Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings - Posts Tagged "the-humans-under-the-bed"
The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 2
The idea for THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came to me very quickly. I was driving, letting my mind drift off to that place where ideas live, as I often do, and the thought occurred to me to reverse the roles of people and monsters. I often write about monsters as antagonists, be them malevolent or misunderstood.
But I'd never attempted to create monster protagonists whom the reader would have to identify with, root for, and create an emotional connection to. This has been done in kids cartoons like Ahhh!!! Real Monsters, and movies like Monster's Inc. But as adult fiction? Who knows, everything's been done before, but I wanted to give my Kevin Strange spin on it either way.
I broke tradition, normally I won't start a new project until the one I'm working on is finished. But this idea solidified so quickly and furiously in my brain, I had to get it out while it was fresh. So I booked a hotel room and spent three days writing this story from the very first sentence to the last, in one long session.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED is my entry in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology, to be released in January 2014 by StrangeHouse Books, but I'm serializing it here on Goodreads to promote the upcoming anthology. Here's part 1 in case you missed it. Now, I proudly present to you, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, part 2:
***
Big Dex deflected a blow from a pair of humans with spinning buzz saws grafted to their chests using the body of the huge bearded man. The saws shot sparks all over the room as they connected with the gyroscope on his chest, causing an awful, high-pitched squealing noise.
Big Dex's tongue was still embedded into the man's forehead. It stretched across the human's head like a fleshy mohawk before it connected back into Big Dex's mouth another five or six feet away. The bearded human's mouth still hung slack as Big Dex controlled his limbs, having gained complete control of his nervous system. The monster crushed faces and stomped bodies into mush even as he controlled the burly man's reflexes, causing him to smash the two buzz saw-wielding humans with his mace arm (his other having already been sliced off, along with one of his legs). His intestines hung freely from a giant gash in his stomach, and he oozed blood from half a dozen different mortal wounds across his body.
Big Dex figured he could get a few more good kills out of the big man before he'd have to discard him and stab into the mind of another lunatic human. As much fun as he was having felling scores of these savages, he couldn't shake the feeling of dread from the revelations made inside the human's mind. He needed to find his children, and he needed to get them to safety. That's all that mattered.
That's when the machine crawled out of the ground.
It was actually five humans, but they each had machine parts grafted onto their already-modified bodies. A pair of them had their left and right arms removed, respectively. In their place were what looked like cannon barrels cut in half down the center. Another pair was missing either leg in much the same fashion, while the fifth had no lower body at all, just a cylindrical piece of technology grafted onto its trunk that resembled the base of a lightbulb.
The bizarre people began to lock these various pieces into place while servos spun and lights all across the weird machine blinked on and off. The legless human climbed up the half-formed machine and screwed itself into a round opening at the top, completing the unusual piece of machinery.
Big Dex already knew what it was: a weapon. A flesh cannon powerful enough to destroy any monster caught between its crosshairs.
The Overmind had created its monsters to eradicate humans. It made them immune to human weaponry. Guns, bullets, rockets, bombs, were all useless against the hoards of terror. These humans had developed new technology. Big Dex knew because the bearded man knew. He saw the memories of countless millions of experiments over hundreds of years as the beings dwelling below the monster city turned their very bodies into weapons capable of killing monsters.
Big Dex braced himself, grabbing the bearded man around the waist to use as a shield while extracting his tongue from his forehead at the same time. Lights along the sides of the machine all lit up green, and the human screwed into the top of it began to spin. Smoke wafted up off the man's body as he screamed, spun faster and faster, and then, without warning, melted down into the barrel, skin, bones, and all, leaving the metal exoskeleton to fall, discarded off to the side of the machine.
A blast of molten flesh exploded from the barrel. Big Dex ducked behind the bearded man as best he could. The screaming, flailing man, now finally back in control of his own body but held fast by the monster's huge claw, took almost all of the supercharged blast, turning him into a red smear across the monster's scaly chest. Big Dex howled in pain as he looked down to find that his enormous claw had been disintegrated in the blast. The heat of the fleshy plasma had cauterized his mangled stump instantly.
Another legless torso crawled from the hole in the floor.
Ammo, Big Dex thought. They're using their bodies as ammo. And if he didn't act soon, he'd be joining his bearded friend as a splatter on his son's bedroom wall.
But the crazed, vibrating things were relentless. Worse, they didn't seem to give shit number one about their own lives. It was as though they enjoyed sacrificing themselves in droves if it meant the death of even a single monster.
Big Dex couldn't let that happen. He had to find the children.
Before the monster could move, another dozen humans swarmed around his legs, digging their claws and teeth into his scaly flesh, while still others clamped down around his feet at the floor, trying to hold him in place as the next “bullet” screwed itself into the man-machine.
***
Seeing his daddy's hand melted off in the blink of an eye wiped the smile right off Dexy's face. He tried to scream, but Willex put her hand over his mouth.
“Don't,” she whispered. “If they can do that to Dad, what do you think they'll do to us?”
Dexy began to cry again.
Big Dex roared. He kicked the humans clinging to his legs like ticks against the wall, smashing them dead, only to have even more fling themselves onto his body. He cracked skulls and bit clean through exoskeletons, but the droves of animalistic humans proved to be too much for him.
The human bullet atop the flesh cannon spun and the lights along its sides turned green as Big Dex was pulled to the floor by at least fifteen naked, vibrating humans. As the bullet-man spun and melted, Dexy broke free of Willex's grasp and screamed out “Daddy!” just as the flesh cannon fired. Buxtak threw his bulk on top of the smaller monster to keep him from running directly into the bio-blast.
Big Dex's eye met with his son's just as the flesh bullet hit him, pulverizing the huge monster's body, along with those of the humans pinning him to the ground.
The sound of the blast muffled Dexy's cry. The humans—those few remaining alive—shuffled back into the pit from whence they came. The flesh cannon disassembled itself, joining the others in the hole in the floor. After only a moment, the bedroom was quiet once again.
“Daddy!” Dexy screamed again. He pulled himself out from under the larger monster's body and ran to where his father lay. Big Dex was crumpled in a heap, his back to his son. When Dexy rolled him over, the little monster gasped and fell on his butt. Half his father's face, his entire arm and most of his chest were just... gone. Black, burnt flesh was all that remained. Big Dex's eye was open and unfocused, glazed over. Lifeless.
Then the hulking beast coughed and shuddered. His eye focused. “Dexy,” he slurred.
“D-daddy...” the little creature said, voice hitching in his throat. He'd never had a reason to think his father anything but indestructible, a superhero. Seeing him prone and mangled was too much.
“C-come closer, Dexy.” The wounded monster pushed himself—with some difficulty—up onto his elbow and turned his body to face his son.
Dexy did as instructed, his little eye darting to his father's wounds and then back to his face, as though ashamed to look at what the humans had done to his beloved parent.
“I have to...show you... Then you have...to find your...mom and show her. Understand?”
“Sh-show me what?”
Big Dex's tongue split. The forked appendage snaked out. He took hold of it and jammed the end into Dexy's neck.
Then, in that moment, the young monster knew that the humans had their eyes pinned open to keep them from shutting them in the face of the monster race's absolute horror. Knew that the factory which produced the gyroscopic modifications grafted to every human being on the planet lay deep, deep underground and spanned, impossibly, the entire length of the continent. And knew just how many scores of billions of humans were down there building machine bodies and flesh weapons, their only purpose to eradicate the monsters from the face of the Earth or die trying.
Dexy knew everything.
***
When Willex and Buxtak finally chanced a glance around the corner of the rubble, Big Dex was dead. Dexy stood alone, his back to his fallen father.
The little fly-girl buzzed through the air, while the lumbering Buxtak trailed behind her. “I-is he…?”
“Yes,” Dexy said. A scowl adorned his features. He no longer looked like an innocent, scared child. He was calm. Focused. He very much resembled his father in that moment, as though some part of the ages-old monster had transferred into his young son when he opened his mind to his boy. “He's dead. They killed him. And they're out there now, killing everyone else we've ever known. Everyone we love. And they won't stop until they kill every last one of us, or die trying.”
Tears flowed down his sister's face. Her little mandible parts, constantly moving like an ecosystem all their own, licked the liquid all away as she knelt over the body of her dead father. Buxtak put his big hands on her tiny shoulders. “I'm so sorry, Willex.”
Dexy turned to face the other two young monsters. “We have to go. Mom needs to know what she's up against. She needs to know how many of these things there really are. What they plan to do.”
Willex wiped her tears away, only for more to stream down her face. “How do you know what they plan to do?”
“Daddy showed me.”
Buxtak stomped over to the window. Outside, the screams of dying monsters filled the air. As far as the big thing could see, humans slaughtered monsters. “If he couldn't fight them, what chance do we have out there? How do we even know where your mom is?”
“We have to try. Dad thinks Mom and the rest of the night patrol will make their last stand at the base of the Overmind. That's where we're going.”
“Buxtak's right,” Willex said. “We're just kids. If we go outside now, we won't last a minute. Any one of those... things could kill us without effort.”
“You're right,” Dexy conceded.
Buxtak rejoined the smaller creatures by their fallen father. “Best we hide and wait this out.”
“If we wait this out,” Dexy said, turning his attention to the human corpses littered about the room, “there won't be a world for us left out there.” He studied each of them intently before moving on to the next. “But you're right about one thing.” He stopped above one of the humans. Its neck was bent sideways. Its eyes were vacant. When Dexy poked its exposed pupil, the thing let out a cry, but did not move. It was paralyzed from the neck down.
“We do have to hide.”
***
“You're crazy,” Willex said. She hovered over her little brother, all six arms crossed in protest. “This will never work. You're going to get us killed, Dexy!”
The little monster was busy. He was using one of his sharp claws to carefully slice open the human's midsection at the stomach. “We're dead either way, sis.”
The human looked down in horror, screaming gibberish as Dexy peeled back its belly, exposing its vital organs. “Shut him up, will you? If they hear him, they'll swarm back in here and we'll be done for.”
Buxtak had been staring into the chasm in the middle of the bedroom floor. It was vast. The sounds of human screams and machinery echoed off the deep walls. He plodded over to Dexy and put one of his gigantic hands over the human's mouth, muffling his protests as the cyclops monster extracted his stomach and most of his intestines, discarding them onto the floor.
“Won't be needing those anymore, will you?” Dexy said, smirking.
After Dexy pulled out several more handfuls of guts, the human stopped screaming. It was pale and sweaty. It continued to jibber, but did so quietly now. It would die soon. Dexy just hoped it would hold out long enough...
“Ok, get him to his feet,” Dexy instructed.
Taking the human by the shoulders, Buxtak lifted it up and held it in place.
“I don't understand,” Willex said.
“Watch and learn, sis. This is gonna be awesome!” Dexy rubbed his hands together, and then crawled up into the human's flayed open stomach.
Willex watched, disgusted but fascinated. Nothing happened for a few moments, and then suddenly, the human's hand twitched. The thing looked down in horror as it flexed its fingers.
“Ok, now let go,” Dexy yelled from the human's guts, his voice muffled but excited.
Buxtak released his grip on the thing's shoulders. It slumped and fell forward, but at the last second caught itself, steadied and stood upright. It whipped back around to face the young monsters. “This is awesome!” the human said. Its speech was slurred and barely discernible. Blood oozed from its mouth and nose. Even though it smiled, its eyes were still filled with recognition and horror. It was not in control.
Dexy was. Curled up inside the empty guts of the dying human, Dexy had fished his pronged tongue up to the point where the human's neck had broken, and tapped into its spinal cord. He now operated the human's entire nervous system with his own mind.
They now had the perfect cover.
***
“I can't fit in there!” Buxtak said.
Willex poked her head outside the human stomach. Bits of intestine fell out and hit the bone floor with a soft splat. “You can change your size, silly!”
“I've never done that before!” Buxtak said, all ten of his eyeballs wide with fear atop the antler-like hands on his head. “My mom told me never to try that.”
“Why not?” the fly-girl asked.
“I don't know. She never said why. She just said not to meddle with things I wasn't smart enough to understand.”
“Concentrate,” Dexy said, speaking through the human's mouth. “I know you can do it.”
Buxtak sighed. He closed his eyes, balled his hands into fists and strained.
Nothing happened.
“Try again,” Dexy said.
Buxtak stomped around in place, cleared his throat and repeated. Again, nothing happened.
“Oh, brother,” Willex said. “This is a stupid idea.”
Buxtak hung his head in defeat. “Just leave me, guys. I'll stay here till the humans are gone. You don't need me anyway. I'm useless.”
“You're not useless,” Dexy said, grinning madly. “You're the key to my whole plan!”
The big monster looked confused. “How?”
“Don't worry about it. Look, I've got an idea,” Dexy said. He steered the human body over to the mess of steel and flesh that had been people before Big Dex got a hold of them. He rooted around in the pile for several moments before extracting a loop of twisted metal.
“Perfect!”
Dexy wrapped the metal loop around Buxtak's hands. “Now you're our prisoner.”
Buxtak smiled. He wanted to believe their plan would work. Wanted to trust in his little buddy. But inside, he knew they were all doomed.
Click here for part 3
But I'd never attempted to create monster protagonists whom the reader would have to identify with, root for, and create an emotional connection to. This has been done in kids cartoons like Ahhh!!! Real Monsters, and movies like Monster's Inc. But as adult fiction? Who knows, everything's been done before, but I wanted to give my Kevin Strange spin on it either way.
I broke tradition, normally I won't start a new project until the one I'm working on is finished. But this idea solidified so quickly and furiously in my brain, I had to get it out while it was fresh. So I booked a hotel room and spent three days writing this story from the very first sentence to the last, in one long session.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED is my entry in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology, to be released in January 2014 by StrangeHouse Books, but I'm serializing it here on Goodreads to promote the upcoming anthology. Here's part 1 in case you missed it. Now, I proudly present to you, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, part 2:
***
Big Dex deflected a blow from a pair of humans with spinning buzz saws grafted to their chests using the body of the huge bearded man. The saws shot sparks all over the room as they connected with the gyroscope on his chest, causing an awful, high-pitched squealing noise.
Big Dex's tongue was still embedded into the man's forehead. It stretched across the human's head like a fleshy mohawk before it connected back into Big Dex's mouth another five or six feet away. The bearded human's mouth still hung slack as Big Dex controlled his limbs, having gained complete control of his nervous system. The monster crushed faces and stomped bodies into mush even as he controlled the burly man's reflexes, causing him to smash the two buzz saw-wielding humans with his mace arm (his other having already been sliced off, along with one of his legs). His intestines hung freely from a giant gash in his stomach, and he oozed blood from half a dozen different mortal wounds across his body.
Big Dex figured he could get a few more good kills out of the big man before he'd have to discard him and stab into the mind of another lunatic human. As much fun as he was having felling scores of these savages, he couldn't shake the feeling of dread from the revelations made inside the human's mind. He needed to find his children, and he needed to get them to safety. That's all that mattered.
That's when the machine crawled out of the ground.
It was actually five humans, but they each had machine parts grafted onto their already-modified bodies. A pair of them had their left and right arms removed, respectively. In their place were what looked like cannon barrels cut in half down the center. Another pair was missing either leg in much the same fashion, while the fifth had no lower body at all, just a cylindrical piece of technology grafted onto its trunk that resembled the base of a lightbulb.
The bizarre people began to lock these various pieces into place while servos spun and lights all across the weird machine blinked on and off. The legless human climbed up the half-formed machine and screwed itself into a round opening at the top, completing the unusual piece of machinery.
Big Dex already knew what it was: a weapon. A flesh cannon powerful enough to destroy any monster caught between its crosshairs.
The Overmind had created its monsters to eradicate humans. It made them immune to human weaponry. Guns, bullets, rockets, bombs, were all useless against the hoards of terror. These humans had developed new technology. Big Dex knew because the bearded man knew. He saw the memories of countless millions of experiments over hundreds of years as the beings dwelling below the monster city turned their very bodies into weapons capable of killing monsters.
Big Dex braced himself, grabbing the bearded man around the waist to use as a shield while extracting his tongue from his forehead at the same time. Lights along the sides of the machine all lit up green, and the human screwed into the top of it began to spin. Smoke wafted up off the man's body as he screamed, spun faster and faster, and then, without warning, melted down into the barrel, skin, bones, and all, leaving the metal exoskeleton to fall, discarded off to the side of the machine.
A blast of molten flesh exploded from the barrel. Big Dex ducked behind the bearded man as best he could. The screaming, flailing man, now finally back in control of his own body but held fast by the monster's huge claw, took almost all of the supercharged blast, turning him into a red smear across the monster's scaly chest. Big Dex howled in pain as he looked down to find that his enormous claw had been disintegrated in the blast. The heat of the fleshy plasma had cauterized his mangled stump instantly.
Another legless torso crawled from the hole in the floor.
Ammo, Big Dex thought. They're using their bodies as ammo. And if he didn't act soon, he'd be joining his bearded friend as a splatter on his son's bedroom wall.
But the crazed, vibrating things were relentless. Worse, they didn't seem to give shit number one about their own lives. It was as though they enjoyed sacrificing themselves in droves if it meant the death of even a single monster.
Big Dex couldn't let that happen. He had to find the children.
Before the monster could move, another dozen humans swarmed around his legs, digging their claws and teeth into his scaly flesh, while still others clamped down around his feet at the floor, trying to hold him in place as the next “bullet” screwed itself into the man-machine.
***
Seeing his daddy's hand melted off in the blink of an eye wiped the smile right off Dexy's face. He tried to scream, but Willex put her hand over his mouth.
“Don't,” she whispered. “If they can do that to Dad, what do you think they'll do to us?”
Dexy began to cry again.
Big Dex roared. He kicked the humans clinging to his legs like ticks against the wall, smashing them dead, only to have even more fling themselves onto his body. He cracked skulls and bit clean through exoskeletons, but the droves of animalistic humans proved to be too much for him.
The human bullet atop the flesh cannon spun and the lights along its sides turned green as Big Dex was pulled to the floor by at least fifteen naked, vibrating humans. As the bullet-man spun and melted, Dexy broke free of Willex's grasp and screamed out “Daddy!” just as the flesh cannon fired. Buxtak threw his bulk on top of the smaller monster to keep him from running directly into the bio-blast.
Big Dex's eye met with his son's just as the flesh bullet hit him, pulverizing the huge monster's body, along with those of the humans pinning him to the ground.
The sound of the blast muffled Dexy's cry. The humans—those few remaining alive—shuffled back into the pit from whence they came. The flesh cannon disassembled itself, joining the others in the hole in the floor. After only a moment, the bedroom was quiet once again.
“Daddy!” Dexy screamed again. He pulled himself out from under the larger monster's body and ran to where his father lay. Big Dex was crumpled in a heap, his back to his son. When Dexy rolled him over, the little monster gasped and fell on his butt. Half his father's face, his entire arm and most of his chest were just... gone. Black, burnt flesh was all that remained. Big Dex's eye was open and unfocused, glazed over. Lifeless.
Then the hulking beast coughed and shuddered. His eye focused. “Dexy,” he slurred.
“D-daddy...” the little creature said, voice hitching in his throat. He'd never had a reason to think his father anything but indestructible, a superhero. Seeing him prone and mangled was too much.
“C-come closer, Dexy.” The wounded monster pushed himself—with some difficulty—up onto his elbow and turned his body to face his son.
Dexy did as instructed, his little eye darting to his father's wounds and then back to his face, as though ashamed to look at what the humans had done to his beloved parent.
“I have to...show you... Then you have...to find your...mom and show her. Understand?”
“Sh-show me what?”
Big Dex's tongue split. The forked appendage snaked out. He took hold of it and jammed the end into Dexy's neck.
Then, in that moment, the young monster knew that the humans had their eyes pinned open to keep them from shutting them in the face of the monster race's absolute horror. Knew that the factory which produced the gyroscopic modifications grafted to every human being on the planet lay deep, deep underground and spanned, impossibly, the entire length of the continent. And knew just how many scores of billions of humans were down there building machine bodies and flesh weapons, their only purpose to eradicate the monsters from the face of the Earth or die trying.
Dexy knew everything.
***
When Willex and Buxtak finally chanced a glance around the corner of the rubble, Big Dex was dead. Dexy stood alone, his back to his fallen father.
The little fly-girl buzzed through the air, while the lumbering Buxtak trailed behind her. “I-is he…?”
“Yes,” Dexy said. A scowl adorned his features. He no longer looked like an innocent, scared child. He was calm. Focused. He very much resembled his father in that moment, as though some part of the ages-old monster had transferred into his young son when he opened his mind to his boy. “He's dead. They killed him. And they're out there now, killing everyone else we've ever known. Everyone we love. And they won't stop until they kill every last one of us, or die trying.”
Tears flowed down his sister's face. Her little mandible parts, constantly moving like an ecosystem all their own, licked the liquid all away as she knelt over the body of her dead father. Buxtak put his big hands on her tiny shoulders. “I'm so sorry, Willex.”
Dexy turned to face the other two young monsters. “We have to go. Mom needs to know what she's up against. She needs to know how many of these things there really are. What they plan to do.”
Willex wiped her tears away, only for more to stream down her face. “How do you know what they plan to do?”
“Daddy showed me.”
Buxtak stomped over to the window. Outside, the screams of dying monsters filled the air. As far as the big thing could see, humans slaughtered monsters. “If he couldn't fight them, what chance do we have out there? How do we even know where your mom is?”
“We have to try. Dad thinks Mom and the rest of the night patrol will make their last stand at the base of the Overmind. That's where we're going.”
“Buxtak's right,” Willex said. “We're just kids. If we go outside now, we won't last a minute. Any one of those... things could kill us without effort.”
“You're right,” Dexy conceded.
Buxtak rejoined the smaller creatures by their fallen father. “Best we hide and wait this out.”
“If we wait this out,” Dexy said, turning his attention to the human corpses littered about the room, “there won't be a world for us left out there.” He studied each of them intently before moving on to the next. “But you're right about one thing.” He stopped above one of the humans. Its neck was bent sideways. Its eyes were vacant. When Dexy poked its exposed pupil, the thing let out a cry, but did not move. It was paralyzed from the neck down.
“We do have to hide.”
***
“You're crazy,” Willex said. She hovered over her little brother, all six arms crossed in protest. “This will never work. You're going to get us killed, Dexy!”
The little monster was busy. He was using one of his sharp claws to carefully slice open the human's midsection at the stomach. “We're dead either way, sis.”
The human looked down in horror, screaming gibberish as Dexy peeled back its belly, exposing its vital organs. “Shut him up, will you? If they hear him, they'll swarm back in here and we'll be done for.”
Buxtak had been staring into the chasm in the middle of the bedroom floor. It was vast. The sounds of human screams and machinery echoed off the deep walls. He plodded over to Dexy and put one of his gigantic hands over the human's mouth, muffling his protests as the cyclops monster extracted his stomach and most of his intestines, discarding them onto the floor.
“Won't be needing those anymore, will you?” Dexy said, smirking.
After Dexy pulled out several more handfuls of guts, the human stopped screaming. It was pale and sweaty. It continued to jibber, but did so quietly now. It would die soon. Dexy just hoped it would hold out long enough...
“Ok, get him to his feet,” Dexy instructed.
Taking the human by the shoulders, Buxtak lifted it up and held it in place.
“I don't understand,” Willex said.
“Watch and learn, sis. This is gonna be awesome!” Dexy rubbed his hands together, and then crawled up into the human's flayed open stomach.
Willex watched, disgusted but fascinated. Nothing happened for a few moments, and then suddenly, the human's hand twitched. The thing looked down in horror as it flexed its fingers.
“Ok, now let go,” Dexy yelled from the human's guts, his voice muffled but excited.
Buxtak released his grip on the thing's shoulders. It slumped and fell forward, but at the last second caught itself, steadied and stood upright. It whipped back around to face the young monsters. “This is awesome!” the human said. Its speech was slurred and barely discernible. Blood oozed from its mouth and nose. Even though it smiled, its eyes were still filled with recognition and horror. It was not in control.
Dexy was. Curled up inside the empty guts of the dying human, Dexy had fished his pronged tongue up to the point where the human's neck had broken, and tapped into its spinal cord. He now operated the human's entire nervous system with his own mind.
They now had the perfect cover.
***
“I can't fit in there!” Buxtak said.
Willex poked her head outside the human stomach. Bits of intestine fell out and hit the bone floor with a soft splat. “You can change your size, silly!”
“I've never done that before!” Buxtak said, all ten of his eyeballs wide with fear atop the antler-like hands on his head. “My mom told me never to try that.”
“Why not?” the fly-girl asked.
“I don't know. She never said why. She just said not to meddle with things I wasn't smart enough to understand.”
“Concentrate,” Dexy said, speaking through the human's mouth. “I know you can do it.”
Buxtak sighed. He closed his eyes, balled his hands into fists and strained.
Nothing happened.
“Try again,” Dexy said.
Buxtak stomped around in place, cleared his throat and repeated. Again, nothing happened.
“Oh, brother,” Willex said. “This is a stupid idea.”
Buxtak hung his head in defeat. “Just leave me, guys. I'll stay here till the humans are gone. You don't need me anyway. I'm useless.”
“You're not useless,” Dexy said, grinning madly. “You're the key to my whole plan!”
The big monster looked confused. “How?”
“Don't worry about it. Look, I've got an idea,” Dexy said. He steered the human body over to the mess of steel and flesh that had been people before Big Dex got a hold of them. He rooted around in the pile for several moments before extracting a loop of twisted metal.
“Perfect!”
Dexy wrapped the metal loop around Buxtak's hands. “Now you're our prisoner.”
Buxtak smiled. He wanted to believe their plan would work. Wanted to trust in his little buddy. But inside, he knew they were all doomed.
Click here for part 3
The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 3
NOTE: if you're impatient like me, and don't want to wait for two, possibly three more weeks of installments, you can buy THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED in its entirety on Kindle Here or in paperback Here.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED was meant for a very prestigious anthology. I can't discuss the details, because to my knowledge, it is still in consideration for said anthology (they accept reprints, which is why you're reading it now, and why it's being included in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology). At any rate, I was asked to write the weirdest, coolest bizarro novelette I could imagine, and turn it in inside a month's time.
Problem was, I was in the middle of the most grueling tour of my career, going three solid months without a single day off from work and/or the road doing horror cons on the weekends, nearly every weekend, all summer long. So I looked at the calendar and saw that I had a single weekend free three weeks down the road.
I booked a room at a cheap Travel Lodge in Springfield, Illinois, roughly an hour's drive from where I lived at the time. That way, I couldn't just get bored and drive home without considerable hassle. So when the weekend came, I drove up and checked in, only to find that the night clerk, an elderly, soft spoken man, was also a writer. A novelist even. And he loved to write horror stories. He was obsessed with ghosts and told me all about a little dead girl who roamed the hallways and sometimes stared at him from atop the ornate spiral staircase that led up to the rooms.
Needless to say, that was just about the most awesome start to my first ever marathon writing weekend I could have possibly hoped for.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came easy after that. I wrote the entire 13,000 word novelette in about a day and a half, including a complete read through/second draft. It was very odd, sequestered away in a haunted lodge, absolutely no human contact, writing about monsters and twisted metal cyborg humans who talk funny. But at the end of the weekend, after I left the lodge and headed back home, the sense of accomplishment I felt was enormous, more so than any other writing project I'd ever worked on, because it all happened at once. I walked in with nothing, I walked out with a fully fleshed out bizarro novelette, ready for submission (after editor Sean Ferrari fixed my awful grammar, of course).
I haven't done another marathon since, but the urge has been building up inside me. I need to get back to that haunted lodge. I need to chat with the old man ghost writer again. And more than anything, I need to feel that overwhelming sense of accomplishment.
***
This is the third installment of THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED. The story gets really fun at this point, as the kids explore their monster powers, and some human characters are introduced. I had little idea of how I was going to write the humans as antagonists until I wrote right up to this point. I got an idea in my head to use a particular cadence from a particular kids television show right as I was about to write the first human's line. I almost chickened out, as it would certainly add an element of silliness that I wasn't sure the story warranted.
Looking back, however, I couldn't see these weird cyborgs written any other way. Bonus points to anyone who can name the TV show their peculiar way of speaking was lifted from. Here's part 3, gang. Enjoy:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Crug of the clan Crug was dying, but lucid. He had wished for a glorious death on the battlefield, like he was raised to believe he'd get when his people rose once again to the surface world that was ripped from their grasp by the Evil Things. He never imagined his guts would be infested with tiny Evil, that he'd be held hostage in his own mind while Evil masqueraded as the mighty Crug. If only he could reach up and push the button. The button would put an end to the tiny Evil. Songs would be sung about his heroic death by the Crug clan forever if he could just take back his body from the tiny Evil for one second.
Push the button.
Boom.
***
Dexy and Buxtak crawled out the window. Blood streamed out of the foot-long wound in the human's stomach as Dexy marched it forward, swaying back and forth, still trying to learn how to walk with human legs.
The monster city was in ruins. Acrid smoke billowed up from a thousand scorch marks across its creeping flesh, choking the children, causing their eyes to water and their noses to sting. Neon blood from trench-like gashes turned the green river streets purple and black. All around the little monsters, screams of death, screams of agony and victory assaulted their senses.
The Overmind loomed in the distance. Its all-seeing eyeball still glowed blood-red, a beacon of hope in a sea of apocalyptic chaos. How could it let this happen? How had it not known the human scourge still lurked below the surface?
Dexy and Buxtak looked at each other and gulped. No sooner had they begun to trudge forward toward the Overmind when a warbling voice stopped them in their tracks.
“You there! Stop!”
Dexy turned around to face a group of humans: three regulars and six pieces of a flesh cannon, including two bullets. They'd barely made it out of their house and already they'd been spotted by an assault team.
“What is this monster which is not to be alive doing with you alive?” the leader of the assault team asked. He was a short, stocky human with metal spikes protruding from his bald skull like porcupine quills.
“He is...my prisoner!” Dexy managed. The human's tongue was swelling from trauma and blood loss. Its body was going into shock, making its muscles rigid.
“The law states that we take no prisoners because of that which the law states!” said another short human. This one female with rows of steel rings buried into the flesh of her large breasts.
“I know this one,” a piece of the flesh cannon said. One of the bullets. It walked forward on its hands. “He is Crug from the clan Crug, which I know as Crug from the clan Crug. What is wrong with your body, Crug?”
“I was wounded by this one... in battle with this one?” Dexy said, trying to imitate the peculiar cadence of the human's speech. He began to panic, and as he panicked, his focus wavered.
The left hand of the human twitched; subtly at first, then in jerking spasms, trying to lift itself up. Dexy used the right hand to push it back down into place.
“It looks like glorious death will soon be upon you, who I know as Crug from the clan Crug. Why not take the tiny Evil's head as a trophy to take with you to the great machine beyond which is what awaits you after glorious death?”
Buxtak looked at Dexy, terrified.
“What's happening? I can't see anything!” Willex said, squirming inside the human's empty belly.
“Shut up! I can't concentrate when you're talking to me!” Dexy said, losing more control of the human by the second.
“Ok,” Dexy said. “I'll just- EVIL! EVIL INSIDE ME! I'll just- EVIL! -take this one back into the- EVIL THINGS! -house and kill him in there.”
“No,” the spike-headed human said, his eyes resting on the human's hand, still jerking. “Crug of the clan Crug will kill the tiny Evil here because that is what we've told Crug to do.”
That's when the hand broke free of Dexy's grasp. It touched a series of spots on the spinning gyro embedded in its chest. The gyro stopped spinning and popped open, revealing a button within. The hand touched it and the human exploded.
***
For the second time in a day, Dexy woke up blind. He was sure this time was for real. He blinked and blinked, but all he could see was blackness. He couldn't move, either. Maybe this was death? Didn't seem so glorious.
“DESTROY THE TINY EVIL!”
Nope, not dead. But blind and paralyzed? Might as well be dead.
Then Buxtak climbed off him. Not blind or paralyzed. But when he saw what was happening, he wished he was.
The flesh cannon was forming itself, locking all the pieces in place while the bullet climbed atop the contraption. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ring-breasted human held Willex in her hand, holding her out triumphantly like a trophy. The spike-headed human lay dead on the ground: the blast from Crug of the clan Crug's body had sent shrapnel in all directions, impaling Spike Head in four or five different places, including his face, right between his eyes.
Buxtak was unharmed. He charged the ring-breasted human, tearing Willex from her grasp, tossing her back toward the spot where Dexy lay.
Ring Breasts sunk her metal claws into Buxtak's side as her remaining companion did the same. They dug their feet into the ground as the flesh cannon powered up. They were about to do to Buxtak what they'd done to Big Dex.
“We have to help him, Willex!” Dexy said in a panic.
“We're just kids!” she screamed back. “We can't fight!”
Dexy grabbed his sister by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. His face was his father's face in that instant. “You know what to do!”
***
Dexy sprinted toward the humans as fast as his little legs could take him. He let out a roar that sounded more akin to a squeak and leaped into the air, landing on the back of Ring Breasts. He stuck out his tongue, letting it part, and jabbed the forked prong right into the top of her head, slicing through bone, piercing her brain.
Instantly, the human went rigid and then let go of her death grip on Buxtak. She reached down and pried her companion—a skinny man with twin blades grafted to his forearms in place of actual hands—off the little monster as well, tossing him to the ground. “Now, Willex!” Dexy screamed with Ring Breast's voice.
“I-I can't,” she stammered. “What if I can't find myself again?”
“Mom does it all the time!”
“Well I haven't done it EVER!” the little fly-girl cried.
There was no more time to argue. The first bullet-man melted into the barrel and the flesh cannon fired its shot. All three monsters were able to jump out of the way just in time, and the blast instead hit the outer wall of their house, turning it to mush, causing the structure to collapse before their eyes.
Dexy—riding atop the ring-breasted human like a horse—and Buxtak climbed to their feet as the second bullet began to screw itself into place.
“Willex!” Dexy screamed. “We can't do it without you!”
“OK!” the fly-girl said. She rose into the air above the dazed human with blades on his forearms. He too climbed to his feet, screamed a warbled war cry and charged Dexy and Buxtak, intent on keeping them away from the flesh cannon long enough for it to fire again.
Willex took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and broke apart.
Blade Arms jumped into the air and struck out in a downward fashion, causing Dexy to pull Ring Breasts' arms up in a defensive posture. The move deflected the blow, but not without severing her right arm at the elbow. She stared at the severed limb—now dangling by a single ligament—in disbelief, drool running from her mouth, unable to so much as scream out from the agonizing pain.
Blade Arms reared back to attack again, when a fly buzzed in front of his face, distracting him. He waved at it annoyingly with a blade arm, but another took its place. Then another, and another. Little flies buzzed all around the metal-human's head until he was completely engulfed in insects.
They didn't stop with his head. Soon, more and more flies swarmed around his arms, his chest and finally his legs, until the human was completely concealed within a thick layer of buzzing, writhing little fly monsters.
“Is this what you wanted?” the flies said in unison, a million little Willex voices speaking at once.
Dexy smiled and roared again, but as he turned to lead the charge toward the flesh cannon, the bullet atop its multi-segmented barrel spun and melted down. The blast was aimed directly at the little monsters.
There was no time to evade.
***
Dexy shut his eyes and prepared to be disintegrated where he stood, his only hope that his body, along with the ring-breasted human, would absorb enough of the impact to spare Willex's life. That's when Buxtak jumped in front of him and, without hesitation, grew to over ten feet tall in the blink of an eye. The giant monster turned and braced himself as the blast met him right in the middle of his back.
But a funny thing happened.
Buxtak didn't disintegrate. His flesh didn't melt away. The superheated expulsion of liquid human bounced right off of him and back toward the flesh cannon itself. The spray covered the bodies of the machine, burning their fleshy parts slowly. They howled in agony as the gunk burned through their skin, then muscle, through bone, until finally melting their lungs and vocal chords, putting an abrupt end to their protests.
Dexy and Willex stared at Buxtak in disbelief. The big monster looked more surprised than anyone. “I'm not...dead?” he stammered out, as he shrank back down to his normal size.
“No, big buddy. You're invincible,” Dexy said, beaming with pride.
“What do we do with the humans?” Willex asked, walking the blade-armed man around, swinging his blades through the air.
“We'll kill them, and continue with our plan,” Dexy said. “This time I won't mess it up.”
Tapping the same series of spots Crug pressed in the gyroscopic circle at Ring Breasts' chest, Dexy opened the secret compartment and tore out the self-destruct button, preventing another Crug episode.
“Aw, man. I was just getting good at this! You get to do all the cool stuff!” Willex said.
Suddenly, Blade Arms started to shake. His screams penetrated the thick layer of flies swarming his body. Blood began gushing out from in between the little flies, and then, just as quickly as they'd swarmed him, all the flies darted off his body at once, leaving nothing more than clean white bones and metal exoskeleton in their wake.
The flies had eaten him so quickly, his bones still shook where they stood for a moment longer before collapsing to the ground in a heap.
“Willex?” Dexy said, growing uneasy after she hadn't reformed into her real body after several minutes had gone by. “Sis? Can you hear me?”
Flies buzzed around, but there seemed to be no focus to their flight pattern. Dexy panicked. “Willex! You have to come back! You have to remember who you are!”
“Chill out, little bro,” Willex said, reforming instantly behind him. She burped and rubbed her tummy. “Remind me to eat humans more often. They're tasty!”
***
With Buxtak gaining control of his size, he was able to shrink down small enough so that all three monsters fit snugly inside the stomach of the ring-breasted human—after they'd extracted most of her innards, of course. They trudged along inside Ring Breasts for several miles.
The vast devastation of their beautifully horrific city caused Willex to start crying again.
Flesh cannons ten times the size of those the children had encountered thus far boomed in the distance. Those machines must have required a hundred or more men to construct the bio-mechanical weapons. Explosions rocked the sky, blasting their fellow monsters blessed with flight right out of the air.
The death was nearly palpable. The scent of it—of mutilated corpses both human and monster—created a dampness to the air they breathed. A silent dread grew stronger with every step they took. And still, the Overmind's eye glowed strong as ever.
A rumbling behind them caused the little monsters to stop. What this time? Some new death machine to delay their voyage further?
Worse.
It was the army. The fighting forces of humans were all converging together into one gigantic legion of millions and millions. And they all walked toward the Overmind. This was it. The humans would overtake the Overmind with the sheer vastness of their numbers, like an entire colony of ants overwhelming a bird or lizard.
The gargantuan army marched right past the monsters, paying the bleeding, ring-breasted woman with the huge gash in her stomach and less an arm no mind.
The monsters fell in line and marched along with the humans. They were, after all, headed to the same place.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED was meant for a very prestigious anthology. I can't discuss the details, because to my knowledge, it is still in consideration for said anthology (they accept reprints, which is why you're reading it now, and why it's being included in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology). At any rate, I was asked to write the weirdest, coolest bizarro novelette I could imagine, and turn it in inside a month's time.
Problem was, I was in the middle of the most grueling tour of my career, going three solid months without a single day off from work and/or the road doing horror cons on the weekends, nearly every weekend, all summer long. So I looked at the calendar and saw that I had a single weekend free three weeks down the road.
I booked a room at a cheap Travel Lodge in Springfield, Illinois, roughly an hour's drive from where I lived at the time. That way, I couldn't just get bored and drive home without considerable hassle. So when the weekend came, I drove up and checked in, only to find that the night clerk, an elderly, soft spoken man, was also a writer. A novelist even. And he loved to write horror stories. He was obsessed with ghosts and told me all about a little dead girl who roamed the hallways and sometimes stared at him from atop the ornate spiral staircase that led up to the rooms.
Needless to say, that was just about the most awesome start to my first ever marathon writing weekend I could have possibly hoped for.
THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came easy after that. I wrote the entire 13,000 word novelette in about a day and a half, including a complete read through/second draft. It was very odd, sequestered away in a haunted lodge, absolutely no human contact, writing about monsters and twisted metal cyborg humans who talk funny. But at the end of the weekend, after I left the lodge and headed back home, the sense of accomplishment I felt was enormous, more so than any other writing project I'd ever worked on, because it all happened at once. I walked in with nothing, I walked out with a fully fleshed out bizarro novelette, ready for submission (after editor Sean Ferrari fixed my awful grammar, of course).
I haven't done another marathon since, but the urge has been building up inside me. I need to get back to that haunted lodge. I need to chat with the old man ghost writer again. And more than anything, I need to feel that overwhelming sense of accomplishment.
***
This is the third installment of THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED. The story gets really fun at this point, as the kids explore their monster powers, and some human characters are introduced. I had little idea of how I was going to write the humans as antagonists until I wrote right up to this point. I got an idea in my head to use a particular cadence from a particular kids television show right as I was about to write the first human's line. I almost chickened out, as it would certainly add an element of silliness that I wasn't sure the story warranted.
Looking back, however, I couldn't see these weird cyborgs written any other way. Bonus points to anyone who can name the TV show their peculiar way of speaking was lifted from. Here's part 3, gang. Enjoy:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Crug of the clan Crug was dying, but lucid. He had wished for a glorious death on the battlefield, like he was raised to believe he'd get when his people rose once again to the surface world that was ripped from their grasp by the Evil Things. He never imagined his guts would be infested with tiny Evil, that he'd be held hostage in his own mind while Evil masqueraded as the mighty Crug. If only he could reach up and push the button. The button would put an end to the tiny Evil. Songs would be sung about his heroic death by the Crug clan forever if he could just take back his body from the tiny Evil for one second.
Push the button.
Boom.
***
Dexy and Buxtak crawled out the window. Blood streamed out of the foot-long wound in the human's stomach as Dexy marched it forward, swaying back and forth, still trying to learn how to walk with human legs.
The monster city was in ruins. Acrid smoke billowed up from a thousand scorch marks across its creeping flesh, choking the children, causing their eyes to water and their noses to sting. Neon blood from trench-like gashes turned the green river streets purple and black. All around the little monsters, screams of death, screams of agony and victory assaulted their senses.
The Overmind loomed in the distance. Its all-seeing eyeball still glowed blood-red, a beacon of hope in a sea of apocalyptic chaos. How could it let this happen? How had it not known the human scourge still lurked below the surface?
Dexy and Buxtak looked at each other and gulped. No sooner had they begun to trudge forward toward the Overmind when a warbling voice stopped them in their tracks.
“You there! Stop!”
Dexy turned around to face a group of humans: three regulars and six pieces of a flesh cannon, including two bullets. They'd barely made it out of their house and already they'd been spotted by an assault team.
“What is this monster which is not to be alive doing with you alive?” the leader of the assault team asked. He was a short, stocky human with metal spikes protruding from his bald skull like porcupine quills.
“He is...my prisoner!” Dexy managed. The human's tongue was swelling from trauma and blood loss. Its body was going into shock, making its muscles rigid.
“The law states that we take no prisoners because of that which the law states!” said another short human. This one female with rows of steel rings buried into the flesh of her large breasts.
“I know this one,” a piece of the flesh cannon said. One of the bullets. It walked forward on its hands. “He is Crug from the clan Crug, which I know as Crug from the clan Crug. What is wrong with your body, Crug?”
“I was wounded by this one... in battle with this one?” Dexy said, trying to imitate the peculiar cadence of the human's speech. He began to panic, and as he panicked, his focus wavered.
The left hand of the human twitched; subtly at first, then in jerking spasms, trying to lift itself up. Dexy used the right hand to push it back down into place.
“It looks like glorious death will soon be upon you, who I know as Crug from the clan Crug. Why not take the tiny Evil's head as a trophy to take with you to the great machine beyond which is what awaits you after glorious death?”
Buxtak looked at Dexy, terrified.
“What's happening? I can't see anything!” Willex said, squirming inside the human's empty belly.
“Shut up! I can't concentrate when you're talking to me!” Dexy said, losing more control of the human by the second.
“Ok,” Dexy said. “I'll just- EVIL! EVIL INSIDE ME! I'll just- EVIL! -take this one back into the- EVIL THINGS! -house and kill him in there.”
“No,” the spike-headed human said, his eyes resting on the human's hand, still jerking. “Crug of the clan Crug will kill the tiny Evil here because that is what we've told Crug to do.”
That's when the hand broke free of Dexy's grasp. It touched a series of spots on the spinning gyro embedded in its chest. The gyro stopped spinning and popped open, revealing a button within. The hand touched it and the human exploded.
***
For the second time in a day, Dexy woke up blind. He was sure this time was for real. He blinked and blinked, but all he could see was blackness. He couldn't move, either. Maybe this was death? Didn't seem so glorious.
“DESTROY THE TINY EVIL!”
Nope, not dead. But blind and paralyzed? Might as well be dead.
Then Buxtak climbed off him. Not blind or paralyzed. But when he saw what was happening, he wished he was.
The flesh cannon was forming itself, locking all the pieces in place while the bullet climbed atop the contraption. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ring-breasted human held Willex in her hand, holding her out triumphantly like a trophy. The spike-headed human lay dead on the ground: the blast from Crug of the clan Crug's body had sent shrapnel in all directions, impaling Spike Head in four or five different places, including his face, right between his eyes.
Buxtak was unharmed. He charged the ring-breasted human, tearing Willex from her grasp, tossing her back toward the spot where Dexy lay.
Ring Breasts sunk her metal claws into Buxtak's side as her remaining companion did the same. They dug their feet into the ground as the flesh cannon powered up. They were about to do to Buxtak what they'd done to Big Dex.
“We have to help him, Willex!” Dexy said in a panic.
“We're just kids!” she screamed back. “We can't fight!”
Dexy grabbed his sister by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. His face was his father's face in that instant. “You know what to do!”
***
Dexy sprinted toward the humans as fast as his little legs could take him. He let out a roar that sounded more akin to a squeak and leaped into the air, landing on the back of Ring Breasts. He stuck out his tongue, letting it part, and jabbed the forked prong right into the top of her head, slicing through bone, piercing her brain.
Instantly, the human went rigid and then let go of her death grip on Buxtak. She reached down and pried her companion—a skinny man with twin blades grafted to his forearms in place of actual hands—off the little monster as well, tossing him to the ground. “Now, Willex!” Dexy screamed with Ring Breast's voice.
“I-I can't,” she stammered. “What if I can't find myself again?”
“Mom does it all the time!”
“Well I haven't done it EVER!” the little fly-girl cried.
There was no more time to argue. The first bullet-man melted into the barrel and the flesh cannon fired its shot. All three monsters were able to jump out of the way just in time, and the blast instead hit the outer wall of their house, turning it to mush, causing the structure to collapse before their eyes.
Dexy—riding atop the ring-breasted human like a horse—and Buxtak climbed to their feet as the second bullet began to screw itself into place.
“Willex!” Dexy screamed. “We can't do it without you!”
“OK!” the fly-girl said. She rose into the air above the dazed human with blades on his forearms. He too climbed to his feet, screamed a warbled war cry and charged Dexy and Buxtak, intent on keeping them away from the flesh cannon long enough for it to fire again.
Willex took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and broke apart.
Blade Arms jumped into the air and struck out in a downward fashion, causing Dexy to pull Ring Breasts' arms up in a defensive posture. The move deflected the blow, but not without severing her right arm at the elbow. She stared at the severed limb—now dangling by a single ligament—in disbelief, drool running from her mouth, unable to so much as scream out from the agonizing pain.
Blade Arms reared back to attack again, when a fly buzzed in front of his face, distracting him. He waved at it annoyingly with a blade arm, but another took its place. Then another, and another. Little flies buzzed all around the metal-human's head until he was completely engulfed in insects.
They didn't stop with his head. Soon, more and more flies swarmed around his arms, his chest and finally his legs, until the human was completely concealed within a thick layer of buzzing, writhing little fly monsters.
“Is this what you wanted?” the flies said in unison, a million little Willex voices speaking at once.
Dexy smiled and roared again, but as he turned to lead the charge toward the flesh cannon, the bullet atop its multi-segmented barrel spun and melted down. The blast was aimed directly at the little monsters.
There was no time to evade.
***
Dexy shut his eyes and prepared to be disintegrated where he stood, his only hope that his body, along with the ring-breasted human, would absorb enough of the impact to spare Willex's life. That's when Buxtak jumped in front of him and, without hesitation, grew to over ten feet tall in the blink of an eye. The giant monster turned and braced himself as the blast met him right in the middle of his back.
But a funny thing happened.
Buxtak didn't disintegrate. His flesh didn't melt away. The superheated expulsion of liquid human bounced right off of him and back toward the flesh cannon itself. The spray covered the bodies of the machine, burning their fleshy parts slowly. They howled in agony as the gunk burned through their skin, then muscle, through bone, until finally melting their lungs and vocal chords, putting an abrupt end to their protests.
Dexy and Willex stared at Buxtak in disbelief. The big monster looked more surprised than anyone. “I'm not...dead?” he stammered out, as he shrank back down to his normal size.
“No, big buddy. You're invincible,” Dexy said, beaming with pride.
“What do we do with the humans?” Willex asked, walking the blade-armed man around, swinging his blades through the air.
“We'll kill them, and continue with our plan,” Dexy said. “This time I won't mess it up.”
Tapping the same series of spots Crug pressed in the gyroscopic circle at Ring Breasts' chest, Dexy opened the secret compartment and tore out the self-destruct button, preventing another Crug episode.
“Aw, man. I was just getting good at this! You get to do all the cool stuff!” Willex said.
Suddenly, Blade Arms started to shake. His screams penetrated the thick layer of flies swarming his body. Blood began gushing out from in between the little flies, and then, just as quickly as they'd swarmed him, all the flies darted off his body at once, leaving nothing more than clean white bones and metal exoskeleton in their wake.
The flies had eaten him so quickly, his bones still shook where they stood for a moment longer before collapsing to the ground in a heap.
“Willex?” Dexy said, growing uneasy after she hadn't reformed into her real body after several minutes had gone by. “Sis? Can you hear me?”
Flies buzzed around, but there seemed to be no focus to their flight pattern. Dexy panicked. “Willex! You have to come back! You have to remember who you are!”
“Chill out, little bro,” Willex said, reforming instantly behind him. She burped and rubbed her tummy. “Remind me to eat humans more often. They're tasty!”
***
With Buxtak gaining control of his size, he was able to shrink down small enough so that all three monsters fit snugly inside the stomach of the ring-breasted human—after they'd extracted most of her innards, of course. They trudged along inside Ring Breasts for several miles.
The vast devastation of their beautifully horrific city caused Willex to start crying again.
Flesh cannons ten times the size of those the children had encountered thus far boomed in the distance. Those machines must have required a hundred or more men to construct the bio-mechanical weapons. Explosions rocked the sky, blasting their fellow monsters blessed with flight right out of the air.
The death was nearly palpable. The scent of it—of mutilated corpses both human and monster—created a dampness to the air they breathed. A silent dread grew stronger with every step they took. And still, the Overmind's eye glowed strong as ever.
A rumbling behind them caused the little monsters to stop. What this time? Some new death machine to delay their voyage further?
Worse.
It was the army. The fighting forces of humans were all converging together into one gigantic legion of millions and millions. And they all walked toward the Overmind. This was it. The humans would overtake the Overmind with the sheer vastness of their numbers, like an entire colony of ants overwhelming a bird or lizard.
The gargantuan army marched right past the monsters, paying the bleeding, ring-breasted woman with the huge gash in her stomach and less an arm no mind.
The monsters fell in line and marched along with the humans. They were, after all, headed to the same place.
The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 4
This is the fourth in what will be a five part serialization of my newest novelette, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, which will appear in the StrangeHouse Books anthology STRANGE FUCKING STORIES in January. And can be purchased in its entirety in paperback and on Kindle here.
If you're late to the party, you can read parts one, two, and three, before you jump into part four, otherwise what follows will make no sense.
Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and, after the story concludes next week, give it a rating and a review. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Glory! Glory! Death! Death!” the humans cried. Their chant aligned with their marching: one word for every step. Ahead of the little monsters inside the body of Ring Breasts was a sort of platform, except made of humans. They were all conjoined at the limbs and contorted in such a way as to make a walking stage, allowing the commander of this particular section of the human army to stand over his troops and survey their movement.
The commander was twice the width of a normal human, because it was two humans. Grafted together at the face, shoulder, wrist, hip and ankle, and all encased in an oversized exoskeleton, the commander was both a male and a female.
“Your fathers!” the male head said. “And your fathers' fathers of those fathers of which we speak of!” the female head continued. They finished each other's sentences as though they shared the same brain. The way their heads were grafted together, maybe they did. “Generations of brave people slaved away in the factories beneath our feet full of brave people. They died of burns and smoke and worse things that they died of so that their sons and daughters would live to see THIS moment that is for their sons and daughters! So that the seed of their seed, the blood of their blood could march upon the Great Evil and SLAY the Great Evil in which they came to slay! Rid this once beautiful planet of the cancer that's smothered this beautiful planet's lush, life-giving force for five hundred years of smothering!”
“Destroy! Evil! Destroy! Evil!” the army chanted.
“Look upon the face of that which has a face upon which we look!” the generals said in unison, as the army descended into the valley that lay at the foot of the Overmind.
It stood taller than any mountain in the world. One glorious hunk of putrid flesh. The very worst, most awful thing ever to be dreamed up in the small, dark hours of the most imaginative human mind. The last time mankind looked upon its mighty visage, its mere presence had been enough to send them shrieking back the way they'd come, welcoming the teeth and claws and other horrors that awaited them, just so long as they never had to look at It again.
But these were not those humans. These creatures had somehow escaped the Overmind's wrath and created their own hell. Generation after generation of tortured souls living and dying with but one purpose: To look upon the face of the Overmind once again. Only this time, instead of shrieking madness, there were only howls of joy and chants of doom.
***
The army stopped at the base of the Overmind. They were close enough to the titanic horror that tentacles darted out from the mountain of flesh and snatched several of those humans unfortunate enough to be stationed at the front of the line. They were dragged into slobbering, fanged mouths, violently dismembered, and eaten for their troubles.
Dexy, Willex and Buxtak sat still inside Ring Breasts, doing their best human impression, trying to remain anonymous, knowing that a mistake like last time would mean certain death in front of this legion.
“Every single second that's passed since the Great Evil forced us down into the earth has led up to this second that is passing now!” the generals screamed. “We take the mountain from the Evil, we take the upper world back from the Evil that is the mountain!”
Just then, a spot in the front of the mountain peeled back, revealing a dark chasm. A dozen monsters emerged, the children's mothers among them. They descended the mountain, standing defiantly at the base, directly in front of the legion of millions of mechanically-enhanced humans.
They were all that was left of the monster resistance.
Suddenly, Willex burst from Ring Breasts' stomach, zipping across the heads of the humans in the front line of the army before they could react. “Momma!” she cried.
The little fly-girl slammed into her mother, gripping the larger fly monster made of fly monsters so tightly, she thought she might hug right through her mother's body.
But something was wrong.
“Momma?” Willex said. Blood dripped from her mother's mouth. The little girl looked over at Buxtak's nine-headed hydra-like mother. The eyes of her heads were lifeless. Blood oozed from their noses.
“No,” Willex said in a whisper. She jumped back just as metal hands ripped through the tops of the bodies of all dozen monsters. They tore the hollowed-out monster shells off like costumes, discarding their skins like so much garbage.
The human masquerading as the little monsters' mother stepped forward. Grafted to its head were six mini flesh cannons. “Victory is ours! I have just come from the bowels of the Great Evil from which I have come. It spoke to me! It said, 'it is finished!' We have WON the thing in which we came to WIN!”
The ranks of millions of humans cheered. One huge deafening warbled yell filled the air and hung there for a moment. The humans had indeed won. The Overmind had conceded defeat, and every last living monster had been wiped off the planet.
Except for three little kids. Unfortunately for the humans, one of those little kids was Buxtak the Destroyer of Worlds, the Scourge of Nations.
Buxtak the Invincible.
***
Ring Breasts' body erupted in a violent spray of flesh and metal as Buxtak grew. Tens of thousands of the closest humans to him were smashed in seconds as he continued to grow. The monster bellowed a low, mournful scream for his mother and grew larger still.
Buxtak was now taller even than the Overmind. His eyeball-tipped fingers touched the clouds. He stomped backwards and squashed ten thousand more as the army below him began to scatter. But the monumental beast did not purposefully attack the humans. He cried and he screamed, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He stumbled away from the war below, aimless, grieving. Mindless.
***
Dexy wasn't blind when he woke up this time. Dizzy, sure—being knocked unconscious three times in one day was enough to rattle even the hardiest of monsters. And he was in trouble. He blinked the darkness away, only to find himself surrounded by humans. A lot of humans. Lucky for him, they were all paying attention to the hulking behemoth stomping away from them, each step like an earthquake followed by thunder, when Buxtak screamed out for his mother.
Dexy took the opportunity to scramble between the humans' legs. He found cover under the corpses of several newly-squashed people. If they saw him, they'd rip him apart before he could finish what he'd come here for. What he'd seen inside his father's mind. He had to get to Willex, and fast. Before Buxtak made it to the ocean.
***
Willex broke apart again. It was hard to control the minds of millions of tiny fly monsters. But it was harder still to control her emotions. Every part of every one of those millions of tiny monsters wanted to see the gun-headed human dead. Willex imprinted all of her hatred and anger for the human race onto the being that killed her mother.
She flung herself at the human, turning herself into a long, flying tendril aiming for his stretched open grin. She planned to fly down his throat and turn him inside out. But he was fast. He dodged the attack, scooping up bits of monster and human gore off the ground as he did so, jamming the hunks of meat into the openings of the six guns on top of his head.
When she turned in the air to strike a second time, he fired all six shots in quick succession. His aim was good for three hits, blowing huge holes into Willex's flying tendril body, killing thousands of miniature versions of herself. While each death hurt, the little creatures bred just as quickly as they died, mating with each interlocking little fly version of herself, giving birth to two monsters to replace every one that died.
Just as Gun Head reloaded his weapons with gore, the flying tendril dispersed, leaving only a small trail of fly monsters in its wake.
“I want ten flesh cannons brought over here at once to the place that I am wanting flesh cannons. We can't let this one get away to a place which we do not know of. She's much more powerful than her size lets us know how powerful she is. Understand?” Gun Head glanced at the human to the left. “I said, do you understand what I asked about understanding what I said?”
The human turned its head and looked at him. Its eyeballs had been replaced by flies.
***
Dexy heard the screaming. He chanced a quick peek out from under his pile of corpses. He saw Willex fifty or so yards away closer to the base of the mountain. She'd encased another human. She was battling with the one who'd come out of their mother's corpse. She had him pinned to the ground, using a swarm of fly bodies to slowly suffocate him. His legs jerked back and forth helplessly as his entire torso was covered in fly monsters.
Dexy took the chance to scramble out of the corpse pile and take off running toward his sister. Most of the humans were forming flesh cannons and firing at Buxtak who still stomped around in aimless circles.
Most. Not all.
Dexy made it about twenty yards before a huge human with two additional arms grafted onto his hips stepped in his path. The little monster skidded to a halt. He gulped and put his hands out in surrender. “N-Now wait a second. You don't really want to kill me, do you? I'm just a kid!”
The human smiled even wider than his pinned back cheeks forced him to. “Gnarlack wants to kill all Evils, even tiny Evils, which is what Gnarlack has been commanded to kill by his commanders.”
Before the four-armed man could say more, a swarm of fly monsters attacked his head, completely enveloping it before scattering a moment later, leaving nothing but a clean skull to rattle around in its head cage. A second later, blood gushed up from its neck and the whole big human fell on its back.
Willex reformed in front of her little brother. “Why didn't you kill him?” she asked, anger spewing from her voice. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It's over, Dexy. We've lost. All we can do now is kill as many of them as we can before they overwhelm us.” She touched her brother on the shoulder. “It's what mom and dad would want us to do.”
Dexy smiled. “It's not over yet, sis. Fly me up to the top of Buxtak's head. I'll tell you everything.”
If you're late to the party, you can read parts one, two, and three, before you jump into part four, otherwise what follows will make no sense.
Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and, after the story concludes next week, give it a rating and a review. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Glory! Glory! Death! Death!” the humans cried. Their chant aligned with their marching: one word for every step. Ahead of the little monsters inside the body of Ring Breasts was a sort of platform, except made of humans. They were all conjoined at the limbs and contorted in such a way as to make a walking stage, allowing the commander of this particular section of the human army to stand over his troops and survey their movement.
The commander was twice the width of a normal human, because it was two humans. Grafted together at the face, shoulder, wrist, hip and ankle, and all encased in an oversized exoskeleton, the commander was both a male and a female.
“Your fathers!” the male head said. “And your fathers' fathers of those fathers of which we speak of!” the female head continued. They finished each other's sentences as though they shared the same brain. The way their heads were grafted together, maybe they did. “Generations of brave people slaved away in the factories beneath our feet full of brave people. They died of burns and smoke and worse things that they died of so that their sons and daughters would live to see THIS moment that is for their sons and daughters! So that the seed of their seed, the blood of their blood could march upon the Great Evil and SLAY the Great Evil in which they came to slay! Rid this once beautiful planet of the cancer that's smothered this beautiful planet's lush, life-giving force for five hundred years of smothering!”
“Destroy! Evil! Destroy! Evil!” the army chanted.
“Look upon the face of that which has a face upon which we look!” the generals said in unison, as the army descended into the valley that lay at the foot of the Overmind.
It stood taller than any mountain in the world. One glorious hunk of putrid flesh. The very worst, most awful thing ever to be dreamed up in the small, dark hours of the most imaginative human mind. The last time mankind looked upon its mighty visage, its mere presence had been enough to send them shrieking back the way they'd come, welcoming the teeth and claws and other horrors that awaited them, just so long as they never had to look at It again.
But these were not those humans. These creatures had somehow escaped the Overmind's wrath and created their own hell. Generation after generation of tortured souls living and dying with but one purpose: To look upon the face of the Overmind once again. Only this time, instead of shrieking madness, there were only howls of joy and chants of doom.
***
The army stopped at the base of the Overmind. They were close enough to the titanic horror that tentacles darted out from the mountain of flesh and snatched several of those humans unfortunate enough to be stationed at the front of the line. They were dragged into slobbering, fanged mouths, violently dismembered, and eaten for their troubles.
Dexy, Willex and Buxtak sat still inside Ring Breasts, doing their best human impression, trying to remain anonymous, knowing that a mistake like last time would mean certain death in front of this legion.
“Every single second that's passed since the Great Evil forced us down into the earth has led up to this second that is passing now!” the generals screamed. “We take the mountain from the Evil, we take the upper world back from the Evil that is the mountain!”
Just then, a spot in the front of the mountain peeled back, revealing a dark chasm. A dozen monsters emerged, the children's mothers among them. They descended the mountain, standing defiantly at the base, directly in front of the legion of millions of mechanically-enhanced humans.
They were all that was left of the monster resistance.
Suddenly, Willex burst from Ring Breasts' stomach, zipping across the heads of the humans in the front line of the army before they could react. “Momma!” she cried.
The little fly-girl slammed into her mother, gripping the larger fly monster made of fly monsters so tightly, she thought she might hug right through her mother's body.
But something was wrong.
“Momma?” Willex said. Blood dripped from her mother's mouth. The little girl looked over at Buxtak's nine-headed hydra-like mother. The eyes of her heads were lifeless. Blood oozed from their noses.
“No,” Willex said in a whisper. She jumped back just as metal hands ripped through the tops of the bodies of all dozen monsters. They tore the hollowed-out monster shells off like costumes, discarding their skins like so much garbage.
The human masquerading as the little monsters' mother stepped forward. Grafted to its head were six mini flesh cannons. “Victory is ours! I have just come from the bowels of the Great Evil from which I have come. It spoke to me! It said, 'it is finished!' We have WON the thing in which we came to WIN!”
The ranks of millions of humans cheered. One huge deafening warbled yell filled the air and hung there for a moment. The humans had indeed won. The Overmind had conceded defeat, and every last living monster had been wiped off the planet.
Except for three little kids. Unfortunately for the humans, one of those little kids was Buxtak the Destroyer of Worlds, the Scourge of Nations.
Buxtak the Invincible.
***
Ring Breasts' body erupted in a violent spray of flesh and metal as Buxtak grew. Tens of thousands of the closest humans to him were smashed in seconds as he continued to grow. The monster bellowed a low, mournful scream for his mother and grew larger still.
Buxtak was now taller even than the Overmind. His eyeball-tipped fingers touched the clouds. He stomped backwards and squashed ten thousand more as the army below him began to scatter. But the monumental beast did not purposefully attack the humans. He cried and he screamed, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He stumbled away from the war below, aimless, grieving. Mindless.
***
Dexy wasn't blind when he woke up this time. Dizzy, sure—being knocked unconscious three times in one day was enough to rattle even the hardiest of monsters. And he was in trouble. He blinked the darkness away, only to find himself surrounded by humans. A lot of humans. Lucky for him, they were all paying attention to the hulking behemoth stomping away from them, each step like an earthquake followed by thunder, when Buxtak screamed out for his mother.
Dexy took the opportunity to scramble between the humans' legs. He found cover under the corpses of several newly-squashed people. If they saw him, they'd rip him apart before he could finish what he'd come here for. What he'd seen inside his father's mind. He had to get to Willex, and fast. Before Buxtak made it to the ocean.
***
Willex broke apart again. It was hard to control the minds of millions of tiny fly monsters. But it was harder still to control her emotions. Every part of every one of those millions of tiny monsters wanted to see the gun-headed human dead. Willex imprinted all of her hatred and anger for the human race onto the being that killed her mother.
She flung herself at the human, turning herself into a long, flying tendril aiming for his stretched open grin. She planned to fly down his throat and turn him inside out. But he was fast. He dodged the attack, scooping up bits of monster and human gore off the ground as he did so, jamming the hunks of meat into the openings of the six guns on top of his head.
When she turned in the air to strike a second time, he fired all six shots in quick succession. His aim was good for three hits, blowing huge holes into Willex's flying tendril body, killing thousands of miniature versions of herself. While each death hurt, the little creatures bred just as quickly as they died, mating with each interlocking little fly version of herself, giving birth to two monsters to replace every one that died.
Just as Gun Head reloaded his weapons with gore, the flying tendril dispersed, leaving only a small trail of fly monsters in its wake.
“I want ten flesh cannons brought over here at once to the place that I am wanting flesh cannons. We can't let this one get away to a place which we do not know of. She's much more powerful than her size lets us know how powerful she is. Understand?” Gun Head glanced at the human to the left. “I said, do you understand what I asked about understanding what I said?”
The human turned its head and looked at him. Its eyeballs had been replaced by flies.
***
Dexy heard the screaming. He chanced a quick peek out from under his pile of corpses. He saw Willex fifty or so yards away closer to the base of the mountain. She'd encased another human. She was battling with the one who'd come out of their mother's corpse. She had him pinned to the ground, using a swarm of fly bodies to slowly suffocate him. His legs jerked back and forth helplessly as his entire torso was covered in fly monsters.
Dexy took the chance to scramble out of the corpse pile and take off running toward his sister. Most of the humans were forming flesh cannons and firing at Buxtak who still stomped around in aimless circles.
Most. Not all.
Dexy made it about twenty yards before a huge human with two additional arms grafted onto his hips stepped in his path. The little monster skidded to a halt. He gulped and put his hands out in surrender. “N-Now wait a second. You don't really want to kill me, do you? I'm just a kid!”
The human smiled even wider than his pinned back cheeks forced him to. “Gnarlack wants to kill all Evils, even tiny Evils, which is what Gnarlack has been commanded to kill by his commanders.”
Before the four-armed man could say more, a swarm of fly monsters attacked his head, completely enveloping it before scattering a moment later, leaving nothing but a clean skull to rattle around in its head cage. A second later, blood gushed up from its neck and the whole big human fell on its back.
Willex reformed in front of her little brother. “Why didn't you kill him?” she asked, anger spewing from her voice. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It's over, Dexy. We've lost. All we can do now is kill as many of them as we can before they overwhelm us.” She touched her brother on the shoulder. “It's what mom and dad would want us to do.”
Dexy smiled. “It's not over yet, sis. Fly me up to the top of Buxtak's head. I'll tell you everything.”
Strange Sayings
Pontifications of one Kevin Strange, cult film director come Hardcore-Bizarro author.
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