by RyFT Brand
Jazz, Monster Collector in:
Creatures and Clowns
season one, episode one
RiFT
Copyright 2010
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to
persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
JAZZ, Monster Collector
Season One: Earth’s Lament
Episode-2: Creatures and Clowns
RiFT
Clowntown, a particularly dangerous section of Nitsburg, one of the gleaming, human cities on the dimensionally merged worlds called Mirth. Not that you would find Clowntown on any map, a perpetual state of leisure had blinded the general population to anything ‘off color,’ and Clowntown was way off color. No one, especially a woman, would knowingly wander here alone, but, thanks to a run in with a few crank fighter pilots, I’d been forced to crash-land my flycraft right in the middle of one of my least favorite neighborhoods.
That’s my luck.
I heard something, like a bottle kicked underfoot. My hand went to the macdaddy revolver in my shoulder harness. My eyes swept the broken windows of the crumbling buildings. I did my best to quiet my breathing and racing heartbeat and listened. I scanned the shadowed alleys, the empty doorways, and the overturned car—nothing. It might have been a cat, or it might have been a descender wraith. But, at least for the moment, whatever it had been it was keeping out of sight and I should keep moving.
I limped up the middle of what had once been a bustling street in the middle of Pittsburg. With use my crash injured knee was working better, but still smarted. The painted road lines had faded, and my feet trampled through grasses and prickly weeds that sprouted through the cracked blacktop. Aside from that, the roadway was mostly clear space and I wanted to see whatever might come at me as soon as possible. Even with my shadow-sight, the nocturnal dwellers of Clowntown would have an advantage over me in the dark, close spaces of the monster ghetto.
As the result of an ‘accident’ I’d had as a teenager, I’d gone completely color-blind; the world to me appears as nothing more than shades of grays and blacks and whites. But I’d gained something too. I can see in anything but total darkness, I can also see things that other people can’t, like magics and other-worldly intangibles. But it isn’t something that I can turn off and on, and there were times I wished I could turn it off. There are just some things that the human mind isn’t equipped to deal with.
And a fourteen foot tall organ binder is just one of those things.
“Scrud!” I cursed and drew my revolver, took a strong stance, steadied the gun in both hands, and squeezed the trigger three times. The customized seven shot pistol packed a hefty kickback, especially when you weighed a hundred and nine pounds, but I knew how to handle it and I knew how to aim. Crack! Crack! Crack! The shots popped in my ears.
The squirming mass of intestines, and livers, and hearts, and many unearthly organs I didn’t recognize, opened its gorge of an implied mouth and let out a gurgling roar as the three copper bullets passed through its disgusting form. It raised long arms of squiggling, stolen body parts, and then charged.
“Scrud!” I fired again then ran for the nearest building. I didn’t expect bullets to do an organ binder much damage, but I hoped to scare it off. Instead I seemed to have enraged it. I did have a way with…things.
I could hear its massive ‘feet’ flopping on the pavement behind me. It was moving fast, faster than your average organ binder, which meant it had harvested recently. In their natural state, organ binders are spirit dwellers, they have no physical form of their own. They construct bodies for themselves by harvesting organs from living creatures. But once harvested, the stolen innards quickly begin to deteriorate, so they have a constant need for fresh, energy-full organs. Generally organ binders were little more then a small, squirming mass. But every now and then a binder comes into a good supply of stock and can get pretty big. This was the biggest one I’d ever seen.
For the sake of speed I didn’t dare look, but I could hear it closing the gap. If it got a hold of me, bits of me would soon become bits of it, and I liked my bits right where they were. I needed a confined space; I needed to slow it down.
I was running for an open doorway, too big. I veered right, now running straight for a wall as fast as I could. I judged the distance, then dug in my heels and attempted a sharp turn. But I misjudged and slammed into concrete.
“Ooff!” I grunted, gritting my teeth with the pain. But I had no time for it. I shoved off, pushing myself into a run along the building front.
The creature went into a slimy slide, trailing red streaks behind its intestine-tentacled feet—raw organs are not conducive to good traction. With a gurgling bellow it splattered against the wall. I heard a promising series of plops and skidded to a stop.
I turned. A large pile of organs were squirming on a heaved slab of sidewalk. My side burned and I was panting hard. Between my dogfight, the crash, and now this, I really needed a rest. Maybe I’d gotten lucky and the binder was slush, but I doubted it so I began reloading the revolver, keeping an eye on the disgusting pile and trying to catch my breath. Just then five eyes of varying sizes and colors popped like fishing bobbers to the surface, and one by one focused on me.
“Oh scrud!” I spun, ran to the nearest broken window, and dove through. “Ahhh!” I tucked and rolled over the floor, then sprang to my feet. From outside I could hear the creature oozing back into an implied humanoid shape. I looked at the rip in the side of my shirt; blood was already soaking the frayed ends of the tear. More of my blood hung on the end of some jagged glass jutting from the pane.
“Wonderful, just wonderful.” The fresh blood would make it even easier for the creature to track me. I drew my knife and cut a pleat off my long skirt. I needed to stop the flow. Then the room grew a lot darker. A horrible, gurgling bellow emitted from a mass of innards that now filled the window. Several eyes appeared at random locations on the mass, and trained their gaze on me.
“Gross,” I grimaced, swallowing down the bile that crept up my throat. Suddenly I was glad I’d missed lunch. The thing began oozing through the window frame, occasionally cutting and tearing bits of itself on the shards of glass. I did what anyone would have done, I turned and ran.
I scrambled through the next room into what once must have been a conference room, as it still held the metal frames of a large table and many chairs. Wood was pretty scarce in the outlands, what hadn’t been eaten ended up in fires. Like blobs and aggravator beasts, ferrousmites were band from crossing over, and, as they were neither very bright nor easily concealed, metal was still pretty common.
I tore down a narrow hall, hoping the confined space would slow my pursuer. At the end I squeezed between two broken, metal doors hanging partially open.
I was in a huge space, like an old warehouse or something. A few machines and bits of conveyers still lined the walls. Big, metal lamps that hadn’t worked in the hundred years since the electricity went off dangled from the ceiling, and a crane boom with a winch and cable stood high above me. I didn’t like it a bit, lots of nooks and crannies, lots of places to lurk in.
I risked a cautious look around before moving further. My breath was heaving, each gasp burned. I watched and listened, hoping I was alone. Clowntown was home to things that even monster-friendly communities didn’t want. Fear of the clowns kept most chaotic monster hunters out of this area, therefore chaotic creatures felt fairly safe here. I was far from safe. Trapped inside, anything could be lying in wait to eat me, or do worse.
; I heard something oozing down the hall, and I had a pretty good idea what. When pursued by the known face of imminent death, it’s best to risk the unknown face of imminent death, so I ran as fast as I could across the open factory floor.
Behind me something started banging hard against the metal doors. I found a little extra speed in some reserve I didn’t know I had and poured it on. I was across the floor in a flash, rounded a tight corner, slipped behind an old fork truck resting on its rims—digester beasts think of rubber the way you think of chocolate—and, on hands and knees, managed to squeeze through a small hole in the block wall.
I crawled over several broken cinder blocks—so the wall had been smashed from the inside—and stood. I was in a large lot overgrown with chest-high weeds and surrounded by a tall, barb-wire topped chain-link