MonsterVille

River was in front of a roaring fire when Mellie returned, a thick wooden log was burning, flames licking over it as the kindling beneath crackled and turned to ash leaving the faintest smell of wood smoke in the room as the rest of it was whisked up the chimney. River was hunched over his little notepad and didn’t even notice her until she leant in behind him and the trail of her ash blonde hair tickled the back of his neck. He jumped in fright and she laughed at his expense. On the bright side she was in a better mood than when she left. On the other hand if people kept making him leap about like that his heart was going to give out before the week was through.

Her brow furrowed, “You’re bleeding.”

River glanced down at the bandage he had haphazardly applied to his hand, he was right-handed naturally so he’d had some difficult wrapping the bandage tightly enough around his entire arm. He had discovered the lovely slice of the monster’s pincers had scoured him from wrist to elbow, add in the cut to his palm and it was one big bloody wreck. At least none of the cuts were overly deep, just messy.

“Ah yeah,” River said, “I had a bit of an accident I hope you don’t mind, I found the bandages in the bathroom.” Mellie gave him the queerest look.

“No, I’d prefer you to bleed all over the house,” she chided lightly, “Mi casa es su casa.”

“Gracias,”

“De nada,”

“Ah, uno?” River said sheepishly, “Sorry, I’m out of Spanish.”

Mellie kept smiling, “I can teach you a little, but I’m rusty myself. So what secret notes about my likes and dislikes were you making this time?”

“Huh?” River responded, ever the articulate one. Mellie gestured to the notebook he had dropped when she surprised him. Before he could string two more words together she slid onto the couch beside him and scooped it up, flipping it open to the entry he had been working on.

“Rat Monsters,” she read aloud as she skimmed through it, “Nasty, ugly, pincers.” She raised a brow curiously, “Hard to kill? Axe to the chest doesn’t phase them,” her voice grew louder with each word, “decapitation required? What have you been up to?”

“It attacked me!” River said in a rush, all flustered, “I was just chopping some fire wood,” her gaze flicked to the roaring fire, “and-and I cut myself on some wood and it attacked me.”

“And yet you’re alive?” he couldn’t tell whether she was pleased about that or not.

“I was saved.”

“Saved?” She followed his line of sight up to the portrait hanging over the fire place. “Katie-Cam?” she exclaimed, “Katie-Cam saved you!”

River flashed back to the woman’s rather intimate exploration of his physique, “We ah didn’t exactly exchange details,” he murmured. His hedging didn’t seem to matter, Mellie’s smile was in force, in fact her entire being radiated happiness. Right down to the way she was humming under her breath.

“She’s a friend,” Mellie said excitedly, “one who has been away for too long.”

“Oh, yeah. She was uh, very friendly.”

“She must have liked you,” Mellie said. “If she didn’t she would have just let the rats eat you. And didn’t I tell you to stay inside?”

“I thought the backyard counted.” River equivocated.

“It doesn’t.”

“I know that now,” he muttered.

“Oh well, some lessons are best learnt the hard way,” her hand rested lightly on his shoulder, “and I do appreciate the fire. It gets very cold in here.”

River hadn’t really thought she felt the cold, but apparently she did. Mellie was one of the monsters so why did he keep getting the impression that she was terribly frail? She had passed out in his arms, she was so pale, he began to wonder what kind of monster she was at that. So far all he knew was that her mother was a force to be reckoned with.

Analyn was a woman who ‘frail’ could never have described, powerful, stern, radiating a force of sheer will and terror, but never frail. River contemplated everything he had seen so far, everything he had experienced. He knew monsters were real and he knew they came in all shapes and sizes, he also knew they could look human if they wanted to.

“Um, can I ask you something?” River asked.

“Tit for tat,” Mellie said smoothly.

“You’re a monster.”

“That’s more of a statement than a question,” Mellie interrupted him, her good mood seemed boundless.

“You’re a monster, but you look human.” He stated, “And all the monsters I saw in town looked human too, until they didn’t. But that rat thing that attacked me, there was nothing human about it. So my question is can you all do that, shift from human to monster, monster to human.”

“Yes.” Mellie said. She tilted her head. “And no.”

“Enlightening.”

Mellie kicked off her shoes and flipped her feet up in River’s lap as she stretched out on the couch.

“Monsters don’t become human,” she explained, “over the millennia monsters have simply adapted, evolved if you will, to survive. Part of that is what we call masking, it’s what lets a monster assume a human appearance but it’s exactly what it sounds like, a mask. It’s easily broken and it takes effort to maintain so a lot of monsters don’t bother. The ones that don’t bother live in the woods, in caves, anywhere they won’t be seen. The ones that can mask live in towns like this one, or they hide in plain sight in human cities. And while we’re on the topic masking is completely different to skin-walking or shape-shifting.”

“What are those?”

“Well a mask is like a membrane stretched over the body, it’s paper thin, but skin walking is when you alter your body by removing the skin of a human or animal and wearing it, your body absorbs the shape and alters it size, weight, height, everything. Shape shifting is the same sort of thing only you don’t need a skin, you just do it, sometimes monsters can shape shift into humans, or animals, or all kinds of things, sometimes it requires lunar cycles or dark moons or various astrological phenomena. Now I believe that was two questions you asked, my turn.”

“Ok.”

“When Katie-Cam saved you, were you scared of her?”

“Ah, no, not really.”

She smiled as if she had expected the answer.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why weren’t you scared, she is terrifying, trust me, most of the monsters in this town would quake at the sight of her, at the very least they would run in the opposite direction. So why weren’t you scared?”

“I don’t know, I just wasn’t.”

“But you were scared of the rat?”

“It was trying to kill me.”

“Humans are all so… funny. You react in all the wrong ways and you don’t even realise it.”

“Sorry?” he offered, once again she laughed at his expense.

“Do you want to know what kind of monster I am?” a glimmer passed through her eyes and River shook his head before he could think about it.

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you afraid I’ll look like some big monster rat underneath this human mask?” she quizzed.

“I think it’s easier for me to deal with this situation if I can just think of you like this,” River said. “Just a pretty woman with a quirky sense of humour.”

“You think I’m pretty?” she mused.

“Yes?”

“Was that a question or an answer?”

“Both?” he replied more than a little flustered, in fact his whole body was starting to feel a touch warm.

It was probably just the fire, or it could have been how close Mellie was sitting. She was after all very pretty and he was a red blooded man, he couldn’t help it if he found her attractive. Although now that she had mentioned it he couldn’t help but wonder what she looked like beneath the mask, or the skin?

Was she using the membrane thing to look human or had she skinned someone to take their appearance. The thought made him queasy. Was it possible the pretty face he was staring into had belonged to some hapless human girl who had been skinned for her face and eaten for her flesh? Had Mellie murdered a girl just to wear her face… for some reason that thought was too gruesome for him to continue contemplating. Against all reason he found he was starting to like Mellie, she was the reason he was still alive after all, but it was more than that. She was sweet and a little snarky, she was pretty but not conceited, she could be kind and she painted like a muse. He didn’t think he had ever seen anyone who could paint the way she could, who could give such form to such beauty. Would his opinion of her change if he could see her real face? Or if he learned what she had done to gain the face she wore? He shuddered and tried to put the thoughts out of mind.

Mellie shook her head as if she knew exactly what was running through his mind.

“Go fetch the first aid box from the bathroom,” she instructed, “that wound needs to be redressed before you start bleeding all over the place.” River glanced down in surprise. Sure enough his poor attempt at bandaging had resulted in bleed through, a lot of bleeding through actually, too much. He fetched the first aid kid.

Mellie popped it open and unrolled a line of bandage before she expertly stripped his failed attempt from his hand. The cut on his palm wasn’t all that bad, still Mellie lathered it in antiseptic that made him wince. Her grip on his hand was like iron, he couldn’t have jerked away from the pain even if he wanted to. A moment later she rewrapped the hand. It had taken her a few seconds and yet it was neat, orderly, compared to the mess that had taken him ten minutes and had sucked.

The arm was worse. The bandage didn’t come off easily, it had to be pulled from drying blood with a soft wrench leaving a raw oozing arm exposed to the night. Wait, he thought, oozing? He did a double take at the sight of the pus oozing up from the wound and the thin black and green veins spreading out from the cut. He looked away fearing he was going to vomit everywhere. It was grotesque and it was his arm—he didn’t know how Mellie could stand to look at it.

“I was afraid of this,” she said. She tapped a finger against the enflamed red flesh that hadn’t yet started to green and River cried out.

“What-what is this?”

“You ever hear about rats carrying the plague into all those medieval towns way back when?” Mellie said, River just nodded. “Rat monsters are the same. They’re basically just one big contagious filthy breeding spawn, it’s why we just call them rats as if they were no different to an ordinary run of the mill rat. They’re too pathetic, and too gross, to be dignified with a separate identity.”

“You’re saying I have the plague?” River exclaimed.

“No, just something like a plague, a nasty infection that the rats carry,” she was detached, clinical even about the whole thing, “in the old days we’d have to amputate the arm to save your life.”

“Amputate?” River mouthed soundlessly.

“These days we just need antibiotics.” River sagged in relief.

“You couldn’t have said that to begin with?”

“I could have,” she replied, “but that wouldn’t have been any fun. Seriously you should see the look on your face, you thought I was going to cut off your arm.”

“Well yeah,” he mumbled sullenly.

“I could if you’d prefer?” she offered

“Ah no, I’m good thanks. Antibiotics please.”

“Can I trust you to stay in the house while I go to the clinic?” Mellie asked wryly. “I’d take you with me but a human all weak and pathetic like this? It would just be too enticing for most of the monsters in town to resist.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” River made the cross over his heart to back up the statement.

“Good,” she slapped his knee reassuringly as she stood up, “I won’t be long. Try not to move around too much, it’ll make the infection worse. Ok?”

“Got it.”

Mellie left and River picked up his note book, under the passage about the rats he annotated it with ‘Gross. Plague. Stay away.’ After which he turned to a new page and started writing down everything Mellie had just told him, minus his own feelings on the subject of skinning people to wear their skins like clothes. There were apparently a lot of monsters in town and if River had ever been good at anything it was research, it didn’t hurt to make a few notes if it meant keeping things straight and keeping himself in one piece.