hell just happened here? Gordy thought to himself. He looked around but the Turdmonster was long gone, having run off into the trees.

  Did something attack the dog? What the hell is in that hole? He would rather not see the contents, considering where they had come from, but he had to see what had scared the dog away.

  Taking the wooden stairs gingerly, Gordy stepped down to his lawn and walked to the edge of the hole, wincing with every movement. He still heard the popping bubble wrap sounds and they were growing louder as he came closer. Reaching the hole, he peered in and immediately staggered back, nauseated by what he saw.

  He had expected to see the remnants of a soup of blood and feces soaking into the earth. Not pleasant at all, but instead the pit revealed a mass of worms writhing and churning in the stew. No, not worms - worms didn’t have scarlet pincers and mandibles and dozens of small, thorny, chitinous limbs. Worms weren’t translucent and their innards weren’t visible - at least Gordy didn’t think so. He could see clumps of the most recent meal they had eaten (and he was pretty certain he knew what had been on the menu) passing through their abdomens.

  Again, Gordy felt sick to his stomach and more than a little afraid. Did he really crap those things out, and were any still inside him? He steeled himself and peeked over the edge again to get a second look. This time, he forced himself to take note of the details, regardless of how disgusting they were. If more of these worms/grubs/larva were actually still inside him, he would need to be able to describe them to the doctor. They could be some type of exotic parasite that he had picked up in the woods. Who knew what diseases he could have now?

  The larva swam in the pool of waste, rolling over each other in a slimy tangle. Their constant motion and chittering mandibles were the source of the bubble wrap sounds. Gordy realized now that he couldn’t delay any longer. He had to go to the ER immediately, and he needed to bring a sample of the larva so they could quickly identify what they were. To do that, he needed some tools.

  A not-so-quick trip to the kitchen later, he was back at the hole with New England Patriots souvenir cup (that Hector had left in his sink last week), and a plastic ladle (which he would toss in the trash as soon as he was finished with it).

  “Ugh, this is vile,” he muttered as he skimmed a couple of the smaller larva from the surface of the pool into the cup. Each were about an inch long and they began wriggling furiously as soon as they were pulled away from the warm comfort of the pit. Violently, even. As if they were calling for help…

  Gordy secured the lid of the cup and turned to walk back into the house and call for a ride to the ER when something jabbed his left ankle. All strength in that leg and fell to his knees. A sensation of burning acid spread past his knee into his thigh. He looked back to see what had attacked him. One of the larva was attached to his leg, but this one was much larger than the ones in the cup. By a factor of ten, at least, perhaps as much as twenty times larger. It was the size of his forearm with serrated pincers larger than his thumb buried in the meat of his left calf. The larva squeezed the pincers again, cutting deeper into the meat. Through the jelly-like flesh, Gordy could see a gland beneath each of the pincers pumping the acidic venom into his muscle.

  With each squeeze, the burning crimson liquid seared inside him, cauterizing his pain receptors and gradually numbing his lower leg, but Gordy was too shocked to care. The sight of the giant gelatinous larva had triggered a critical synapse in his brain, opening the floodgates, and he remembered the missing days.

  He remembered every horrible second.

  The explosion was instantaneous. A blinding white radiance filled the cave, followed milliseconds later by an equally powerful swell of scorching heat that had the three of them diving for the cave floor to escape it. And then, as soon as it happened, it was over.

  The cave smelled like burning hair and ozone. A high-pitched ringing muffled their screams. Hector whimpered in panic from inside his sleeping bag; Seth and Gordy were sprawled on the cave floor, amazed that they were still alive; and Ross leaned against the wall, moaning in pain. Even in the dim light of the cave, it was apparent that he had taken the brunt of the explosion in the face. His hair and eyebrows were singed and the skin on his face was bright red as if he had been sunbathing without any sunblock for hours.

  “Asshole!” screamed Seth, losing his usual cool composure, “You stupid, braindead burnout asshole! What the fuck were you thinking, Ross? Have you killed every single brain cell in your skull?”

  “Dude,” muttered Ross. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  “It was a mistake that could have gotten us all killed, man,” said Gordy. “You gotta tone it down with the ‘crazy and unpredictable’ act. It’s old.”

  “Man, I said I was sorry! We wouldn’t have been here if you had…”

  “Gimme a break, Ross. That’s beside the point. My mistake has no connection to your decision to shoot a roman candle off at all.”

  Hector sat up suddenly and cocked his ear. “Guys, is it me or is that weird noise getting a lot louder?”

  “What?”

  “That noise,” he said, pointing toward the opposite wall with the hole where the fire. He was right. In the minute since Ross’ adventures with gunpowder, the sounds echoing from the hole had steadily increased in volume until it could easily be heard from every area of the cave. Needing a distraction to calm his nerves, Seth walked over to the gap in the wall and stuck his head in to look down the shaft.

  Seconds later, he was engulfed by a crawling, slithering mass of pincers and claws.

  The plastic ladle was not an optimal weapon at all. Gordy whacked the giant larva over the head three or four times, but it just bounced off the rubbery flesh like a spoon bouncing off of a Jell-O mold. The greasy foot-long grub let out a few clicks and hisses, but it wouldn’t release its grip. By then, his left leg had the worst case of pins and needles he had ever experienced, rendering it thoroughly numb and useless.

  He reversed the ladle and tried to pry the thing off him by inserting the handle between the pincers and levering it out of his leg, but the handle was too flimsy. It snapped in half and all that remained of the handle was a jagged six-inch stump.

  “Goddamnit!” Cursing, Gordy desperately stabbed it over and over until he finally cut through the rubbery skin and it popped like an old blister. A cloudy foul-smelling sludge slopped from the wound onto the ground as the larva froze in death and slid off his leg. Scooting backwards a few feet, he began to sob in great heaving gasps.

  Everything from the past few days was now fresh in his mind as if it had just happened within the hour. The wounds on his ankle matched the two swollen holes in his armpit, only smaller and closer together. He rolled over onto his stomach and began to drag himself around the side of his house toward the garage. He still had to get to a hospital, but before he could think of that, he had to take care of this and other nests. These creatures could not be allowed to live.

  A tide of twisting mouths and slime poured from the breach in the cave wall, swarming over Seth and flowing into the cave. The sounds resembling bubbles popping and thousands of claws scraping against the stone deafened them. The wormy mass was so heavy that the ones on the bottom were crushed; their vile innards coated the cave floor with a slick layer of viscous sludge.

  Ross was the next to be overwhelmed. Holding his burnt face in his hands, he never had time to recognize the threat coming for him. The worms flowed up his legs and torso, biting and stinging their way into his nose and mouth. He fell to the floor choking on them and soon was lost from sight.

  Gordy was closest to the entrance. He screamed at Hector, exhorting him to get out of the cave. Hector was in a panic, trying to pull his way out of his sleeping bag, screaming for help when the zipper became stuck.

  “Gordy! I can’t get out,” he begged. “Please!”

  Without thinking, Gordy ran forward and yanked on the zipper tab. It was thoroughly jammed; a folded bit of nylon was caug
ht between the slider and the teeth. There was no time to work it loose.

  “Fuck the zipper,” he yelled. “Rip it open. Pull yourself out!”

  Hector’s eyes widened. Looking back into the recesses of the cave, he wailed, “GORDY!”

  Gordy turned around. The crawling sea of grubs was nearly to them, but the monstrosity beyond them was what caught his eye. A massive specimen was pulling itself out of the shaft through the hole in the wall. The grubs flowing across the floor ranged in size from half an inch to three inches long. This one was the size of a full-grown man.

  Anyone who had watched as many Animal Planet documentaries as Gordy had could identify it as the Queen.

  Pushing the last of her bulk out of the gap, she flopped to the floor, crushing hundreds of her spawn as she landed. A flurry of wet squelches sounded as each of her two dozen legs emerged from muculent cavities in her sides, unfolding to gain purchase on the slippery floor. She rose up and faced the two remaining friends across the cave, snapping her blood-red clapperclaws together like a chef sharpening her knives. Scarlet venom leaked from the tips. Though Gordy couldn’t see any eyes along her flanks, it was dreadfully apparent that she was looking directly at him. She began to drag her immense bulk in his direction.

  With a hoarse desperate cry, he dropped Hector’s sleeping bag, turned toward the narrow entrance of the cave, and ran blindly for his life. Behind him, Hector’s screams of terror were quickly muffled as the worms reached him and filled his mouth.

  Gordy pulled himself up on his good leg and dragged himself around the corner of his house by leaning against the vinyl siding for support. His other leg was completely useless from the paralyzing venom that the grub had injected, but he still managed to shuffle along with his three good limbs.

  I let my friends get slaughtered by those things. It’s my fault we were even in that goddamned cave. The horror of what had happened repeated itself in his mind over and over again. He saw his friends’ dying faces again and was overwhelmed with nearly crippling guilt. Even if their actions may have slightly contributed to the situation, ultimately Gordy knew that he was at fault.

  He turned the corner and, as he had expected, found the garage wide open. At the back, covered by an oil-stained tarpaulin, his old riding mower sat in the corner. He hadn’t used it in nearly two years, ever since he had begun paying an entrepreneurial neighborhood teen to mow it twice a month. He crossed his fingers that it would start. Otherwise, he was out of options.

  Ten minutes later, after an effort so draining that he had vomited on the garage floor, he sat on the mower and managed to start the ignition on only the third try. At his feet, on the mower deck, sat a 5 gallon jug of gasoline. It was only about half full, but he didn’t have anything else that was flammable, so that would have to be enough for the job he was about to do.

  Driving with his left hand, Gordy held a propane grill lighter in his right ready to ignite the gasoline and fry those vermin. He exited the garage, leg limply splayed out to the side, and turned the corner into his back yard where the churning holes remained. The sound of the mower drowned out the noise coming from the original hole, but he could still see the frothing, churning soup of grubs ahead of him. He drove the mower to the open hole and poured a few splashes onto the surface. Immediately, the grubs began writhing and jumping out of the gory sludge. One flick of the lighter and the hole was filled with dancing flames. Gordy smiled to himself as the grubs sizzled and popped. He continued around his yard, soaking the five other mounds where he had left a deposit with gasoline. Once all six holes were burning, he sat there to make certain that the contents were thoroughly burnt to cinders.

  As he watched the six plumes of black smoke rise in the sky, he felt some discomfort and nausea as the burning shit stench filled the air and blew back in his face. Disgusted, he retched on the opposite side so violently that his upper abdomen spasmed and he doubled over the steering wheel as more violent convulsions rippled through him. He fell off the mower holding his gut as another sharp pain hit him. It felt as if someone was stabbing him… from the inside.

  Gordy rolled onto his back screaming. He pulled up his t-shirt and confirmed what he had feared. A large bulge in his abdomen had pushed his navel inside out, and a two inch long pincer covered in blood and gore was slowing digging its way out of the umbilical cavity.

  Freedom was less than ten feet away when the Queen caught Gordy and slammed him to the cave floor. He wailed as she climbed his back and pinned him beneath her mass clamping her pincers on his right flank. The jagged barbs pierced the flesh directly beneath his armpit and the paralytic venom pumped into his body. Within a minute, he was unable to move more than with the slightest of tremors.

  Circulation and breathing slowed as he was dragged back into the dark cave. He was still conscious but his perception was altered to the point where sounds echoed and everything he saw faded in and out in a slow-motion strobe effect.

  Thankfully he was numb, feeling no pain and only the slightest of pressure.

  Once the Queen had pulled him back into the main cavern, she left him on his side on a layer of bodies of her crushed and scorched spawn. He could see now that she had been injured by the roman candle. A foot-long burn mark like molten glass scarred her upper flank and a pungent ooze leaked from the wound.

  Hours passed.

  Thousands upon thousands of her children crawled along the floor and flowed up the wall in the dim glow of the flashlight that still cast its beam from where it had fallen. A few even walked along the ceiling, sometimes dropping to the floor and bursting with a wet impact. Many of them climbed his frozen body as if he were only an outcropping of stone around which they needed to maneuver. Across his arms, legs, mouth and eyes, he felt their sharp feet scratch along his skin. None of them, however, attempted to crawl inside his mouth or other orifices, nor did they feed upon him.

  His friends were not so lucky.

  Little remained of Seth. He had been consumed down to his bloody bones. Even his clothes had been eaten, except for his wristwatch, the eyelets of his boots and his beloved Captain America belt buckle that he wore when he could be certain that no one of the opposite sex was likely to see him.

  From his vantage point, Gordy could only see the upper half of Ross, but what he saw would have made him scream in terror if he was able to make a sound. The grubs had crawled inside his body like the carcass of a wild animal left to decompose on an African veldt. Gases had bloated his face and torso to twice their size and the constant motion of the creatures feeding on his interior caused his skin to ripple like the ocean tide. Hector seemed to have suffered the same fate as Ross, but since he was still stuck inside the sleeping bag, all Gordy could see was the seething flow of grubs entering his body through the eye sockets.

  More time passed. Despite his paralysis, Gordy became quite hungry and desperately thirsty. The Queen had been out of sight since he had been tossed aside, but he could hear her massive bulk slide around the cave from time to time.

  Suddenly, the grubs began flowing in his direction and surrounding him. A subsonic humming vibrated the cave and tingled the surface of his skin. The cave seemed to get warmer and a smell like horse piss tainted the air.

  Something was obviously different about her as she slithered into Gordy’s view. She seemed larger and her skin was awash with a pinkish mucus. She circled him three times in an ever-tightening spiral. As she rolled by on the final pass, the heat radiating off her body was palpable.

  It was at that point that he saw the ovipositor.

  Gordy knew what that horrible thing was the second he saw it (Yet another benefit of watching too many Animal Planet documentaries). He understood that an ovipositor is an egg-laying organ generally located on the tail end of an insect's abdomen. In this case, it was a foot long with a fleshy sheath surrounding a black segmented organ that protruded from the butt end of the Queen.

  All signs pointed to the unequivocal fact that the Queen was going to stick
a Humongous Monster Insect Dick inside of him and plant a few hundred thousand eggs. Technically “dick” was not the correct term since she was a female, but for all intents and purposes, it performed the same basic function as a penis did. It penetrated.

  Gordy gibbered and screamed in his mind as the reality of what was going to happen crystallized in his mind. Covered in warm, glutinous, reproductive mucus, the Queen slid on top of his frozen body like a nightmare lover. As she rolled him over, some of the mucus filled his mouth and nose. For a few long seconds, he couldn’t breathe. His sight began to blur, his ears began to ring, and he was momentarily thankful that this mouthful of bug sludge was going to kill him before the Queen could consummate their union. Unfortunately, however, his involuntary survival instinct was in full effect. His gag reflex was triggered and he vomited out the sludge just as the Queen spread his legs and struck.

  The pain of the impalement was so great that he immediately passed out.

  Another pincer tore through the flesh of his belly and a grub equal in size to the one he had already stabbed to death emerged through the wound wrapped in the shredded remnants of Gordy’s intestines.

  This was it.

  This was the end

  This was how he would finally die.

  After all he had survived in the cave, with the ghosts of his friends haunting him, now he was going to perish wallowing in a pool of his own blood and shit in his own back yard. Somehow it didn’t seem fair at all.

  Another grub poked its head through the bloody gash and he felt more of them – dozens more - writhing inside him.

  FRIDAY, JUST BEFORE DAWN – Gordy woke to the smell of his friends’ rotting bodies. It was darker inside the cave, with only the fading light of the flashlight, which had been kicked to the opposite wall and now cast a meager glow on the surrounding rocks. Silence hung over the stone chamber like a bloody shroud. Shadowy mounds littered the floor around him, unrecognizable in the blackness. A vile, feculent taste filled his mouth; he spat several times and gingerly lifted his head off the floor. Gummy residue on his cheeks stuck his skin to the stone until he peeled it away.