The Monster's Daughter

by Paul Gamble

  The guard nodded and slammed the door shut. Jack was left in the cold, dank room. There was hardly any light. The only reason he could see anything at all was that the dungeon door didn’t fit the doorframe perfectly. It was made of a series of wooden planks that had swollen and twisted due to the constant damp. Through the cracks in the door small slivers of light illuminated the darkness.

  It took Jack’s eyes a few minutes to adjust to the low level of light, but he soon found he was able to get about easily enough. The only problem now was how to escape. With no pillow he had no idea, no clue.

  Jack took one of the longer pieces of stick that were floating on the water and started poking about with it. He had hoped that there was something useful hidden under the water’s surface that he could use to escape. Sadly, after twenty minutes of trying he found nothing but more water. Although, for some reason, like all boys, he had felt strangely at peace with himself while poking the water with a stick.

  Jack sighed. He felt like slumping down in the corner of the room. However, if he had done that, his head would have been underwater and it wouldn’t have been much fun.

  All he had in the room was a toilet—and it was almost impossible to escape a room only using a toilet. If only the Misery had taught him some magical shrinking trick, then perhaps he could have flushed himself to safety. It wouldn’t have been a hygienic way to escape, but Jack was so desperate to escape he was willing to try anything.

  But in order to try and do something he needed an idea. Jack went over to the toilet, put the lid down, and sat on it. He could feel frustration welling up. Here he was half submerged in a dungeon and soon his country was about to sink like the Titanic.

  The Titanic … that was it!

  Jack stood up and kicked the pipe that led away from the toilet. He kicked it three times quickly. Then three times more, slowly. Then finally three times quickly. As Jack kicked the pipe another piece of the puzzle fell into place—he realized why the seal had been rapping its flipper against the Plexiglas. It had been sending the same message that he had.

  Then he sat back down on the toilet to wait. Wait and hope.

  * * *

  MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK

  BOYS

  THEIR NEED TO POKE THINGS WITH STICKS

  Stick poking is a habit with a long and honorable tradition dating back millions of years. The habit originated shortly after an early Stone Age man was trampled by a mammoth. It happened as follows:

  “Ugg, don’t go near that mammoth; it might only be sleeping.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lug; it’s dead. Look.”

  STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP

  And so Lug went back to his tribe to tell them how the mammoth in question hadn’t actually been dead and how Ugg wouldn’t actually be needing his space in the cave that night.

  Cavemen scientists worked around the clock in a desperate attempt to solve the problem of unnecessary mammoth stampings. The caveman opposition pointed out in the caveman Parliament that mammoth stampings had risen by sixty percent in the last two years.

  In the end the cavemen scientists designed the stick. With a stick a caveman could establish how lively a mammoth was simply by poking the mastodon96 from a safe distance.

  This is engraved in men’s collective memory. Women do not tend to suffer from the same problem because during cavemen times everything was dreadfully sexist, and so the women were not allowed to go hunting. Instead they had to stay at home, look after the children and the crops, and make sure that the cave was pretty. Therefore, they were never actually supplied with sticks to poke anything with. Occasionally a woman would get hold of a stick and use it to poke one of the children—but this was frowned upon in caveman society.

  Although many people in modern society see stick poking as anachronistic and out-of-date, it has helped in many of the great scientific discoveries of the age. Before Oppenheimer split the atom he spent a considerable amount of time poking the atom with a stick. Before Einstein stated that energy is equal to the speed of light squared, he spent literally years poking both energy and the speed of light with a stick. Probably most important is that before the apple actually fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head, he had spent almost half an hour poking it with a particularly long stick.

  Men still remember all this stick poking on a subconscious level and in times of stress or danger resort to the habits of their forefathers. This is part of the reason all fathers have an area of their garage or shed where they keep pieces of wood of different sizes. They’re never quite sure why they have them—but they always somehow feel that “they might come in handy” someday.

  * * *

  49

  A SCUTTLING NOISE

  Jack had almost given up hope when he heard a scuttling noise outside his cell. There was a moment of silence and then an observation hatch in the center of the door opened. An eye appeared at the hatch. Then another and another. Jack’s plan had worked perfectly!

  Jack was feeling incredibly proud of himself. He’d remembered that giant spider Ministry operatives were located underneath baths across the country and used the plumbing system as a way to communicate with one another using Morse code. Jack, like many other twelve-year-olds, didn’t in fact know much Morse code. But he did know one piece. Three short dots. Three long dashes. Three short dots. The sign for SOS—the international distress signal. But how had he remembered this? Simple—in his elementary school project about the Titanic, he had learned that it was one of the first ships to use the SOS signal—before that, ships had signaled distress with CQD.97

  Jack heard the bolt securing the door sliding back, and standing there in front of him was an enormous spider. Jack walked out of the room. He was getting very good at escaping from locked rooms and decided he might change his name to Houdini.

  After confirming that there were no guards in the corridor, Jack turned and spoke to the spider, hoping it could understand English.

  “I need to get a message to my Ministry friends.”

  The spider read Jack’s lips and then waved its arms/legs to get him to stop talking. It mimed banging on some pipes and then pointed at itself.

  “You’ve already contacted them?” Jack guessed.

  The enormous spider nodded.

  “Right, then, the only thing left to do is to escape.”

  The spider nodded again and scuttled down the corridor, leaving Jack with no option but to follow it.

  * * *

  MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK

  MORSE CODE

  FREQUENCY OF USE

  Many people assume that Morse code is rarely used in the modern world. The truth is that it is all around us, but people do not notice it.

  Many people, for example, do not realize that tap dancers are not only dancing, but also telling a story in Morse code. It is always nice to go up to them afterward and say, “I loved the dancing, but the story was even better.”

  Most drumming is too regular to be able to communicate a message. However, experimental jazz is played without sheet music and their drummers sound almost entirely random. Their drummers use Morse code to signal to the others what to play next.

  Interestingly enough, the most common phrase of Morse code used by jazz drummers is “Gary, please … we all like a saxophone solo, but three hours is long enough. Please stop, as we all want to go home.”

  * * *

  50

  CHARADES AGAIN

  At first the spider seemed to be moving incredibly quickly, but every dozen yards it had to stop and remember which leg was supposed to move next. This caused it to dash quickly for a short space of time, stop for a few seconds to think, and then run again.

  Jack realized that this was the way ordinary spiders ran as well. Previously he had assumed that it was because they were stopping to look around them, but he now realized it was almost certainly because when you have eight legs, it’s probably very difficult to keep them in sequence.98

  The spider led J
ack to the warehouse where he had nearly been crushed by the enormous shelving unit. All the soap, moisturizers, and perfumes had been removed and replaced by spears, tridents, seashell armor, and boxes upon boxes of explosive bath bombs. A dozen burly Atlantean warriors stood in the center of the room guarding it.

  “Looks like they’re getting ready for a battle,” Jack said to the giant spider. The giant spider bobbed its body up and down, nodding enthusiastically.

  Even using The Speed Jack would never have been able to take on a dozen warriors in full battle armor. If Trudy were here, maybe they would have had a chance. But at the moment his partner wasn’t Trudy. It was a giant spider. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.…

  “All right, giant spider…,” Jack said.

  The spider waved a long, hairy leg in Jack’s face before he said anything further. It then used its long legs to spell out the letters T I M.

  Jack wondered if it was trying to spell time. Maybe it was telling him to hurry up? Then he realized what it meant. “You’re called Tim. I get it. Okay, sorry about the ‘giant spider’ thing. It’s just that we hadn’t been formally introduced.” The spider stood up on its back legs and performed a small bow, and then Jack had to shake each of its “hands” in turn, wasting a considerable amount of time that they probably didn’t have to spare.

  “And my name is Jack. I work for the Ministry.”

  Tim mimed banging on pipes again.

  “Right, they told you that using Morse code on the pipes.”

  Tim nodded.

  “Okay, well, now that we know each other, here’s my plan. I’m going to run in there and distract those guys. While I do that I want you to shoot webs out of your wrists and catch them.”

  Tim lifted up two long appendages and appeared to be holding his head in his hands.

  “What? Can’t you do that?”

  Tim shook his head and pointed around the back of himself.

  Jack caught on almost immediately. “Ahh, I get it—the webs don’t come out of your wrists, they come out of your bottom.”99 Jack paused to think about this briefly. If they had bothered to make Spider-Man anatomically accurate, it would have been a very different film indeed. “Right, can you shoot webs out of your bottom at them?”

  Again Tim shook his many-eyed head. Jack put his hands out palms upward in a sign of frustration. Tim thought to himself and suddenly stood up on just two legs, spreading the others out across the corridor.

  Jack tried to guess what he was doing. “What are you pretending to be? Ummm … a web?”

  Tim collapsed back onto all eight legs and bobbed his head up and down.

  Jack tried to understand what Tim meant. “Wait a minute—I get it. You can’t shoot things with your silk, can you? You can only spin a web.”

  Tim nodded vigorously.

  “Right, well, I’m not sure if that’s actually much use to us.” Jack wondered about Spider-Man again. He wouldn’t have been considered much of a crime fighter if he couldn’t have webbed people. He would just have had to call them names until they chased him, hoping they would follow him into a web he had previously spun. It didn’t seem very heroic.

  Jack wasn’t feeling very heroic himself. He needed to figure out a way to make himself invisible. If only he’d bought a clipboard with him he would have been able to stroll across the warehouse nonchalantly. Although having a giant spider with him might have made him a bit more memorable than he wanted to be.

  Jack turned to Tim. “Maybe we could make a run for it?”

  Tim just frowned at Jack.

  “Oh. That’s right; you aren’t the world’s best runner, are you.”

  The problem was that the guards weren’t busy. If they were distracted somehow, then maybe he could … An idea struck Jack.

  “Wait here,” he said to Tim, and then he strolled into the warehouse. The guards began to walk toward him. They looked suspicious. Jack walked straight toward them. He thought that if he approached them they wouldn’t suspect he was up to anything—hopefully the guards weren’t aware of who he was.

  One of the guards called out to him. “There aren’t any tours of the factory today.”

  “I’m not here for a tour. I’m working with Regina.…”

  The guard captain interrupted him. “Working with Regina. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re only a child. There are child labor laws, you know.”

  Jack had feared something like this would happen. He should really have had a lie prepared for this eventuality. However, as he hadn’t, he panicked and tried the first lie that popped into his head. “Um, no. Well, I’m not really working with her as such. It’s more … umm … Bring Your Daughter to Work Day?” Jack offered. It sounded stupid even to him.

  The guard captain was confused. “But Regina doesn’t have any children.”

  Jack actually felt relatively relaxed as he told more lies. The first one had been so ridiculous that he knew it couldn’t get any worse.100

  “Well, yes, you’re right: Regina doesn’t have any children. Which is why I’m actually the neighbor’s child. You know she nipped next door to borrow a cup of sugar. But in this case it was a … well, a cup of Me.”

  Jack expected the guard captain to see through this patent lie, but instead he merely asked another question. “But you’re a boy and you said it was Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.”

  Jack sighed and pretended to be exasperated by the question. “Well, yes, but my sister wasn’t there because she’s on a school trip to Russia. So I was the next-best thing.” The guard captain was about to ask another question, but Jack decided it was time to put his plan into action. “Anyway, Regina told me to come down here because she has a special task that needs to be done and she wants a few volunteers. So…”

  The Atlantean guards all stiffened at once. Before they had been lounging about, leaning against the walls, and chatting. But in mere seconds they became incredibly busy. Some polished their armor; some sharpened their swords; others started sorting the bath bombs by color, size, and texture. The guard captain himself took a map out of an oyster shell pocket and started looking at it. “Sorry, we’d love to volunteer, but we’re all very busy.”

  “Very busy…” the men behind him all chorused.

  Jack smiled to himself. This was exactly the behavior that he had been banking on. He’d seen the same reaction at home. His father could have been sitting on the sofa, idly staring into space, literally doing nothing. However, the minute Jack’s mother asked him to do anything, he managed to instantly become busy with something else. Fixing a pair of glasses, wiring a plug, or repairing a radio that hadn’t worked for over a decade.

  “Okay, I’ll let her know how busy you are,” Jack said as he edged his way toward the exit from the warehouse.

  “Very busy…,” the guards muttered.

  Jack took a last look at the guards. They intently focused on trying to look busy. Jack waved to Tim, who scuttled as quickly as he could across the floor. Jack prayed that none of the guards would look up before he made it to the door.

  Jack held the door open and Tim scuttled through it. None of the guards had noticed. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. Tim held up a leg for Jack to high-five.

  “Right, we don’t have time to waste. We’ve got to get back to the Ministry and let them know what’s going on.”

  Jack and Tim ran across the factory’s car park. Jack saw a Ministry car pulling up. “Wow, that was quick. I hadn’t even called for one yet.”

  * * *

  MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK

  SUPERHEROES

  ANIMAL POWERS

  Over the years you may have noticed that when superheroes get the powers of animals they are almost always the useful powers. Like the ability to fly, shoot stingers, or climb up walls. They almost never have the powers of less exciting animals such as llamas or cows.

  Of course, the truth is that occasionally in bizarre scientific experiments people do get their DNA spliced with duller animals and
go on to try to become superheroes. It’s just that if you are Alpaca-Man and your only power is having really touchable, soft fur, your adventures generally aren’t that exciting and so you tend to get reported about less in the popular press.

  It’s interesting to note that one of the most bitter heroes that has ever existed was Cow-Man. Occasionally in comic books you can see him standing in the background in his black-and-white Holstein jumpsuit. He’ll be the one chewing the cud and muttering to himself, “One of these days a world-destroying deity will turn up who is lactose intolerant and then they’ll be begging for my help.”

  What made it even worse was that he’d never been invited to a dinner party or asked to play spin the bottle (please see Being Sick: Location—Your Own Mouth).

  * * *

  51

  THE CAVALRY ARRIVES

  Trudy and Grey stepped out of the Ministry car.

  “I escaped being captured.” Jack felt proud of himself.

  Trudy didn’t look impressed. “Do you ever think that maybe you wouldn’t need to escape all the time if you weren’t so dreadfully easy to capture?”

  Jack decided to ignore what Trudy had said and pretend that she had been congratulating him. “You’re right, Trudy, I am excellent at escaping. But I think saying that I could be the next Houdini might be going a bit too far.”

  Trudy punched Jack in the shoulder.101

  “There’ll be time enough for patting each other on the back later. Did you learn anything new?” Grey asked.

  Jack told them about his confrontation with the evil Regina Maris, queen of the Atlanteans. He explained her plot.

  “And they did kidnap your mum,” Jack finished.

  “You saw her?” asked Trudy.

  Jack shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not. She’s being held elsewhere by some kind of scientist, but when we capture Regina we can make her take us there.”