American Monsters (2 page)

You are lying on a porch, bloody and oozing. You were invited to a house party where everyone dropped little pills and you waited to find a woman with whom to mate. You have been unsuccessful in your attempts for a few days now and you felt an almost painful desire to procreate. You finally did, but the woman reacted differently than others afterwards. Usually they just cried and cried, and if the ritual occurred anywhere other than their homes, they have run off. But this one hurt you, she actually did. It makes you want her again, but you know it is a useless venture. This ritual has no end result. These women are not of your kind, your presence here on this planet is an accident and now you must suffer an unfruitful life.

Doctors held you in a laboratory for years, performing test after test, poking and prodding at your alien body, trying to find the secret to your healing powers, but all to no avail. In the end the Doctors decided you were a threat to no one, and since they are unable to send you home, they comfortably set up your life on Earth.

But freedom has compounded your urges, and what you were once able to control in the sterile lab can no longer be contained. You have no idea how many females you have tried to copulate with, but it will never be productive. The seed is incompatible, but the craving remains.

You lie on the porch, stunned. People have crowded around you; they ask you if you are okay. You have blood in your mouth, which you swallow. You gurgle a response and wait as your wounds heal themselves. You don’t worry about what these people see since they are all on drugs and will assume this part, if not the entire scene, was some sort of chemically induced mass hallucination. You swallow a few more mouthfuls of blood, enjoying its crisp metallic taste. You feel healed. You sit up.

― It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m fine.

― What happened man, there was screaming.

― There was?

― What the fuck man, we heard it, we all heard it. Didn’t we?

Assorted voices reply in affirmatives.

― It’s nothing, really. She’s having a bad trip or something and freaked out, then she just ran off. I don’t know, I didn’t do anything to her.

― Whoa, that’s some good shit, huh?

Assorted affirmatives. The party carries on as before. You got what you came for and decide to go walking. You notice a trail. Is it blood? You kneel and rub your fingers in it, then raise it to your nose to smell it. Yes, blood. It peters out ahead of you, so you walk around where it ends, wondering if the creature stopped bleeding or is close by. There is a park ahead, so you decide to look around.

You spy a woman lying supine. You aren’t sure if she’s drunk, or homeless, or both. You think, what good luck to find two accessible women in one night. You walk over quietly and peer down at her with your strange and pale spotted face. She’s awa
ke, her eyes widen in fear: It is the woman you had at the party.

― What the fuck are you doing here.

It is not a question and she has murder in her voice. Her violet eyes flash with rage. You feel an uncertain tingle of fear emanating from between your legs. Her eyes. For the first time since you arrived on this planet you are afraid. You are not immortal. You have healing capabilities, but that’s the brunt of it. You cannot regenerate, evidenced by your missing toes and the pinky finger of your left hand. You do not have super human strength. But neither does she, and she has no weapons.

― Well, we meet again. What was your name?

― Fuck you asshole.

She begins getting to her feet. Her face is streaked with tears and blood.

― You stay the fuck away from me or I swear to God. I. Will. Kill. You.

― Really now. It certainly would be fun to s
ee you try.

It’s sweet, to you, actually. You have not seen a female with so much spirit. What’s the word...spunky. She doesn’t want to give up. It’s refreshing to you, it makes it more like a game.

You push her down again. You know that her bottoms are already torn, this won’t even be much work and a second go would be exhilarating. You can’t even remember the last time you copulated twice in one night. What a treat!

Just as you thought. Easy as a pie. You look down at her and you are terrified. There is something in those plum-colored eyes that makes you uncomfortable. What is it? Is it that she isn’t afraid this time? There is no fear. What is that in her eyes? Then, out of nowhere, you feel something resembling pain.

All of the muscles in her body have tightened. She is clenching everything, you can feel it from inside her. You wince with a discomfort that borders on agony. The space inside her is getting smaller and smaller. You must get out, you must get out, she is doing something inside, something is happening inside! You begin to pull your hips away, you tug at your pelvis. She won’t let you go. She is still staring at you with those violet eyes, she’s daring you to get out, the bitch is daring you. You violently yank your pelvis, as hard as you possibly can, pushing off of her chest for support.

The sound of your penis ripping from your body echoes through the trees and ricochets in your ears. That grotesque sound, the burning heat of your loins transformed into an amputated pain. Now it is you who lies supine, tears streaming from your eyes. She gets up and stands over you, one foot by each of your ears. She bears down on her hips and spits a chewed lump of flesh into your face. You scream and try to turn away as blood and mucus stream into your mouth, your eyes, your nose. There is a cunning smile in her violet eyes.

― Was it as good for you as it was for me?

She walks away as you choke on your very big mistake.

The twins are sitting and talking in a trashed living room, their sparkling tops revealing the expanse of flesh where they ar
e joined at the hip. They wear huge baggy pants that might almost be mistaken for skirts, beaded bracelets halfway up their forearms, sparkling glitter faces, and huge bags under their eyes from having been up for the last two days. SugarBear contentedly gnaws on a pacifier. SnuggleBear sucks a grape Blow-Pop while reading a psychedelic fluorescent flyer for an upcoming rave. The twins have been smoking marijuana since their return from a gathering early this morning.

― SugarBear, oh my God, we have to go to this party on Halloween! We totally have to go, it looks so awesome.

― Wait, which one is it? The Motel Chain one?

― What? No. This one is called FULL LUNACY. It’s a full moon party in the city, they, like, never ha
ve those.

― Yeah dude, that’s the one that the crazy Motel Chain guy is throwing, at his mansion house on a hill in Hollywood! It looks so twisted!

SnuggleBear looks very confused. She also looks really stoned.

― [SugarBear exhales sharply.] Ugh. Don’t you
keep up with this scene? From what I’ve heard, the Motel Chain guy is totally whack. He’s bitter because he made bank off of all his Motel Chain, but no one knows who he is or anything ...

― What’s his name again? [She is so stoned]

― I don’t know. [Looks at her funny] Dude, you are so out of it. He made that Motel Chain, I don’t know what his name is, why would I know what his name is? I mean, it’s a pretty lame thing to have a motel chain be your life accomplishment, you know. I’d probably be bitter enough to buy a hill in Hollywood, which is what he did.

― You can’t buy a hill in Hollywood. There have to be laws against that or something. Either I’m just really faded or you’re making it up.

― Money has more power than God, you know [in her know-it-all voice]. He apparently gave all the people who were living on this hill all kinds of money, and it was enough for them to have a reason to leave, so then he bulldozed over all their houses and he’s been building for, like, ever. Years and years! It’s crazy, dude, I heard that the house is on top of the hill and he’s been growing a labyrinth that leads up to it, with car paths and walking paths!

― No shit! Like that movie with David Bowie and the girl who has to solve the labyrinth to get her brother back from goblins and creatures ...

― [As she waves her sister’s words away] No, it’s like the woods in Twin Peaks and the Blair Witch Project. It’s a labyrinth of trees. It’s so huge and intricate they’re going to give out a first map at the gate to the hill so you can even get to the house, cuz you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. And then at the door of the house you get a second map because inside it’s all fun-housy, with different carnival rooms, and tunnels and secret passages and crazy shit like that! Pretty freaky, huh? It’s going to be so huge

― Oh right on, [looking at the colorful piece of glossy paper] the flyer says “Curiosity killed the cat.” What the hell does that mean?

― Oh my God dude, I bet he’s so fucked up. He probably has children locked in the basement, or he beats his wife and has her locked in the basement or maybe he has them all trapped in iron maidens like that Johnny Depp Sleepy Hollow movie! Mad amounts of children and babies and women and stuff he has down in there. Dude, you have to wonder about these things. It’s pretty weird to buy a hill and then throw a party there. No one wants even wants us having parties, why would he build a house with that sole purpose?

― Well, considering the fact that hostility fucks you up, man, I mean, maybe he just wants to get in touch with the youth of today, seeing that if anyone will remember him for anything, it’ll be us. We’ll be around for a while longer to spread the word abo
ut how cool he is and how incredible his party was.

― But what if it’s something else. Something more. [She giggles] Like, what if he’s working with the police and the government and it’s a plot to kill all the party kids! He might be planning on catching
us all in there so we can be wiped out in one fell swoop!

― Or maybe [giggling] the house is alive and must be fed every few years!

― No dummy he just built it! [She gives her a “duh” face and even thumps the side of her hand against their chest to punctuate.]

― How do you know that the hill doesn’t have something about it? [Defensive tone and posture] Maybe people go missing every year and no one ever finds them. Maybe he knows there is something supernatural about the hill, maybe that’s why he bought it.
[Totally defensive] Or maybe even the hill is a burial ground of some sort and needs sacrifices to the unrestful dead.

― Oh, good one! You know that could be possible. I’ve heard this city, this area, used to be all Native American lands until priests cam
e and killed everyone who wasn’t Spanish or who wouldn’t convert to Christianity and now I bet there are a lot of angry spirits out there. Wandering around, looking for revenge. Payback! Hell yeah! Maybe they made Mr. Motel 6 buy the hill and build the maze and the house because they are the ones that want to kill us!

― So you want to go?

― Fuck yeah! Halloween night, baby! [A thoughtful pause] What are we going to wear?

You vividly remember the day you first saw your mother naked. The shock of her castrated body was so traumat
ic for your five-year-old mind that you instantly diverted your gaze to her mouth. You wonder sometimes whether your decision to become a dentist was somehow motivated by that accidental sighting. But the thought of that, like the thought of your mother naked, is too much for you to bear.

You brush it out of your mind, like always.

When your parents sat you down afterwards to explain your mother’s body — that she wasn’t missing a widdler, she just had a different place inside of her, a place where babies are made — well, you weren’t listening. You were staring at that mouth, the teeth, the voice, the little drops of spittle that sprayed into the air as she spoke. You weren’t listening because you already knew where her widdler was: it was hiding inside her body. And like her tongue that kept snaking out in her nervousness to lick those lips, her widdler comes out of her. And like those teeth it is very sharp, and you began to feel scared for your father. Scared of what your mother could do to him.

You remember, also, seeing a horse at pasture. A big huge horse, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere it seemed, its widdler emerged, huge and throbbing and ultimately the most terrifying sight to enter your mind as you imagined your mother’s widdler, creeping out of her body, looking for prey, wanting to devour anything in its path.

You became a dentist because you decided that the female body is wrong, and you know you aren’t the only one. You saw a movie, Dead Ringers, about two gynecologists who also believe that the female figure must be fixed and they invent all manner of tools for operating on women/mutant monsters.

At this point, where we find you now, you believe all women to be mutations, with their retractable widdler. The big secret they keep from all men because then, one day when you least expect, it it’ll slide out and cut you to pieces!

You never got to the end of the movie, though, when you would have seen that the grotesque tools were not for fixing mutant women, but were instead for separating Siamese twins. That wouldn’t have changed your views on this mutant women subject anyway. You are convinced (and afraid) that women are killers by nature, and so you decide to kill them first.

You opened your first dental practice 30 years ago and you change location every few years to keep people from figuring out what you do to your different female patients. If anyone had followed up on any of them they would have found a string of incredible sicknesses, unfortunate mishaps and many a suicide, but none of which directly relate to you, Dr. Johnson, and your practice. It’s just icing the cake to make a new start every few years. Indeed, it is a sacrifice, the loss of spatial stability, but one that you are willing to make for the sake of a greater cause.

You have ways to make the female body correct, as it should be in nature: dead or so deformed the only place that women could call home would be the sideshow freak tent at a circus carnival. Either way, life will be woman-free. You have the poisons and the diseases and an amazing cornucopia of substances that, if mixed correctly, can create just about any desired effect, or dis-effect, rather.

It doesn’t matter that no one knows about the service you provide by relegating these monsters to the lower echelon of society where they belong. You are a man, you have the real widdler, the one that doesn’t hide and trick and manipulate. Women have killer widdlers. Kill the widdler.

You stare into the splayed mouth, head resting on your black leather chair. Number 87. You will have to make a note of it later. She looks at you with her eerie gold eyes and you feel nothing but fear. You tell her to open wide, that this will help the bleeding in her gums after brushing. In your hand you have a vial of bright pink liquid. If you look close enough, you’ll see that the bubbles travel downwards. You’ll see that the liquid is making its way up the glass vial: It wants out.

― Here rinse your mouth out with this.

She complies and that gold stare is averted for a tiny reprieve that makes you realize you have almost been holding your breath.

― Now spit.