Here There Be Monsters
by A. Mims
Copyright 2013 a. j. s. mims media
“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Table of Contents
The Killing Kind of Love
Withdraws
Drunken Lamentations
User
The Conqueror
Leah was here
Lost
Junkie Tales
A Song of Sixes
Choices
Art Form
Wasteland
Strength
About the Author
The Killing Kind of Love
I fall in the dark, only this time I don’t get up. I lay among the leaves, shivering. My feverish mind sees shadows everywhere, hears sinister noises with each passing moment. I sigh. I don’t have the strength to keep going. I am going to die here. My mind registers this thought without much protest. I guess that shows just how tired and sick I really am. The last little part of my brain that’s functioning knows I need to get up and run in the direction of the town, toward doctors, toward police. Towards safety. But I’ve become disoriented and lost over the past couple of hours. Even if I could get up, I have no idea what direction to take off in. Maybe it’s better to die here, out under the stars and in the open air.
Besides, a tiny part of my heart wants to run in the direction I came from, back to the old house filled with strange noises at odd hours, filled with smells that you would never be able to place, filled with terror and loss and longing. Filled with him. I close my eyes.
Something drops down beside me.
“Luci,” a hoarse voice whispers. My names has never sounded so good, or quite as sexy.
“You’re here,” I say, not opening my eyes. I don’t need to. I know it’s him.
“Yes. I knew you would get lost. I would have come sooner, only….I had things to finish.” His words are so pregnant with deeper meaning, something he wants to tell me but can’t, that I open my eyes. Even in the dark I can see him.
His pale face is haggard, his long black hair falls in a tangled mass down his back. His simple black clothes are stained with something dark. His hands are, too. I take one between my own, a large pale moth covered in blood so fresh it was still sticky. I know who it belongs to.
“It’s Ashley’s, isn’t it?”
He nods. “She found some of my….work. She tried to escape. I never imagined the scared little rabbit capable of such bravery. I couldn’t let her leave and go to the police. But it was quick. That I promise you, Luci.” There is nothing in his voice but grief, and a sorrow at the disease he can’t control.
“I believe you,” I sigh, putting his bloody palm to my cheek and holding it there. I don’t really want to know the answer, but I ask, anyway. “Alex and Ricky….”
“Have been dead for some time,” he answers dully, not looking at me. “Alex died that first night. Ricky I took my time with, but I finished him the night you left.” I didn’t say anything, just kept his hand on my face, smelling the metallic tang of Ashley’s blood.
“I don’t want to do this, be like this. I can’t help it, though. I’m a monster.” He pauses, still not looking at me. “But I would never hurt you.”
“I know that,” I replied. He gathers me into his arms, holding my shivering body close. I want him to kiss me, want his bloody hands all over me but I’m afraid. Afraid of him, but more afraid of wanting him.
“Come on,” he says as he picks me up. “I have to get you into town, get you to a doctor.”
“No! If you go anywhere near town, they’ll arrest you and I’ll never see you again.”
“Luci….”
“No!” He looks down at me, and doesn’t smile, but looks less unhappy than I’ve ever seen him.
He bends his face close to mine and I kiss him, wrapping my arms around his neck and tasting his lips. They taste like sorrow and blood and passion, and too many other forbidden things, but I don’t care. I want to taste them.
He pulls away and is trembling a little; our bodies shake together. He starts walking, cradling my head to his chest.
“I’m going to have to leave you for a little while,” he whispers.
“I know,” I reply, listening to his heart thudding.
“But I’m coming back for you, Luci. I to whatever’s out there, I’m coming back.”
I shut my eyes when he kisses me, trying to memorize everything about him: the way he feels, the way he smells, the way I don’t care what happens to me as long as he gets away okay.
I don’t open my eyes as he gently puts me down against a tree. They stay shut as he brushes the hair out of my eyes, turns, and slowly walks away.
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I woke up warm and safe feeling. My joints didn’t hurt anymore, I wasn’t shivering. But I was angry. I was angry that I was here and he wasn’t. Angry that he left. Angry that he didn’t just hold me in the woods. I let out a mew of frustration.
“Luci?” a voice said. It was my mother. My eyes flew open. “Oh, God, Luci!” She wrapped me in a hug, cradling my spine.
“Is she awake?” someone else asked. It was a voice I didn’t recognize. I looked past my mother and saw a police officer.
“Yes, I’m awake,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I was lying in a hospital bed, covered in one of those itchy blue blankets that had to be full of germs. I had tubes in my nose, tubes coming out of my arms. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You had an attack of arthritis,” my mother said. “You didn’t have your medication with you, so it just got worse. Plus, you were found wandering in the woods. You were dehydrated and freezing, too.”
“Oh.” I’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was seven, and had taken four pills a day for it from then on. But I didn’t have any of it when he took me. I couldn’t have. I must have been very sick.
“Luci, do you remember anything that’s happened to you in the last two weeks?” the police officer asked, stepping in front of my mother.
“What do you mean?” I asked guardedly. I wasn’t going to say anything that would get him in any more trouble. I tried to lay back and look docile, keep my eyes shadowed.
“You and three other students from Benedict College have been missing,” he replied, staring at me shrewdly. “We found you three days ago, about a half mile from the property of Nathan Cole, kind of the town weirdo.”
“That’s not his name,” I whispered. “It’s Murmed Mod. It means….”
“Mournful heart,” my mother finished for me. She was staring at me hard. She looked like she wanted to cry.
“We found you on the edge of his property, with a bloody hand print on your face.”
“What?” my mother exclaimed.
“It wasn’t her blood. It belonged to another student – Ashley Rainy.” I shut my eyes. “We searched the house and found her body. We also found the remains of Rick Sanchez. All we found of Alex Oswald was a large puddle of blood.”
My mother sobbed into her hands, never taking her eyes off me.
“We also found evidence that this isn’t the first time Cole killed. We think we can link him to several other disappearances.”
“Luci!” my mother wailed, tears running down her face.
“We aren’t accusing you of anything,” the officer said, kneeling beside my bed. “But if you know anything….”
“I don’t,” I said tightly, twisting the blanket between my fingers.
??
?This is a very bad man. We have to catch him.”
“No. He let me go. He can’t be that bad, if he let me go.”
“No, Luci, you escaped. You escaped, and if we hadn’t found you in time he probably would have come back and killed you.” I shook my head, silent tears running down my face.
“Luci….”
“Boys never looked at me,” I told him suddenly, crazily. “Not when I was in high school, not when I got to college. He did. He looked at me with most gentle eyes, and then he let me go. Because he knew I needed a doctor. Because he cares about me.”
“Luci, men like that are incapable of love,” the officer said patiently. I was starting to get angry. He was treating me like a two-year-old.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and smiling. “You’re wrong. He’s just as capable of love, and life. But, unlike you, he’s also capable of death.”
Withdraws
Sweating
Aching.
Shivering.
Cramping.
Hallucinating.
Quitting.
Stumble out of bed,
Dying for a fix,
One more hit, just one,
To take the edge off.
Stare at the clock.
You’ve been clean for twenty-four hours.
Drunken Lamentations
I am drunk. Not just a little tipsy, but falling-over-I-will-be-throwing-up-tomorrow drunk. My mother will be so proud. She used to tell me, in that quiet, patient voice that never failed to send me flying into a rage, that no situation ever warrants getting intoxicated.
I stare at the empty sky, so clear and cold. It looks like blue velvet. Fuck her, I think, what does she know? Losing a soul mate is the perfect time to get wasted, so I raise the bottle of Jack Daniel’s to my lips. Here’s to you, Ma.
The world spins