Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings, page 3
August 6, 2016
The Disciples of Strange 99 cent eBook Sale!
Now thru Sunday ALL Kevin Strange Fiction eBooks are on sale for just 99 cents!
http://www.kevinthestrange.com/the-di...
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June 18, 2016
April 15, 2016
Free Kevin Strange Day- All of my books are free today only!
#FreeKevinStrangeDay is upon us, gang! On Friday, April 15th 2016 and ONLY on Friday, April 15th, 2016, get every. single. Kevin Strange book absolutely FREE on Amazon Kindle! Just follow this link: http://www.kevinthestrange.com/free-k...
January 18, 2016
Chainsaw Mantis is 99 cents on Kindle Wednesday January 20th ONLY!
Visit www.kevinthestrange.com this Wednesday, January 20th to get my new novel TEXAS CHAINSAW MANTIS for ONLY 99 cents!
January 1, 2016
From Wonderland to Sad Puppies- Kevin's 2015 Year in Review
I had a pretty crazy year, career wise. Check out how I managed to get praise from both the Bizarro community and the Hugo Award affiliated Sad Puppies in the same year: http://www.kevinthestrange.com/from-w...
February 2, 2015
How to get Bad Reviews (and Why You Need Them)
I wrote a new blog over on my official website all about bad reviews: http://www.kevinthestrange.com/how-to...
December 16, 2014
Merry STRANGEmas-Free Digital Chapbook
Gang It’s our favorite time of the year around StrangeVille. Christmas time! We like to do something special for the StrangeHeads every Christmas. This year is no different! We’re launching the Strange Sayings newsletter this month, and we can’t think of a better way to kick it off, than to offer an exclusive FREE chapbook of Kevin’s novelette sequel to his 2009 feature film NIXON AND HOGAN SMOKE CHRISTMAS. The novelette sequel is called THE WITCH WHO FUCKED CHRISTMAS and was released last year as part of the A VERY STRANGEHOUSE CHRISTMAS anthology from StrangeHouse Books.
This year, we’re offering the novelette for FREE as a digital chapbook, including the never before released bonus short story WHALE FARTS! How do you get your hands on this freshness? It’s simple! Just sign up to the newsletter at KevinTheStrange.com with a valid email address. That’s it! On Christmas day, you’ll get an email with the exclusive digital chapbook, and another one every month you’re subscribed to the newsletter, meaning you’ll get cool special shit like the digital chapbook every month!
Merry STANGEmas, gang! See ya next month!
May 16, 2014
Stranger Danger has been released!
Hey gang! I just wanted to let all my Goodreads folks know that the book I wrote with Danger Slater called "Stranger Danger" has been released! You can pick it up for Kindle here for just $2.99 or Paperback here for $10.99!
Synopsis:
Sentient highways and subway systems. A man with an iPad grafted to his face. Killer torture-bots fueled by human fear. These are but a few of the themes running rampant throughout these two novellas packed into one ultra-violent, apocalyptic book from Bizarro virtuosos Kevin Strange and Danger Slater! Roadvolution by Danger Slater. Computerface by Kevin Strange. Don't miss the best mash-up since Vanilla Ice sang Ninja Rap with the Turtles: Stranger Danger!
Synopsis:
Sentient highways and subway systems. A man with an iPad grafted to his face. Killer torture-bots fueled by human fear. These are but a few of the themes running rampant throughout these two novellas packed into one ultra-violent, apocalyptic book from Bizarro virtuosos Kevin Strange and Danger Slater! Roadvolution by Danger Slater. Computerface by Kevin Strange. Don't miss the best mash-up since Vanilla Ice sang Ninja Rap with the Turtles: Stranger Danger!
November 26, 2013
The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 5
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
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
November 21, 2013
The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 4
This is the fourth in what will be a five part serialization of my newest novelette, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, which will appear in the StrangeHouse Books anthology STRANGE FUCKING STORIES in January. And can be purchased in its entirety in paperback and on Kindle here.
If you're late to the party, you can read parts one, two, and three, before you jump into part four, otherwise what follows will make no sense.
Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and, after the story concludes next week, give it a rating and a review. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Glory! Glory! Death! Death!” the humans cried. Their chant aligned with their marching: one word for every step. Ahead of the little monsters inside the body of Ring Breasts was a sort of platform, except made of humans. They were all conjoined at the limbs and contorted in such a way as to make a walking stage, allowing the commander of this particular section of the human army to stand over his troops and survey their movement.
The commander was twice the width of a normal human, because it was two humans. Grafted together at the face, shoulder, wrist, hip and ankle, and all encased in an oversized exoskeleton, the commander was both a male and a female.
“Your fathers!” the male head said. “And your fathers' fathers of those fathers of which we speak of!” the female head continued. They finished each other's sentences as though they shared the same brain. The way their heads were grafted together, maybe they did. “Generations of brave people slaved away in the factories beneath our feet full of brave people. They died of burns and smoke and worse things that they died of so that their sons and daughters would live to see THIS moment that is for their sons and daughters! So that the seed of their seed, the blood of their blood could march upon the Great Evil and SLAY the Great Evil in which they came to slay! Rid this once beautiful planet of the cancer that's smothered this beautiful planet's lush, life-giving force for five hundred years of smothering!”
“Destroy! Evil! Destroy! Evil!” the army chanted.
“Look upon the face of that which has a face upon which we look!” the generals said in unison, as the army descended into the valley that lay at the foot of the Overmind.
It stood taller than any mountain in the world. One glorious hunk of putrid flesh. The very worst, most awful thing ever to be dreamed up in the small, dark hours of the most imaginative human mind. The last time mankind looked upon its mighty visage, its mere presence had been enough to send them shrieking back the way they'd come, welcoming the teeth and claws and other horrors that awaited them, just so long as they never had to look at It again.
But these were not those humans. These creatures had somehow escaped the Overmind's wrath and created their own hell. Generation after generation of tortured souls living and dying with but one purpose: To look upon the face of the Overmind once again. Only this time, instead of shrieking madness, there were only howls of joy and chants of doom.
***
The army stopped at the base of the Overmind. They were close enough to the titanic horror that tentacles darted out from the mountain of flesh and snatched several of those humans unfortunate enough to be stationed at the front of the line. They were dragged into slobbering, fanged mouths, violently dismembered, and eaten for their troubles.
Dexy, Willex and Buxtak sat still inside Ring Breasts, doing their best human impression, trying to remain anonymous, knowing that a mistake like last time would mean certain death in front of this legion.
“Every single second that's passed since the Great Evil forced us down into the earth has led up to this second that is passing now!” the generals screamed. “We take the mountain from the Evil, we take the upper world back from the Evil that is the mountain!”
Just then, a spot in the front of the mountain peeled back, revealing a dark chasm. A dozen monsters emerged, the children's mothers among them. They descended the mountain, standing defiantly at the base, directly in front of the legion of millions of mechanically-enhanced humans.
They were all that was left of the monster resistance.
Suddenly, Willex burst from Ring Breasts' stomach, zipping across the heads of the humans in the front line of the army before they could react. “Momma!” she cried.
The little fly-girl slammed into her mother, gripping the larger fly monster made of fly monsters so tightly, she thought she might hug right through her mother's body.
But something was wrong.
“Momma?” Willex said. Blood dripped from her mother's mouth. The little girl looked over at Buxtak's nine-headed hydra-like mother. The eyes of her heads were lifeless. Blood oozed from their noses.
“No,” Willex said in a whisper. She jumped back just as metal hands ripped through the tops of the bodies of all dozen monsters. They tore the hollowed-out monster shells off like costumes, discarding their skins like so much garbage.
The human masquerading as the little monsters' mother stepped forward. Grafted to its head were six mini flesh cannons. “Victory is ours! I have just come from the bowels of the Great Evil from which I have come. It spoke to me! It said, 'it is finished!' We have WON the thing in which we came to WIN!”
The ranks of millions of humans cheered. One huge deafening warbled yell filled the air and hung there for a moment. The humans had indeed won. The Overmind had conceded defeat, and every last living monster had been wiped off the planet.
Except for three little kids. Unfortunately for the humans, one of those little kids was Buxtak the Destroyer of Worlds, the Scourge of Nations.
Buxtak the Invincible.
***
Ring Breasts' body erupted in a violent spray of flesh and metal as Buxtak grew. Tens of thousands of the closest humans to him were smashed in seconds as he continued to grow. The monster bellowed a low, mournful scream for his mother and grew larger still.
Buxtak was now taller even than the Overmind. His eyeball-tipped fingers touched the clouds. He stomped backwards and squashed ten thousand more as the army below him began to scatter. But the monumental beast did not purposefully attack the humans. He cried and he screamed, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He stumbled away from the war below, aimless, grieving. Mindless.
***
Dexy wasn't blind when he woke up this time. Dizzy, sure—being knocked unconscious three times in one day was enough to rattle even the hardiest of monsters. And he was in trouble. He blinked the darkness away, only to find himself surrounded by humans. A lot of humans. Lucky for him, they were all paying attention to the hulking behemoth stomping away from them, each step like an earthquake followed by thunder, when Buxtak screamed out for his mother.
Dexy took the opportunity to scramble between the humans' legs. He found cover under the corpses of several newly-squashed people. If they saw him, they'd rip him apart before he could finish what he'd come here for. What he'd seen inside his father's mind. He had to get to Willex, and fast. Before Buxtak made it to the ocean.
***
Willex broke apart again. It was hard to control the minds of millions of tiny fly monsters. But it was harder still to control her emotions. Every part of every one of those millions of tiny monsters wanted to see the gun-headed human dead. Willex imprinted all of her hatred and anger for the human race onto the being that killed her mother.
She flung herself at the human, turning herself into a long, flying tendril aiming for his stretched open grin. She planned to fly down his throat and turn him inside out. But he was fast. He dodged the attack, scooping up bits of monster and human gore off the ground as he did so, jamming the hunks of meat into the openings of the six guns on top of his head.
When she turned in the air to strike a second time, he fired all six shots in quick succession. His aim was good for three hits, blowing huge holes into Willex's flying tendril body, killing thousands of miniature versions of herself. While each death hurt, the little creatures bred just as quickly as they died, mating with each interlocking little fly version of herself, giving birth to two monsters to replace every one that died.
Just as Gun Head reloaded his weapons with gore, the flying tendril dispersed, leaving only a small trail of fly monsters in its wake.
“I want ten flesh cannons brought over here at once to the place that I am wanting flesh cannons. We can't let this one get away to a place which we do not know of. She's much more powerful than her size lets us know how powerful she is. Understand?” Gun Head glanced at the human to the left. “I said, do you understand what I asked about understanding what I said?”
The human turned its head and looked at him. Its eyeballs had been replaced by flies.
***
Dexy heard the screaming. He chanced a quick peek out from under his pile of corpses. He saw Willex fifty or so yards away closer to the base of the mountain. She'd encased another human. She was battling with the one who'd come out of their mother's corpse. She had him pinned to the ground, using a swarm of fly bodies to slowly suffocate him. His legs jerked back and forth helplessly as his entire torso was covered in fly monsters.
Dexy took the chance to scramble out of the corpse pile and take off running toward his sister. Most of the humans were forming flesh cannons and firing at Buxtak who still stomped around in aimless circles.
Most. Not all.
Dexy made it about twenty yards before a huge human with two additional arms grafted onto his hips stepped in his path. The little monster skidded to a halt. He gulped and put his hands out in surrender. “N-Now wait a second. You don't really want to kill me, do you? I'm just a kid!”
The human smiled even wider than his pinned back cheeks forced him to. “Gnarlack wants to kill all Evils, even tiny Evils, which is what Gnarlack has been commanded to kill by his commanders.”
Before the four-armed man could say more, a swarm of fly monsters attacked his head, completely enveloping it before scattering a moment later, leaving nothing but a clean skull to rattle around in its head cage. A second later, blood gushed up from its neck and the whole big human fell on its back.
Willex reformed in front of her little brother. “Why didn't you kill him?” she asked, anger spewing from her voice. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It's over, Dexy. We've lost. All we can do now is kill as many of them as we can before they overwhelm us.” She touched her brother on the shoulder. “It's what mom and dad would want us to do.”
Dexy smiled. “It's not over yet, sis. Fly me up to the top of Buxtak's head. I'll tell you everything.”
If you're late to the party, you can read parts one, two, and three, before you jump into part four, otherwise what follows will make no sense.
Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and, after the story concludes next week, give it a rating and a review. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Glory! Glory! Death! Death!” the humans cried. Their chant aligned with their marching: one word for every step. Ahead of the little monsters inside the body of Ring Breasts was a sort of platform, except made of humans. They were all conjoined at the limbs and contorted in such a way as to make a walking stage, allowing the commander of this particular section of the human army to stand over his troops and survey their movement.
The commander was twice the width of a normal human, because it was two humans. Grafted together at the face, shoulder, wrist, hip and ankle, and all encased in an oversized exoskeleton, the commander was both a male and a female.
“Your fathers!” the male head said. “And your fathers' fathers of those fathers of which we speak of!” the female head continued. They finished each other's sentences as though they shared the same brain. The way their heads were grafted together, maybe they did. “Generations of brave people slaved away in the factories beneath our feet full of brave people. They died of burns and smoke and worse things that they died of so that their sons and daughters would live to see THIS moment that is for their sons and daughters! So that the seed of their seed, the blood of their blood could march upon the Great Evil and SLAY the Great Evil in which they came to slay! Rid this once beautiful planet of the cancer that's smothered this beautiful planet's lush, life-giving force for five hundred years of smothering!”
“Destroy! Evil! Destroy! Evil!” the army chanted.
“Look upon the face of that which has a face upon which we look!” the generals said in unison, as the army descended into the valley that lay at the foot of the Overmind.
It stood taller than any mountain in the world. One glorious hunk of putrid flesh. The very worst, most awful thing ever to be dreamed up in the small, dark hours of the most imaginative human mind. The last time mankind looked upon its mighty visage, its mere presence had been enough to send them shrieking back the way they'd come, welcoming the teeth and claws and other horrors that awaited them, just so long as they never had to look at It again.
But these were not those humans. These creatures had somehow escaped the Overmind's wrath and created their own hell. Generation after generation of tortured souls living and dying with but one purpose: To look upon the face of the Overmind once again. Only this time, instead of shrieking madness, there were only howls of joy and chants of doom.
***
The army stopped at the base of the Overmind. They were close enough to the titanic horror that tentacles darted out from the mountain of flesh and snatched several of those humans unfortunate enough to be stationed at the front of the line. They were dragged into slobbering, fanged mouths, violently dismembered, and eaten for their troubles.
Dexy, Willex and Buxtak sat still inside Ring Breasts, doing their best human impression, trying to remain anonymous, knowing that a mistake like last time would mean certain death in front of this legion.
“Every single second that's passed since the Great Evil forced us down into the earth has led up to this second that is passing now!” the generals screamed. “We take the mountain from the Evil, we take the upper world back from the Evil that is the mountain!”
Just then, a spot in the front of the mountain peeled back, revealing a dark chasm. A dozen monsters emerged, the children's mothers among them. They descended the mountain, standing defiantly at the base, directly in front of the legion of millions of mechanically-enhanced humans.
They were all that was left of the monster resistance.
Suddenly, Willex burst from Ring Breasts' stomach, zipping across the heads of the humans in the front line of the army before they could react. “Momma!” she cried.
The little fly-girl slammed into her mother, gripping the larger fly monster made of fly monsters so tightly, she thought she might hug right through her mother's body.
But something was wrong.
“Momma?” Willex said. Blood dripped from her mother's mouth. The little girl looked over at Buxtak's nine-headed hydra-like mother. The eyes of her heads were lifeless. Blood oozed from their noses.
“No,” Willex said in a whisper. She jumped back just as metal hands ripped through the tops of the bodies of all dozen monsters. They tore the hollowed-out monster shells off like costumes, discarding their skins like so much garbage.
The human masquerading as the little monsters' mother stepped forward. Grafted to its head were six mini flesh cannons. “Victory is ours! I have just come from the bowels of the Great Evil from which I have come. It spoke to me! It said, 'it is finished!' We have WON the thing in which we came to WIN!”
The ranks of millions of humans cheered. One huge deafening warbled yell filled the air and hung there for a moment. The humans had indeed won. The Overmind had conceded defeat, and every last living monster had been wiped off the planet.
Except for three little kids. Unfortunately for the humans, one of those little kids was Buxtak the Destroyer of Worlds, the Scourge of Nations.
Buxtak the Invincible.
***
Ring Breasts' body erupted in a violent spray of flesh and metal as Buxtak grew. Tens of thousands of the closest humans to him were smashed in seconds as he continued to grow. The monster bellowed a low, mournful scream for his mother and grew larger still.
Buxtak was now taller even than the Overmind. His eyeball-tipped fingers touched the clouds. He stomped backwards and squashed ten thousand more as the army below him began to scatter. But the monumental beast did not purposefully attack the humans. He cried and he screamed, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He stumbled away from the war below, aimless, grieving. Mindless.
***
Dexy wasn't blind when he woke up this time. Dizzy, sure—being knocked unconscious three times in one day was enough to rattle even the hardiest of monsters. And he was in trouble. He blinked the darkness away, only to find himself surrounded by humans. A lot of humans. Lucky for him, they were all paying attention to the hulking behemoth stomping away from them, each step like an earthquake followed by thunder, when Buxtak screamed out for his mother.
Dexy took the opportunity to scramble between the humans' legs. He found cover under the corpses of several newly-squashed people. If they saw him, they'd rip him apart before he could finish what he'd come here for. What he'd seen inside his father's mind. He had to get to Willex, and fast. Before Buxtak made it to the ocean.
***
Willex broke apart again. It was hard to control the minds of millions of tiny fly monsters. But it was harder still to control her emotions. Every part of every one of those millions of tiny monsters wanted to see the gun-headed human dead. Willex imprinted all of her hatred and anger for the human race onto the being that killed her mother.
She flung herself at the human, turning herself into a long, flying tendril aiming for his stretched open grin. She planned to fly down his throat and turn him inside out. But he was fast. He dodged the attack, scooping up bits of monster and human gore off the ground as he did so, jamming the hunks of meat into the openings of the six guns on top of his head.
When she turned in the air to strike a second time, he fired all six shots in quick succession. His aim was good for three hits, blowing huge holes into Willex's flying tendril body, killing thousands of miniature versions of herself. While each death hurt, the little creatures bred just as quickly as they died, mating with each interlocking little fly version of herself, giving birth to two monsters to replace every one that died.
Just as Gun Head reloaded his weapons with gore, the flying tendril dispersed, leaving only a small trail of fly monsters in its wake.
“I want ten flesh cannons brought over here at once to the place that I am wanting flesh cannons. We can't let this one get away to a place which we do not know of. She's much more powerful than her size lets us know how powerful she is. Understand?” Gun Head glanced at the human to the left. “I said, do you understand what I asked about understanding what I said?”
The human turned its head and looked at him. Its eyeballs had been replaced by flies.
***
Dexy heard the screaming. He chanced a quick peek out from under his pile of corpses. He saw Willex fifty or so yards away closer to the base of the mountain. She'd encased another human. She was battling with the one who'd come out of their mother's corpse. She had him pinned to the ground, using a swarm of fly bodies to slowly suffocate him. His legs jerked back and forth helplessly as his entire torso was covered in fly monsters.
Dexy took the chance to scramble out of the corpse pile and take off running toward his sister. Most of the humans were forming flesh cannons and firing at Buxtak who still stomped around in aimless circles.
Most. Not all.
Dexy made it about twenty yards before a huge human with two additional arms grafted onto his hips stepped in his path. The little monster skidded to a halt. He gulped and put his hands out in surrender. “N-Now wait a second. You don't really want to kill me, do you? I'm just a kid!”
The human smiled even wider than his pinned back cheeks forced him to. “Gnarlack wants to kill all Evils, even tiny Evils, which is what Gnarlack has been commanded to kill by his commanders.”
Before the four-armed man could say more, a swarm of fly monsters attacked his head, completely enveloping it before scattering a moment later, leaving nothing but a clean skull to rattle around in its head cage. A second later, blood gushed up from its neck and the whole big human fell on its back.
Willex reformed in front of her little brother. “Why didn't you kill him?” she asked, anger spewing from her voice. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It's over, Dexy. We've lost. All we can do now is kill as many of them as we can before they overwhelm us.” She touched her brother on the shoulder. “It's what mom and dad would want us to do.”
Dexy smiled. “It's not over yet, sis. Fly me up to the top of Buxtak's head. I'll tell you everything.”
Strange Sayings
Pontifications of one Kevin Strange, cult film director come Hardcore-Bizarro author.
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