MonsterVille
Four

River woke up.

Which came as rather a surprise as he didn’t recall going to sleep in the first place, didn’t remember passing out either.

As the faint stirrings of consciousness returned he groaned and rolled over, beating his hands against the soft pillow his head was resting on. It was at that point he started to notice something wasn’t quite right. The pillow didn’t feel right, it certainly didn’t feel like his lumpy little pillow, and the sheets for that matter were so soft and comfortable, not scratchy at all.

For an instant he thought maybe he was in Madelina’s room, but her sheets were silky smooth and he had a tendency to slide around in them, honestly he had no idea how anyone could sleep in silk sheets while wearing slinky lingerie. How did they ever manage to stay in bed?

He wearily opened his eyes and yawned loudly as he rolled over and stretched out. He blinked the sleep from his eyes until blurred vision snapped into focus and he was left staring up at the stars. A ceiling filled with them.

Not tacky little glow in the dark stickers like kids stuck up, but mapped out constellations. The ceiling was filled with a life like replica of the night sky at its clearest and it had been done with such exquisite detail he felt a little gobsmacked to be staring up at it. It was also what brought him to the shocking realisation he had no idea where he was.

Unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar ceiling. He slowly sat up and looked around the otherwise empty room as he frowned and rubbed his head.

The last thing he remembered… no that couldn’t be right. He must have been having some weird dream. Was he at one of the sorority houses? Had Derrick dragged him to another all night kegger and tried to get him to hook up with some airhead? It wouldn’t have been the first time.

The last vestiges of sleep faded and River remembered his heartbreak, remembered Madelina and the soul crushing despair she had left in her wake. It consumed him and he huddled into himself as the thought of her left him in turmoil. Any thought of her tended to have that effect.

Almost to the point that he stopped wondering exactly where he was and what was going on, almost. The stunning constellations hovering overhead were just enough to draw him back into the here and now rather than dwelling on his painful recent history.

River threw off the sheets and swivelled till his legs hung off the side of the bed—his legs that were currently covered by a short purple and white skirt—the rest of the night came flooding back; the inexplicable burning car, the fight with Eric and Kieran, the search for help, and the town.

The Town.

River closed his eyes as he thought about that, about what he had seen. He must have hit his head when he bailed out of the car, or maybe the cold had just gotten to him and he was delusional. He delicately probed his skull for any signs of wounds or bleeding and found himself to be in good health more or less, the less part being the bruising along his wrists as if someone had grabbed him in an ironclad grip, there was also the small matter of the scrapes along his knees. That added up to his falling out of the SUV so he was pretty sure that had happened, but the rest of it?

He shook his head again while he tried to make sense of it. In the end he decided there wasn’t much he could do from bed, the only way to figure it out was to get out of bed and go see what was happening.

What he really needed to do was replace Derrick and the others, make sure they were ok. A prospect made more difficult by the stinging pain in his feet when he ever so gently settled them on the floor. He winced at the discomfort before he looked at his cut, bruised, rubbed raw and blistered feet. Right. Apparently running along miles of road bare foot was going to leave a guy feeling less than a hundred per cent. He would chalk it up to numbness the night before that had let him keep going when every step should have been agonising. Still he couldn’t do anything from bed. He needed to get up even if it sucked.

Apparently someone else had the same idea; tucked along one side of the bed were a pair of soft flip flop slippers. They were a touch big but the cushioning made walking ten times less painful than his bare feet slapping against the hard wood floors.

River gingerly stood up and took a test step, he winced slightly, but it was tolerable so he made for the door which brought him into a long corridor that was filled to the brim with art. Literally every exposed surface along the hallway had a painting or drawing wedged into it. There was no unifying style or imagery, there were glorious oil paintings of impressive scenery hung beside charcoal drawings of animals, styles ranges from expressionist to postmodern, there were portraits of women and men, some of which were disturbingly designed. Claws, teeth, fangs, mottled skin…

River shuddered at the painting of the mottled man, it stirred disturbing memories that he knew must have been a bad dream. It couldn’t have been anything else.

River followed the hallway to a flight of stairs that proved a touch challenging given his battered state but after a few winces and muffled groans he managed to make his way into a lounge room/extension of the art gallery.

Where the hallway had been a mishmash of odds and ends, random styles and forays into experimentation the lounge was specific, targeted even. There was a white leather couch in the centre of the room, a large ornate fire place set into one wall and a luxurious fur rug covered the space in-between. Above the fireplace was a painting that took River’s breath away, it was beautifully terrifying in a raw primal sense.

It was a dark painting of a petite woman with auburn brown hair and piercing brown eyes, her skin was a cool white and her expression—it was ravenous. There was no other way to describe it except that the woman looked like she was starving, as if you were about to be her next meal.

She had been painted in the midst of a forest, dark and shadowy with a hint of snow dusting the tree tops. Beautifully terrifying was truly the only way to describe it.

He glanced around the rest of the room and all of the paintings were of the same woman in differing styles, in paints, in pencils and charcoals, she had been captured from every angle, every facet. In each piece she was posed differently, styled differently, she wore different clothes, stood or sat in different settings but the eyes never changed. In every picture she looked starving, ravenous.

“Beautiful isn’t she?” the voice startled River and he jumped, which he regretted as his feet flared up and he was forced to wince yet again.

He turned to see a young woman leaning against a door frame; she looked wistfully towards the portrait over the fire place and smiled faintly. She looked tired. Her skin was pale as if she had recently been sick and her ash blonde hair was slightly slicked to her skin, a touch damp, as if she had been sweating, her soft blue eyes were enraptured by the painting and River wondered if maybe she wasn’t leaning against the doorframe out of an artistic desire to pose but because she needed the frame to help support her.

“Yes.” River agreed, “Did you paint it?” he asked, making a small gesture towards her hands which were covered in various shades of paint. The woman nodded softly. “You painted them all?”

“I have a lot of free time,” she explained as she pushed away from the door frame. “So, I guess you’ve got a few questions?”

“Ah yeah,” he ran a hand back through his unkempt hair as he tried to gather his thoughts, “Where am I? And where are my friends?” he asked.

Rather than answer she made her way into the room and took a seat on the leather couch, she patted the spot beside her and River sat down.

“You’re very calm,” she said.

“I shouldn’t be?”

She shrugged, “You’re either in shock or you’re an idiot.”

“Thanks?” he replied quizzically.

“You don’t remember what happened yesterday do you?” she asked.

“I thought you said I must have a lot of questions,” River responded.

“I did,” she agreed, “I didn’t say I’d be answering them.”

“Yeah, ok. I think I’m going to leave now, but thanks, really, this has been great.”

“You’re going to leave before I tell you about your friends?”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be answering my questions.” He pointed out.

“I didn’t say I would be, I didn’t say I wouldn’t be.” She corrected him. “I’m doing this all wrong,” she sighed, “let’s start again. What do you remember about yesterday?”

“Ah, me and my friends were on a road trip and our car broke down?” he offered, “Derrick and I went looking for help and found a town,” he paused as the image of a woman with the most intense and inhuman eyes he had ever seen flitted through his mind. “I think I must have hit my head when the car went off the road, everything else is a little a fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy,” she remarked. “Or something that just sound a little unbelievable?” River didn’t respond. “Ok here goes,” she breathed out, “I’ve never explained this to anyone before so bear with me.”

“Sure?” he said half-heartedly.

“What you saw was real.”

“What I saw?” he repeated.

“Don’t play dumb, it’ll just make this harder than it already is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” River insisted, that nagging feeling of dread welled up inside him again. She couldn’t mean the diner could she? That was just a bizarre tripped out dream, it couldn’t be real, she couldn’t mean that was real, if she did then she was off her meds, bonkers, crazy, nuts. People’s faces didn’t just melt off.

She looked like she was struggling to replace the right words and in the end she must have decided the easiest way for him to accept her crazy was just to blurt it out.

“They were monsters.”

“Monsters…” he repeated slowly, “Ooook. Definitely time to go.” River stood up despite the discomfort and despite the fact he was still wearing a cheerleading uniform, “Which way is the door? Never mind. I’ll replace it.” He picked a doorway at random and headed towards it.

Her voice stopped him cold. “If you go outside they’ll kill you.”

River froze, his blood turned to ice and chills shot down his spine. It wasn’t so much what she had said as the way she said it. She could have spurted off any random crazy talk and he could have ignored it provided she sounded crazy. The problem was she didn’t sound crazy, her voice was level, calm, and she sounded deadly serious to the point that the primal part of his brain accepted the words as truth while the supposedly rational part of his mind tried to tell him she was crazy and that he needed to get out of there, needed to replace his friends.

The rational part of his mind won, the primal part may have screamed with instincts based on millennia of experience passed from generation to generation but in the twenty first century human beings were all too adept at suppressing their better instincts, at ignoring the little voice that would save their life if they just listened to it.

She didn’t say anything else, didn’t try to stop him, she just let him go. He found a big wooden door and surprisingly found it unlocked, he pulled it open and stepped out into the chill dusk breeze. It was cool but nowhere near the frosty depths of hell he had been subjected to the night before.

River surveyed his surroundings. The woman’s house was huge and it bordered the edge of the woodlands which meant he was on the edge of town, which edge he had no idea, nor did he know which way the road was he had come in on or where the hell his friends were. But still it seemed better than sitting in a house with a crazy lady. He picked a direction and started walking briskly back into the town.

It wasn’t long before the edge of the woods became the edge of the town and people started appearing, they gave him strange looks and bemused smiles but nobody stopped him, nobody said anything. It was funny actually, with the exception of a few faces peering out of empty shops the town was practically deserted. It had been busier at four in the morning than it was at the end of the work day. Maybe everyone was just sleeping in after a very late night, he told himself.

Again he pushed down that wary frightened instinct that told him to run for his dear life. He cast nervous glances at the shadows stretching between buildings and the soft echo of steps that belonged to no one.

The sun was setting, night was falling and that feeling of being watched, of the darkness writhing around him grew more intense. A few hundred metres ahead of him River saw the sign for what looked like a small medical clinic or maybe a GP’s office, whatever it was it looked medical and that seemed like a good place to either replace help or replace his friends.

Danny and Eric would have to have taken Kieran to get checked out when they made it to town… still River had to wonder why he had been at some strange woman’s house on his own… why his friend’s hadn’t been there, why he hadn’t had so much as a note from one of them to let him know what was going on.

Maybe he couldn’t remember the rest of the night because they had all met up, got hammered and River had somehow managed to hook up with that woman. A woman who he had just realised he didn’t even know the name of. Smooth, very smooth.

The last wash of pink in the sky settled behind the horizon and night encompassed the town. It was as if a switch was flicked. Lights turned on, doors opened and the nearly deserted street was abruptly flooded with life. Men, women, teenagers, they appeared as if conjured from the shadows themselves. Most eyes turned towards him in his eclectic garb and River felt sheepish enough to avert his gaze. When he finally caught up to his frat brothers he was going to kill them for putting him in that uniform, or hell he was going to make them all dress to match! River realised he was letting his thoughts carry him away to distract himself from his growing sense of unease as he headed towards the clinic.

He had just reached the doors when he saw a small closed sign hung in place. So much for that idea. He sighed and turned around, slumping against the door in momentary defeat. The local sheriff, that’s who he needed to replace and surely with all the people on the street someone could tell him where to go. River closed his eyes for a moment and he felt relaxed, the tension drained from his body, his muscles relaxed and he smiled in momentary pleasure.

It was the most disconcerting sensation, his mind was still racing but his body was completely pliant. For a minute he didn’t even realise he was moving, being drawn along by the melody that entranced his body and enraptured his soul. His feet had a mind of their own and River found himself walking across the plush green grass of a nearby park, the slippers he was still wearing were soaked through with the damp and he frowned over that. They were ruined and even though that woman had been crazy he still felt bad about ruining her slippers.

That thought, so out of place, brought him back to his senses. The melody still washed over him but River was shocked back to reality. His eyes snapped wide open and he found himself in front of a gazebo where a gorgeous woman, in a flowing white dress, was singing. Her eyes were locked to his as she sang and her smile promised all kinds of deliciously horrific things were about to take place.

River wasn’t alone with her either. Dozens of men and women were in the park, although they were setting up picnic blankets and pouring themselves glasses of wine, the hiss of beer bottles being popped open filled the night as well. All eyes were on him, or more precisely, they were watching him watching the woman singing. They were waiting with rapt attention for what was coming and he didn’t disappoint them.

The singer’s face contorted, her eyes grew wide into vibrant green oceans of life, her hair flowed into a silky stream of fluttering air that moved of its own accord. Her skin grew luminescent and body elongated, dress stretching with her. The effect was mesmerising, intoxicating. She was surreal in her appearance, sleek and powerful, gorgeous in the way a shark was gorgeous, in its unrestrained predatory nature. She was beautiful because she was dangerous, inhuman… River screamed. It wasn’t a manly shout. It was a terrified, oh god, oh god, what’s happening, I’m going to die, kind of wailing scream that was apparently music to the ears of the waiting audience. Like the singer they began to shuck their human personas, masks falling away to reveal the monsters beneath. The woman in the house had said they were monsters… why hadn’t he believed her?

Why had he let that allegedly rational part of his mind tell him monsters didn’t exist when the primal side knew they damn well did exist and to stay the hell of the dark.

No two of the audience were the same, some shifted into hairy, animalistic creatures with claws and coarse features, others were willowy, larger than life, or squat and malformed. There were eyes of crystal blue, coal black, burning red, cobalt and everything in between.

There were creatures that bridged man and animal, and Monsters River couldn’t fathom the existence of. Monsters of every shape, size, colour and bizarre oddity and every last one of them stared at River like he was about to be dinner. It was funny how in moments like that the mind kicked into over drive and began to notice the most peculiar details. Like the fact that none of the monsters had any food on their plates, they had knives and forks, they had sauces and garnishes and wine to share, but there was no actual food waiting to be eaten. River gulped. The salacious lick of their lips, the famished look in their eyes, it was perfectly clear what they anticipated eating.

Oh god why hadn’t he listened to that woman? She had told him they would kill him if he left the house and he hadn’t believed her… of course maybe she had just been intending to eat him herself… Maybe staying in the house wouldn’t have been any safer. Ifs, buts and maybes, they all meant nothing now…

The singer bore down on him with her swirling ocean green eyes, her lips parted to reveal serrated teeth and River closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it coming.

“I want his liver,” a rasping voice pronounced.

“I want his skin.”

“I want those soft juicy eyes,” a woman cooed.

“I want to drink the marrow from his bones and floss my teeth with his sinews.”

River tried to tune out the voices; they only got worse from there. His knees shook and he sunk to the ground as the singer descended on him, he couldn’t even gather the will to try and run. He was too afraid, quaking in his metaphorical boots as he was about to become a monster’s dinner. He clenched his fists together and waited, and waited… and waited…

The first rip of teeth tearing away his flesh never came, no hands clamped down, no claws shredded skin, no fingers plucked his eyes from their sockets.

He peeked through cracked eye lids and found a tableau of motionless monsters. Standing in front of him, directly between him and the descending singer was the back of a woman. A woman with slightly damp ash blonde hair and hunched shoulders. It was the woman from the house and she was standing defiantly between River and his would-be-eaters.

“Casiana,” the woman said softly. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I believe it’s called dinner,” the singer, Casiana, replied pertly, her voice ringing like bells, “it’s a meal that takes place in the evening, often with one’s family.” Her eyes cast a wide gaze over the picnicking monsters and their slick lips and hungry expressions. “Would you like to join us?” Casiana offered graciously. There was something in her expression, something teasing, something taunting, “You’re welcome to the first bite.”

“He is mine.” The woman announced, “Mine and mine alone.”

“Oh come now my dear, share and we can all delight in his hot little flesh, it will be a bonding experience.”

“No.”

“Just imagine feeling your teeth sink into his flesh, feel that first hot gush of blood pouring down your throat,” Casiana sensuously ran her hands down her body. She could have been describing sex as easily as dinner.

“The taste of skin between your teeth.” She shuddered in ecstasy, “It’s like being hot and cold all over, burning with fever while chills race down your spine, it’s exquisite, nothing like it in this world. And that my dear is just the first bite, can you even begin to imagine what it will feel like to devour every last morsel?” She leant in, her breath stirring the woman’s hair as she stood there. She was going to say yes, going to whisper it, going to scream it. River could see it when she turned, could see that aching need, that burning hunger… she was going to say yes and he was going to be torn apart, his momentary reprieve over. He could see she was going to say yes, the singer, the picnickers, they could all see she was going to say yes.

“No.” It was a whisper. A whisper forced through clenched teeth.

Casiana recoiled in surprise. “What?”

“I. Said. No.” She ground out, each word more forceful than the last, “He is mine and mine alone.”

“Sharing is caring my dear, think twice before you deny me.” Casiana warned.

“I’ve thought about it. The answer is still no. I won him, he is mine, now go eat a rat you hag.” Hag seemed harsh, but with the word the singer rippled, her facade of beauty that had so entranced River was shattered and the last rapture of her voice broke from him. Her skin was gaunt, her hair coiled like snakes, she wasn’t beautiful, she was a hag with a hump and a sharp pointed nose. She hissed at the denial and reared back, nails turned to claws and punctured their way free of the woman’s hands to become deformed monstrosities. She looked like she was going to rip the woman to pieces, looked like every fibre of her being was screaming to do just that but at the last instant she hesitated. Pulled back with a sour glower as she backed away.

“One of these nights…” Casiana the hag threatened.

“But not tonight.”