MonsterVille
Five

The hag left in a flutter of wind. River was still trying to wrap his head around the fact he wasn’t about to be eaten alive by monsters and the hag literally disappearing in a gust of wind, her hair fluttered, she bent over and she was gone, when the breeze past there was just a small amount of leaves and detritus blowing about in her wake.

“She didn’t turn into wind,” the woman who had saved him said wearily. She had turned towards River and she looked exhausted, dark rings etched into her eyes, her pale skin was waxen. She hadn’t looked all that great back at her own house, but out in the park her ordeal with the hag appeared to have run her down even further.

“That’s what you were thinking right?” she asked, “that she had just turned into wind, but she didn’t, it’s more like a flashy exit while she moved really fast.” She waved a hand in one direction and snapped her fingers in the other, “Like a magician. A distraction over here while the real event is happening over there instead.”

“Are you ok?” River asked, “You’re rambling.”

“Am I?” she murmured, “oh.” Before promptly collapsing. River caught her by reflex, her body folding into his arms. She weighed a feather in his arms, she was so slight he could barely feel her body as he held her. If it wasn’t for the heat of her skin against his he would have thought he was holding a mannequin. And when he said heat he meant heat, her body was burning up—a fever raging through her.

“Ah,” he mumbled, “Are you ok? I’m not really sure what to do…?”

He was standing in the middle of a park with a dozen hungry monsters staring at him with his apparent protector, or would that be owner? Collapsed in his arms completely defenceless. It wasn’t all that great of a situation and given the numerous shocks he had gown through in the last few hours River thought it was only fair if he was a little slow right then.

“I’d suggest taking her home.”

River turned and stumbled at the sound of the voice. As he managed to gain his footing he couldn’t help but note the salacious expressions of the hungry monsters in the park abruptly vanished. Every last one of them locked their jaws, averted their eyes, and started packing up their picnics. A handful of them just stood up and walked away, leaving their baskets and blankets behind, and when he said walked he meant scurried. They scurried away like roaches when the lights were turned on.

The woman who had spoken was a few inches shorter than River and yet she made him feel like the small one, her presence was towering, immense and all she was doing was standing there looking at the woman cradled in his arms. She had dark black hair and creamy smooth skin, her build was slight and there was a tint to her features, something ethnic or islandish but he couldn’t put his finger on it. She also had the most dazzling blue eyes, eyes the exact same hue as the woman in his arms.

She didn’t step forward, didn’t move in any perceptible way but the distance between them closed and she gently stroked the woman’s hair, the woman he could only assume was her daughter.

“Melanie,” she murmured affectionately, her fingers gently tracing along her daughter’s exposed cheek bones, “She’s a fool.” That was directed at River, “An obstinate, precocious, fool, unfortunately she gets that from me.”

River wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or even if he was meant to, so he remained silent. He had learned that sometimes saying nothing was the smartest thing he could do, alas foot in mouth was a disease he often suffered from. Her eyes flicked from her daughter to River and he smiled nervously.

“I am Analyn,” she informed him, “and this my daughter Melanie to whom you now belong for as long as she sees fit, do you understand?”

“No Ma’am,” River responded before he could stop himself.

Analyn smiled, “Well at least you have some spine, if no brains to go with it. All you need to know is your life belongs to my daughter, you breathe because she allows it. So until such time as she decides to end your life,” her smile grew amused by the concept, “you are hers. You will obey. You will raise no hand to my daughter, you will not even presume to think of harming her. She may hurt you, she may kill you, but rest assured my boy that if you touch so much as a hair on her head without her permission? I will flay the skin from your bones and visit tortures you cannot begin to imagine upon you. Know that anything she might do to you I will do a thousand times worse and with a far more practiced hand. Do you understand?”

River nodded, or rather his head shook up and down furiously while beads of sweat slicked down his face. “Ye-yes Ma’am.”

Analyn patted him on the cheek, “Good boy. Now she needs to rest, take her home, put her to bed and make her a broth, she’ll be hungry when she wakes.” River glanced around at the empty park, and the empty street adjacent, “You will travel unmolested this night. And boy? When my daughter awakens tell her she’s on her own, this was the last time.”

He didn’t understand. He didn’t need to.

“Yes Ma’am.”

River managed to replace the woman’s—Melanie’s—house after a few false turns. Given he was currently utterly petrified he didn’t particularly want to go nosing around her house so he placed her in one of the few rooms he had already seen. The room with constellations where he had woken up. He gently tucked her into the bed and then slipped into the hallway where he promptly slid down the wall, his body was shaking and he was doing his best to keep from hyperventilating. Not that his body was listening as he tried to make it breathe in and out, one deep breath after another. He raised his hand to see it trembling no matter how hard he tried to make it stop; sweat glistened on his skin and after a minute River gave up and folded his head into his knees and rocked himself comfortingly.

Monsters. Were. Real.

It wasn’t a dream, or a delusional, it wasn’t some acid trip. Monsters were real and he was stuck in a town full of them. Monsters that had wanted to eat him and that had been fairly explicit about how they intended to do that as well. His friends were missing. Were they even alive? He didn’t know and even though it was probably a horrible thought he knew he couldn’t worry about them, they were either in situations like his own or they were already dead, either way there was nothing he could do for them, they’d have to survive on their own just like he needed to figure out how to survive. The first step was apparently making sure his Monster was ok lest her mother deliver on her threat. Was he a servant? A Slave? A snack when she was feeling hungry…? He pushed those thoughts down, they only made his hands tremble worse and that was counterproductive.

It was funny that with everything he had just seen it was the perfectly ordinary looking woman that had threatened him that he was truly afraid of. Not the hag or the collection of picnicking monsters, just the perfectly ordinary looking mother of a monster…

With considerable effort River managed to make it downstairs, he was too numb from the last few hours to even notice his own pain anymore, and after a quick search he found the kitchen. It was large, chrome covered and pristine as if it had just been factory assembled. The cabinets were fully stocked with a large number of sugary sweets and the fridge was filled to bursting with soft drinks and raw meats; large juicy chunks of raw meat.

“Broth,” River murmured, “that’s sort of like soup. I can make soup.”

His life depended on it so he was pretty sure he would figure it out, he just needed some boiling water, a few vegetables, a couple of stock cubes from the pantry and a slice of meat which he dumped onto the stove and set to cooking. He already knew it was going to be terrible. Cooking was not his forte, apparently even when his life depended on it cooking still wasn’t his forte. Oh god he was going to be killed because he had blown off every home ec class he was ever supposed to take. His mother had always told him cooking was the way to a woman’s heart, why hadn’t he listened? His mother… he was never going to see her again…

His hands started to tremble again and River slumped against the island cabinet in the centre of the kitchen and he slid down to the cold tile floor.

Hours past and River sat there huddled against the cabinet lost in his dark thoughts. He was still huddled there with the soup cooking above him when Melanie found him.

She padded into the room in zombie head slippers, which he would have found adorable any other time, or any other place, and sat down across from him on the floor. She looked better, those dark rings had faded some and she wasn’t rambling in a feverish state so he supposed that was good, but then what did he know? Maybe for monsters a fever was a good thing. He just didn’t know anything!

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he squeaked back.

“You look like you need to talk.” She brushed a loose strand of ash blonde hair back behind her ear and leant forwards, giving him her undivided attention. “This is a safe place,” she said before amending, “sort of. What I mean is right now you can say anything you want to or need to, ok? I won’t hold it against you, if you need to vent go for it.”

“Vent?” River choked out, “I-I, ah…” he trailed off before saying in a very, very small voice. “Monsters are real.” Melanie nodded so he said it again, “Monsters. Are. Real.”

“Yes, yes we are.”

“How can monsters be real?”

She shrugged, “We just are.”

“But how could people not know? I mean Monsters. Are. Real!”

“People did know, or they use to, that’s why humans are afraid of the dark. Why you have myths and legends and folklore, it’s just somewhere along the way the monsters wised up, stopped being so open about it and started hiding. A numbers game really, there are just so many humans and so few monsters that we had to hide.”

“But there’s a whole town of you…” he said.

Melanie smiled, “Safer that way. We stay away from humans; humans stay away from us for the most part.”

“I didn’t…”

“No.” She agreed, “You didn’t. It happens sometimes, a few humans here and there stumble into town and we deal with them. Protect our secret.”

“By killing us?”

“For the most part. There are two things you need to understand about monsters, the first is that we’re probably more afraid of humans than you are of us, the fear of discovery, of hordes of humans coming to our town? That terrifies most of us.” She explained.

“And the second thing?” he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but he asked anyway. Ignorance was bliss but apparently River was a glutton for punishment.

“Monsters eat humans. Whatever flavour of monster, whatever breed, or species or crossbreed, one and all crave human flesh which we get very little of since we live like this, so when a human comes to town? It’s a big thing. Use to be riots would break out trying to get a piece of them. That was until the lottery started.”

“Lottery,” River repeated. “You won me. I mean that’s what you said at the park, you said you won me?”

Melanie nodded, “When a human comes to town a lottery is drawn, every monster in town has an equal chance of winning the human to do with as they see fit.”

“To eat?”

“If they want to. Some monsters will tear them apart with their own two hands, some will have little feasts for all their friends to come to. It’s a way to curry favour or to bargain with more dangerous monsters for land, or protection or whatever else you might want.”

“Humans are currency to monsters,” River summed up, still trying to wrap his head around it.

“Yep. It’s a monster eat monster town, with so little human meat available monsters prey on each other for food, sex, just to get off on the domination, it’s brutal and bloody and violent so if you’re not apex you might as well be prey.”

“Apex?”

“Top of the food chain.”

“Oh… are you apex?” he asked.

Melanie laughed, it was a rich full throated chortle that left her winded and gasping for breath, tears were streaming down her cheeks before she managed to get herself under control.

“Oh that’s hilarious,” she said as she shook her head, “No. I am most definitely not apex.”

River frowned, “But your mother is?” That knocked the laughter right out of her.

“My mother?”

“Analyn.”

“I know who my mother is,” Melanie snapped back, “How do you… oh, damn.” She bit her lip as she thought about it, “She bailed me out at the park didn’t she?” River nodded, “Damn it.”

“She um, she had a message for you as well… she said that was the last time, that you’re on your own now.”

Melanie sighed, “No surprise there. But since you asked, no, my mother isn’t apex either.”

“She scared away the rest of the monsters though?”

“Which should tell you just how terrifying an apex is. This is all over your head I get that, and really you don’t need to know any of it.”

“So why did you tell me?”

“Because,” Melanie said with a wry smile, “your hands have stopped shaking,” River looked down in surprise, she was right, his hands were steady as could be. She had been taking his mind off it, distracting him by overloading him with information. He couldn’t believe that had worked, couldn’t believe that telling him more terrifying things had actually helped to calm him down. “All you really need to know is you belong to me, ok? Stay in the house, do as you’re told and no one should bother you.”

It was one of those times when River suspected he should just nod and smile and stop asking questions, but he had a thousand more and one that was just begging to be asked even though the answer would probably haunt him if he knew it… in the end he figured his life was over anyway he might as well just ask, maybe knowing would help.

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What are you planning to do with me?” he clarified.

She paused, “I- I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure, my life is literally in your hands and you’re not sure what you’re going to do with me, seriously?”

“Would you rather I said I was going to eat you?”

River blanched, “Ah I guess not…”

“Didn’t think so.” He opened his mouth and she cut him off, “That’s enough for now. I have errands to run, don’t leave the house because if another monster replaces you they will kill you, do you understand?” River nodded. “Ok,” she stood in a lithe graceful motion that River did not follow, his legs had fallen asleep and his attempt to stand nearly resulted in him being sprawled all over the floor which amused Melanie to no end.

Before she left Melanie took a dainty sniff of the soup, “Add more meat. A lot more meat… and maybe marinate a steak, can you do that?”

“I’ll manage.”

“There are some cook books on the top shelf if you need a guide. Don’t try to use the phone or the internet.”

“You have the internet?” River exclaimed in surprise.

“Of course,” she replied with a soft o of amusement pursing her lips, “I’m a monster, not a Neanderthal.”