kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"OvercomingTheMonster"

words

'Overcoming the Monster'

Turqoise pulled the slugs from his mother's vanity, marveling idly at the viscosity of their slime. "What do you think, Manny? How we's going to obviate this little invasion?"

The manatee just floated there, but Turqoise heard him speak. Mother said that Manny would disappear when Turq was old enough, but Manny said otherwise. Manny said lots of crazy things, sometimes, things Turqoise didn't understand, but for now its statement was entirely of sense.

"Concurment, dear friend. We's just got to deter them. But how?" Turqoise dropped the gooey crittermonsters one at a time into his tupperware prison, closing the lid down on each one of them to keep them from escaping.

The manatee's silence was more thorough, to that--Turqoise knew it didn't have an answer, neither.

"We've been done through every room in the house, and there doesn't seem to be an end to 'em. I's almost afraid to be stepping outside. Picture it, osmosis, what'd have to be the slug density beyond the house to have this many be inside it."

Manny shook its head slowly.

"Oh, I know we's got ta figger a constant of osmolarity, a density quotient, somelike. But let's just pick a range, hypothesetical. What's reasonablish?"

Another shake of the head. A horn blew outside, and Manny blinked out of existence. Turquoise sighed. Manny could go up to twenty minutes without blinking, but sometimes its presence was as short-lived as thirty seconds, and there was no telling how long it'd be gone.

The horn blew again, and Turqoise opened up his mother's bedroom window to holler out at her. "I hears ya! But if it bein' all the same to you, I'd rather not brave the slugs outside!"

She just honked the truck again, and he sighed. He'd have to go outside soon, or it'd be a lashing to make him wish he could float like Manny just so's his stings didn't have to touch corporeal reality.

The horn honked two more times before he was down the stairs; the last one was a long, low wail which made him finally drop the tupperware bucket heedless of the dangers of re-loosing his slugs as he dashed for the door.

Suddenly he caught whiff of Manny, again, like the sea at low tide; there was just a tinge of something rotting, something wrong. "Manny?" There was a low bull's moan from up the stairs, and Turqoise took the stairs three at a time . He nearly lost his footing on a slug his second leap, but he grabbed the hand-rail and used that to both re-capture his balance and propel him further ahead.

The slugs were thick as slime by the time he topped the flight of stairs, and squirming up to his ankles before he reached his mother's room again.

From outside he heard muffled curses attacking his entire lineage, including her what was originating the curses. His heart nearly burst, warring between his mother and Manny, and he paused in the doorframe, looking back as if he could see his mother through the floor and wall.

She was sure to tan his hide regardless, but Manny was hurt--but mother had just walked through a green carpet of slugs if she was at the door. Only--they were thicker upstairs than not, so what if they weren't outside at all?

That thought spurred him into his mother's room, Manny topping a violent pile of slugs. "Manny!"

The manatee writhed not unlike the slugs it sat atop.

"Sure an' I'll help you, but how?" Turqoise waded deeper into the slimy mass, trying to reach up towards his friend. Turqoise'd never touched him before--Manny had always just floated away when he tried--but Manny was in no position to escape now, though he couldn't say how. Maybe the slug slime was keeping it grounded.

His hand went into something warm, and he almost gasped in a slug from the shock.

"Turqoise?" His mother's voice screeched straight through the floor and into his ears, rattling his gray matter to mush.

The warmth began to burn and he yanked his arm back, breathing forcefully through his nostrils to keep the slugs from crawling up and in. His mouth was closed tight, and he dove backwards out the pile, concerned now about his own safety.

The screech bellowed again. "Turqoise, where is you?"

Standing up, he tried to brush away the slugs. His arm was coated in a brownish goo somewhat characteristic of slug-slime, but somehow more mature. It felt near-like blistering from the burn, hurting especially where the slugs were crawling on it.

"Here, mother! I'm here!"

"Turqoise, why ain't you come when I call, you little so-and-so?" Her voice darted from the bottom of the stairs.

"Mind the slugs," he gasped, dots speckling his vision.

"Slugs? Whatchoo doing with slugs inside the house?" He could hear her high heels clomping up the wooden stairs, and he didn't hear none of the squishing of slugs. "And what's my good tupperware doing out on the stairs?"

"They's invading, mother! Don't you see any slugs out there? I've got some near to burning my very flesh off just this moment, and would be apprecative of the utmost assistance!" He grit his teeth and pulled them off his arm; despite the room's spinning, he kept his ground and managed to toss them far away. The room's spinning added to his nauseated reaction, though, at seeing thick stripes of his muscle laid bare. "Mother!"

He stepped back, intending to go through the doorway and meet his mother a little less than half way, but the door was shut solid. The slugs were slowly massing towards him and he saw Manny swimming through the air his direction as well, its own ethereal flesh peeling off in ghastly manner.

"Manny?" A gnarled mass of slime was building up in the manatee's mouth; Turq couldn't understand what was happening. His friend--the slugs must have eaten his friend, must be controlling it somehow. "Manny!"

"Turq, you open this door! I want to be knowing what's going on!" He felt his mother's fists pelting the door with indignation.

"I'm scared!" he cried. Manny's maw filled until the glop was brimming over; it was hovering neatly over him, and the ooze dribbled onto his scalp; he felt his scalp warming and shrieked with primal fear.

The knob jiggled urgently, and came loose. He could feel it cold and impotent in her hand from all the times the same thing had happened to him when she didn't want him in, and his stomach sank yet another level deeper into hell.

"You open this door, Turq, and don't be telling me no tales!"

"I don't believe," he screamed, "I don't believe in you!"

"Turqoise, the hell you saying this disbelief?"

He stepped away from the door, then broke around the swarming mass of slugs back to the vanity. Rifling through the drawer, he found his mother's gun. Loaded, like always. He pointed it at the manatee, and closed his eyes.

His friend.

Taking a deep breath, he gently squeezed the trigger.

The recoil knocked his hands into his face, bloodying a knuckle against his teeth, and he could feel his right eye beginning to bruise from his fist and the gun.

"Turqoise, what the hell you doing in there? Baby? Baby! Nobody tell you to play with no guns?"

The manatee appeared undisturbed by the hole in its jaw; ooze drained out slowly, smoking against the floor. The slugs seemed attracted by the mess, coalescing as a group towards it.

Turqoise braced himself, both eyes open--well, the one just a wee squinted shut. He sighted down the pistol and aimed for that spot Manny had always claimed souls existed.

And again, he gently squeezed the trigger. The cartilege in his elbows squealed against bone, but his muscles held everything still. The pads of his thumbs ached mightily, but even more painful was the sight of his manatee. It was floating, but barely, and the ooze was pouring back into it. The slugs were slowly climbing up the ooze, and it almost looked as if Manny was curling up into itself.

"Turq, what the hell is going on? Why ain't you tell me what's going on? Why ain't you open the door?"

Turqoise slowly crossed the room, skirting an odd coldness coming from the point what his friend was disappearing into. Crying at the loss of his friend, and maybe some from the burns on his arm and the pain of his flesh dissolved, he opened the door.

His mother stood there, arms crossed and disapproving. The glare on her face almost numbed the pain of his battle. "Don't you be crying, you snot-nosed kid! I'll tan your hide double for sniveling! You know you deserve this whippin! Oh, the things you be deserving this whipping!"

She grabbed his arm, though, and stared at it. "What on God's green earth did you do to your arm, Turq? It looks et by slugs!"

"I'm telling you, mother! Manny, he--"

"Manny, is it? Is it all done, then? Is Manny gone?"

"Ye--yes."

"Yes, mother," she scowled.

"Yes, mother."

"Then let's just put this behind us, shall we? I'm proud of you."

"Proud of me, mother?"

"You're a man, now. I told them you were fit to live. I knew you could do it, without any of their silly help."

Turqoise stared at his mother as if she were a different being entirely. And maybe that was because he was a different being now. He was a man now, whatever that meant. "I knew I could, too," he said, not knowing at all what he was saying, but glad to have said it. He was a man now.