Monster Girl Base

by Logan Jacobs

  “Well, I suppose that with the three of us and dear Floppy, we might be able to go out safely long enough to find something,” Emma said. “You lot were quite fearsome when you were fighting those feral dogs. I’d love to see how you hunt for your dinner, to be honest. I don’t particularly enjoy the killing of animals for the sake of it, but sometimes it’s quite satisfying to be able to just reach out, snap your fingers, and have a fresh-roasted fish or fowl right in your hand.”

  “Okay, I definitely need to see you in action,” I said to Emma. “My big secret is just a pistol, but I have to admit that I’ve never really had to hunt for food. Before we saved you from the wild dogs, the only thing I’d learned to shoot was a paper target with a silhouette of a federal agent on it.”

  “Oh, dear,” she gasped. “Federal, as in the government? Why would you shoot at--”

  “That’s a long story about my father,” I snickered. “He didn’t like anyone given authority by the federal government.”

  “My Papa used to have a rifle, but a bear melted it,” Emma sighed. “He kept the wooden stock with the iron drippings on it over the fireplace as a reminder not to use metal weapons against an animal. I suppose that won’t be necessary to remember in most of the worlds we travel to, will it? Perhaps we ought to stop by town and load up on guns before we travel to the next world.”

  “Actually, there are a lot of things we could stand to load up on if the stuff in the stores is still halfway intact,” I said. “The Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending creates a pocket dimension of dirt that gets about twenty feet wider every time we travel to a new world. Since the, uh, shelter part of the machine is only big enough for two people to sleep in, I kind of wanted to see if we could build a house or something on the dirt. Maybe even plant some crops, so we can have something to eat besides wild game and the stuff we can forage.”

  “Oh, that’s a brilliant idea,” Emma nodded. “I can bring what I have in the house, but the stores in town are still quite full. I don’t think there were many looters right after the Great Electrical Storm, especially since not many people survived. I only brought what I needed here, but if we’re going to be starting a homestead from scratch we’ll need to build up our stores.”

  “Yeah, it seems like you have a really great little household built up right here,” I said. “We’ll get what we can from the town, and then we’ll definitely pack your stuff. Seeds and pickles and dishes, whatever you think will be useful.”

  “We will need to be careful with what we bring back to the world-moving cave,” Fela cautioned us. “We can all only carry so much, even Floppy.”

  “Can Floppy pull a carriage?” Emma asked. “There is a harness and carriage shop in town, and I think we might be able to fit him with something so we can carry more. If he’ll consent to it, that is.”

  “Floppy will do what I tell him to do,” Fela said. “Do not worry about that. Do you need to gather your weapons before we go out and hunt, or can we go right away?”

  “All I need is these.” Emma held up her hands and crooked her fingers lightly, then grinned. “What are we waiting for? I’ll show you my favorite fishing spot first, and then we can see what kind of wild game is around.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, and then the four of us were off to hunt as a pack for the first time ever.

  Chapter 12

  “I can’t wait to show you my favorite fishing spot,” Emma chirped as she led us southeast down Grand River Avenue. “The fish in the river here aren’t quite as large as the ones I used to catch in Lake Michigan, but they do make a decent little dinner, and they’re quite tasty.”

  “Do you have any fishing gear or anything?” I asked. “Or do you just tie a string to a branch and go at it?”

  “I’ve never needed to use a fishing pole,” Emma giggled. “I’ll show you when we get there. Do you fish much, Dave?”

  “Eh, I went fishing a few times when I was a kid,” I said. “Wasn’t really into the whole hook-and-worm situation, though. And I got finned by a bluegill the last time I caught anything. This stupid little fish kept flopping around in my hand and then it cut me on the arm with its freaking spine. I thought, okay, it might bite me, that’s what fish are supposed to do, but I didn’t expect to get a paper cut from a fucking fish, you know?”

  “Fish are fast and can be clever,” Fela said. She kept one hand on Floppy’s side as she walked and held her spear by her side as though she was expecting the feral dogs to come back and attack us at any minute. “They are not just delicious morsels of flaky, tender flesh. They can defend themselves just like the beasts of the land can.”

  “Yeah, I definitely found that out the hard way,” I said. “Do you fish a lot, Fela?”

  “There was a river in my home that flowed with fat, fresh fish,” Fela sighed. “It was not hard to stick a hand in the current and find a meal, especially in the autumn when the pink fish liked to spawn. If it was a good autumn, my pack would eat so much fish that we would get sick of it. The river by the cave where you found me had tiny fish that were good for a snack sometimes, but it was much better for drinking than fishing. I have not had fish in a long time.”

  “Well, hey, we have two pros here!” I remarked. “Maybe you can give me some tips.”

  “I will be happy to try,” Fela said. “Catching fish is not hard. It just takes practice. If we had more time, I could show you how to weave a net from long grasses so that we could catch many fish all at once, but I want to find food before the sun goes down.”

  “It’s not that late, is it?” I checked my watch. “It’s only five o’clock, we have at least three hours before it’s going to start to get dark.”

  “Fela is quite right, actually,” Emma said. “The wild animals around here do start to get bolder not too long before the sun goes down, and I’d rather be in the house sooner than later. We’ll have plenty of time for net-weaving lessons once we’re safe inside having a nice piece of fish for supper.”

  “Alright, lead on.” I scrutinized the abandoned shops for salvage potential as we passed. I knew we had to find food right now, since Fela needed meat and I was getting pretty hungry, too, but I was already starting to make a list in my head of things we might be able to loot from the stores downtown.

  The barbershop would probably have soap, and blades if they hadn’t rusted. The butcher shop might have blades, too, and the bar would definitely have alcohol. The drugstore and doctor’s office would undoubtedly be full of useful medical supplies, although I figured we’d also find plenty of snake oil and patent medicines on the shelves. The hardware store would probably have plenty of tools we could use to fell trees and build a cabin, and I figured we could pick up any odds and ends we couldn’t find there at the dry goods and general store.

  Even as I made my mental checklist, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the way Emma’s world was a slowly rotting time capsule of my own hometown. I didn’t recognize most of the stores, but the few that I did served as an eerie point of reference for my own timeline, so I started to point them out as we passed.

  “So in my world, that dry goods store is a microbrewery that makes craft beer,” I said. “They hold games nights and open mics, where they let you stand up in front of a crowd and recite poetry or play guitars or whatever. I thought it’d be a good place to meet girls, but it was all middle-aged couples and a few really beardy hipster dudes with djembes.”

  “Oh, it sounds like a lovely time,” Emma chirped. “I’ve never had beer before. Does it taste good?”

  “Eh, not at first, but you get to like it,” I said.

  “Then why do you drink it?” Fela asked.

  “It makes you feel really good,” I explained. “Like, just really silly and happy and relaxed. Okay, and that blacksmith shop was a tattoo and piercing parlor--”

  “Tattoos?” Emma sounded scandalized. “Like some sailor in the South Seas?”

  “What is a tattoo?” Fela asked.

  “It’s a drawing that
you put into your skin and it stays there forever,” I said. “In my world, people get them all the time just because they like how they look, and it’s pretty normal. You don’t want to go around with a life-sized dick tattooed on your face or anything, but almost every girl I know has a butterfly on her ankle or a flower on her shoulder or something cute like that.”

  “It seems like a good way to remember stories,” Fela mused. “Making something stay on your skin forever.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people get them so they can remember something important, but sometimes they’re just there to look good.” I shrugged and pointed to a two-story house that sat next to a barn. “Now, that’s there in my world, but it got turned into an organic vegan restaurant that charges fifteen bucks for a plate of nachos made with cashew cheese. I can’t say they were the best nachos I ever had in my life. Do you like spicy food, Emma?”

  “I’ve never tasted a proper spice,” Emma sighed. “The first time I found a grocer, I went straight to the spices and tried all of them, and they all tasted just like sawdust. Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice... The cloves made my mouth go numb, but even then they didn’t taste like much. I’ve learned to make do with herbs and honey.”

  “When we get to a world that’s even a little bit like mine, we’re going to find the nearest fancy little coffee shop and I’m going to buy you a chai latte,” I told Emma. “Real tea and all the spices you can shake a stick at. You’ll love it.”

  “You humans have a strange attitude toward taste,” Fela mused. “Doesn’t adding all these flavored plants to your food make it harder to tell when the food has gone bad?”

  “I believe you’re supposed to add them after you’ve ascertained that your meat has not gone off,” Emma said. “That’s what I do with the herbs, anyway.”

  “Yeah, you gotta do the sniff test,” I agreed.

  In my world, the quaintly preserved storefronts and houses that had been turned into offices gave way to strip malls and fast-food chains after about a quarter of a mile, with a few old houses scattered here and there among the concrete and asphalt. In this world, the Thai restaurant and wood-brick pizza place next to my condo had never existed and hundred-year-old trees sprouted up where I’d ordered Princess Shrimp to go. The strip malls in my world had been built on old farmland, so I figured that in this world the farmland had just never been developed on at all. There definitely wouldn't have been anyone to build on it after the Great Electrical Storm, so it made sense that the land would have started to sprout trees again. Here, the old farmhouses that had been turned into offices and vape shops in my world dotted the trees on each side of the road, and I even recognized the remains of the old barn that had been converted into the maintenance shed at the entrance to my condo.

  “This is where I used to live!” I exclaimed as we passed the barn.

  “I am sure you did not live in that cow house,” Fela said.

  “Nah, that’s where they kept the lawnmowers,” I said.

  “So its use hasn’t changed much, has it?” Emma remarked with a sly grin.

  “Oh, ‘cause cows eat grass!” I laughed. “Yeah, old lawnmower shed, new lawnmower shed. No, I lived in a condo right behind that barn. Kind of like a big cave with a lot of other caves in it.”

  “A cave?” Emma furrowed her brow. “Why do the people in your world live in caves, Dave?”

  “We didn’t live in caves, Fela lived in caves, but she calls most buildings a cave so I just kind of went along with it,” I explained.

  “You do not have to,” Fela said. “I may not understand what you mean when you use some words, but I think it is only because we do not have those things in my home. I am beginning to understand more of the words you use the more you talk about your world.”

  “Sorry, I’ll try not to simplify stuff too much,” I said. “They were just normal buildings made out of brick. There used to be restaurants right next door, and I’d get Italian food or Thai food if I didn’t feel like cooking something. Uh, I guess it would have been Siamese food in your world, Emma. In my world Siam is Thailand, and a Siamese is just a type of cat...”

  “Like me?” Fela’s tail twitched, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice.

  “Not nearly as cute,” I replied, and I thought I could hear Fela purr in response.

  “It must be so wonderful to be able to choose so many different types of cuisine for supper,” Emma sighed. “And from so many different places, too! Your world must be full of good things to eat, Dave.”

  “Food was one thing we had a lot of,” I said. I’d thought I had it hard when I’d been too broke to get anything but McDonald’s or store-brand macaroni and cheese, but spending even a couple of days subsisting on MREs and flavorless energy bars had given me a new appreciation for the bounty of choices that I’d left behind in my world. I had a feeling that I would start to miss Thai food and cheap burgers much more the longer we stayed in savage wilderness worlds.

  “It’s rather funny that you used to live right there,” Emma remarked as she led us off the road and down the much gentler part of the slope that led to the park beneath my condo. “My favorite fishing spot is right down here, where the river starts to get a little wider as it flows out through the valley. It’s such a pretty spot, and the fish are awfully easy to catch when they’re going over the shallows.”

  “In my world, this is a park,” I said. “Children play here, they feed the ducks, there’s a little dog run, high school kids skip class to hide under the bridge and drink beer... Not like I ever did that or anything.”

  We made our way down the tree-filled slope into the valley, where the burbling river flowed south over worn gray rocks. When we finally made it down to the grassy banks of the stream, I knelt down and started to fill my Nalgene.

  Fela crouched down on the riverbank, lowered her face down toward the surface of the water, and lapped at the stream a few times before she raised her head and wiped her mouth on her arm.

  “The water still tastes good here,” Fela reported.

  Floppy knelt down next to his feline mistress, dipped his trunk into the stream, and raised his long nose to squirt water into his mouth.

  “You oughtn’t to drink or fill your bottle straight from the stream, no matter how good it tastes,” Emma said. “There’s a well not too far away, and the pump on the handle still works. I know you may not need to worry about it in your world, but animals--”

  “This has a special filter on it that removes anything I really need to worry about,” I explained. “When I’m done filling this bottle, it’ll be just as good as the water from the well. Probably better, since it filters out the stuff that makes well water taste like rotten eggs.”

  “I’ve never eaten an egg before,” Emma said. She held up her right hand, unbuttoned the mother-of-pearl button that held the lacy cuff of her sleeve together, and pushed the white linen sleeve down her delicate porcelain wrist. “Well, I’ve tried robin’s eggs, but they weren’t very nice at all. I’ve wanted to try a duck egg, but they’re awfully protective of their nests.”

  “You don’t have chickens in your world?” I asked. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that small expanse of pale skin Emma had just revealed. “No wild chickens running around in the woods or anything?”

  “Perhaps elsewhere,” Emma shrugged. She knelt down on the grassy edge of the riverbank, lowered herself down to the ground so that she laid on her stomach, and stuck her right hand into the water. “You may not want to touch the water for this bit, sometimes the lightning can travel a little farther than I really want it to.”

  “Ohh, okay!” I yanked my bottle out of the stream, capped it, and stood. I could see the lacy white bottoms of what looked like bloomers peeking out from under the hem of Emma’s skirt, and it made me blush almost as much as when I’d watched Fela’s leather miniskirt ride up over her ass. It was a little hard to believe that seeing a glimpse of Emma’s wrist or the hem of her bloomers could get me as hot and bothered as see
ing Fela nearly bare it all, but a gorgeous woman was a gorgeous woman no matter what she was wearing.

  “Floppy, stop drinking,” Fela ordered her mammoth, and the cat-woman scrambled to her feet and patted Floppy on the trunk. When her pet didn’t stop drinking, Fela squatted down again, slipped her hand under Floppy’s trunk, and lifted it up from the water. “I know you are thirsty, but this will not take long.”

  Floppy rolled his eyes, raised his trunk, and snorted a fine spray of water straight up into the air. The sunlight caught the spray and made a shimmering rainbow before the droplets dissipated and showered back down into the stream.

  “Floppy!” Fela covered her hair with her hands. Her tail lashed back and forth behind her irritably. “No! This is not the time.”

  “He’s a spirited little devil, isn’t he?” Emma remarked. She flicked a bead of Floppy spray away from her pale brow.

  “Ech, you know that’s mammoth snot water,” I said. “Listen to your pack-mom, Floppy. She knows best.”

  Floppy snorted, but he stepped back from the edge of the riverbank and rolled his trunk up between his tusks.

  “He is not my child, he is my steed,” Fela grumbled, but she gave her disobedient mammoth an ear scratch anyway. “Good Floppy. That is much better.”

  “Rigghhhttt,” I snickered, and Fela actually rewarded me with a slight smile.

  “Alright, let’s look for a good stout fellow.” Emma spread her hand out just under the surface of the water. “Do you see the fish?”

  “I see them,” Fela said immediately.

  “Yeah, you have a predator’s eyes,” I joked.

  I crouched down again and peered into the shallow water as it flowed over the gray stones. It took my eyes a moment to look past the patterns the sunlight made as it danced over the surface of the stream, but when I did I could see fat gray shadows darting back and forth across the bottom of the river. “Ohh, I see them! Those are a lot bigger than the little minnows that hang out there in my world.”