Chapter 4: A MONSTER IN THE MIST
I never did get around to answering that question. The next day Stan came back to me and finished the conversation, which was his usual custom since he'd forget every damn thing and only now remembered he was going to ask me why I lived in Brahms. It was break time again and I just sat there for a while staring at my stale coffee, the same type of stale coffee I had a thousand days before. I'd been asked simple questions like that before many times in my life, but I just stared into the cup and really thought about.
Stan said he didn't have much of a choice since he pissed away most of his money and just didn't have the funds to leave, but he said he just didn't get me. He said I could pack up, leave, and go anywhere no problem. Just leave everything behind and start anew. It's not as if the thought hadn't crossed my mind before, it was only now that I started to really kick around the idea in my head.
"So…then why the hell am I here?" I thought to myself.
Before I could come up with a plausible answer our break was over and Stan never brought up the subject ever again. Good, old forgetful Stan.
I took the small stub of a cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it to the ground, glancing at it and seeing the flakes of snow slowly putting it out. I'd walked for as many miles as I could stomach and finally came across something semi-useful: a car with the keys still in the ignition. How very convenient, I think to myself. The glass shatters and pieces of it fall out as it succumbs to the sideways blow of the hammer. I'll send them an IOU. While brushing some of the glass off the door, I unlock it and try to kickstart the engine.
No luck, though. The car doesn't even respond at all—no sounds, no battery trying to kick on, nothing. Before I kick the door open I take a quick look at the inside of the car. It's very nice, it's got that new car smell and a luxury feel to it. I tug on a plastic knob in the car and the hood pops open with a small thud. Before I take a look at it I spin around 360 degrees to make sure nobody's watching me. The checkup's relatively thorough, I take a look at everything and leave no piece of machinery unchecked.
All the fluids are there, nothing's out of place, and everything should work. It's just one more thing in this town that make's my head hurt and doesn't make a damn bit of sense. I slam the hood and make my way back to the car, nearly taking off the fucking door while I'm closing it.
"HEY! This is 107.9, the Mountain Bear. All the classic rock you love!" The radio belts out and I jump, practically smashing my head into the roof. It's loud and obnoxious—I must've hit the on button by accident. It takes a few seconds for my heart to stop beating so fast and for me to calm down. I just slump down in the seat with my eyes closed, trying to get a grip.
"Up ahead we have some Rolling Stones, Led Zep, and of course The Eagles, but right now we have to take a break." The DJ is an annoying bastard with a high-pitched voice. I'll stick around for the Stones, but that's it. If the radio's working then the car should. I try the ignition and start pumping some gas via the pedal, but nothing happens.
If the car isn't working then the radio shouldn't be on. I reach over and turn it off, but it stays on.
"Fuckshit." I mumble incoherently to nobody. I try flipping on and off, turning up and down any buttons I see in a manic frenzy. The volume doesn't change, the dial remains on the station, and it won't shut off. I just sit back and listen, for the time being, to the commercials.
"Ladies…are you tired of perfumes that don't deliver on their promises? Does your perfume repel men instead of attracting them?"
"Yeah, I can really relate to soaking myself in shitty oils to get somebody's attention." I sarcastically reply to the radio, playing with the air freshener which is an eight ball dangling from the rearview mirror on a thin piece of string. The voice is a saleswoman speaking in a sultry voice. I tune out the rest of the pitch until the very end.
"Pick up Red Rose perfume. Be somebody."
I turn my attention to the ashtray and find it's filled with assorted pennies, nickels, and quarters which I quickly snatch and pour into my coat pocket. You never know. Just as one of the songs starts up with a '70s guitar riff, the radio cackles and the station fades in and out of the song. I furrow my eyebrows in annoyance and pound on the radio. The static picks up in volume, drowning out the station and it starts to hurt my head.
"Piece of shit." I say as I open the door and walk out. Something yanks at my leg and I fall flat on my face. It's something slimy with a strong grip. With a heave of strength, I shift my weight so I'm on my back to look at whatever's holding me. My eyes go wide and bloodshot with fear as I see something slithering underneath the car. Another long, disfigured arm shoots out at me and grabs my other leg pulling me closer and closer. The only real feature I can make out is the pair of hands are thin and bony, with each finger at least twice as long as that of a human being's.
I grip the pavement, barely holding on by my fingernails but the thing keeps pulling on me. Whatever's under there is way too strong to be a normal animal and it groans at me. It seems like all the bad noises that make your head ache and your nose bleed all rolled up into one. It's somebody scratching a chalkboard, banging cymbals right next to your ear, your dog whimpering in pain, a hungry animal—and there's nothing you can do to drown it out. But I have to block it out for the time being, try not to care that its loud moans sound like its in pain or its growling because it wants to kill me.
I just remember the hammer and furiously swat at the hands. The sound the thing makes doesn't change, but its hands loosen up and I know I'm hurting it. Good. I can't tell if the creature's bleeding—its entire body is made up of a dark red color. The long arms retreat back into the darkness of the bottom of the car and I scramble to my feet as fast I can, just barely keeping balance as I go into a ready position with the hammer raised up. The thing crawls out from underneath the car looking like some demonic snake writhing out from a rock to fight. It has the overall appearance of a man, but it's not.
It's a cruel joke of one, like a childish blueprint for one that God tossed away. Its arms are so long that they touch the pavement, the right part of its head is elongated while the other side is caved in, it has no face, and its upper body seems to be disjointed. Its ribcage sits to the far right of its abdomen. It looks as if somebody just took this thing and stretched it completely out of shape like some toy. There is no possible way for this thing to be alive in that state, but I see it right in front of me. It shouldn't exist, it's just some demonic vision that I dreamt up. I rub my face and eyes hoping the nightmare in front of me disappears. It doesn't, it just lurches forward at me.
I lie to myself that it isn't real when all of my senses know damn well that it is. I tell myself that it's just my demented imagination, actively seeking out and telling me things are real when they're not. One of the oldest clichés is that it's scarier when you can't see what's coming to kill you, but it's only true half of the time. There are times when you see something so horrible that it makes your most haunting nightmares look like nothing. I can feel it walk towards me, its feet thudding on the ground in unison and I can see its breath chill in the air just like mine. Under other circumstances, I might sympathize with it.
How would you want to walk around as an abomination? But the self-preservation instincts kick in and I can't indulge in that kind of thinking, it's fight-or-flight. I block out the complex thoughts about how this thing can possibly exist and whether or not I should kill it. It walks in range now and I bring the hammer down with all of the force I can muster on its skull. It buckles under the weight of the blow and falls face-first onto the ground. The radio starts to play one of the songs, but then it just goes to more static. The thing groans in what I assume in pain and pushes itself off the ground. I bring the hammer down once again and something inside the being's head gives.
It cracks and makes a sickening snapping sound. This time the thing falls to the ground harder with blood pooling around its head. In the background, I hear the static dying down until it finally stops and the radio station comes in clearly.
"And that's the forecast for today. I feel sorry for anybody who isn't enjoying the pleasant weather today, and it looks like that weather will continue for quite some ti—" I limp over to the car and break the radio with the hammer, watching it short out and the plastic falling off.
I steady myself with one hand on the car and the other clutching my chest. My heart won't stop beating so erratically—I'm so scared right now, but my main fear is a stroke or a heart attack. I turn my gaze away from the apparition's corpse leaking gooey blood on the road and try like hell not to think about it at the moment. I have to maintain some semblance of composure, or at least sanity. Just breath deeply and regularly, just stay calm. My eyes shift upwards to the gray sky, watching the snow flakes slowly float to the ground. It's a soothing enough image that I can feel some of the adrenaline balancing in my system, at least enough for me to not worry so much.
My heart slows down, each loud beat becoming fainter as the minutes tick away. I'm assuming they're ticking away since I didn't take my watch with me. I have to practically pry off the hand on my chest with the other one, and I now can face the corpse once more. I'm pretty sure it's dead, but why take a chance? I raise the hammer one more time and bring it down on the thing's head, watching it burst apart in a grisly spectacle. Only black goo seeps from its head.
"Oh, Christ!" I gag and feel that my guts are pushing something back up my throat. I drop the hammer, hearing it clack and lean forward—puking a stream of chunky, orange vomit. After barfing the entire contents of my breakfast and then some, I pick up the hammer and walk cautiously through the street. When I reach the corner, I hear something and stop.
"Nice one, ma-a-a-a-a-a-n-n! You clocked 'em good-like." It's a raspy voice coming from what I think is a storm drain next to me. I don't see anything there, but I can still hear the voice.
"Who…are you?" All of a sudden it feels like I've had all my strength and energy sucked out of me that I think I might fall over.
"That's really up to you-u-u-u-u." The voice sounds like its vocal chords have been punctured, resulting in a hissing sound for some of its words.
"I don't feel like…bullshit right now, man. Give me some answers."
"For starters, there's a 50/50 chance I'm just a voice in your head. Or maybe I'm some stupid old man that got caught in this here storm drain. Or maybe…"
"You're in my head then?"
"I never said that. S-stop putting words in my mouth. I s-said I COULD be just a figment of your imagination."
My vision goes blurry again and everything seems more surreal than it already is.
"Then by…by that rationale, I can shut you the fuck up whenever I want, right?"
"Once again, that's up to you-u-u-u. Maybe that thing you just killed is also just another product of your diseased mind."
"I'm not insane. I'm just…confused at what's happening."
"So you're telling me, a disembodied voice coming from the sewers, that you're not insane? After you killed something that looks like it came right out of someone's nightmarish psyche that it isn't your mind that's broken?"
"There's an explanation for this. I—" I want to say something intelligent, something that puts all of this in perspective, but I can't. I'm talking to somebody I can't see in an empty town where a monster lives, probably more of them waiting to kill me. I can't think of any plausible defense.
"Then what are the alternatives?" I ask, laughing a bit that I'm questioning what seems to be an imaginary friend.
"There are only two others. One: you're bouncing off the walls in some asylum dreaming this whole thing up. The other one is very s-s-s-imple—don't trust your eyes. It's possible you're just running around a populated town screaming and bashing people in the skull with a hammer, ranting about how they're monsters and that you have to kill them."
"That's…a pretty sucky way to start explaining things."
"Then you think all this is real?"
"Could be. May be. I really don't know anything anymore." My senses start to numb and everything around me spins. I want to throw up again, but I don't have the energy to.
"Good night then" the voice says and before I know what direction is up I collapse to the ground, hammer still in hand and go unconscious. Fatigue is something you have to worry about when too many things happen at once. It's a welcome release and I'm perfectly content to just sleep away the whole experience. I am, however, completely vulnerable and another one of those creatures could simply come along and tear my flesh off. I just hope when and if I wake up that I still have my cigarettes and change.
Bastards, at least let me keep that before this goddamn town swallows me up in its craziness.