CHAPTER TEN: ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE
I walked calmly up behind the orange
monster and took aim. I brought it down as hard as I could, and it
hit him squarely between the horns. He groaned and slid to the floor.
Vanessa gave a soft little scream from the corner in which she sat on
the floor, playing with a limp doll. She was, after all, still
fifteen. The octupus monster turned on me and grinned maliciously
when he recognized me.
"Randall!
How good of you to come!" he greeted. "Yeah right, you
overconfident bastard, think fast!" I brought the shovel down,
but he dodged it.
"Randall
stop." said Vanessa lifelessly. "Randall, let me out, I can
help!" cried Zavier. Walking backwards, never taking my eyes off
the octupus, I reached out an arm and fumbled with the lock on the
door. It clanged to the floor, and Zavier ran out of the cage, all
tears vanished.
"Oh,
he's a nasty one, your brother." cooed the octupus. Vanessa said
nothing, but went back to playing with her doll, humming under her
breath. I got the impression that coming back from the dead had
addled whatever brains she still possesed. "Hey, over here,
pinhead!" cried Zavier. I looked to her and saw that she had a
metal bar in her hand. Where she got it, I didn't know, but it had a
wicked piece of twisted metal at one end that looked terribly sharp.
"Oh, it's the human, the little girl, the one with the clever
lizard costume." said the octupus. He took one step towards
Zavier, and that was all she needed. She swung the bar with all her
strength. It singed through the air and hit the octupus viciously
right in the face, causing a thick, ketchup like substance to spray
out on the floor. Zavier jumped back in disgust, forgetting the
crowbar, which was stuck in the guy's head. He was screaming for
help.
"Come
on!" I snarled. I dropped the shovel, grabbed Zavier's hand, and
ran towards the exit.
"Where's
the car?" asked Zavier breathlessly. I pointed to the stand of
trees and ran. Zavier ran with me, finally pulling ahead, the tail of
her costume lashing back and forth from her speed. Suddenly, a
monster stepped out from behind a tree nearby, and he was holding a
large weapon on his skeletal shoulder. It was my father. His
once-blue scales where now black, the red on his back now brown. His
eyes were still blue, but they looked empty and dead. His body was
thin and so skeletal you could literally count every rib. I knew deep
down that this thing with my father's figure was no longer my father,
but some hideous creature looking for a purpose in a world where he
no longer belonged. "Zavier, watch out!"