Marvel Monsters Unleashed: Beware the Glop!

by Steve Behling

  “Everything okay, you two?” asked the sheriff. “Was my son bugging you again?”

  “It’s fine,” said Cindy. “I can handle him.”

  The Sheriff chuckled loudly. “I have no doubt,” he said, smiling. “Well, you let me know. Get to school now. Give your mom my best.” Then Sheriff Cyphers hopped back into his police car and drove away. Don Cyphers may have been a bully, but his dad was a good guy. He certainly had his hands full with Don.

  “He’s right, we should get going,” Ben said as he picked up the monster journal and put it safely in his backpack. “And thanks, Cindy.”

  Cindy grinned as the pair left the bus stop and headed down the sidewalk toward school.

  “Anytime, big brother. Now tell me more about Fin Fang Foom.…”

  “Okay, so check it! I was reading about him last night on Tales to Astonish! He fought off the Chinese army, and nobody thought he could be stopped! Except a guy figured out how to make him go to sleep!” Ben babbled excitedly.

  “Wow, sleep! Really? That sounds super exciting!” Cindy said with mock amazement in her voice. “Tell me again how the day was saved by napping!”

  “But that’s how it happened! I’m sorry, I don’t make this stuff up,” Ben said. “Not every giant monster story has chases and battles and excitement, ya know.”

  The kids walked along the town square and headed toward the school. Neither bothered to look down at their feet. And why would they? If they had, all they would have noticed was concrete, dirt, bubble gum, and goo.

  Goo, bubbling up through the cracks in the pavement.

  Goo that pulsed.

  Like it was…alive?

  SOMETHING WAS BUBBLING and oozing. It had no eyes, but it stared right up at Ben. It seemed to be creeping closer and closer to him! He turned his head, panicked, trying to avoid the inevitable.

  “It’s going to get me!” Ben shrieked. “It’s going to…eat me!”

  “Oh, come on, Ben, it’s not that bad!” said his mother. She pointed at the plate in front of him. The plate had some kind of orange blob on it that Mrs. Lee claimed was their dinner.

  Ben didn’t believe it.

  “You’re always trying new recipes!” Ben moped, pushing the orange glob around on his plate with a fork. “Why can’t we just have galbi jjim? This feels more like punishment than dinner.”

  Galbi jjim was Ben’s favorite—braised beef short ribs. Ben loved the Korean dishes his mom made. She was an awesome cook. He could happily eat his mom’s galbi jjim and her jjajangmyun—black bean sauce and noodles—forever.

  But whatever was on the plate in front of him now was pure culinary evil.

  “New is good!” Mrs. Lee answered. “You should try new things. You never know, you may like them.” Mrs. Lee turned toward Cindy, who was dutifully eating everything on her plate, smiling. “See? Your sister likes it.”

  Cindy smiled an insincere smile at Ben. He groaned.

  “She doesn’t really like it, Mom. She’s just pretending she does so I get in trouble.”

  “Well, you won’t get in trouble if you eat your dinner,” Mrs. Lee said.

  “What is ‘dinner,’ exactly?” Ben asked.

  His mom tilted her head to one side, looking at her plate. “It’s tuna casserole.”

  “And what’s this on top of it?” Ben said, pointing at the bumpy orange surface of his “food.”

  “It’s cornflakes. You know, the cereal.”

  Ben groaned. He wasn’t sure why his mom insisted on making gross things like tuna casserole with cornflakes when there was a fridge full of perfectly good kimchi to be eaten.

  He stared at his plate as his mom finished her meal. Cindy finished hers as well, leaving Ben alone at the table to confront the orange blob on his plate.

  “What would Kid Kaiju do?” Ben wondered aloud. He put down his fork and tried picking up the orange blob with his spoon instead. That seemed to work better.

  “He’d probably draw a picture of it in his monster journal,” Cindy chimed in. This broke up Ben, who couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe Kid Kaiju would, maybe he wouldn’t. But Ben knew what he was going to do.

  Deciding that the sooner he ate, the sooner the nightmare of the orange blob dinner would be a distant memory, Ben held his nose. Spoonful after spoonful, he shoveled the orange blob into his mouth. It wasn’t as bad as Ben thought it would be.

  It was worse.

  At last he finished. Plates went into the sink, and they headed upstairs.

  It was time for bed, but Ben wasn’t ready for sleep, as usual. It was lights-out time (9:00 p.m. sharp, as his mom always said), and Ben followed the rule. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t switch on his tiny reading lamp. He sat at his drawing desk, the one his mom had given him for his last birthday. The monster journal was open, and Ben was busy writing. He had already drawn a picture of an enormous orange blob, attacking the town square.

  “Is that mom’s din—?”

  “Ahhhhh!” Ben screamed. He whirled around, only to find his sister inches away from his face. “At least make some noise when you sneak into my room! You scared the snot out of me!”

  “I did? Good!” Ben’s sister replied. “Speaking of snot, is that mom’s dinner?” She pointed at the monster journal.

  Ben loosened up and turned the journal so Cindy could see it. “Yeah, I figured it deserved monster status. Want to see what else I’ve been working on?”

  Cindy gave her brother a look that said As if you had to ask, and they were off and running. Pages flipped and jaws dropped as Cindy gaped and howled and pointed at all the different monsters that Ben had been adding to his journal.

  “Pretty scary, right?” said Ben. As Cindy flipped through the journal bathed in the light of the reading lamp, Ben tried to make some spooky sounds.

  “MoooooAAAAAhhhhhhAaaaHhaaaaa!”

  “You sound like a sleepy chimp,” Cindy said.

  “Really?” Ben frowned. “Not even a little scary?” Cindy shook her head.

  “What are you still doing up?! It’s nine thirty!” Mrs. Lee shouted from downstairs. “Lights out! Even your reading light, Ben! And go to your own room, Cindy!”

  Ben and Cindy sighed and then, in unison, yelled, “Okay, Mom!” Cindy padded out of Ben’s room and went across the hall to her own bedroom.

  He shut off the reading light and headed toward his bed. He pulled the covers up over his head and pulled out a small, pocket-size flashlight he kept hidden under his pillow. And then he pulled something else out from under his pillow—a thick hardcover book with a beat-up dust jacket. The book was called The Bloodstone Chronicles: The Bloodstone Family and the Search for Monsters. It was one of his most prized possessions. It had made the move from New York City to Highland Park in the same backpack as his monster journal.

  Ben was just about to turn on his pocket flashlight and reread one of his favorite books about monster hunting, when the light in his room came back on.

  Ben let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. All he wanted to do was be left alone to read his book in secret, and Cindy was going to ruin it by getting Mom mad.

  “Cindy, Mom said we have to—”

  As Ben turned around, he saw the reading light was, in fact, off. So was his bedroom light. The light hadn’t come back on. Cindy wasn’t there. It was coming from somewhere else.

  Cindy ran back into Ben’s room, excitedly. “Look!” she said. “Do you see the light coming from outside?” She stood by Ben’s bedroom window, looking out toward the center of town. An eerie glow emanated from it and pulsed a few times, before disappearing entirely.

  “What was that?” Cindy asked, excited.

  “I…don’t know,” Ben gasped. “But I think I know who would.”

  IT WAS DARK, and he sat at his desk. There was a lone lamp providing just enough light to sketch by. The desk was littered with pieces of paper. And on each, there was a pencil drawing.

  Of a monster.

  Some of them were monsters he had
read about in books, like Zzutak and Spoor. Some he had seen on the news—like the time the mighty Thor had fought Fin Fang Foom. He wasn’t sure what some of the other ones were called—as far as he knew, some of the monsters he drew were just products of his imagination, curious creatures brought forth from the back of his mind. Kei had two passions: art and monsters. Right now, in this moment, he was in the zone.

  “Kei!” came a voice from downstairs. “Are you still up? It’s a school night, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  Mom.

  Kei sighed. He knew his mom was right, but he just had to get this monster down on paper.

  “Just a few more minutes, Mom!” Kei yelled down. “I’m almost done!”

  He turned his attention back to his drawing. The pencil clutched in his right hand moved slowly, deliberately across the page. Kei had been drawing for years and had learned to take his time. He wanted to make sure that what he was seeing in his mind was captured perfectly on the page.

  Kei took a break from his drawing to look over at a nearby computer screen. He was looking at a website, one that he loved to follow—Tales to Astonish. There were countless threads about unsolved mysteries, myths, and cryptids. Most of the time, he was just regular ol’ Kei. But when logged on to Tales to Astonish, he was something else—Kid Kaiju, expert on all things supernatural!

  Especially monsters.

  “I’m not kidding, Kei! Lights out!”

  “Okay, Mom!” Kei shouted. He was just about done with his drawing anyway. He erased a couple of lines, then took the piece of paper in hand. He stuck a piece of transparent tape on each corner, then put it on his bedroom wall.

  Taking a step back before turning out the light, Kei admired his handiwork: a picture of a large blob, sort of shaped like a giant person, leaving a trail of…

  Glop.

  “WAIT UP, CINDY, or I’ll tell Mom!” Ben shouted at his sister, who was running ahead of him—WAY ahead of him. Neither could wait to walk toward the center of town on the way to school. They both were curious to see where that eerie glow may have been coming from. They had breakfast early, made their lunches, said good-bye to their mom, and headed out the door.

  By the time they had reached the town square, Ben had caught up to his sister. It was early, around 7:00 a.m., and they were surprised to see some other kids from school there. Ben wondered if maybe they had witnessed the same strange light that he and Cindy had seen last night. They were standing near the bus stop, and looking at something in the middle of the square directly opposite.

  It was the statue—the same statue that the kids saw every day on their way to school. Only something was different. If Ben didn’t know any better, he’d swear that—overnight—the statue had moved!

  No, not like it had moved; it was still in the same spot. More like it had changed positions. The arms that were once raised up were now lower, pointing toward the ground. Was this some kind of prank? Ben looked around for a hidden camera, but didn’t see one.

  The statue was unremarkable except for its size and its weird, hunched-over pose.

  “Is that a different statue?” Cindy asked, examining the strange figure.

  “I don’t think so,” Ben said. “I mean, the face looks the same, and it’s the same dopey parka.”

  “But look at its arms,” Cindy replied. “They look…different!”

  Ben whipped out his phone and snapped a picture. “I’ll post this to Tales to Astonish,” he said, uploading the photo to the website. “Maybe somebody there will know a thing or two about statues that suddenly move overnight.”

  “You can add it to your journal, too,” Cindy said. “A moving statue is freaky enough to belong next to the rest of your monsters!”

  The other kids turned their attention from the statue and saw Ben typing away on his phone, while Cindy reached into his backpack. She pulled out the monster journal, with its bloodred letters on the cover, and handed it to Ben. He put the phone away, pulled a pencil out his jacket pocket, and started to sketch the statue as the other kids watched.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good,” said a kid with a high-pitched, nasal voice.

  At last—someone who appreciates my talent, Ben thought.

  “What’s it supposed to be?” the same kid added.

  So much for art appreciation, Ben thought, shaking his head.

  “Maybe it’s Mr. Pierce,” said a kid with a mouth stuffed full of breakfast bar. He snort-laughed and spat little crumbs out of his mouth.

  This broke the kids up. Even Ben had to laugh a little. Mr. Pierce was the art teacher at Kurtzberg Middle School. He was also the OLDEST teacher at Kurtzberg Middle School. The students were pretty sure that he must have started teaching when the school first opened. In 1901. Sure, he was weird and kind of mean and a little freaky and did this thing with his false teeth that grossed everybody out, but none of that bothered Ben. The guy was a pretty talented artist in his own right. If you could look past all the goofy stuff, you could actually learn something from him.

  Before long, Ben had drawn the statue in his journal. The kids were transfixed until one of them realized they had about five minutes to get to school before the first bell. Everyone ran off, including Ben and Cindy, leaving the statue by itself.

  Alone.

  Except for the glop that bubbled up from the pavement beneath it…

  “WHAT DO YOU think happened?”

  “Did someone switch the statue in the middle of the night?”

  “Who put it there?”

  “The Hulk?”

  “Seriously? You think the Hulk doesn’t have better things to do than replace statues in our dinky town?”

  “Well, the statue looks pretty heavy. Who else could have lifted it?”

  “Maybe, like, Red Hulk?”

  “If the Hulk wasn’t gonna show up in our town, there’s no way Red Hulk would!”

  The art room at Kurtzberg Middle School was abuzz with voices as Ben and his classmates talked about the mysterious moving statue in the town square. No one paid attention to their art projects.

  “Ben’s from New York; he’s the Super Hero expert,” said one of the kids. “What do you think happened, Ben?”

  Ben sighed. “I don’t know how this rumor got started that I’m some kind of Super Hero expert! Just because I’m from New York doesn’t mean I know everything there is to know about Super Heroes!” Then he thought for a minute. “Yeah, there’s no way Hulk did this. He’s on an Avengers mission, saw it on the news.”

  “Put a cork in it!” said Mr. Pierce, the art teacher, and the class fell silent. “Back to your still life projects!” he barked, pointing to a lone bowl full of plastic oranges sitting in front of the classroom. “I don’t care what you saw, where you saw it, or if you were riding a pony while dressed in a bunny suit while seeing it. I only want to see fruit, bowls, and more fruit!”

  “But there’s only oranges,” said one student.

  “So?” Mr. Pierce said. “Use your imagination! That bowl’s full of apples and mangoes and that fruit, you know, the one that’s really stinky!”

  The class stared at Mr. Pierce.

  “Uh, which stinky fruit?” someone asked.

  “The one that stinks!”

  “Durian fruit?” someone said.

  “Sure! That one! Now draw!”

  Ben put his head down and started to sketch. But instead of the plastic oranges, he began to sketch the statue on the blank piece of paper in front of him. Man, that really is weird, he thought. The arms were longer than he remembered, now that he thought about it. And the way they were reaching toward the ground. Reaching for what?

  “And what do you think you are you drawing, Ben?” Mr. Pierce asked, peering over the boy’s shoulder. “It looks an awful lot like not a bowl of fruit.”

  “Uh, sorry, Mr. Pierce,” Ben said. “It’s the statue. The one from town that everybody’s talking about.”

  Mr. Pierce lowered his glasses and squinted at Ben’s still life. Bu
t instead of getting angry, like he always did, Mr. Pierce muttered something under his breath. “Not again.” Then suddenly Mr. Pierce pulled the false teeth from his mouth and gave them a wipe with his handkerchief. He popped the teeth back in his mouth.

  It was always disturbing whenever Mr. Pierce took out his teeth. No one was sure why he did that, exactly, and it was gross.

  “What do you mean, ‘Not again’?” Ben asked.

  Mr. Pierce stood for a moment, silent, staring right at Ben. He blinked.

  “What?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard or didn’t understand what Ben was talking about.

  “You said ‘Not again’ when you saw the picture of the statue,” Ben continued. “What did you mean?”

  “Are you talking back to me?” Mr. Pierce said, flustered. “Never mind. Forget about it. Just draw. Draw that fruit! I wanna see fruit!” The art teacher stormed off, sat down at his desk, and popped his teeth out again, holding them in his right hand.

  Gross.

  But that wasn’t what made Ben feel uneasy at that moment. He wondered what Mr. Pierce had meant by Not again. And why the old art teacher had dodged Ben’s question.

  Did Mr. Pierce know the secret of the strange moving statue?

  RECESS. While the other kids played kickball and just generally hung out, Ben sat on the stoop with his monster journal on his lap and a pencil in his right hand. He stared at the picture he had drawn of the statue. It was still the town founder or parka guy or whoever it was, but there was something almost inhuman about it. The way the arms stretched out. They were just…wrong. Ben couldn’t seem to get it out of his mind.

  What he really wanted to do was check the Tales to Astonish website to see if anyone had responded to his photo yet. But the school had a strict “no cell phones during school hours” policy. The last kid who tried to use his phone during recess had it taken away from him.

  “Hey, nerd.”

  Ben looked up to see the last kid who tried to use his phone during recess.