by P. T. Phronk
“Mom?” Stan cried. She was alive. In a way.
The chains ended with hooks embedded in her thick skin. Some had been driven through her wrists. More hooks tugged at her breasts, which had been joined by a row of nipples trailing down her elongated torso. Two more hooks impaled the calves of her misshapen legs.
But somehow he knew it was her. And as he watched, the machine rumbled, pulling the chains tighter. The hooks dug deeper, her skin stretched, her limbs straightened. Stan raised his sword, but he was too far away. The chains pulled taught. Skin ripped. Bones dislocated with a pop. Her breasts were torn from her body in fatty lumps. Hooks in her back pulled away from each other, splaying her body open, putting her twisted bone structure on display. Stan smelled her bowels as they spilled on the floor.
An animal scream escaped his mother’s lips before her lungs became a spongy mass stretched between her ribs and the rest of her body. A moment later she was unrecognizable as anything that was, or had been, living. She was strips of skin and chunks of meat exploded in a barely-connected tableau.
Stan didn’t have the energy to scream. He fell to his knees, and stared at the tip of the sword.
There were so many ways to kill a man with a sword. There were so many ways to kill oneself with a sword.
Bottles sat on tables nearby, each covered in warning labels that depicted skulls and explosions. Those could be weapons too.
Wilcox had left this for him. Like a sick work of art, with his mother’s barely-living tissue as paint, arranged using chains, chemicals, and some monstrous voodoo as paintbrushes. All to destroy Stan.
But then he heard a chorus of voices—Wilcox’s, Annie’s, Paul’s—it’s not all about you.
The machine rumbled to life again. Its chains tinkled, then moved, this time in the opposite direction, loosening.
Stan winced. With the chains loose, his mother would go from a splayed work of art to an unrecognizable pile of offal, skin, and bone. He didn’t know which was worse.
His mother oozed and dripped, but in an irregular way. Some of the pieces defied gravity; muscles still twitched. A leg pushed off the ground. The ribcage squeezed together. Her skin sprouted hair.
This wasn’t the machine letting her go; this was like watching her being torn apart again in reverse. The skin of her chest blobbed together like it was made of Silly Putty. Her torso reformed, but it was covered in fur now, and the row of nipples became more prominent. A wet, wriggling sound issued from her throat, then, as her splayed neck healed, her lungs pushed air through newly forming vocal cords, and his mother began to scream.
Stan approached, sword raised, but what could he do?
She got hairier and hairier. Her legs not only reattached to her body, but became bigger as they did, bulging and forcing her onto her hands and knees. Her feet were still intact, but they bulged, her toes split apart, and a pair of hooves emerged to replace them. Her arms underwent a similar transformation, but ended in claws instead.
The machine needed to go. He couldn’t watch this all happen again, as it had probably happened many times before. When the chains were as loose as they were going to get, Stan hacked at the machine until gasoline leaked from it. He chopped at belts and pulleys until the chains looped free.
His mother’s head had gotten lost in the mess of gore when she was ripped apart, but as she was put together again (all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, she used to read to Stan at bed time), a face emerged from the writhing flesh, still strangely elongated and growing even more misshapen. Her ears became long and tufted with hair, and the holes above her ears bulged, then sprouted velvety antlers.
Her eyes were still there. His mother’s eyes, dark, sharp, as recognizable as they ever were.
She stopped screaming. As a fluffy tail sprouted above her butt, her eyes met Stan’s. “Stanley,” said his mother’s voice. “I knew you would come for me.” Then her eyes oozed down her face and were replaced with a wolf’s.
22. My Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
KIMMY DESERVED BETTER. ANNIE’S BOSS from the grocery store was annoying and boring, but in Bloody’s experience, people like that usually ended up living boring lives and dying boring deaths. Instead, Kimmy was bleeding out in the middle of the road while she watched a shagg squeeze the blood from both of her severed arms into his friend’s water tank.
At least her death served as a distraction. Bloody used the opportunity to lead Mike across the street, toward Stan’s scent, which had moved east, his path crossing this area just before all Hell broke loose.
There was still another group of shaggs coming straight for her. A store called Endless Summer was closest, and it would have to do as a place to hide or take a stand; if they stayed in the open, the shaggs would group up again, and Bloody and Mike would just be two more blood spigots like Kimmy.
Endless Summer. Bloody pictured it like that Christmas Store in Little Italy that she’d get walked past sometimes, with its garlands and fake snow in the windows all year long. Maybe this store was like that, except with summer all year long. She got Mike to smash the window and push aside blinds, and she expected to see fake sand and palm trees, but instead it was just cold tile and mirrors. The place was only a salon.
The pursuing shaggs would be there any minute. A car served as another distraction when it tried speeding through town a little too fast, and didn’t quite anticipate the chaos in the street, so its driver swerved at the last minute, clipped one shagg’s leg, then, as if imitating Stan and Bloody’s entrance into town, slammed into the front of the pet store across the street.
“We gotta save the puppies,” Bloody heard herself saying.
“They won’t bother with animals if they’ve got people,” Mike said. And he was right; the puppies that escaped the front window of the pet store were ignored in favor of the bloodied drivers in the car, who made a great snack for the shaggs who still hadn’t gotten their fill.
But three of them still seemed intent on making Bloody and Mike their main meal.
Bloody entered the salon. Sinks lined the mirrored walls, and chairs rose from the checkered floor. All those ladies out there—the ones who had wanted eternal life from the shaggs, but instead got torn apart by them—they had probably come here for their perfect puffy haircuts every week. Conditioner to keep their hair young. Manicures to keep their hands young. And to keep their skin looking, at least temporarily, young …
“Tanning beds,” Bloody said, pointing to the curtain leading to the back of the salon.
“Beds? For tanning? Why would anyone need that?” Mike asked.
“Not everyone likes being perpetually pale. Gotta keep that healthy glow during the long winters here.” She made a gag me motion with her claw. “But you know who else doesn’t like tans?”
Mike nodded. He flipped open the lid of one tanning bed, and Bloody flipped open another one across from it. She put down the bar sign and generator, then ducked to hide behind the bed. Mike followed her lead. She had so many good ideas lately! Being a leader was actually pretty cool.
“Hey Mike, you seen Ghostbusters?”
“Um, nope. Saw the preview I think. I was real young.”
Bloody’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? Never? You poor thing. Anyways, to catch ghosts, they shot them with beams of light. But that didn’t kill the ghosts, it just made it so they couldn’t move. Then the Ghostbusters captured the ghost with another light … weapon … thing. It’s been a while since I seen it too, actually. Anyways, we’re gonna play Ghostbusters.”
Glass crunched at the front of the store. Three crunches, three shaggs. Bubbly voices.
“Ready? Follow my lead,” Bloody whispered.
Mike’s knees shook as he crouched behind the tanning bed. He nodded.
The curtains to the tanning room were swished aside by a pale hand. The apparition-like shaggs entered the room. Only two of them. Maybe she miscounted them earlier, but probably not.
“Now!” Bloody shoute
d, and flipped the switch behind the machine. Mike did too, and the two shaggs were caught in the middle of the beams of purplish light—this was actual UV, for sure. Their skin immediately sizzled and bubbled as they cringed, unsure of where the light came from or which direction to flee in.
“Now!” Bloody shouted again. “Ghostbusters!” She launched herself at the shaggs with one of Dean’s steak knives in each hand. They were blinded and didn’t see her coming. She plunged one knife into the chest of the closest creature—a woman with straps crossing her chest. With the other knife, she cut a strap. The water tank on the woman’s back dangled to one side, throwing her off her balance.
Mike had shoved his stake into the other shagg’s belly, but when that didn’t seem to do much other than make it flail about, he removed it and aimed for the heart.
Bloody got her weight on top of her shagg before it could scurry away. With both knives, she stabbed and slashed as quickly as she could. She’d killed quite a few vampires and vampire-like things lately, and some combination of heart and head trauma always seemed to do the trick.
Soon she was covered in oily blood, and the shagg stopped moving, aside from skin that continued to blister in the UV light.
Mike gawked at her with horror. Another good stab with the chair leg had done the job for his shagg, which lay with blood pouring from the wound like a fountain, gradually snaking its way to the drain in the floor.
Bloody spit the blood from her lips. “Who you gonna call? Right?”
“Are you sure that’s how Ghostbusters went?” Mike asked.
Bloody stood and tried to wipe blood off on her jeans, but they were so soaked that it didn’t do much good. She shrugged. “Close enough.”
Mike put a hand on Bloody’s shoulder to steady himself as they stumbled into the salon’s back room, and his palm came away red. He stared at it, his lower lip trembling.
“Dean was a good man,” he said.
Bloody rolled her eyes. She put the bar sign and generator down on a steel table nearby, and kept an eye on the mirrors behind Mike, which gave her a good angle of the salon to make sure they weren’t being followed. They seemed to have a second to rest. “That worm fucked us. You get that, right? He sold us out to Wilcox, who is the one responsible for all of … this.”
Mike’s lips tightened. His expression became defiant. “He was a good man.”
“He couldn’t come with us. Our relationship, it got complicated.”
He kept shaking his head as he stepped away from her, and began to turn away.
“Don’t worry about Dean,” Bloody said. “He’s in a better pl—”
A webbed hand shot out from behind Mike. Dammit, she’d forgotten that these things couldn’t be seen in mirrors. Bloody pushed Mike aside in time to get between him and the shagg barrelling into the room. The shagg’s eyes were wild. He jabbed at her with a pair of scissors dripping with blue antiseptic.
Bloody picked up the bar sign and swung it at the shagg. It shattered into a thousand pieces against his arm. The scissors clanged on the ground. Bloody seized the moment and pounced. Her claws went to work, ripping and tearing until the shagg was a splayed mass of twitching meat.
“I may be a monster,” she said, “but that’s what’s keeping us alive right now. Let’s go.”
Mike took a deep breath and nodded.
The bar sign was toast, so she left it and the generator behind. Mike followed her out the back door. The parking lot was clear, but now that they were defenseless, they’d be screwed if another pack of shaggs found them. Bloody sniffed the air, letting the sensations hit her from every direction. There were familiar shaggs on Sandford Avenue, their scent masked by others nearby. Traces of Wilcox were in the air, too fragmented to make sense of. There was another presence, pungent with the smell of death, and half-familiar, further up Sandford. Then, the scent she was looking for.
“Stan is still alive. He’s moved.” She took a deep breath in through her nose. “He’s closer! Moving! Must’ve found a car or something. We gotta get to him.”
They stuck to the back parking lots and yards, hopping fences to stay away from the street, trying to stay quiet.
“What if we try talking with them?” Mike whispered. “They’re not usually like this. It’s only that Wilcox guy making them do it, like you said.”
Bloody sighed. She thought of Miriam, locked in the basement of the lodge. Stan had been so mean to her, and she had shown him mercy. Mike was right that there was nothing in their blood that prevented them from being reasonable. Only Wilcox did that.
She sighed again. “We have to get Wilcox out of the way first. He has them convinced that a demon is coming and this is the only way to survive. Fear will fuck anyone up good, make talking useless. Plus, they’re all loopy with blood lust. It’s hard to break that.”
“You’d understand that.” There was a hint of anger in Mike’s voice, but more curiosity. They ran down a fenced alleyway behind an office building, leading to the park across from Town Hall. The steeple of the church where Wilcox had gouged out her eyes peeked above the trees to the east.
“Look, yes, I do understand it. I’m a monster, okay? Look at me. But who isn’t a monster these days?” She sighed again. This line of questioning was making her uncomfortable.
In all that sighing, she’d forgotten to pay attention to the air coming in her nose. Muffled shouting erupted behind her as a group of shaggs spotted them.
“Run,” she said, but Mike was already running, his messy hair bobbing up and down.
They had almost reached the park when another pack of shaggs blocked their path. Their leader was so thoroughly covered in blood that his skin looked black in the moonlight.
There were five of them behind, and seven in front. Bloody could hear more approaching from the street. She flexed her fingers, readying her claws, planning the order in which she’d take them, but even with Mike distracting one or two, she’d be in way over her head.
“Mike, you’re a good guy,” Bloody said. “There should be more of you.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“Because we’re completely fucked. Might as well end on a positive note, right?” Her voice choked up.
The blackened shagg approached. Bloody raised her claws. Mike reluctantly raised his stake.
“Thanks for being kind to me,” Mike said. “You’re not a monster. You were nice when you didn’t have to be. Even though this was all bad, it was also good.”
“Fuck, kid …” Annie started, but she couldn’t think of anything snappy to say before that blackened shagg made them both into a meal.
A thumping sound echoed down the alleyway.
A shape barreled across the park. It was nearly as tall as the jungle gym, with fur glistening in the moonlight. Appendages poked at odd angles, and as it got closer, Bloody could feel the ground shake under its heavy feet.
The shaggs behind the blackened one turned to defend themselves, but they were tossed aside as if they’d been hit by a train. The massive shape surged forward, then a white branch made of bone burst from the blackened shagg’s chest.
The creature shook its head, then the shagg flew from its antler and splatted against the wall. The shaggs in the alley behind Bloody took one look at the thing, then turned and ran.
Stan was riding on top, carrying a sword. He glanced back to make sure the rest of the injured shaggs were scattering.
The thing towered above Mike and Bloody. It pulled its lips back into something resembling a smile, and even though its wet snout and pointy teeth were animal, there was something human about its face. It smelled like a moose. But also like a wolf. But most of all, it smelled like Stan’s mother.
“Linda!” Bloody said. “It’s so nice to finally meet you!”
23. Dirty Dog Days
STAN WATCHED BLOODY NUZZLE HER furry face against his mother’s snout in some sort of animal greeting ritual. He’d always pictured them meeting someday, but not quite like this.
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When they were done, Bloody awkwardly hugged Stan’s leg while he reached down from on top of Linda's back to shake Mike’s hand.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Stan said.
“We were on our way to rescue you, but you had to go and rescue us instead. Asshole!” Bloody said. “Oh, excuse my language,” she added when Linda raised one tufted eyebrow.
“Mom, this is Annie. Well, we call her Bloody when she’s like this. Turned. Like you now, apparently.”
Linda nodded her head, antlers slicing through the air.
Bloody stared at her in awe. “So? Gonna tell us what made you decide to get a makeover?”
Stan spoke for her. “It was Wilcox. He had another hideout at the old school. Some combination of science lab, prison, and torture chamber. God, she must have been in so much pain. That fucker.” Linda’s antlers twitched. “Sorry, language.”
“This explains the blobs of half-turned flesh with antlers we found in the woods,” Bloody said.
“And the missing people,” Mike added.
Stan nodded. “Yeah. He’s been transforming this entire town. We saw women out there defending the shaggs against anyone dumb enough to try fighting them. All this to get revenge against us? For trying to kill him? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What about the demon?” Mike asked.
“You know about Wilcox’s fantasy demon?” Stan asked.
“I listen to the shaggs. They talk about a demon. It’s why they joined Wilcox. They think he can save them.”
Annie growled in frustration. “And the Tupperware Cult thought the shaggs could save them. Florence thought they’d cure her sickness. Maybe they even planned to, but I’m pretty sure the shaggs out there that tore her apart aren’t interested in an alliance anymore.”
“Damn, not Florence.” Stan gripped his sword under his armpit, took off his glasses, and squeezed the skin between his eyes with his good hand. His head swam—when was the last time he ate?—but if he could just put together all these details, maybe there was a chance of living through this. “Miriam mentioned a demon too,” he said. “When we had her tied up in the lodge. I thought it was just another trick by Wilcox, to get them on his side. But Wilcox also wrote about it. He had an array, like the one Bob had, and he thought he detected something on it. Maybe it’s not a complete fantasy.”