Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings - Posts Tagged "serial"

The idea for THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came to me very quickly. I was driving, letting my mind drift off to that place where ideas live, as I often do, and the thought occurred to me to reverse the roles of people and monsters. I often write about monsters as antagonists, be them malevolent or misunderstood.

But I'd never attempted to create monster protagonists whom the reader would have to identify with, root for, and create an emotional connection to. This has been done in kids cartoons like Ahhh!!! Real Monsters, and movies like Monster's Inc. But as adult fiction? Who knows, everything's been done before, but I wanted to give my Kevin Strange spin on it either way.

I broke tradition, normally I won't start a new project until the one I'm working on is finished. But this idea solidified so quickly and furiously in my brain, I had to get it out while it was fresh. So I booked a hotel room and spent three days writing this story from the very first sentence to the last, in one long session.

THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED is my entry in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology, to be released in January 2014 by StrangeHouse Books, but I'm serializing it here on Goodreads to promote the upcoming anthology. Here's part 1 in case you missed it. Now, I proudly present to you, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, part 2:

***

Big Dex deflected a blow from a pair of humans with spinning buzz saws grafted to their chests using the body of the huge bearded man. The saws shot sparks all over the room as they connected with the gyroscope on his chest, causing an awful, high-pitched squealing noise.

Big Dex's tongue was still embedded into the man's forehead. It stretched across the human's head like a fleshy mohawk before it connected back into Big Dex's mouth another five or six feet away. The bearded human's mouth still hung slack as Big Dex controlled his limbs, having gained complete control of his nervous system. The monster crushed faces and stomped bodies into mush even as he controlled the burly man's reflexes, causing him to smash the two buzz saw-wielding humans with his mace arm (his other having already been sliced off, along with one of his legs). His intestines hung freely from a giant gash in his stomach, and he oozed blood from half a dozen different mortal wounds across his body.

Big Dex figured he could get a few more good kills out of the big man before he'd have to discard him and stab into the mind of another lunatic human. As much fun as he was having felling scores of these savages, he couldn't shake the feeling of dread from the revelations made inside the human's mind. He needed to find his children, and he needed to get them to safety. That's all that mattered.

That's when the machine crawled out of the ground.

It was actually five humans, but they each had machine parts grafted onto their already-modified bodies. A pair of them had their left and right arms removed, respectively. In their place were what looked like cannon barrels cut in half down the center. Another pair was missing either leg in much the same fashion, while the fifth had no lower body at all, just a cylindrical piece of technology grafted onto its trunk that resembled the base of a lightbulb.

The bizarre people began to lock these various pieces into place while servos spun and lights all across the weird machine blinked on and off. The legless human climbed up the half-formed machine and screwed itself into a round opening at the top, completing the unusual piece of machinery.

Big Dex already knew what it was: a weapon. A flesh cannon powerful enough to destroy any monster caught between its crosshairs.

The Overmind had created its monsters to eradicate humans. It made them immune to human weaponry. Guns, bullets, rockets, bombs, were all useless against the hoards of terror. These humans had developed new technology. Big Dex knew because the bearded man knew. He saw the memories of countless millions of experiments over hundreds of years as the beings dwelling below the monster city turned their very bodies into weapons capable of killing monsters.

Big Dex braced himself, grabbing the bearded man around the waist to use as a shield while extracting his tongue from his forehead at the same time. Lights along the sides of the machine all lit up green, and the human screwed into the top of it began to spin. Smoke wafted up off the man's body as he screamed, spun faster and faster, and then, without warning, melted down into the barrel, skin, bones, and all, leaving the metal exoskeleton to fall, discarded off to the side of the machine.

A blast of molten flesh exploded from the barrel. Big Dex ducked behind the bearded man as best he could. The screaming, flailing man, now finally back in control of his own body but held fast by the monster's huge claw, took almost all of the supercharged blast, turning him into a red smear across the monster's scaly chest. Big Dex howled in pain as he looked down to find that his enormous claw had been disintegrated in the blast. The heat of the fleshy plasma had cauterized his mangled stump instantly.
Another legless torso crawled from the hole in the floor.

Ammo, Big Dex thought. They're using their bodies as ammo. And if he didn't act soon, he'd be joining his bearded friend as a splatter on his son's bedroom wall.

But the crazed, vibrating things were relentless. Worse, they didn't seem to give shit number one about their own lives. It was as though they enjoyed sacrificing themselves in droves if it meant the death of even a single monster.
Big Dex couldn't let that happen. He had to find the children.

Before the monster could move, another dozen humans swarmed around his legs, digging their claws and teeth into his scaly flesh, while still others clamped down around his feet at the floor, trying to hold him in place as the next “bullet” screwed itself into the man-machine.

***

Seeing his daddy's hand melted off in the blink of an eye wiped the smile right off Dexy's face. He tried to scream, but Willex put her hand over his mouth.

“Don't,” she whispered. “If they can do that to Dad, what do you think they'll do to us?”

Dexy began to cry again.

Big Dex roared. He kicked the humans clinging to his legs like ticks against the wall, smashing them dead, only to have even more fling themselves onto his body. He cracked skulls and bit clean through exoskeletons, but the droves of animalistic humans proved to be too much for him.

The human bullet atop the flesh cannon spun and the lights along its sides turned green as Big Dex was pulled to the floor by at least fifteen naked, vibrating humans. As the bullet-man spun and melted, Dexy broke free of Willex's grasp and screamed out “Daddy!” just as the flesh cannon fired. Buxtak threw his bulk on top of the smaller monster to keep him from running directly into the bio-blast.

Big Dex's eye met with his son's just as the flesh bullet hit him, pulverizing the huge monster's body, along with those of the humans pinning him to the ground.
The sound of the blast muffled Dexy's cry. The humans—those few remaining alive—shuffled back into the pit from whence they came. The flesh cannon disassembled itself, joining the others in the hole in the floor. After only a moment, the bedroom was quiet once again.

“Daddy!” Dexy screamed again. He pulled himself out from under the larger monster's body and ran to where his father lay. Big Dex was crumpled in a heap, his back to his son. When Dexy rolled him over, the little monster gasped and fell on his butt. Half his father's face, his entire arm and most of his chest were just... gone. Black, burnt flesh was all that remained. Big Dex's eye was open and unfocused, glazed over. Lifeless.

Then the hulking beast coughed and shuddered. His eye focused. “Dexy,” he slurred.

“D-daddy...” the little creature said, voice hitching in his throat. He'd never had a reason to think his father anything but indestructible, a superhero. Seeing him prone and mangled was too much.

“C-come closer, Dexy.” The wounded monster pushed himself—with some difficulty—up onto his elbow and turned his body to face his son.
Dexy did as instructed, his little eye darting to his father's wounds and then back to his face, as though ashamed to look at what the humans had done to his beloved parent.

“I have to...show you... Then you have...to find your...mom and show her. Understand?”

“Sh-show me what?”

Big Dex's tongue split. The forked appendage snaked out. He took hold of it and jammed the end into Dexy's neck.
Then, in that moment, the young monster knew that the humans had their eyes pinned open to keep them from shutting them in the face of the monster race's absolute horror. Knew that the factory which produced the gyroscopic modifications grafted to every human being on the planet lay deep, deep underground and spanned, impossibly, the entire length of the continent. And knew just how many scores of billions of humans were down there building machine bodies and flesh weapons, their only purpose to eradicate the monsters from the face of the Earth or die trying.
Dexy knew everything.

***

When Willex and Buxtak finally chanced a glance around the corner of the rubble, Big Dex was dead. Dexy stood alone, his back to his fallen father.

The little fly-girl buzzed through the air, while the lumbering Buxtak trailed behind her. “I-is he…?”

“Yes,” Dexy said. A scowl adorned his features. He no longer looked like an innocent, scared child. He was calm. Focused. He very much resembled his father in that moment, as though some part of the ages-old monster had transferred into his young son when he opened his mind to his boy. “He's dead. They killed him. And they're out there now, killing everyone else we've ever known. Everyone we love. And they won't stop until they kill every last one of us, or die trying.”

Tears flowed down his sister's face. Her little mandible parts, constantly moving like an ecosystem all their own, licked the liquid all away as she knelt over the body of her dead father. Buxtak put his big hands on her tiny shoulders. “I'm so sorry, Willex.”

Dexy turned to face the other two young monsters. “We have to go. Mom needs to know what she's up against. She needs to know how many of these things there really are. What they plan to do.”

Willex wiped her tears away, only for more to stream down her face. “How do you know what they plan to do?”

“Daddy showed me.”

Buxtak stomped over to the window. Outside, the screams of dying monsters filled the air. As far as the big thing could see, humans slaughtered monsters. “If he couldn't fight them, what chance do we have out there? How do we even know where your mom is?”

“We have to try. Dad thinks Mom and the rest of the night patrol will make their last stand at the base of the Overmind. That's where we're going.”

“Buxtak's right,” Willex said. “We're just kids. If we go outside now, we won't last a minute. Any one of those... things could kill us without effort.”

“You're right,” Dexy conceded.

Buxtak rejoined the smaller creatures by their fallen father. “Best we hide and wait this out.”

“If we wait this out,” Dexy said, turning his attention to the human corpses littered about the room, “there won't be a world for us left out there.” He studied each of them intently before moving on to the next. “But you're right about one thing.” He stopped above one of the humans. Its neck was bent sideways. Its eyes were vacant. When Dexy poked its exposed pupil, the thing let out a cry, but did not move. It was paralyzed from the neck down.

“We do have to hide.”

***

“You're crazy,” Willex said. She hovered over her little brother, all six arms crossed in protest. “This will never work. You're going to get us killed, Dexy!”

The little monster was busy. He was using one of his sharp claws to carefully slice open the human's midsection at the stomach. “We're dead either way, sis.”
The human looked down in horror, screaming gibberish as Dexy peeled back its belly, exposing its vital organs. “Shut him up, will you? If they hear him, they'll swarm back in here and we'll be done for.”

Buxtak had been staring into the chasm in the middle of the bedroom floor. It was vast. The sounds of human screams and machinery echoed off the deep walls. He plodded over to Dexy and put one of his gigantic hands over the human's mouth, muffling his protests as the cyclops monster extracted his stomach and most of his intestines, discarding them onto the floor.

“Won't be needing those anymore, will you?” Dexy said, smirking.

After Dexy pulled out several more handfuls of guts, the human stopped screaming. It was pale and sweaty. It continued to jibber, but did so quietly now. It would die soon. Dexy just hoped it would hold out long enough...

“Ok, get him to his feet,” Dexy instructed.

Taking the human by the shoulders, Buxtak lifted it up and held it in place.

“I don't understand,” Willex said.

“Watch and learn, sis. This is gonna be awesome!” Dexy rubbed his hands together, and then crawled up into the human's flayed open stomach.

Willex watched, disgusted but fascinated. Nothing happened for a few moments, and then suddenly, the human's hand twitched. The thing looked down in horror as it flexed its fingers.

“Ok, now let go,” Dexy yelled from the human's guts, his voice muffled but excited.

Buxtak released his grip on the thing's shoulders. It slumped and fell forward, but at the last second caught itself, steadied and stood upright. It whipped back around to face the young monsters. “This is awesome!” the human said. Its speech was slurred and barely discernible. Blood oozed from its mouth and nose. Even though it smiled, its eyes were still filled with recognition and horror. It was not in control.

Dexy was. Curled up inside the empty guts of the dying human, Dexy had fished his pronged tongue up to the point where the human's neck had broken, and tapped into its spinal cord. He now operated the human's entire nervous system with his own mind.

They now had the perfect cover.

***

“I can't fit in there!” Buxtak said.
Willex poked her head outside the human stomach. Bits of intestine fell out and hit the bone floor with a soft splat. “You can change your size, silly!”

“I've never done that before!” Buxtak said, all ten of his eyeballs wide with fear atop the antler-like hands on his head. “My mom told me never to try that.”
“Why not?” the fly-girl asked.

“I don't know. She never said why. She just said not to meddle with things I wasn't smart enough to understand.”

“Concentrate,” Dexy said, speaking through the human's mouth. “I know you can do it.”

Buxtak sighed. He closed his eyes, balled his hands into fists and strained.
Nothing happened.

“Try again,” Dexy said.
Buxtak stomped around in place, cleared his throat and repeated. Again, nothing happened.

“Oh, brother,” Willex said. “This is a stupid idea.”

Buxtak hung his head in defeat. “Just leave me, guys. I'll stay here till the humans are gone. You don't need me anyway. I'm useless.”

“You're not useless,” Dexy said, grinning madly. “You're the key to my whole plan!”
The big monster looked confused. “How?”

“Don't worry about it. Look, I've got an idea,” Dexy said. He steered the human body over to the mess of steel and flesh that had been people before Big Dex got a hold of them. He rooted around in the pile for several moments before extracting a loop of twisted metal.

“Perfect!”

Dexy wrapped the metal loop around Buxtak's hands. “Now you're our prisoner.”

Buxtak smiled. He wanted to believe their plan would work. Wanted to trust in his little buddy. But inside, he knew they were all doomed.

Click here for part 3

This is the final part of the serialization of my newest novelette, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, which will appear in the StrangeHouse Books anthology STRANGE FUCKING STORIES in January. It can be purchased right now in its entirety in paperback and on Kindle here.

Before you read further, you should read parts one, two, three,and four.

Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and give it a rating and a review. Thanks, and I hope you've enjoyed reading my little story as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. :)


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A flesh bomb exploded directly in their path, causing Willex to almost drop her brother. Dexy cried out and redoubled his grip on his sister's waist. They flew at eye-level with Buxtak, who was still hundreds of yards away. Dexy told himself not to look down, but did so anyway, causing him to cry out again. For a monster with two fliers in his family, he sure was scared of heights.

“Stop whining and tell me why we're doing this!” Willex said, avoiding another explosion just off to their right.

Dexy took a deep breath and closed his eye so he wouldn't have to see how high they were. “I saw inside Daddy's mind, into his memories. Big Buxtak, he didn't die in the war. Nothing the humans have in their power, then or now, could kill him. He just grew too big. His brain doesn't grow with his body. Once he gets big enough, he forgets what he is and just... walks.

“Big Bux walked off into the ocean and drowned, sis. That's why Buxtak's mom never taught him to shift sizes.”
“And what exactly are we going to do?”
Dexy grinned in spite of his fear of heights. “You'll see!”

***

The generals' two heads screamed in unison. They lived for war, had dreamed about this day their entire lives. The smell of Evil blood on the air, even the honor of sending countless millions of their own kind to the great machine beyond gave them unbridled joy. “This is it! We take down the giant, we wipe the globe clean of the Evil which makes the globe not clean!”

The generals looked around at the teeming multitude of humans surrounding them. There were enough. Of course there were enough. They would not make the mistakes of those weak, soft people who lived here before the Evil. These humans were innumerable. They were legion.

***

Dexy and Willex stood on top of Buxtak's head. Humans swarmed his body. Flesh bombs exploded all around him. It was useless; they hadn't so much as scratched his skin. That was the good news. The bad news was he was only ten or fifteen steps from the ocean.

Dexy split his tongue and drove the prongs into Buxtak's skull, but they couldn't penetrate his hide any better than the human weapons. “I was afraid of that,” he said, putting his hands on his hips as Willex knocked a human who'd crawled up onto the giant's head back down onto his companions below, killing several more on impact.

“So what now?” Willex asked.

“I don't know, but if we don't do it soon, our big buddy's going to walk right into the water. And he can't swim.”

“I've got an idea!” Willex said, snatching Dexy up, causing the little monster to scream and flail once again.

The little fly-girl zoomed straight up into the air, corkscrewed, and headed back down toward Buxtak's head, dodging a flailing human who jumped off the giant's hand-antler in an attempt to knock the children out of the sky. Dexy continued to scream as Willex made a B-line for Buxtak's head. Dexy was sure they were going to hit the lumbering beast when, at the last second, Willex tossed her little brother into Buxtak's ear canal. “You're welcome!” she yelled, as his screams faded the further he tumbled into the giant's head.

Her celebration was cut short when she turned around and saw what loomed before her. How did something that... big sneak up on her like that?

***

The generals were face to face with Willex, all those hundreds of feet up in the air. The thing was breathtakingly enormous. Half a million humans must have comprised the skeletal structure alone, all interlocked together, their metal hands and feet welded together forever. It was a mega centipede. Its body was miles long, arching backward in the middle and forward again way up here in the sky, forming a gigantic S. Row after row of flesh cannons, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, lined its underbelly like the legs of the bug it resembled. And fixed atop its head, like a great horn, were the generals.

“Fire at the thing in which needs to be fired at!” they screamed.

Willex couldn't dodge the incredible number of flesh cannons firing off at once. She had to break apart and skitter away as the explosions rocked Buxtak's titan body, causing him to stumble ever closer to the edge of the water.

Something was wrong. Dexy should have taken control of the giant monster by now and steered him away from disaster. As more explosions knocked Buxtak onto the shoreline, Willex reformed and darted into the big beast's ear canal.

She found her brother sitting cross-legged in front of Buxtak's little brain. His tongue prong was in place and his eye was closed in concentration. His brow was creased, and the little scaly monster trembled. Willex put her hand on him.

“Dexy, are you OK?”

He opened his eye. “It's not strong enough. Even with me controlling it, his little brain can't stop him from walking. The explosions outside, what is that?”

“The generals. They knows they can't kill Buxtak. They're just pushing him into the water. They know everything, Dexy. They knew exactly how to wipe us off the planet.”

“They've had five hundred years to plan, sis. But they didn't plan on three little kids ruining their party.” Dexy turned and faced his sister. “We can beat the humans. Just do exactly what I tell you.”

***

“The Abomination is the last of the Evil that is the Abomination!” the generals screamed from the top of the mega centipede. “The sea is its weakness! Push! Push it into the unfathomable depths of that which is its weakness!”

Buxtak was now ankle-deep in the water. The mega centipede was right on top of him. The shoreline was completely obscured by human bodies. They waded into the water, singing songs of glory and death as they swam out to the mega centipede and climbed up its towering body, only to crawl into the barrels of the innumerable flesh cannons to be shot into the indestructible hide of the Abomination. If every single human on the planet had to die to kill the last of the Evil, that was just fine by them. Maybe the trees would sing the songs of their glory.

More cannons exploded, driving Buxtak ever deeper into the ocean, now nearly up to his waist.

The big thing was still crying and blubbering about its mother when the flies began pouring out of his ears.

***

Willex replicated and replicated some more. Buxtak was shoulder-deep in the water. Soon, there would be no way to turn him back. He would drown where he stood, and then this war really would be over. No sooner would she replicate enough little versions of herself to cover the big monster's head than the mega centipede would fire off another thousand-round volley of flesh blasts, incinerating all of her work. This happened again and again, frustrating Willex to no end. She was about to give up.

And then the cannons stopped firing.
They'd come too far out into the ocean. The humans couldn't swim out this far. They were all drowning from exhaustion before they made it to the mega centipede.

The generals screamed, their fury shaking the entire titanic creature. “Swim! Swim for your lives as though glory depended on your swimming!”

This gave Willex just enough time to replicate herself over Buxtak's whole head, then his shoulders, then grew three sets of arms made of fly monsters from his long torso under the water.

She concentrated. It was difficult synching the minds of all the billions of tiny flies covering the giant's body. If she lost focus, she would certainly never find herself among all of those little monsters again. And then it happened.
Working together with Dexy, with much effort, they managed to turn the great beast around in the water.

***

The generals unlocked their feet from the mega centipede's head. They climbed down its back, stepping on faces, backs, and elbows, ignoring the pained protests from the interlocked humans they stomped on. They stopped in front of a flesh cannon, reached down and ripped one of the humans from the structure, tearing the helpless man's arms out of socket in the process, due to the fact that they were welded to the person above him. “For the glory of the death which brings me glory!” the armless man screamed as the generals stuffed him down the cannon's barrel, melting him down instantly, blasting his remains toward the Abomination. The single shot did nothing to stop the towering beast which now trudged back through the water toward the mechanical being.

“We have come too far to lose after we've come so far!” the generals bellowed, scrambling back up to the mega centipede's head. No sooner had they locked themselves back into place than a gigantic fist covered in flies swung directly at their faces.

***

The generals ducked, barely avoiding the blow. They locked their arms and finally their two heads permanently in place, allowing a series of nanobots to weld their bodies to the creature's frame. Their brains took full control of the giant centipede. Now they saw from the eyes of the millions of humans comprising the gargantuan machine. Felt what they felt, heard what they heard.

As soon as the two-person being finished orienting themselves with the mega beast's nervous system, the Abomination's gigantic fly-covered hand shot back out, grabbing the mega centipede around the throat. In response, the generals commanded their miles-long body to thrash up like a whip, smashing into the Abomination's head, sending the titanic Evil back another hundred yards closer to the abyss that awaited it below the waves.

***

Flies covered the vast space inside Buxtak's head. They continued to multiply exponentially, now by the millions every minute. Soon they would cover Dexy as well. He panicked when the flies began to swarm over him. He tried to pull his tongue free of Buxtak's brain, but the prongs held fast, almost as though Buxtak wouldn't let him pull them out.

“Don't fight it, Dexy,” millions of Willexes said as the flies filled the brain cavity entirely. “This is the only way. You know this. You wanted this.”

Now flies crawled into his own head, massaged his own brain with the relaxing words of his sister. He no longer panicked. No longer cared about his own insignificant little life. He, Buxtak, Willex, they were all one creature now. One glorious monster known as... What had the humans called them? The Abomination. Their minds were perfectly in sync. They no longer thought as three separate entities. Their memories, their rage, their sadness melded together into one unstoppable giant.

The mega centipede was wrapped around their face, trying to choke the life out of them. Impossible. The Abomination took a step toward the shore. Then another.
That's when the centipede changed.

Its segments shifted, creating two pairs of long legs, while maintaining its noose-like tail. It more resembled a scorpion now. With these modifications, the human-machine hybrid was able to pull the Abomination off balance, and send both titans crashing underwater.

Below the surface, the giant machine made of men changed again, splitting its long tail into two segments, each digging into the sediment of the ocean floor, pulling the flesh beast further underwater as it permanently anchored itself beneath the waves.

***

The Abomination's fly carapace began to drown. Whole pieces of it broke off and floated back toward the surface. Air bubbles escaped its lungs as it fought to break free from the mechanical titan.
But the general and his millions of humans were not immune to the water, either. Parts of its vice-like legs began to drown and loosen their grip. The generals were close to unconsciousness themselves. Waves of panic swept through the machine giant.

Glory comes to those who would drown to see the Evil drown at the hands of those who would drown for glory! the generals thought into the minds of each of the humans struggling to hold their breaths. Just... hold on... a little... longer!
The Abomination braced its arms against the sediment and arched its back, allowing it just enough space to smash down on top of the machine creature, killing thousands of drowning humans, causing it to loosen its grip that much more.

More flies died and washed away as the three-minded monster swam in and out of consciousness. Another minute, and it would die as well.

The generals spat out a lungful of stale air. Then another.

The Abomination lashed out with its fists, tearing off segments of the machine in one last desperate attempt to break away. Air bubbles streamed from its mouth as it choked, still unable to swim to the surface.

Then the machine creature spasmed. Its legs kicked uselessly in the water. The Abomination held it fast, pinning it to the ocean floor.

The two faces of the Generals mouthed the word glory in unison, and then went slack, the remaining air bubbles from their lungs trickling out of their mouths and noses.

The Generals were dead. The war was over. The monsters had won.

Victory was short-lived, as the Abomination let out its final lungful of air in a vast stream of bubbles. In seconds, it would join the legion of humans in death. It was calm in that moment, ready to accept its encroaching demise knowing it had wiped out the human race again, preventing them from taking back the world the monsters had won from them so long ago.

Its final thought: Would there be glory in the afterlife for monsters? Or would the humans hog it all for themselves?
That's when a gigantic arm reached into the water and pulled the titanic monster back to the surface.

***

The Abomination puked sea water on the beach. The few thousand humans left alive on shore ran for their lives, choosing to scuttle back under the rocks they'd crawled out from under rather than face the glorious death they'd so recently sung about. Without their leader, they were as useless as a colony of bees without their queen.

Already the fly monsters were replicating, reforming across the surface of the Abomination's flesh as it rolled over, breathing in huge lungfuls of air. After several minutes, it opened all ten of its reptile eyes atop its hand-antler head. What it saw made its breath hitch in its throat.

Had it actually died down there deep in the ocean? Was this Heaven?

***

The Overmind. After five hundred years of silence, it had chosen to stand up. Now it stood over the Abomination, offering a hand to the fallen mega monster.

The Abomination took its hand and rose to its feet. It still had to look up to meet its savior's gaze. The Overmind's mountainous head loomed in the planet's lower atmosphere. Its huge glowing eye cast a red hue over the entire northern hemisphere.

Its body was slender, its six arms long and lanky, each ending in a hand the size of city-states, its legs taught and muscular.

The Abomination looked up in awe, then fell to one knee.

“Master,” it said, shuddering in ecstasy at the sight of the most horrible of horrors. The Creator of all monsters.

“Rise,” the Overmind said. Its voice shook the Earth enough to cause tectonic plate shifts. Tsunamis roared across the surface of the ocean, washing away continents.

The Abomination did as instructed.

“Walk with me.”

The two titans strode the Earth's surface, causing earthquakes and volcanoes to explode in tribute to the two godlike beings.

The Abomination looked into the Overmind's mountain face. “Why did you let them live, master? Why let them slaughter our entire race?”

“Five hundred years ago, mankind blessed me with life. I, in turn, created my own. But try as I might, I could not create a being as powerful as myself.

“I became lonely in my omnipotence.

“Even Gods are limited by their own ego, I suppose. I was forced to be patient. To let the nature of this world—the nature of life—carry on at its own pace.

“I let the humans live so that my creations could breed. So that the humans could breed their hatred for me and my children. I hoped that when the time came, when nature pushed back, my children would be strong enough to survive. Would be strong enough to do what I could not.”

“Create a God,” the Abomination said, finishing its master's thought.

“And what a beautiful God you've created, my child.”

The Overmind knelt down and kissed the Abomination on its lips. “Come. Let us leave this planet to fester and die. Its worth has run its course. We have more Gods to create, worlds to conquer. Maybe the two of us can create a being powerful enough to worship ourselves. Wouldn't that be something?”

With that, Overmind opened at the chest, revealing a hollow cavern. The Abomination stepped inside its master's body without hesitation. The Overmind grew wings made of trillions of little fly monsters, and launched itself off the Earth into the unknown blackness of space.

THE END