Party At Sheckler's

by Alan Spencer

  One of the monster's intestines slapped the floor, slithered forward, and wrapped itself around Bruce's ankle. Chris reached for him, but again, the intestine jerked the director in the opposite direction too fast to help him.

  Candy's corpse was thrown aside in the meantime, her body crashing into the Gangbang video section with a wild clatter of toppling VHS tapes.

  Bruce kept shouting in high piercing shrills. The monster must've been bothered by this, because it grabbed his lower jaw and ripped it from his face. Bruce's eyes rolled into the back of his head in shock. The clawed hands dipped into the man's head, broke through with the ease of digging through mud, and claimed a handful of brains.

  Before the beast could eat more, Harvey appeared behind the beast. He had a syringe in each hand. He jammed the needle into a large pink bubble behind its neck and injected the blue poison.

  The monster raged, punching Harvey in the side and sending the man flailing in Chris's direction. When Chris reached Harvey, the monster had disappeared from the room.

  Harvey was in bad shape. He was coughing up blood and couldn't breathe right. Every inhale and exhale was a sick wheeze.

  "My ribs are broken. I think it ruptured something. I'm not going to make it very long. It's up to you to end this, pal. I'm sorry to put this on you. Call the police. I was stupid to do this on my own. I can't honor my friend. Not when he's hideous. I should've put him out of his misery long before now. James is no longer in there. It's all beast."

  Harvey was clutching onto Chris's shirt with both hands. "I have more syringes downstairs on the counter. Chances are, he's in his lair. Just turn that wall in the bathroom. That's where he is. Maybe he's knocked out. The two doses might've killed him. You have to be sure. If you can't do this on your own, call the police. I don't care. Promise me one thing."

  "Of course, Harvey. Anything."

  Harvey had lost all color. Blood was staining his side where broken bits of his bone had pierced through the skin. He was aspirating on blood. "Don't tell them it's James. You have no idea what that thing is. James deserves that much. Let him rest in peace."

  "I won't tell them. I promise, Harvey. You have to hold on. I'll call for help."

  The hands on his shirt were easing their grip.

  Harvey was quickly fading.

  "One more thing, Chris."

  "Yes."

  "Make sure that monster dies. Don't let him out of this building alive. You promise me."

  "I promise."

  Harvey let go.

  He struggled to breathe for another thirty seconds before he perished.

  Chris was all alone in Gold Video with the monster.

  A room full of disembodied corpses gave Chris a lightening fast dose of perspective.

  He could honor a dead man's wishes and kill the monster. He could also leave the monster's identity unknown.

  Two things troubled him.

  One, the monster had killed six people without breaking a sweat. The word killed was a tad light. Slaughtered. Meat-grinded. Mutilated. Those better described the carnage. It was obvious Harvey's request was unreasonable. A single man couldn't defeat that beast.

  Two, there was a strange possibility innocent people had been murdered without Harvey knowing it. Did Harvey have constant monitoring of James's movements? Probably not, he thought. Winos and bums were innocent people. Didn't they deserve protection from James, as much as anybody else? This monster was a serial killer capable of murdering many more victims.

  The two points added up to one greater idea. The monster posed a great threat to the city. Even if Chris had the audacity, or dumb courage, to take on this monster alone, wouldn't it be better to get help in the form of the police?

  Harvey also forgot one other thing.

  How would they know that monster was James? The guy didn't have fingerprints anymore. He was a mass of muscle, growths, and teeth.

  James would remain anonymous.

  Chris could justify dialing the police without trying on his own to kill the monster.

  Harvey's final request would be honored.

  Chris grabbed Harvey's blood covered gun hanging from his belt loop and drew zero comfort from it.

  He raced down the stairs, carefully checking every which way for that hulking man-eater. He feared that claw would smash through a wall or the floor and pull him into its voracious mouth. When he reached the first floor, he was immediately stopped. The beast had pulled down the curtains over the front store window. The video shelves had been barricaded up against the front door.

  The monster didn't want him to escape.

  He stood there for several moments unsure of what to do next until it hit him.

  You didn't think of everything, Monster. Hah hah!

  Chris kicked aside strewn VHS tapes, empty beers cans, and torn panels of the ceiling to reach the landline phone installed in the wall.

  He dialed 9-1-1.

  No dial tone.

  Maybe Harvey didn't pay the bills.

  That's not right. That Dominic video nerd guy said he had called here to make sure they were still here. The phone works. That monster probably chewed through the line.

  What does it want with me? It could've turned me into a sandwich by now. The outcome's the same. I'm up the creek with a paddle shoved up my ass.

  No.

  I'm not dead yet.

  That front door isn't the only way out. The back room has an exit.

  Get moving.

  He stepped carefully towards the bathroom where both Raggedy Anne and Snake had been dragged inside and eaten. The back room was down a short hallway. He pushed open the EMPLOYEE'S ONLY door and entered.

  Harvey was the only person who worked here. It turned out he also lived here. The break room was more like a small kitchen attached an even smaller living room with a couch and a television. Among various shelves were hundreds of VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray movies. He searched for the back exit and couldn't find it. That's because the refrigerator and oven had been moved to block the exit.

  Chris placed the .45 pistol on the coffee table next to a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The ashtray was bulging with stubbed out butts. Beer cans were spread out everywhere on the floor. Harvey had smoked and drank himself into a deep dark hole. This place reeked of Harvey's personal hell, care of murder, cannibalism, and paranoia.

  He desperately tried to move aside the oven and fridge. He wasn't strong enough. The attempts were pitiful. He wondered if the monster was lurking in the shadows enjoying this pitiful show of futility.

  There was no way he was clearing the doorway.

  The left wall was smashed through. Bricks shot across the room. Many of them hit his body, including the side of his head. Blood filled his right eye. He was dizzied by the blow but not incapacitated. The monster was bounding after him. Both its arms extended, sagging with hideous bubbles of fat crossed with bulging, taught ripples of muscle tissue. It wanted to grab hold of him, and do what? Squeeze every ounce of life from him? Shake his brains out like that poor porno lady's?

  Chris rolled to the left, crab walked to avoid being grappled, and swiped the .45 off the coffee table.

  The beast smashed the table in one blow.

  He fired, and fired, and fired.

  The bullets seemed to sink into its body as if it were made of marshmallow. Seconds later, muscles twitched and pulsed until each bullet dropped from its body.

  The gun was useless, and empty.

  Maybe someone had heard the gunshots.

  That's all he could hope for at this point.

  The plan was simple. Run from room to room and hope help would arrive. He could play chase all day long if he wasn't caught.

  He fled out of the back room. Before the door could close behind him, the beast's entire body battered through it and turned the barrier into flying scraps.

  The monster was right behind him. Its hot, deep exhalations were fiery hot. A hand swiped for him and stole a bolt of cloth from his back and a t
hin line of skin. The sudden bite of pain had him moving even faster. The monster matched his speed.

  Chris had no choice but to dive for the bathroom. He threw the door shut behind him and put his back against it and knew his plan was fucked.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the monster to come crashing after him.

  Instead of waiting for the monster to make its move, he pushed on. He remembered Harvey telling him the bathroom wall shifted. He checked into it and spun the wall. He turned it half-way, giving him plenty of room to sneak inside. The secret hideaway was originally more storage for back stock. Shelves were heaped with plastic tubs filled with old VHS tapes. Most were busted open and emptied.

  Did the monster watch movies while in hiding?

  The brick wall right in front of him had a giant hole punched through it. There was a smaller room that wasn't connected to Gold Video, nor was it connected to the abandoned apartment building. The small crawlspace was a dirt square surrounded by brick and concrete. A hole had been dug by determined claws. This was the monster's constructed home. The hole was the only way he could go. He wasn't going to turn around. Not with that ugly asshole on his back.

  Crawling down on hands and knees, the dirt was cold damp clay. The further he tunneled into the hole, the more he questioned his choice. Would this suddenly turn into a dead end, and the monster would come in after him?

  He was having a harder time breathing. There was little air flow. The tunnel kept going on and on. It angled, seemingly channeling deeper into the ground. The way was getting narrower and difficult to maneuver.

  Chris struggled to breathe. Every bit of air was stale and panicked. He thought he was going to pass out. He considered turning back. He stopped to listen. There were no sounds of pursuit. The monster wasn't hot on his trail.

  This is too easy.

  Why am I not dead?

  I get it. I'm dessert. The monster is playing with its food.

  He thought about his options. Going back meant bumping into the monster. There was still a chance he could happen on a way out.

  He prayed for a way out.

  The light up ahead gave him hope.

  The putrid stench quickly dashed those hopes.

  The moment he was out of the hole and into a wider space, he wretched. Disgust made his skin crawl. This room was literally a giant hole dug into the earth. Once his double vision subsided from the sudden weakness that attacked him, he noticed several extension cords trail through the hole into this room.

  The light wasn't from any fixtures. They were from the fifty or more televisions spread out about the room. Those televisions were propped on slabs of broken concrete, cinder blocks, and in some cases, the broken bones of animals and humans.

  The room didn't stop there.

  The set-up was much like upstairs in the front room of Gold Video. A dead corpse weeks old was sitting in a chair behind a counter. He had a beer can tied to his decaying hand. The guy was supposed to mimic Harvey. A movie theatre style popcorn machine had no popcorn, but instead, human heads. Rats, beetles, and maggots writhed in the head mess. A soda fountain stood in the corner. Soda cups were full of bloody nastiness. On top of the soda fountain, where ice was poured into the machine, two torsos were crookedly jammed inside. Candy boxes were emptied of the actual candy, and re-packaged inside were bloody fingers, tongues, and eyeballs. A couch was placed in the middle of room in the semi-circle of televisions. VHS players were hard at work playing movie, after movie, after movie. Comedies. Musicals. Action. Horror. Drama. The monster showed interest in all genres.

  This is what the beast did to occupy its time. Watch movies. Kill people. Stock its underground lair with fresh bodies and eats.

  Two corpses were posed on the couch, both of which were women the color of mushrooms. That left the middle of the couch for the monster to sit. Chris could see the monster's bloody butt print on the cushion.

  Did the monster think the bodies were his dates?

  Was the creature lonely?

  Madness.

  This entire situation was insanity. Harvey kept the monster hidden, ignored the problem, and this was the end result.

  Chris felt the impending need to escape escalate.

  He scanned the sick room. There was a corner where another sliver of light showed through. Could it lead outside? The monster had to come and go from somewhere. That corner had to be it.

  Before he made it a single step, the monster crawled up from the dirt tunnel and challenged his escape.

  Chris rushed for the mystery exit. The hole was covered by a wooden pallet. Light could be seen through the gaps between the wood. Before he could move it aside, a wet hand grabbed him by the arm and leg and launched him across the room. He struck the couch, both hands going into one of the corpse women's stomach. His hands came away wet with guts and maggots.

  The monster's shadow eclipsed him. He had no time for disgust. The beast claw swiped at him. Tufts of couch padding shot up through torn claw marks. He landed under the coffee table. Two fists pounded the table. The monster was raging and angry that he wasn't in bloody pieces. The table wouldn't hold up forever, Chris thought. What was his next move, besides dying?

  Two loud crashes. Each of the monster's claws were lodged into the table. The table was lifted up, and he was exposed. The monster was busy trying to free its claw arms.

  Another shot at escape.

  He charged full force at the covered exit.

  The monster roared. The couch was heaved right at him. He dropped to his feet. The couch crashed right into the wooden pallet and shattered it.

  He dropped down to his feet, crawled into the freshly exposed exit hole, and only got three feet before the monster grabbed his ankles. He was ripped backwards and held up like a child would a doll. The monster's giant orb eye sized him up. The mouth was drooling gallons of fluid. The mastication at the sides of its lips were active popping bubbles. The flesh, the pockets of fat, the strips of muscle tissue, every part of the monster throbbed with life.

  The monster squeezed him by the middle even harder. Its mouth stretched wide. He could see the multiple teeth. Dozens and dozens of curved teeth gleamed yellow and nasty. Spurting processes leaked fluids that bubbled and steamed, bragging of acidic breakdown abilities.

  The monster was ready to eat him like it had everybody else. He would be stuffed right down its throat and be gone forever.

  Chris could only let it happen.

  The monster's face came in real close to Chris's. He was being dropped right down into its mouth. The tilt gave him a two second window to do something. Anything. Be eaten, or escape. The monster's grip was way too strong to break free. He had seen the end result of the monster feasting on a body. That gave him the balls to do something another person wouldn't. The right kind of fear compelled him to react.

  He jammed his fist into the creature's eye. The orb popped under the pressure. Hot black blood poured forth from the wound. The monster unleashed a shriek. Chris didn't stop there. He dug his hand deeper, scooping out the fleshy tissue behind the orb. Clawing, grabbing handfuls and throwing them aside, he was creating a giant gaping hole. Anything connected to muscle tissue, like sacks, bags of pus, arteries, veins, he popped, tore, ripped, and dug trenches into with his fingernails.

  He was elbow deep into the eyeball, and he was still breaking cobwebby tissues. Shoulder deep, head deep, chest deep, hip deep, he was parting through a sea of insides. The deeper he slid into its body, the more he wanted to inflict new harm on the monster.

  He squeezed and squashed pounds and pounds of long intestines, breaking them like overinflated balloons. Chris couldn't see, but he could sure feel his way around. The giant trash bag of skin he poked with a finger. From the pressure within, gnarled chewed up human remains of the porn girls sprayed forth. So much pressure, the mess ruptured through the beast's stomach, giving Chris a much needed air hole. It was stifling hot inside!

  He discovered the gleam of white. The monster's s
pine. Chris didn't hesitate. He seized it with both hands, and broke it like a thick stick. The uncouth snap dropped the monster to the floor. Its limbs couldn't move. The beast was paralyzed.

  Chris crawled out of the monster.

  He had survived.

  The monster was slowly dying. Blood was leaking from every inch of its body. Its face and stomach were one great stretched wide hole. The thing was disgusting before. Now it was hideous. Gases popped. Processes were terminated. The monster's chest didn't rise and fall after ten minutes of its gradual death.

  He wanted nothing more than to escape this room. He was so caught up in saving his life, he had forgotten about the movies playing on the TV screens. He could hear the tick and turn of the VHS players.

  This was Gold Video's last night of existence.

  What a day this turned out to be.

  New thoughts turned in his head. The monster was dead. Great. Fantastic. Now what? Would he go the police covered in gore and tell them what had happened? He didn't want to re-live this experience with anyone. If this story was a book, it shouldn't be published.

  Things like this had to happen out there that didn't touch the news waves. Chris believed in monsters. He believed in evil. The fantastic was real.

  Fear coursed through him for brand new reasons.

  Harvey said James has been tested on. Others had to be monsters like James out there. This was illegal, messed up testing. The kind that if someone found out about it, bad things would happen to very powerful people.

  Nobody would find out about this story, even if Chris broke it to a reporter. Whoever had the money, the funding, and the sick motivation to turn people hard on their luck into beasts would have the wherewithal to shut him up, cover their tracks, and dispose of any evidence of wrongdoing.