1001 Monsters You Must Slay Before You Die

by Miles Hurt

  I know why I didn't recognise the arcade leading to the crater. I've been avoiding it for decades.

  Because the crater is kind of my fault.

  NINE

  This is where I took Clarezza on our second date.

  Our first date was a year beforehand, when Thoxx fixed us up.

  That original date was a lukewarm event. I met her out the front of the Regal Theatre on a cold night, beneath the yellow marquee lights. The elf maiden was gorgeous; hands tucked into the pocket of a slim overcoat, cute pointy ears poking out from under a chic hat. But one look at her face and I knew she was only doing this for Thoxx. Taking one for the questers. Clarezza didn't light up when she spotted just how dweeby I was, and the Regal Theatre snack bar didn't serve tankards of mead. She asked the ticket girl which was the soonest, shortest film, and declined my offer of snacks. Who turns down a choc top at a movie?

  I shot sidelong glances at her during the feature, which was an atrocious comedy that had the plebs in stitches. Clarezza's face was a gorgeous, impassive mask. Needless to say she went nowhere near the shared arm rest.

  Afterwards I asked her if she wanted to grab a coffee to discuss the movie, but she made her excuses.

  'No.'

  Okay, so she didn't make her excuses. She made her blunt rejection. Either way, I went home alone, and aside from being haunted by her beauty for a week or two I thought no more of the matter.

  Until I bumped into her in a public underground bunker in Outer Slocking about a year later, during one of Doctor Gorilla's rampages.

  Being a gentleman, I won't put too fine a point on it. Suffice it to say that I totally nailed her.

  I'll never forget the magic of that night. Little bits of concrete and dust raining down on our bodies, Clarezza breathing heavily, ripping the turtleneck off my back. She was a woman transformed.

  The best part was that, although I'm partial to bunker sex, the reality is it's usually a one-time thing. Hot, intense, this-may-be-the-last-thing-we-ever-do fantastic, but once you zip up and come blinking back into the light, it's over.

  Not with Clarezza. Sirens wailing, the city on fire, and Doctor Gorilla on the run, I realised we were still holding hands, leaning against each other. Then she asked to see me again.

  'Not to see a movie, I hope?' I said.

  She smiled. It was a smile like a spring breeze, a smile that invoked dreams of sitting around on wooden platforms in a deep forest listening to eternal flute music. I liked that smile.

  Eager to impress her with my cosmopolitan good taste, I suggested the Empress Arcade.

  This was during the time when people were getting super powers. I can't remember the explanation; something to do with solar flares. Or was it DNA editing nanobots in the water supply? Either explanation seemed kind of implausible to me.

  People started being able to do all sorts of things that contradicted the laws of thermodynamics, such as being able to shoot heat beams from their eyeballs without getting so much as a suntan. There were lots of weird, useless powers like being able to sense when your mail was being delivered, or to jump sideways a really long way. I developed chronic rhinitis at this time, but I'm not sure if having a never-ending nasal drip counted as a super power.

  Anyway, some people actually got useful abilities, such as super strength or the ability to fly. Couple this with either a deficit or surplus of moral fibre among individuals and you've got yourself a city filled with costumed heroes and villains.

  And what costumes they were.

  Flying V collars. Spandex that left nothing to the imagination. Masks that couldn't conceal a sprinkling of freckles, let alone an identity. Codpieces a foot long. Anything to stand out in a newspaper.

  I wasn't a fan of these egotists, any more than I was of questing heroes. Seriously, if you break up a mugging wearing a skin-tight yellow jumpsuit, is it really about reducing crime statistics? Or is it about you?

  The second date with Clarezza was some time after my bar collapsed, and I was between jobs. I tried to make the conversation as much about her as possible.

  'So, how's the whole questing thing going?' I asked her. 'Now that the Dark Lord Gorak has been vanquished.'

  By 'vanquished' I meant 'defeated in a democratic election that he himself called to legitimise his tyrannical reign'. The questers never got to use the Sword of Komonar, let alone the Crown of Azere.

  'That whole thing?' She affected boredom. 'A waste of time. There's only so many times you can camp out in the fissures of a volcano with winged hellions hunting you down before it gets stale.'

  'I know what you mean.' I didn't. I hated camping, even the type where you weren't being sniffed out by winged hellions.

  'In the end it all became about the book sales,' she opined. 'The endless autobiographies. Every quest has to have seven hundred pages and end on a cliff-hanger.'

  That put me in mind of when Thoxx launched the thirteenth tell-all book of his various sojourns at the Hag and Cackle Tavern. A Sword of Thrones. It was a good night. Lots of mead quaffed, plenty of wenches.

  'Anyway, I'm much more interested in the current goings-on,' Clarezza continued. 'These superpowers are making life terribly exciting at the moment.'

  'Are you kidding me?' I said. 'I never get a moment's peace. Explosions, implosions, flashes of green light, people smashing through the walls of your house at all hours. It's too much. My nerves can't take it.'

  She grunted, not wanting to disagree. I could have let the matter drop at this point. The date was going well - sitting in the cosy window booth of a little cafe looking out on the bustling arcade. A trio of guitarists were playing on green milk crates just outside. Clarezza was wearing a red skirt; her naked leg pressed against my trouser beneath the table.

  Yes, I could have let the superhero thing go. But I'd warmed to the topic.

  'And the costumes!' I said. 'A funny way to hide your identity! You may as well take out a classified on page three of the Rambunculan Times.'

  'I think some of them look nice,' she said. 'The women all look amazing. I'd never be able to pull off a plunging neckline in a catsuit.'

  In hindsight this was a clear opportunity to compliment Clarezza on how foxy she was. Instead I chose to continue my rant.

  'Take that squid-headed guy, for instance. Squiddle? Lord Squid? You know the one.'

  She nodded, stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee.

  'I think his name is Squidlor,' she offered.

  'Some super villain he is,' I said. 'Wears a bright pink jumpsuit complete with flares, tassels and sequins. As subtle as a punch in the goolies.'

  Clarezza smiled a little. It was all the encouragement I needed.

  Some guy a couple of tables over put down the book he was reading. He looked at me. The guy had a funny beard, kind of grey, or flesh coloured. I ignored him, focusing back on the lovely almond-shaped eyes of Clarezza.

  'And what's his agenda?' I continued, getting on a roll. 'Responsible fisheries management? Or has he got the trawler industry in his sights? Perhaps he wants to save the spotted sea bass.'

  Clarezza laughed, her white teeth showing.

  The guy with the book scraped his chair back and stood up, his eyes wide. Very wide. In fact, they looked a bit like they were on either side of his head.

  He picked up the chair he'd been sitting on with an arm that looked suspiciously like a long tentacle. The chair swung high into the air, crashed down on our table. Clarezza gasped, and leaped backwards.

  With another tentacle our fellow cafe-goer flicked his table up, spinning it like a discus in my direction. It slammed into the plate glass window, shattering it. Everyone in the cafe froze. People walking past outside in the covered arcade scampered away; the musicians made a run for it with guitars in hand.

  Turns out the guy with the funny beard and wide-set eyes took exception to my jokes about Squidlor. Chiefly because he was Squidlor. Cafe lunch, quiet book, some smart-arse making fun of your costume. I can see how
that would be annoying. But there is such a thing as an over-reaction.

  'Piffling minnow!' Squidlor burbled. 'Your mockery will be your final act!'

  His fleshy beard unfolded into a mass of writhing tentacles. He grew about three feet and turned purple as well. The Calamari Crusader loomed, his head elongated. I squirmed down into my seat.

  'I'm sorry!' I wheedled. 'I love the spotted sea bass! I would never condone over-fishing it.'

  Squidlor filled the cafe with a supernova of black ink, channelled into my face. Everything went dark, and I felt myself swept by the geyser out of the smashed window, hurled across the arcade laneway. I went sliding through the door of the chocolaterie opposite, tumbling through a beaded curtain. I wiped ink from my eyes, blinking, and threw myself headlong into the closest cupboard.

  Back in the arcade, Squidlor ram amok.

  From my hidey-hole I heard glass shattering, wood rupturing, Squidlor squealing like a banshee. And the unmistakable sound of a stampede of Rambunculans fleeing a disaster area. Screaming, yelling, alarms being set off. I hoped, as I tucked myself into a small cardboard box and closed the flaps over my head, that Clarezza would be okay. Sure, she might be a bit miffed that I'd ruined our date by triggering a destructive rampage. But there was no question of heading back out there to take on Squidlor. One face full of ink was quite enough.

  I was lucky to escape alive. Chalk another victory up to hiding in the corner curled into the foetal position.

  Squidlor cleared out of the arcade fast, in the grip of a berserk transformation. He hauled himself up by the tentacles onto a rooftop. He was the size of a truck by this stage, swollen with rage.

  There's some lo-res video footage of what happened next up on the rooftops, taken by some kid messing around with a camera a few blocks away. I watched it on the news that night, as I sat in my house eating a curry-for-one out of a pot. I'd spent the bulk of the afternoon trying to get the black goo out of my clothes and scrubbing my skin raw. Feeling slightly depressed that I'd let a nice girl go because I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

  In the footage you see this squid-thing flopping around for a bit, giant tentacles slicing through buildings, ripping down power poles and the like. Then a super hero team shows up, bopping across the skyline, about five guys on the back of a big one known as the Human Tic. They called themselves the Indubitables. Anyway, they deploy and contain the squid with a variety of powers; rays, shimmery energy fields, and large ejaculations of colourful gook. All the usual carry-on.

  Watching it, I thought of myself in the rubble below, tucked up in my cardboard box. Some might judge me for causing the mess with my insensitive remarks. But really, overhearing someone mocking your fashion sense shouldn't be seen as a valid excuse for going bananas in a downtown area. A witty riposte would have put me in my place.

  To this day I maintain it was a daft costume.

  You can see that the hero team have trouble containing Squidlor. He throws the Human Tic off the roof, KOs the girl hero with the flick of a tentacle. It looks like he's going to win.

  That is, until the hero of the day steps forward. One of the team, the Immolator, runs straight at the enormous humanoid squid. He leaps onto Squidlor's head just as he slips over the edge of the roof. They both disappear. A pause for drama.

  Then an almighty flash.

  The Immolator's superpower was the ability to blow himself to smithereens.

  There's a white sphere of energy glowing in the centre of the footage. It fades, leaving empty space. Some buildings crumble around the edge. You can't see it, but down below is the new crater. And the Immolator and Squidlor are gone.

  Cue a week of emotional outpouring in the media about the supreme sacrifice of the Immolator, a seventeen-year-old high school kid with a winning smile and a pair of cocker spaniels named Teddy and Streak. What wasn't explained was how he knew what his power was.

  Kind of stupid really, being able to blow yourself up. You could only do it once. I wonder if coating half of Rambunculous with fried calamari was the best use of this power.

  TEN

  The crater is a dead-end for me. It's like an enormously deep skate bowl. There's no way across. The sides are as smooth as glass, the curved concrete and stone fused by the intense heat of the immolation. There's a pile of rubble at the bottom, like the crumbs you find in a bowl of potato chips the morning after a party.

  A handrail blocks off the crater, but standing at the edge, I get a rush of vertigo. It's not the safest place for an old man to stand.

  I switch the box to my other hand, sling the gun over my other shoulder, and go back the way I came.

  My hip is feeling better, but I hate having to backtrack. I need to get back before nightfall. And there's every chance I'll drift off again and get lost.

  You get nostalgic when you get old. You get maudlin. The city affects me. A shred of architecture, a familiar laneway has the same effect as an old photograph found in an attic shoebox.

  That's one of the benefits of age. You've got a lot of choices when it comes to regrets.

  Regret.

  I regret losing my bar, but that wasn't my fault.

  And I regret losing Rowena. That was my fault.

  ELEVEN

  Rowena.

  Was I the first small-business owner to hire a girl based solely on her looks? Sure, she had the cool striped turtleneck, the straight black hair cropped into a bob; sure, she knew a fair bit about jazz and had a bookish thing about her; sure, she had beautiful brown eyes; sure, she had a smile that made you forget for a fleeting moment what a grumpy bastard you were; sure, she had a sweet rack and a tidy chassis; sure...

  What was the point I was making?

  Oh, yes. I hired her for her looks. But in between 'You're hired,' and 'This is how you hold a broom,' I fell for Rowena. Properly.

  The clientele loved her, too. We were busy then. It was just before the Dark Lord Korak rose to power, and Rambunculous was enjoying a brief era of peace.

  Allsop Records was perched in the steep, hip Qwerty Lane. During the day the bookshop smelled of bittersweet espresso and cigarettes. The inner urbanites of Rambunculous flipped through the colourful squares of LPs, or sat in leather couches reading second-hand paperbacks by the windows. Wannabe writers dropped in to check out the thin volumes of poetry my friend Larry Fettuccine printed under the Slightbulb Books imprint, reading passages to one another in hushed tones.

  At night the book and record shop would become a jazz bar. Local combos would burn, with horns flaring in the light of the table candles. The room was always packed. Rowena worked the bar in total silence, so as not to disturb the spell of the music. People leaned across to whisper in her ear, Rowena taking three different orders during the applause of a solo.

  A hundred people in the darkened room; during a bass solo, you could hear a coin hit the pavement outside. I loved it, sitting at the back behind the bar, feeling it happen around me. Music. People enjoying themselves. Peace, happiness. Rambunculous in a rare stable period.

  We swept up together that first night she worked for me. Just us left, the lights on full, my bar reflected back at me in the windows. Books, records, coffee. Rowena and I. We leaned against the bar, drank a few glasses of wine. As we talked I realised we'd hit it off, that we didn't want to part company. Her eyes were shining with laughter. We talked and talked.

  She finally got to her feet, the broom in her hand. A little drunk, she overbalanced and caught herself on my shoulder. She giggled, and made as if to sweep up a little.

  'This is how you hold a broom,' I said, my hand gracing across her fingers, taking it from her grasp. She smiled at me, moving her hand up behind my neck.

  'Show me tomorrow,' she said.

  I pulled away from her.

  'Isn't that a mistake?'

  She looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes.

  'It was going to happen sooner or later,' she said, moving close again. 'Let's just get on with it.'

  I do
regret that time. I regret that it didn't last forever.

  TWELVE

  The subway. I'm above the Huxley Rise station. I can get some direct travel going if I head through the subway tunnels. Avoid getting lost again.

  The stairs down into the station are bright in the early afternoon sun. A curtain of vines swarms down from above. Beyond that, it is dark.

  There's always a chance that someone will have taken up residence down there. Waiting to ambush the naive.

  I check the plasma meter on my gun, although I know it's charged.

  The advertising screen at the subway entrance is faded; it's for some kind of shaving gel. A handsome young guy running his hand over his square jaw. Jealous of this image of youth and beauty, I console myself with the thought that the guy is probably dead, or in exile.

  I brush past the vines, and reach the bottom of the stairs. There's been a battle here, in the subway thoroughfare. The tiling of the walls is riddled with bullet holes. A couple of pillars are gone, their melted remains the tell-tale sign of the Serpent Queen's weapons. Part of the roof has collapsed; there is debris everywhere.

  Across the shattered surface of the walls, a graffiti slogan is spray-painted.

  'The Mongoose rebellion will never die.'

  'Do your bit for the cause,' I mutter in response.

  The glass of the ticket booths is smashed, scattered. My boots crunch as I cross the floor. I clamber over the frozen turnstiles, awkwardly lifting the box up. Sunlight barely penetrates down here. I flick on the LED torch hanging on the front of my jacket, lighting up the escalator shaft. The banister of the dead escalator angles down to the platform below. I can't resist, lifting my backside onto the banister and sliding down. My reflection flashes past glowing mirrors.

  Sometimes you can have a bit of fun.

  I hit the platform going too fast, and stagger into the emptied-out vending machine at the bottom with a bang.

  The noise echoes down the tracks in either direction, then dies off. I hold my breath for a moment, then exhale slowly.