Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1

by John G. Hartness

  "It ain't a cherub, Bubba. It's a fairy."

  "Whatever. How. Do. I. Find. It?"

  "I don't know. Go on in there and start investigating. Find something that looks weird and follow it. When you find the fairy, shoot its ass!"

  "Just like that? I'm supposed to shoot Cupid? I ain't supposed to talk to it or nothing?"

  "There are people The Church calls when they need something talked to, and there are people they call when they need something shot. Guess which one you are." Fair enough, I figured. I walked across the street to the double glass doors and pulled on the right-hand door. It rattled in the frame, but was locked up tight. I gave the left-hand door a yank with the same lack of success. I banged on the glass for a minute and a nun came to the door.

  "No visiting hours today." She didn't look up at me, just kept glancing around like something was after her.

  "Are you okay, sister? I'm Bubba, with the Southeastern Regional Catholic Paranormal Investigation Division." It was something like that. I kept buggin' Skeeter to get me a badge so I could remember what Father Uncle Joe called his team of badasses, but it didn't seem to matter to the good sister. She unlocked the door anyhow.

  "Oh thank the Savior you're here! I didn't know if anyone got my call! It's awful, I tell you, awful! Mr. Scoggins in 147 had a heart attack, Mrs. Lathan in 168 has come down with gonorrhea, and poor Mr. Benfield in 272 has a terrible case of priapism!"

  I grabbed the sister by the shoulders and gave her a little shake to calm her down. "Slow down, sister, I can't help you if I can't understand you. Now what was that about a 272? I thought there was only one floor in this place."

  "No, there's a second floor on the rear wing, the property slopes down, so there's a downstairs." Great, more places for the cupid to hide.

  "Okay, so what about the dude that had the heart attack? Is he all right? Or is he dead?"

  "He's going to be okay. He's been sedated, but every time he wakes up he keeps groping the candy stripers!"

  "Yeah, well, who doesn't? It's a uniform thing I reckon. The lady with the clap oughta be fine with a shot or two of penicillin, and what did you say was wrong with that other dude?"

  Skeeter chirped in my ear. "Priapism. It's a condition where an erection doesn't go away."

  I couldn't help it. I knew it was wrong but I couldn't help it. I laughed. "When I was growing up we just called that middle school."

  The nun looked horrified. "Mr. Benfield is eighty-seven years old! Who knows what kind of trauma he could do with that thing?"

  "Ma'am, at eighty-seven if he still remembers what to do with that thing I applaud him. But I see your point, kinda. Have you seen anything strange flying around the hospital? Looks like a baby with a bow and arrow?"

  "Are you sure you're from The Church?"

  "See Skeeter?" I said into my Bluetooth. "I told you we need badges."

  "We don't need badges, Bubba, you just need to not be a jackass. Cupids don't always look like babies, and their arrows are metaphors. It's their touch that causes the, um, love to blossom, if you get my drift. And they can look like anybody or anything."

  "Crap. Well, for the purposes of this experiment we'll keep it to human anyway. So Sister...I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

  "Sister Mary Catherine." She held out her hand to mine and I reached for it, then remembered at the last minute what Skeeter said about touch and pulled my hand back.

  "Sorry," I said, sticking my hand in my pocket. "I've got a nasty cold." I faked a cough, but she didn't look convinced.

  "Well, what do you plan to do about this situation?" She asked.

  I thought for a few seconds, then said, "Ma'am, The Church has a whole bunch of people they call when something needs to be talked about, or prayed over, or even exorcised. But there's only one guy in this part of the country they call when something needs to be made dead, and that's me. So I'm gonna find this cupid, and I'm gonna turn it from a live fairy to a dead one. I hope that doesn't offend your nun-like sensibilities, but it's kinda my thing." I looked at my feet as I finished saying all that, because I still have some issues from Catholic grade school that my therapist hasn't been able to work out yet. With all the crap I've seen, my therapist thinks it could take years just to work through middle school. I still say strippers are cheaper, but my HMO doesn't cover lap dances.

  Sister Mary Catherine looked me up and down for a minute, and suddenly I was back in fourth grade and the Mother Superior was giving me a stern lecture on Onanism. It didn't really sink in, no pun intended. Then the nun did something I never expected. She nodded once, moved behind me to lock the door, and said "Good. Little bastard has made this week hell on all of us. He needs to come down with a bad case of dead." Then she pulled an ancient Colt 1911 forty-five automatic out from under her habit and racked the slide. "Let's get it done."

  I drew Bertha and chambered a round. "Come get some."

  We started our search on the ground floor, and went room to room. The first dozen or so rooms were just fine; old people sleeping or watching Dr. Phil. It wasn't until halfway down the hall that we noticed a few things out of the ordinary. We checked on her Mr. Benfield, and sure enough the old dude was laying in his bed, fast asleep with a serious pup tent in the sheets.

  "That's impressive." I whispered, trying not to wake him.

  "It's downright invasive is what it is. Mr. Benfield has been in a coma for six months, and now this happens to him? The poor man it just breaks your hear to see it." It really made me want to whip out my camera phone, but I've never claimed to be the most mature person in any crowd.

  I heard moaning coming from a room up ahead, and I looked over at Sister Mary Catherine. "I'm guessing there's nobody on this floor that should be making those particular unmistakable noises?"

  "Not at all." She pulled her pistol and took up a position beside the door, her hand on the knob. I put my back to the opposite wall and settled into a shooter's stance directly opposite the door. I gave Sister a nod, and she yanked the door open. She spun into a crouch in front of the door, clear from my field of fire but in the way if I needed to run into the room. What I saw made me want to slam the door and throw up everything I'd eaten for the last three months. An old man's scrawny bare ass was aimed straight at the door, hanging out of a hospital gown. It was horrible, the kind of thing you can't ever un-see. He had skinny chicken legs covered in white hair and liver spots, with loose folds of skin hanging down over the backs of his knees. The loose skin was flapping in time to his strokes as the old dude went to town making sweet old-dude love to somebody I couldn't see. His bony, hairy butt went back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster and faster and I could hear his breathing getting more and more labored.

  "We have to do something!" Sister Mary Catherine looked up at me with a horrified expression.

  "You have to do something. I have to find a fairy, and it ain't in there! I was clambering for the door and wiping at my eyes all at the same time. Suddenly old King Oedipus seemed to have the right idea. Not about banging his mama, but about stabbing his own eyes out. I finally got the door shut and slid a nurse's cart in front of it. "There." I said, panting like I'd run a marathon in a spacesuit. "That oughta keep 'em in there, at least."

  "I need to know who he was with." Sister Mary Catherine said. "I need to know who has been affected by this..."

  "Fairy." I offered.

  "Monster." She corrected.

  I nodded at her and said "Fine, you can play Nuncy Drew all you want, but I've killed zombies, werewolves, rakshashas, vampires and a couple of things I can't even pronounce, and that was the scariest damn thing I've ever seen. The Church ain't got enough money to get me to open that door again." With that, I turned and started down the hall, kicking open doors looking for the cupid. I was pissed, now. I'd seen something that no man was ever supposed to see - octogenarian fornication - and it had me almost completely unhinged. So much so that I almost let the little candy striper touch me when she came runni
ng out of the third room I kicked the door open to.

  "Help me! There are sex maniacs all over the home today! Mr. Benfield has that...condition, Mr. Whitesides is doing it with Mrs. McGruber, and Mr. Wyatt just pinched me on the butt!" She was cute, and I could see why Mr. Wyatt would pinch her butt even if the cupid hadn't attacked him. It looked like a nice butt, wrapped in a skirt that probably fit her about two years ago. But now, it was a parody of a candy striper outfit, the kind of thing a stripper would wear. And let's face it; I'm an expert in stripper outfits. This little brunette, with her bouncy ponytail, hooker-red lipstick and bouncing funbags barely restrained by her top, was a cupid or I was a Shaolin monk.

  I put both hands in the air and backed away slowly. "Stay back, fairy. I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to."

  Skeeter's voice crackled in my ear. "The hell you don't want to shoot it! You have to shoot it! Shoot it, Bubba!"

  The cupid obviously had super-human hearing in addition to its shape-changing powers, because at Skeeter's words its eyes went from cheerful blue to a deep, pupil-less black. The cute candy-striper facade melted away to reveal a four-foot tall creature with gangly limbs and leathery wings. It was covered all over in grey scaly skin, and had long pointy ears that would have given Spock a complex. Seriously, these ears were like a foot and a half long. Its snout was long and pointed, and it grinned at me with razor-sharp pointed teeth. It opened its mouth and a long forked tongue flickered back and forth like a snake. "You don't want to shoot ussssss, do you mortal?"

  I stood frozen, not in fear, no longer in lust, but out of sheer confusion. "I know they used to think friggin' manatees were mermaids, but those dudes were all drunk and had scurvy or something. How the hell did anybody ever paint your sorry ass as a cute little baby with a bow and arrow?"

  It tensed its scrawny legs and sprang at me, but I wasn't there anymore. I'd heard Sister Mary Catherine's Crocs squeak on the tile behind me and I threw myself flat backwards. The cupid jumped over me and Sister Mary Catherine met it in mid-air with seven rounds of forty-five caliber ammunition. The fairy flew about eight feet back and then slid another six feet or so along the floor, leaving a trail of greenish-yellow blood in its wake.

  "Eat lead, bitch." Sister Mary Catherine stood calmly in a classic Weaver stance, both hands on the pistol's grip. She blew the smoke off the barrel and gave me a grin. "Guess we didn't need The Church's hired gun after all, did we, Mr. Bubba?"

  I got up, keeping one eye on the prone monster and another on the nun with the gun. "That depends, Sister Mary Kate. Did you mean it when you said 'eat lead'?"

  "Well, that's what bullets are made of, son." She grinned at me.

  "Not the ones that you hunt fairies with." I pulled Bertha and started down the hall for the Cupid. "Most magical creatures are only vulnerable to either silver, or cold iron. In the case of most magical or demonic critters, it's silver. For the Fae, or other extra-dimensional baddies, it's cold iron."

  "Oh." She said, pulling a fresh magazine and slamming it home. "You mean it's not..." She didn't even bother finishing the sentence, just stopped and leaned against the wall and watched the cupid scramble to its feet and skitter around the corner on all fours.

  "Dead? No. It was hurt, and then it was playing possum. But it wasn't dead. Don't feel bad, you still did good. You probably saved me from getting all love-struck and horny, and nobody wants a horny giant around a building full of nuns and old ladies, least of all the giant. So thanks."

  "You're welcome. Now what?"

  "Now we go find it again. And this time, I shoot it."

  We rounded a corner just in time to see the doors slide closed on the elevator. I looked at Sister Mary Catherine and asked "Stairs?"

  "Behind us, of course." We turned around and hauled ass back to the stairwell at the other end of the hall. The main floor was mostly deserted, except for one old dude rolling around the hall in his wheelchair. He was sporting a pup tent in his pj's and grin on his face like he'd just won the lottery. Which maybe he had, for all I knew.

  I pressed the button in my ear. "Skeeter, is there anything I need to be worried about with this cupid?"

  "You mean besides the fact that it can turn you into three hundred forty pounds of raging hornball with just a touch?"

  "Yeah, I mean besides that. I can kill it, right?"

  "Yeah, cold iron should take care of it."

  "Should?" I repeated.

  "I don't know for sure until you shoot it, Bubba. This ain't exactly the kind of crap you can look up in the Encyclopedia Britannica." I was about to come back with something smart-assed, but I heard a shriek from up ahead.

  "That's coming from the rec room!" Sister Mary Catherine said as we hoofed it up the hallway. We hung a right at the nearest intersection of hallways, and my feet almost slid out from under me. I grumbled a little about mopping the floors in the middle of a crisis, then got my balance back. I burst through the double doors like Emmitt Smith heading for the end zone, and drew up short as I took in the sight in front of me. It was the most horrifying thing I'd ever seen - an honest-to-God orgy of old people. There were people screwing in wheelchairs, on sofas, on the floor. One particularly spry couple was going at it like jackrabbits on the ping-pong table.

  "I ain't never playing ping-pong again." I muttered, looking around for the cupid.

  "Looking for me, stud?" A dulcet voice came from behind the door, and my blood ran cold. I turned, and the candy striper was standing there with Sister Mary Catherine. The good sister was frozen stock-still, looking at me with huge eyes. Her arms were rigid at her sides, and her hair was almost standing on end, she was so scared.

  "Hey now, Cupid. You don't need to be making anybody forget about any vows today, okay?" I stepped slowly sideways, hoping to lure it away from the nun.

  The cupid didn't move. "My name is Gloriannalyne, mortal. But you may call me Glory."

  "Okay, Glory. I'll call you whatever you like, just don't put the whammy on Sister Mary Catherine."

  "Why not? She has so many repressed desires. I can almost taste them there, just beneath her skin. They're delicious, just begging to be set free." Sister Mary Catherine was trembling now, and one tear rolled down her cheek as the cupid brushed her arm outside her habit.

  "Leave her alone, Glory, and I won't shoot you."

  Glory turned back to me and flashed those fangs again. "What makessss you think you could even come close to me, mortal?" She hissed.

  "I'm fast for a big dude."

  "How fasssst?" She licked her lips with that forked tongue and I shuddered a little. "What'ssss the matter, mortal? Don't you find me ssssexy?"

  "You're not my type, sweetie. I prefer my women a little more human."

  "Pity. Now I suppose I'll have to have my fun with this one instead." It leaned in closer to Sister Mary Catherine, and I pulled Bertha in one smooth motion. The cupid spun Sister Mary around in front of it, but I let fly with a round just past its nose. Sister Mary Catherine dove for the tile, and I put three quick rounds in the fairie's face. It exploded as the cold iron struck it, but it wasn't gross like I expected. No, that would have been fine. This stupid thing blew up into a giant cloud of glitter, coating everything and everyone with pale pink sparkles.

  I reached down to help Sister Mary Catherine to her feet, dusting the worst of the glitter off her head-thingy. I clicked the Bluetooth again. "Skeeter."

  "Yeah, Bubba. Did you kill it?"

  "This would be a good time for you to tell me you didn't know what happens when a cupid dies."

  "How close were you? And did Sister Mary Catherine get a picture?"

  "I was right in front of the damn thing, and no, she did not..." I stopped cussing Skeeter for just a second as a flash went off in my face. I looked up and Sister Mary Catherine was standing there with her cell phone pointed straight at my face. "She got a picture. I reckon you want her to email that to you?" Sister Mary Kate nodded and pushed a few buttons on the phone. "It's on the
way to you. Asshole."

  "Don't cuss in front of the nun. And you might want to get out of there, Bubba."

  "Why? The cupid's dead."

  "Yeah, but that glitter? That's the magical essence of the cupid. It's lust-dust in its purest form, and you've probably only got about another minute before everybody it touched starts feeling the effects." I turned to the room and saw a whole passel of grannies looking at me like I was tapioca pudding. And Sister Mary Catherine didn't have the most wholesome look in her eyes, either.

  "Sister, it was great meeting you, but I've got an appointment in another time zone." I shook her hand, yanked myself free before she could throw her arms around my neck, and bolted for the exit. I made it out the front entrance, wedged a planter in front of the doors to keep the crazy inside, and hauled ass across the street to my truck. I peeled rubber onto the main street and pointed my truck out of town.

  As York, South Carolina faded in my rearview mirror, I dialed Skeeter again. As soon as he picked up I said, "Have I ever told you I hate Valentine's Day?"

  Hall & Goats

  It was the middle of the night, and I was crouched in a damp, smelly field waiting for something to happen. This wrapped a lot of my least favorite things all up in a nice little ball of suck for me to gnaw on. I hate waiting. I'm a man of action, as they say. I like to do stuff, not wait around to do stuff. Now I'll admit that some of the stuff I do sucks, like chasing down zombies, or werewolves, or fighting witches or ghouls or vampires or pretty much anything else that goes bump in the night. But it's a damn sight more entertaining than sitting around waiting for something to show up for me to kill. Especially when I don't know what I'm waiting on. Waiting to me just seems like a great big waste of my precious drinkin' time.

  I hate being wet, too. I'm a big dude -- six-five and a good bit past three hundred pounds. And every damn inch is covered with hair. I got a ponytail that hit me halfway down my back, a beard that reaches almost down to my chest, and a pretty good suit of man-fur everywhere else. I ain't one of these billboard pretty boys that's got nowhere for a tick to hide on their cute little manscaped six-pack abs. I got a whole great big fuzzy pony keg of a belly, and that all makes it pretty uncomfortable when I'm rolling around in the cold damp grass. And it takes forever and about three big towels to dry off. I tell you, it's just irritating.