Well, I'm relatively new to writing fanfiction for the Monsters Inc fandom (aside from that tiny little one shot like, a year ago, 'A Quick Little Scare', and my more recent 'Still Waiting to Wake Up'), but I've recently re-obsessed myself with Randall, and decided that he needed for fanfiction. :) I wasn't going to post this until I'd finished at least five chapters (only finished writing three chapters and the first few paragraphs of the fourth), but I've gotten a job working as the staff's children's babysitter (along with my sister) at this campground, and will be basically living in a cabin (with no internet access) for most of the summer, not including the day or two I get for breaks at home every week. So, as you can see, I won't be having much time to write this summer (unless I end up becoming inspired and writing out stuff long-hand), so I've decided to post this now. If I get some good response, I'll post the second chapter on my first day off back at home.
Please, tell me (review, or e-mail if you like) if there's anything you think I can do to improve my writing.
Disclaimer: ...Does anybody even read these anymore? Seriously? If you think that I own Monsters Inc, et al, you're seriously deluded... and I'd like to be deluded with you. :3 What I do own is this somewhat bizarre plotline, and a few background characters that I'm fairly certain won't become Mary Sues or Larry/Harry/whatever Stues either. Probably. No love interests for Randall in sight!
Nightmares again.
A vicious line of pain across his forehead.
Images swam sickeningly in front of his vision; what was left of it. Through his swollen eye he could only see tiny slits of light. The metal bars of his cage lurched in and out of view.
A heavy wooden stick, painted an obnoxious shade of pink, swinging down to land across the shoulders of his upper set of arms that sent his scales flicking automatically to match the shade.
The shrieking laughter of human children heralding the shifting of colours.
The other shrieks, from their parents, of disgust and fear; quickly sheparding their children away from the 'Swamp Thing', only to be quickly replaced by more and more humans.
Funny how when he had meant them to be screaming, not so long ago, the screams held satisfaction to him. Screams aimed at him... now those hurt.
The stick descended again, a neon blue colour this time.
Thud! Flick flick flick. Laughter. Screams.
His face met the straw-strewn floor. He would have moaned in despair, but the duct tape encircling his mouth made it all but impossible to breathe, let alone make any sounds.
Green stick. Thud! Flick flick flick. Laughter. Screams.
One of his arms crunched painfully as he hit the floor. He cradled it to his chest with it's partner arm. Broken. Had been for nearly a week.
Red stick. Thud! Flick flick flick. Laughter. Screams.
Huh, red. Ruby-red, cherry-red, poppy-red... Blood-red.
A voice, harsh and high, shouted,
"Daddy, daddy! Make 'im pink again! I want 'im pink!"
Pink stick. Thud! Flick flick flick. The little girl's laughter drowning out the screams.
Laughs? Screams? They were all the same here.
Randall woke, staring at the ceiling of his small bedroom. The nightmares came every night. They had ceased to bother him.... much.
He reached his upper right arm across his chest to check it's left, feeling along it for any sign of a break without looking. He'd done it so many times he barely even thought about it. His three-fingered hand nimbly felt along the slender, slightly crooked bone of the arm. Still healed.
Good.
With a quiet groan, the lizard monster extracted himself from the tangled, threadbare blankets of his bed. Yet again, one of his many limbs was caught in the sheets. This time it was his lowest pair. Somehow one of his feet had gotten through one of the holes in the blanket during the night. He glared at the offending limb. It really was much too early in the morning to solve the problems associated with getting out of bed.
He braced his upper back against the wall, and with his second set of feet, slowly unlooped the material restraining them, only to feel the bed shift beneath him. Too late he realized that the bed had slowly scraped along the floor as he pushed himself against the wall, the result leaving the rest of his twelve and a half foot long body unsupported. He fell in a crumpled heap in between the wall and his now-moved cot, his upper feet and tail waving comically in the air.
Laughter suddenly filled the room.
"Oh, ha ha, very funny. Now shut up." Randall growled to the rooms other occupant as he heaved himself back onto his bed.
"I'll have you know that getting out of bed is a very dangerous operation, one that should be done cautiously and with care. In fact, it's so dangerous, it shouldn't be done at all. So if you'll excuse me..." The purple-and-blue lizard swiftly covered his head with his bed sheet, and to all appearances, fell back asleep.
"Come on, now..." The other monster said placatingly as he edged towards the bed. Any apologetic sense was lost, though, because he continued snorting with laughter. This monster was reptilian as well, but resembled a human-world lizard much more closely than his room-mate did. One would almost mistake him for one of such said lizards, if it weren't for the fact that he was nearly nine feet long, and the fact that he was covered in bright red scales. Another unusual trait that set him apart from those smaller lizards was the long whisker-like fronds that trailed out from his muzzle like an absurdidly long mustache. He was known as Jared by the monsters he knew, and the 'Sandwich Guy' by those who didn't [1]. He was called this nickname because he owned and ran a small sandwich shop in downtown Haven.
Now Haven was an unusual place; it was the only monster city in the human world. Solely monsters who had been banished, and those who had been born there inhabited it; the monsters of their original world had no idea it even existed. As long as there had been monsters in exile, there had been this city. It had been merely a hovel on the edge of a large river for hundreds of years, but in the last century, it had flourished; with the invention of the door-system, more and more monsters were banished, mostly accidentally, others purposely. In either case, banished monsters were always assumed dead (for who could survive in a world literally filled with toxic substances?). Banished monsters quickly learnt that what they'd always been told, that children and humans were deadly, was a false conception. The entire city of Haven was located underground, beneath a large human city. It's network of tunnels extended far beyond the contours of the human city; some ran parallel along the subway lines, others dug deep into the garbage dumps, still others connected to the sewer systems, which served as the gateways between the monster city and the human one. The monsters depended on the humans (not that the humans knew, of course) for food, electronics and other supplies.
Haven's residents were united in the way that only creatures that depend on each other for survival can. Every single monster above a certain age had duties; some dug new tunnels and maintained old ones (a never-ending task), others went aboveground for supplies (usually the smallest and slyest of the monsters), but only the most elite were chosen to aid in the search for more banished monsters. Using sources as mundane as human tabloid newspapers and overheard human conversations to the Internet and other more respectable sources, the monsters would check into rumors of anything that had even the remotest possibility of being a new banished monster, and send one of their agents out to retrieve them. More often than not, the monster came back empty handed (or tentacled, whatever), but occasionally they would be successful, and the new monster would be warmly welcomed to Haven. As the city had less than one hundred occupants, everybody knew everybody and their cousin, and any new monster arriving was a big event.
That was exactly how Randall himself had come to Haven; having been banished to a swamp in Louisiana, in the human world, he had been beaten into unconsciousness by a woman he only knew by the appellation of 'Momma'. While he'd been senseless, they'd apparently decided he wasn't worth eating, and had sold him to a passing 'freak show', where he had later been rescued by his current room-mate, Jared, who'd taken a turn at (as he put it) 'Being a hero'. Jared had brought him to Haven, shown him the ropes, and gave him a place to stay.
That had been nearly three years ago. Randall had since gotten a job at the only energy company in this monster city, a place called BrightFright Ltd. Until he'd given a demonstration, the officials at the company hadn't believed him when he'd said that he'd been a scarer at the most successful branch of ScareCo - Monsters Inc. - and a top scarer at that. With his engineering and scarer background, Randall had risen swiftly through the (sparse) ranks of the company, getting much more respect than he ever would have had he been still working at Monsters Inc back in Monstropolis.
One constant in Haven was the lack of energy; all it's inhabitants had learnt to take it in stride, and not to waste useful energy. Fire-breathers were put to good use, boiling water, heating buildings, etc. In Monstropolis they had been despised as the worst kind of room-mate, for fairly obvious reasons, but here they were an eagerly sought after, luxurious commodity.[2]
But we've gotten off track; back to this particular morning in the human-world monster-city of Haven.
Jared prodded Randall's blanket-covered form with one blunt claw. "C'mon, get up! We both gotta get to work, and you always take forever to get ready! Be at the front door in five minutes, and whether you're ready or not, I'm dragging you out the door!" The red lizard-monster called as he exited the room.
Grumbling incoherently, Randall slid out of bed. Running a three-fingered hand through his fronds, avoiding the long, thin scar in between the first two (evidence of his somewhat violent initiation to his permanent stay the human world), Randall stumbled to the other side of the room, where a old, cracked mirror was propped up against a chipped ceramic basin, filled with slightly tepid, day-old water. Cupping a pair of his slim hands, the other pair gripping the edge of the table upon which stood the basin, he reached into the water to splash his purple-scaled face. Blinking the water out of his vibrant green eyes, he gazed at his image in the old mirror. The thing had been a lucky find, one of his first after arriving at Haven. Luxuries such as mirrors and glass windows all had to be taken from the human city above. Nobody was allowed to take things that big while the humans were using them; if stuff like that went missing regularly, they would be sure to notice. Humans were stupid, but not that stupid.[3]
Randall's own refection stared back at him. It didn't look a whole lot different from a few years ago; the scar was new, his scales were a bit more taught against the bones of his skull, but then again, all of Haven's residents were on the skinny side. One just couldn't afford to be fat. The scales themselves, though... They didn't have the slightly dusty, dull look they'd had in his last months in Monstropolis. Oh, sure, they were dusty, but only because he hadn't had a chance to take a long soak in a large bath (an unheard of thing, really, in the city), but underneath the dust, they shone with health. He'd never really noticed that, before. He reached up to run a hand through his fronds, smirking. Oh, yeah, he'd never looked better. Sleek, muscular, long fronds, shiny scales, a roguish-looking scar that did nothing to mar his features...
Not that he had a girlfriend to show off to. Still, what was he gonna do? Miraculously bump into an intelligent, beautiful lizard-monster female, his age, with his own interests, in the human world? That only happened in cheesy, badly written stories posted on the internet.[4]
His thoughts were interrupted, again, by Jared.
"Randall! Come on!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm coming!" He shouted over his shoulder. Turning with one final look at his reflection, he grabbed his trench coat from the "coat-hook" (half of an old candlestick dug into the dirt walls). He shrugged on the coat; one of his most prized possessions. It had taken him ages to save up for it; it had had to be tailored to fit him especially, with an extra pair of sleeves sewn on. It had many volumous pockets, and was the only real item of clothing he owned or needed aside from a small scarf he used to take off the edge of the cold in wintertime.
Now being dressed and ready to go, Randall joined his roommate at the door, walking right past him. Neither of them bothered to lock the door; they didn't have the need to. Nobody really owned anything worth stealing in Haven, and whatever was worth stealing was almost always immediately recognized by one person or another: one of the advantages of having such a small community.
A new day had begun.
[1] Woot! Subway reference. ;) Love their meatball subs. If you haven't tried 'em, go try one as soon as possible. Seriously.
[2]Sorry for the large amount of expository back-story. I tried to keep it simple, so if you read it all, have a cookie! ...If you skipped through it... Grrr...
[3] Haha! You thought you could escape the exposition, didn't you? :)
[4]Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)