Of mice and monsters

Words 1492                                        Of mice and monsters                                    by Josh Stone Waters



         The knotty, stinking hands moved over the mans face and head feeling them, exploring them. He wrested and fought, trying to free a shoulder, an arm, anything to be able to turn out from under the weight of the beast upon him but to no avail. The large creature's torso pinned his own to the ground and it's arms (or rather the large legs that replaced it's arms, with twisted grizzled hands where the feet had been) leaned upon his shoulder with an irresistible strength coming from massive thigh muscles in the place of biceps.

         “Francis, stop, let me g-”

         The monster pinched his mouth closed with its corpulent rotten fingers as they wandered over his face taking it in curiously. It twisted its head like a curious Rottweiler and moved its mouth attempting to mimic his speech. No sound came out. Its brow furrowed in frustration and he let go of the mans mouth to hear some more of the noises.

         The man turned his head lose from the its relaxing grip. “It's okay, Francis, I'm not mad.” He spoke slowly, gently as to a child. “We'll buy you another harness.” The monster aped the lip movements but could not reproduce the sound. “But right now I need you to let me up, alright Francis? Nod your head and let me know you understand Francis.”

         The creature's frustration at not being able to make the sounds he liked changed to a broken, semi-toothless smile and he nodded. His hands crawled from the man's face up over his nose and eyes to his stringy blonde hair. As the searching fingers entangled themselves in it, rubbing it between them and feeling its softness, the smile turned into the breathy hawing of a laugh.

         “Yes. We like hair, don't we Francis? We like it. That's why we must let brother's hair go. Let it go and not hurt it. Just let it go and let me get up.”

         The beast's features began to darken and his eye narrowed as he left the man's hair with one of his deformed hands and reached to his own head scarred and bald. He rubbed back and forth on his scalp and, as he did, his face turned angry, visceral.

         “That's it, Francis, just let me go and we can put you back in the cage and brother will buy you-” It raised both it's legged arms up above its mangled head and slammed gnarled fists into the ground on either side of the man's head, fragmenting tile squares, and ran its face into his. Noses smashed together, brows parallel, gazes connected, it voicelessly howled a rancid gust and sickening drops of infection into the man's open, pleading mouth.

         “Don't do this, Francis, I-” The thing sat up and brought another hammer fist down on the man's turned up forearm, mashing it against the hard floor. He gnawed his lip at the pain, trying to retain a calm demeanor as he began to perspire. “Francis,” he choked out, “you can't act like this, Francis.  Brother is disappointed. You're being very bad, Francis. Bad.”

         The monster curled his lips and barred his uneven teeth. He grabbed the man around the neck with one arm and latched onto his injured wrist with the other. With a rapid panting, the freak wrenched on the arm, pulling it away from the man's body.

         “Francis, don't. You're hurting brother.” The ball of his shoulder came out of the socket with a snapping sound. His free arm flailed about, slapping the creature's side and slugging its shoulder over and over as if he'd forgotten there was no feeling in any of it- as if that hadn't been part of the design.          “Francis, stop, STOP, Fr-” As the creature bore down with all of the strength in the massive ham-hocks that were now his arms, the sinew and cords of the man's shoulder gave way beneath the grotesque torque and his arm slipped free of his body, pouring blood across the shattered tiles. He screamed a high pitched scream. Not the kind of scream that carries the hope someone will hear and come to your aid, but the sort of scream rooted in sheer agony and knowledge that you are about to die a nightmarish death. He screamed like this and continued to futilely assault the beast's side with ever more weakening blows. The monster turned to the mere annoyance and swatted it away before burying his face into the side of the mans neck.

         A gurgle, and then silence as the abomination ripped its head back opening the mans throat. The tender meat hadn't tasted nearly as good as it had smelled. He chewed it a bit and then spit it out as the jets of blood onto the floor grew weaker and weaker and finally stopped altogether. He sat for a moment waiting for brother to yell at him again. He always yelled at him. Brother was funny when he yelled. But the man neither spoke nor moved nor breathed. His pale empty body laid still, mouth open and eyes wide in shock fixed upon the ceiling.

         The monster beat on the mans chest with bloody palms, shook him side to side. Nothing. He ran his hands through his matted and now sticky hair. Nothing. He cradled his jaw in his hands and opened and closed the mouth, mushing the lips around into the shapes he had made noises with. Nothing. Its lips turned down and quivered and its eye reddened and softened and a dirty tear fell down one cheek.

         The beast stared at the body for a short while and hoisted himself up onto his legs that were really arms with feet where the hands had been and made his way across the laboratory, moving on all fours in the manner of an ape- past the chain and broken harness, past the open door of the cage, past the doberman on the operating table with its head open and half a brain missing- to the wooden desk. He stood up and and gazed into the large mirror behind it. Gazed at his face, his body. The reflection revealed a patchwork head, sewn together of several large pieces of flesh, jagged scarring in between. A line of stitching ran from his bald head down over his brow and along side his nose before cutting across his cheek toward where an ear used to be. The skin on that side of his face looked different than the rest. It had more hair. And there was a nipple where the eye should have been.

         Stitching around his shoulders connected thigh muscles to his upper body and hands to the calves. Likewise biceps and triceps jutted out of his buttocks running down to turned out feet. His one eyed reflection looking back at him, he reached out to touch the face in the mirror. Then he touched his own face, groping the chin nose and nipple-eye. He jumped up and down and guffawed a throaty, breathy cry and picked up the desk chair over head and plowed it into the mirror. The wooden chair shattered the mirror and continued through the wall. A long shard of reflective glass fell from the mirror frame to the desk where it knocked over a photograph. The monster saw it and brushed off the glass, picking up the photo. A four by six showed several people standing side by side and arms around shoulders with beautiful trees and lake behind them. On the left, the man who now laid on the floor dead. Beside him another man with a similar look to the first. The beast touched this man with a bloody finger. Beside him, a happy brunette laughing with her two children holding to her hand. The monster held the glass of the picture up to his nose and inhaled deeply, eyes closed, and blew out a hot burst of steam that fogged up the surface. He tapped his fingers over every person in the picture leaving blood prints on them. He held it up to the chest side of his face and rubbed it over it several times. He dropped the picture back to the desk and galloped over to the window. With little effort it was broken and the frame pushed out of the way. He pulled himself up to it and drank in the rain and the dark night. He sniffed the air till he caught the hint of something he recognized and, without hesitation, he bolted out the window and disappeared into the darkness.



         The next morning as police taped off and combed the scene of the gruesome crime for any sign of what had happened in the apparent makeshift laboratory, a detective lifted prints off of the stained frame of a photo. The inscription read, Me, Francis, Susanne, and the kids before the wreck.