MonsterVille

It had been an hour since Katie-Cam left. River was sitting at the kitchen table twiddling his thumbs and trying to wrap his head around everything that happened while Mellie sat opposite him. She was paler than usual and her cheeks were still blotchy from crying. At that particular moment she was staring into empty space. River wasn’t sure whether she was furiously contemplating what she was going to do or whether she had just gone catatonic—all he knew for sure was they were in a bad spot.

Mellie owned him, check.

Mellie was on the low end the of the monster world, check.

Those two facts combined made for a problem. From everything he had been told or pieced together on his own Mellie would have been fine if she didn’t have River there, unfortunately human flesh was such a valued commodity in the town that every depraved monster with loose control of their appetites wanted to take him for themselves. Katie-Cam had essentially been the only thing stopping them, an apex predator and Mellie’s BFF under the same roof. River had seen first-hand what Katie could do and he was willing to bet what she had done was the least of her capabilities. She was lethal, dangerous and liked to play with River like her own personal chew/sex toy. Not that he minded, in fact given his situation a violent romp on the couch that left him bleeding all over was actually just the distraction he needed to keep sane. Now she was gone. Now Mellie was defenceless… now she needed to find a solution and River had already figured it out.

She was going to sell him, trade him, barter him, whatever, to another monster. It would kill two birds with one stone, she would remove the source of her problems and in the same stroke she would gain a measure of protection from any of the monsters that might be holding a grudge.

“Guess you wish you’d never won that lottery,” River said quietly. He wasn’t even sure she heard him, she just kept staring ahead blankly. “I’m sorry?” he offered. She laughed. It was a touch unhinged but it was progress.

“You’re sorry?” she repeated, “You have the bad luck to get scooped up by monsters, to have your friends killed and to be raffled off in a lottery and you’re apologising to me?” she wiped a tear from her eye. “Oh I needed that, I really needed that.”

“Glad I could help.”

Mellie let out a long sigh as the laughter vanished and she deflated beside him. She turned sorrowful eyes on River and sniffled. “I’m not a killer,” she confessed, “I’m a monster, I was born this way but I’ve never hurt a human in my life, never killed one or eaten one, until a couple of years ago I was a freaking vegetarian!”

River didn’t know what to say to that so he said nothing.

“Which drove my mother crazy, she’s an Aswang by the way, don’t know if I told you that before but they eat pretty much everything which makes them crazy strong. She used to prepare me these big elaborate meals disguising human meat and I could always smell it right away, wouldn’t go anywhere near it so she was always yelling at me, trying to force me to eat…” she trailed off lost in her memories, “that’s how I met Katie. I was just a kid and I ran away from home one night, ran off into the woods.”

She looked directly into River’s eyes as she went on, “I’m more human than monster you know. I don’t think I told you that either, and at that age even my mother couldn’t tell the difference between me and a run of the mill human. Just imagine it, a little girl, all that soft tender flesh ripe for the eating and I was just running through the woods crying, my mom didn’t even know I was gone.” Again she trailed off lost in those dark thoughts, “It didn’t take long for some ghouls to get my scent and start hunting me.” She didn’t elaborate on exactly what ghouls were but from the sound of it they weren’t anything pleasant.

“They followed me for miles because they’re cowards, they could smell the human on me but they wanted to be sure, wanted to wait till their pack had come together just in case.”

Just in case what? He wondered. In case she was something else, some scary monster pretending to be a little girl? He thought of the black eyed kids and shuddered, they would be haunting his nightmares for a long time to come… assuming he lived long enough to enjoy his nightmares.

“I ran for his as long as I could and they hunted me down,” she closed her eyes, “one of them bit me. Tried to take my arm off in one bite. That was when Katie found me, she swept in like an angel of death descending with the wrath of god behind her…” She stood up suddenly and took his hand, he couldn’t help but note how warm it felt, like she was starting to run a fever again. She always seemed to be running to one extreme or another, “Come with me.” She said, not that he had much choice, she dragged him behind her anyway.

They went upstairs to the locked door and she took him into that mysterious room which turned out to be exactly what he thought. Her studio.

Half painted canvases covered the room, a paint encrusted desk ran along an entire wall with every shade imaginable decked out along it in a flurry of unsorted colours, there were brushes of every size and description, chunks of charcoal haphazardly resting on a canvas. And above the wall farthest from the door there hung a painting of unimaginable beauty.

It was Katie-Cam in all her primal fury, she was naked and painted in a flurry of pinks and reds, it took him a moment to realise the red was blood slicked to her nude body. It suited her so well it was as if she wore the blood as armour. She was in the midst of a dark forest with immense trees dwarfing her, and shadows stretching out from her lithe body, shadows that bent and twisted reminiscent of an angels wings as they spread out behind her. Her h

and was raised like a weapon, her thick black lacquered nails dripping red, and her eyes, they were the same intense ravenous black as every picture he had seen of her. It was her universal feature no matter how she was painted.

At her feet there was a little girl with golden blonde hair, bright blue eyes and rosy cheeks staring up at her saviour, one hand reaching out.

“Wow,” River breathed, “I mean, wow. That’s how you see her, your knight in bloody armour.”

Mellie smiled and nodded, “She’s always been there for me, when I was a little girl she played with me and scared away the monsters who thought I would be a tasty snack. When I was a teenager she was around more than my own mother, she taught me to hunt in the woods, to navigate by the stars, she taught me how to live and she’s been my best friend, my only friend, most of my life.”

“And now she’s gone,” River said, “because of me.”

“Because she did what she always does, she protected me, this time that just meant protecting you. She’s a wendigo you know, one of the most dangerous monsters in the world, she makes a habit of eating other monsters when they cross her but I always felt perfectly safe with her.”

“I’m sorry,” River said again, he felt like he had apologised a thousand times that night.

Mellie shook her head, her hair flicking from side to side wildly, “You don’t get it. You don’t have to apologise, you don’t need to. This may suck but it’s not your fault.” Her smile grew coy, mischievous, “Want to see something else I painted?” she didn’t let him answer. She pulled him towards a canvas covered by a thick white sheet and she pulled it away to reveal… River.

He was in that awful purple and white cheerleading outfit, and he was just standing there alone on a stage with shadows creeping in on him. It was sombre and ridiculous in the same stroke and it was his turn to laugh. It was also when he realised Mellie was still holding his hand as she smiled back at him. His heart started to beat just that touch faster and he wondered what was wrong with him for the umpteenth time since he had found himself in Monster Ville. How many women were going to set his libido racing with a smile or the brush of their hand?

“It’s um,”

“Stupid I know,” she laughed, “but it’s the first time I saw you so while you were sleeping I thought why not? I should commemorate the event. Maybe I should have commiserated it but it’s too late now, I’m thinking I’m going to hang it in the main room,” she laughed again, “where all of my many friends, family and guests will be able to see it.”

Mellie went serious in the blink of an eye, “I’m not going to sell you.” She said, “You must have been thinking about it, and I’ll admit there have been offers. But I’m not going to do it. Doesn’t matter where you went sooner or later it would end up the same, you’d be eaten.”

“If you keep me the other monsters are going to come after you,” he pointed out.

She shrugged, “They were going to come after me sooner or later anyway, like I said I’m just too human for them to pass up the opportunity.” Now that Katie-Cam was gone. She didn’t need to say the last part, it hovered between them unspoken and acknowledged. “So screw it, I’m not the most moral girl in the world but I draw the line at handing you over to die.” She sighed, “Which brings me to the next tiny little detail. We need to go see a man about a harem.”

“Uh, ok?”

“Long story,” Mellie said, “Potential buyer of sorts, but he’s honourable in his own way. If I speak to him face to face he won’t come slit our throats while we’re sleeping. And he’ll probably let us walk out of his lair tonight…”

“Probably?”

“Only two things in the world are guaranteed.” Mellie smirked and River groaned, “Death and taxes.”