monster haven 06.5 - transmonstrified

by R. L. Naquin

  The only way back to Mount Olympus from the human world I knew of was through the front door to the main building, right past my desk in the atrium. Despite my earlier expedition to steal shoes from the courier department, I felt pretty ballsy walking into the empty building with a basilisk tucked under my arm. Still, I strode through the door and across the atrium like I owned the place, then exited through the opposite door out into the rest of Mount Olympus.

  Five minutes of flight later, I was in a clearing in the wilds of the land of the gods.

  “This is it.” I gave the basilisk an affectionate squeeze and set him on the ground. “You’ll do a whole lot better here. I promise.”

  The basilisk nudged me with both its heads and gave me a sorrowful look from four eyes.

  I hunkered down so I could get closer. “Now, don’t be like that. I’ll come visit when I can. I promise.”

  The bushes across the clearing shook, and clicks and hisses came from within it.

  Another basilisk stepped into the clearing, this one with a purple rooster wattle and green tips on its wings. It hesitated, then stepped forward. My creature met it in the center of the clearing, and they eyed each other, circling and ruffling their feathers.

  The two snakes slithered toward each other, tongues flicking.

  After a moment, the two roosters crowed, the snakes twisted together, and the two creatures settled in a patch of grass to doze.

  My heart gave a little tug, but I left, satisfied that I’d done a good thing.

  That satisfaction carried me all the way back to the atrium and up to the seventh floor.

  “No exterminators today,” I whispered, as I hung the magic shoes back on their peg in the courier office.

  ~*~

  The next day, I sat at my desk feeling particularly smug as I stamped unnecessary paperwork and directed people the long way to their appointments.

  I’d totally gotten away with it. I’d broken several huge rules, stolen the shoes of a god, and robbed some exterminator out of a job. Not too shabby for a shy girl who’d never even driven over the speed limit in her previous life.

  A lot more had changed than my skin color and a head full of snakes. I had a lot of catching up to do. I barely knew who I was yet. But I had plenty of time to find out.

  “Next!” I bent my head and glared at the nervous man standing at my counter. “Can I help you?”

  “I need a supernatural pool cleaner.” He glanced past me, then at my desk, at his hands, the ceiling—anywhere but my eyes. “Or something.”

  I crooked an eyebrow, and the snake hanging over my left eye hissed at him. “What seems to be the problem?”

  He bit his lip and looked at my hairsnakes. “I have a hydra in my pool, and it won’t come out.”

  My heart sped up in excitement. “Did you ask it nicely?”

  “Yes, but then it tried to bite me. My son threatened it with a knife, you know, to scare it off. He accidentally cut off one of the serpent heads and two more grew back. I don’t know what else to do. Please. My mother-in-law is coming to visit next week. She doesn’t know anything about this stuff.”

  I smiled and pushed a form toward him. “Don’t you worry, sir. I think I can help you.”

  Relief spread across his face. “You can?”

  “Sure. I think I might be able to get someone out there tonight.” I checked my watch. Two more hours till everybody went home.

  Maybe my job wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Voices on the Wind”

  When I wrote this flash piece for the Confabulator Cafe, the challenge was to draw a random picture from an open source as a writing prompt. The photo I grabbed was of a lonely train trestle in the middle of a forest. This is where I went with it.

  When the first trees fell, the entire forest stilled with the tragedy. Men dragged away the empty husks to clear space for the new railroad, their voices raised in celebration.

  Under the full moon that night, dryads gathered around the ragged stumps and mourned the loss of their sisters.

  In the distance, Elder Stagfather watched in silence. His hooves and antlers shimmered gold in the moonlight. He clenched his meaty fists, and his great, black eyes turned stony with resolve.

  The men returned the next day, their hearts full of mirth and murder, and Elder Stagfather stepped out from the brush to greet them.

  “Leave this place,” he said. He flicked his enormous ears and waved a polished stick at them. “Or pay the price.”

  The men were startled by Elder Stagfather’s appearance, but quickly recovered. They found reassurance in their numbers. Strange as the stag-man may seem, he was but one. They laughed and turned their backs on him, returning to their work.

  Many dryads perished that day, their stumps left to sap themselves dry. The men dragged off the carcasses, which they stacked in cords for future use as slats and pilings for the trestle of the coming tracks.

  When the men reached the village, their homes were in disarray. Fresh milk had soured, meat was rancid, and bloated rats and flies filled every well. The women fed the men stale bread and moldy cheese for their suppers and begged them not to anger the forest spirits further.

  The men laughed. “You women are superstitious,” they said. “The stag-man is trying to frighten us. He will tire of it.” They slapped each other on the backs and drank ale, since there was no water.

  The next day, they returned to the forest, their heads aching from too much drink. Elder Stagfather waited for them.

  “What will you pay for the lives you have taken?” he asked, stomping a golden hoof. “What will you give for the lives of those you love?”

  One man stepped forward and waved his ax in a threatening manner. “Be gone, spirit. Have you nothing better to do than bother men with honest work?”

  A tear slid down Elder Stagfather’s muzzle, and he shook his head. “There is nothing honest in this work. Do you not hear the trees screaming while you cut?”

  The men waved him away and went on with their chore, though one or two paused in the act of chopping, heads cocked, listening.

  When the men returned to their homes in the village, they found their woman and children huddled in closets and under beds, terrified. Thousands of mice had come through the village, spilling over each other in a wave of greedy eagerness. They ate every scrap and crumb, leaving the villagers nothing for themselves. Every woman and child was peppered with tiny bites from the passing vermin.

  “Now will you listen?” they asked the men. “The forest is angry.”

  Because the next day was Sunday, the men stayed in the village. The cows gave fresh milk, freshly hunted meat remained unspoiled, and the villagers hauled clean water from a nearby stream. The people attended services in the little chapel and ate well enough that night.

  Believing their misfortunes were poor luck and nothing more, the men went out again into the forest the next morning. Elder Stagfather waited for them in the widening clearing.

  “What do you offer to pay for what you have taken?”

  The men shifted their feet and glanced at each other. One stepped forward, shaking his fist. “Listen here, Stag Man. We are not afraid of you. Step aside so we may do our jobs.” The other men mumbled their agreement.

  Elder Stagfather snorted from his wet, black nostrils. “Then the price is set.” He flicked his tail and walked away on his two strong legs.

  The men returned to the village that night, dragging trunks and leaves and branches behind them. The village was deserted. Not a woman or child remained. They searched in the cupboards, the root cellars, and out in the fields. They never found a living soul.

  Elder Stagfather wept in silence from a distance. The dryads hummed over their work, their bloody hands toiling carefully to place a sister-seed within each human heart. Some of the work was difficult, the hearts so small and the blood so slippery. With all the seeds buried deep, they dug holes in the earth and placed the already-rooting saplings inside.

&nb
sp; Satyrs came for the husks. They played their pipes and danced a slow march, and the bodies turned wooden. The goat-men dragged them off and stacked them in cords for future use as slats and pilings for the trestle of the coming tracks.

  The men never returned to the forest, but the satyrs saw to it that the trestle was built using the materials they had collected. It stands to this day, transporting goods and travellers from one side of the country to the other.

  Late at night, when the train whistle blows, the voices of women and children rise on the wind.

  And the voices of the trees cry back to them.

  “Just Right”

  This was originally written for the Confabulator Cafe. The challenge was to take a common fairy tale and do something different with it. I’m afraid I got a little silly, but I had a good time writing it.

  I knew the dame was trouble the minute she blew into my office. Any Suzie Next Door comes with a measure of problems, but a gal this gorgeous is ten times more likely to land you in a heaping mess.

  Unfortunately, her looks made it hard to turn her away.

  She shook the rain out of her blonde curls and gave me the doe-eye with her big baby blues. “Are you Mr. Frank Grimsby?” she asked. Her voice came out all breathless-like, as if she’d hoofed it up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.

  I nodded and dropped the stub of my smoke into a day-old cup of joe. “That’s me.”

  She leaned over my desk, giving me an eyeful of her goods. “You gotta help me, Mr. Grimsby. I’m desperate.”

  Of course she was. By the time anybody made it into my office, they were desperate. That’s just how it worked. Besides, a skirt like her was always desperate about something.

  I lit another cigarette. She shook her head when I offered her one.

  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it? See what we can do?”

  She sat on the edge of the chair, clutching her pocketbook. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” she said.

  “Why don’t you go to the police, then? I’m not a bodyguard.”

  “Don’t you think I tried? The cops don’t care.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Nobody believes me. You just gotta help me, Mr. Grimsby.”

  She pulled a lace hanky out of her purse and sobbed into it. I waited for the waterworks to finish. One thing I’ve learned, there’s no point in trying to stop a broad from crying if she’s stuck on it. You’ll just end up with a wet shirt.

  When she was done, I poured her a drink from a bottle I keep hidden in my bottom drawer. She threw it back like a pro, then hiccupped.

  “What’s your name, doll?”

  “Marigold Locke. My friends call me Goldie.”

  Of course they did. “Who’s after you, Goldie? And why?”

  She dabbed at her eyes and put the handkerchief in her purse. She was stalling. I could see it in the way her eyes darted away from me.

  She sighed and settled into the chair. “You see, it all started when I took a job at the Bruin Club.”

  I groaned. This dizzy dame was involved with the mob. Whatever her trouble was, it would be big. “Showgirl?”

  Goldie smiled and dimples popped out. “No, I wait tables. The Baehrs are quite kind to me. Well, the men are, anyway. I don’t think Milly Baehr much likes me. Pauly and Junior are aces.”

  That didn’t surprise me. “So you waited tables. Then what?”

  The dame knew how to work a story. She went quiet for a minute, wringing her hands and biting her lip before spilling the next bit. “It wasn’t enough. My brother’s sick, and I’m all he’s got. What I made waitressing didn’t go far enough. I asked Pauly if there was anything else I could do, and he gave me extra shifts washing dishes in the back.”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Seems like a downgrade to me. Waitress to dishwasher.”

  “Oh, no. Not a downgrade, Mr. Grimsby. An addition, you understand.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  She nodded. “That’s where the trouble really began. Junior started making eyes at me and asking me to dinner. But I was too tired to even consider it, so I gave him the brush off.”

  “I hear he doesn’t take that sort of thing very well.”

  “Junior Baehr does not like to be told no. In the end, I was worried for my job and finally agreed to a drink after my shift ended.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night.” Her voice went even more quiet-like, and her eyes flicked to the window. “It all happened last night.”

  “So, I take it things didn’t go so well.”

  Goldie looked at me square. “That’s just the problem, Mr. Grimsby. I have no idea how it went. I remember getting off work. I remember sitting in Junior’s booth with a drink. And the next thing I remember is waking up in Junior’s bed this morning, fully clothed, with the entire Baehr family standing around me, yelling at each other.”

  It sounded to me like somebody—probably Junior—had slipped her a Mickey Finn. “What were they shouting about when you woke up?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t understand most of it. Vandalism and theft, I think. They seemed to think I stole something.”

  I squinted at her through a haze of smoke. “Well, did you?”

  Goldie frowned. “Of course not. I know I can’t remember what I did last night, but if I’d stolen something, surely I’d have had it when I woke up, whatever it was. Anyway, I didn’t stick around to find out what the fuss was all about. Milly pulled out a gun, and I high-tailed it through the window.”

  “I see.” I grabbed my hat and coat. “Let’s go.”

  She looked up at me in confusion. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the scene of the crime.”

  ~*~

  The Bruin Club was all glitz and glam at night, but in the light of day, it was just an empty gin joint that smelled like stale cigarettes and greed. Goldie didn’t seem too keen on going in there, but I flashed her the bean shooter under my coat, and she relaxed.

  The front door was unlocked, but nobody was around. Off in the distance, I heard voices arguing, and we followed the sounds down a back hall and into a private apartment. All three Baehrs were together, their faces pink with anger.

  The door was wide open, and the family didn’t see us come in. Milly held a butcher knife in her hand and kept waving the business end of it at her husband. Pauly’s mitt was wrapped around a gun, which he pointed square at Junior’s chest.

  Junior held nothing in his hands but two white-knuckled fists to match the ugly snarl on his face that was directed at his mother.

  Not exactly the picture of a happy family.

  The place was a disaster. Broken furniture lay scattered around the room. Tables were overturned, dishes of food puddled on the floor. Something had happened here, that was for sure. But I had a hunch it was not what any of these people thought.

  I cleared my throat, and all three swung around toward us. Their faces told their stories pretty clear. Junior’s melted with relief. Pauly’s lip twitched in a smirk while his eyes got a little friendly with Miss Locke’s curves. And Milly just plain looked annoyed.

  Nobody here seemed intent on killing my client—my non-paying client. Goldie had read it wrong.

  They might kill each other though, if I didn’t straighten this out.

  “Darling!” Junior said, rushing to Goldie’s side. He took both her hands in his. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

  Miss Locke blushed. “I was so frightened. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Anyway, you’re here now, Angel. I’ll never let anything hurt you.”

  They gazed into each other’s eyes in a sick puppy sort of way—a way that confirmed my suspicion that they’d been seeing each other a lot longer than last night’s single drink.

  “What’s that floozy doing here?” Milly said, waving the knife in our direction.

  “Maybe the little thief brought back what she stole,” Pauly said. “To think, I gave her extra hours to help her
out, and this is the thanks I get.”

  Milly turned the knife back to her husband. “Shut up, Pauly. You know you took it.”

  The gun in his hand hung lose and forgotten. “I didn’t take it. How do I know you didn’t take it so’s you could blame me for it?” The gun came up again, pointed at her face.

  “Nobody stole anything,” I said loud enough to interrupt. “If everybody would just calm down and take a seat, I think I can clear this up.”

  They eyed each other for a moment, then lowered their weapons. Milly picked her way around a broken end table and sat on the end of the sofa. Pauly sat on the other end, as far away from his wife as possible. There was only one chair left in the room, since all the other furniture had been destroyed. Junior pulled Miss Locke into it, then stood behind her. All eyes were on me as I lit up a smoke.

  “How long have you been seeing each other behind Mommy and Daddy’s backs, Junior?”

  Goldie gave him an alarmed look, but he squeezed her shoulder. “It’s all right, sweetheart. We might as well come clean.” He stuck his chin out and looked at his parents. “We’re in love. We’re getting married, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”

  Milly rolled her eyes. “You’re better than that, Junior. The girl doesn’t have two dimes to rub together, and without me, you don’t have much more than she does. Once she’s been gone a few days, you’ll get over her.”

  Junior’s fists clenched at his sides. “I’ve been saving money for a long time, Mother. I have more than enough.”

  Milly’s smile was smug. “I seriously doubt that, Junior.”

  I took another drag and blew out a smoke ring. “Last night, Miss Locke’s drink was drugged. I see no reason, under the circumstances, why Junior would have done it.” I flicked ashes into a broken dish. “Milly, you wanted her gone, though, didn’t you? Your precious boy was getting too interested, and you’d do just about anything to get her out of the picture.”