The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 3

NOTE: if you're impatient like me, and don't want to wait for two, possibly three more weeks of installments, you can buy THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED in its entirety on Kindle Here or in paperback Here.


THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED was meant for a very prestigious anthology. I can't discuss the details, because to my knowledge, it is still in consideration for said anthology (they accept reprints, which is why you're reading it now, and why it's being included in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology). At any rate, I was asked to write the weirdest, coolest bizarro novelette I could imagine, and turn it in inside a month's time.

Problem was, I was in the middle of the most grueling tour of my career, going three solid months without a single day off from work and/or the road doing horror cons on the weekends, nearly every weekend, all summer long. So I looked at the calendar and saw that I had a single weekend free three weeks down the road.

I booked a room at a cheap Travel Lodge in Springfield, Illinois, roughly an hour's drive from where I lived at the time. That way, I couldn't just get bored and drive home without considerable hassle. So when the weekend came, I drove up and checked in, only to find that the night clerk, an elderly, soft spoken man, was also a writer. A novelist even. And he loved to write horror stories. He was obsessed with ghosts and told me all about a little dead girl who roamed the hallways and sometimes stared at him from atop the ornate spiral staircase that led up to the rooms.

Needless to say, that was just about the most awesome start to my first ever marathon writing weekend I could have possibly hoped for.

THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came easy after that. I wrote the entire 13,000 word novelette in about a day and a half, including a complete read through/second draft. It was very odd, sequestered away in a haunted lodge, absolutely no human contact, writing about monsters and twisted metal cyborg humans who talk funny. But at the end of the weekend, after I left the lodge and headed back home, the sense of accomplishment I felt was enormous, more so than any other writing project I'd ever worked on, because it all happened at once. I walked in with nothing, I walked out with a fully fleshed out bizarro novelette, ready for submission (after editor Sean Ferrari fixed my awful grammar, of course).

I haven't done another marathon since, but the urge has been building up inside me. I need to get back to that haunted lodge. I need to chat with the old man ghost writer again. And more than anything, I need to feel that overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

***

This is the third installment of THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED. The story gets really fun at this point, as the kids explore their monster powers, and some human characters are introduced. I had little idea of how I was going to write the humans as antagonists until I wrote right up to this point. I got an idea in my head to use a particular cadence from a particular kids television show right as I was about to write the first human's line. I almost chickened out, as it would certainly add an element of silliness that I wasn't sure the story warranted.

Looking back, however, I couldn't see these weird cyborgs written any other way. Bonus points to anyone who can name the TV show their peculiar way of speaking was lifted from. Here's part 3, gang. Enjoy:

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Crug of the clan Crug was dying, but lucid. He had wished for a glorious death on the battlefield, like he was raised to believe he'd get when his people rose once again to the surface world that was ripped from their grasp by the Evil Things. He never imagined his guts would be infested with tiny Evil, that he'd be held hostage in his own mind while Evil masqueraded as the mighty Crug. If only he could reach up and push the button. The button would put an end to the tiny Evil. Songs would be sung about his heroic death by the Crug clan forever if he could just take back his body from the tiny Evil for one second.

Push the button.

Boom.

***

Dexy and Buxtak crawled out the window. Blood streamed out of the foot-long wound in the human's stomach as Dexy marched it forward, swaying back and forth, still trying to learn how to walk with human legs.

The monster city was in ruins. Acrid smoke billowed up from a thousand scorch marks across its creeping flesh, choking the children, causing their eyes to water and their noses to sting. Neon blood from trench-like gashes turned the green river streets purple and black. All around the little monsters, screams of death, screams of agony and victory assaulted their senses.

The Overmind loomed in the distance. Its all-seeing eyeball still glowed blood-red, a beacon of hope in a sea of apocalyptic chaos. How could it let this happen? How had it not known the human scourge still lurked below the surface?

Dexy and Buxtak looked at each other and gulped. No sooner had they begun to trudge forward toward the Overmind when a warbling voice stopped them in their tracks.

“You there! Stop!”

Dexy turned around to face a group of humans: three regulars and six pieces of a flesh cannon, including two bullets. They'd barely made it out of their house and already they'd been spotted by an assault team.

“What is this monster which is not to be alive doing with you alive?” the leader of the assault team asked. He was a short, stocky human with metal spikes protruding from his bald skull like porcupine quills.

“He is...my prisoner!” Dexy managed. The human's tongue was swelling from trauma and blood loss. Its body was going into shock, making its muscles rigid.

“The law states that we take no prisoners because of that which the law states!” said another short human. This one female with rows of steel rings buried into the flesh of her large breasts.

“I know this one,” a piece of the flesh cannon said. One of the bullets. It walked forward on its hands. “He is Crug from the clan Crug, which I know as Crug from the clan Crug. What is wrong with your body, Crug?”

“I was wounded by this one... in battle with this one?” Dexy said, trying to imitate the peculiar cadence of the human's speech. He began to panic, and as he panicked, his focus wavered.

The left hand of the human twitched; subtly at first, then in jerking spasms, trying to lift itself up. Dexy used the right hand to push it back down into place.

“It looks like glorious death will soon be upon you, who I know as Crug from the clan Crug. Why not take the tiny Evil's head as a trophy to take with you to the great machine beyond which is what awaits you after glorious death?”

Buxtak looked at Dexy, terrified.
“What's happening? I can't see anything!” Willex said, squirming inside the human's empty belly.

“Shut up! I can't concentrate when you're talking to me!” Dexy said, losing more control of the human by the second.
“Ok,” Dexy said. “I'll just- EVIL! EVIL INSIDE ME! I'll just- EVIL! -take this one back into the- EVIL THINGS! -house and kill him in there.”

“No,” the spike-headed human said, his eyes resting on the human's hand, still jerking. “Crug of the clan Crug will kill the tiny Evil here because that is what we've told Crug to do.”

That's when the hand broke free of Dexy's grasp. It touched a series of spots on the spinning gyro embedded in its chest. The gyro stopped spinning and popped open, revealing a button within. The hand touched it and the human exploded.

***

For the second time in a day, Dexy woke up blind. He was sure this time was for real. He blinked and blinked, but all he could see was blackness. He couldn't move, either. Maybe this was death? Didn't seem so glorious.

“DESTROY THE TINY EVIL!”

Nope, not dead. But blind and paralyzed? Might as well be dead.
Then Buxtak climbed off him. Not blind or paralyzed. But when he saw what was happening, he wished he was.

The flesh cannon was forming itself, locking all the pieces in place while the bullet climbed atop the contraption. As if that wasn't bad enough, the ring-breasted human held Willex in her hand, holding her out triumphantly like a trophy. The spike-headed human lay dead on the ground: the blast from Crug of the clan Crug's body had sent shrapnel in all directions, impaling Spike Head in four or five different places, including his face, right between his eyes.

Buxtak was unharmed. He charged the ring-breasted human, tearing Willex from her grasp, tossing her back toward the spot where Dexy lay.

Ring Breasts sunk her metal claws into Buxtak's side as her remaining companion did the same. They dug their feet into the ground as the flesh cannon powered up. They were about to do to Buxtak what they'd done to Big Dex.

“We have to help him, Willex!” Dexy said in a panic.

“We're just kids!” she screamed back. “We can't fight!”

Dexy grabbed his sister by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. His face was his father's face in that instant. “You know what to do!”

***

Dexy sprinted toward the humans as fast as his little legs could take him. He let out a roar that sounded more akin to a squeak and leaped into the air, landing on the back of Ring Breasts. He stuck out his tongue, letting it part, and jabbed the forked prong right into the top of her head, slicing through bone, piercing her brain.

Instantly, the human went rigid and then let go of her death grip on Buxtak. She reached down and pried her companion—a skinny man with twin blades grafted to his forearms in place of actual hands—off the little monster as well, tossing him to the ground. “Now, Willex!” Dexy screamed with Ring Breast's voice.

“I-I can't,” she stammered. “What if I can't find myself again?”

“Mom does it all the time!”

“Well I haven't done it EVER!” the little fly-girl cried.

There was no more time to argue. The first bullet-man melted into the barrel and the flesh cannon fired its shot. All three monsters were able to jump out of the way just in time, and the blast instead hit the outer wall of their house, turning it to mush, causing the structure to collapse before their eyes.

Dexy—riding atop the ring-breasted human like a horse—and Buxtak climbed to their feet as the second bullet began to screw itself into place.

“Willex!” Dexy screamed. “We can't do it without you!”

“OK!” the fly-girl said. She rose into the air above the dazed human with blades on his forearms. He too climbed to his feet, screamed a warbled war cry and charged Dexy and Buxtak, intent on keeping them away from the flesh cannon long enough for it to fire again.

Willex took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and broke apart.

Blade Arms jumped into the air and struck out in a downward fashion, causing Dexy to pull Ring Breasts' arms up in a defensive posture. The move deflected the blow, but not without severing her right arm at the elbow. She stared at the severed limb—now dangling by a single ligament—in disbelief, drool running from her mouth, unable to so much as scream out from the agonizing pain.

Blade Arms reared back to attack again, when a fly buzzed in front of his face, distracting him. He waved at it annoyingly with a blade arm, but another took its place. Then another, and another. Little flies buzzed all around the metal-human's head until he was completely engulfed in insects.

They didn't stop with his head. Soon, more and more flies swarmed around his arms, his chest and finally his legs, until the human was completely concealed within a thick layer of buzzing, writhing little fly monsters.

“Is this what you wanted?” the flies said in unison, a million little Willex voices speaking at once.

Dexy smiled and roared again, but as he turned to lead the charge toward the flesh cannon, the bullet atop its multi-segmented barrel spun and melted down. The blast was aimed directly at the little monsters.

There was no time to evade.

***

Dexy shut his eyes and prepared to be disintegrated where he stood, his only hope that his body, along with the ring-breasted human, would absorb enough of the impact to spare Willex's life. That's when Buxtak jumped in front of him and, without hesitation, grew to over ten feet tall in the blink of an eye. The giant monster turned and braced himself as the blast met him right in the middle of his back.

But a funny thing happened.

Buxtak didn't disintegrate. His flesh didn't melt away. The superheated expulsion of liquid human bounced right off of him and back toward the flesh cannon itself. The spray covered the bodies of the machine, burning their fleshy parts slowly. They howled in agony as the gunk burned through their skin, then muscle, through bone, until finally melting their lungs and vocal chords, putting an abrupt end to their protests.
Dexy and Willex stared at Buxtak in disbelief. The big monster looked more surprised than anyone. “I'm not...dead?” he stammered out, as he shrank back down to his normal size.

“No, big buddy. You're invincible,” Dexy said, beaming with pride.

“What do we do with the humans?” Willex asked, walking the blade-armed man around, swinging his blades through the air.

“We'll kill them, and continue with our plan,” Dexy said. “This time I won't mess it up.”

Tapping the same series of spots Crug pressed in the gyroscopic circle at Ring Breasts' chest, Dexy opened the secret compartment and tore out the self-destruct button, preventing another Crug episode.

“Aw, man. I was just getting good at this! You get to do all the cool stuff!” Willex said.

Suddenly, Blade Arms started to shake. His screams penetrated the thick layer of flies swarming his body. Blood began gushing out from in between the little flies, and then, just as quickly as they'd swarmed him, all the flies darted off his body at once, leaving nothing more than clean white bones and metal exoskeleton in their wake.

The flies had eaten him so quickly, his bones still shook where they stood for a moment longer before collapsing to the ground in a heap.

“Willex?” Dexy said, growing uneasy after she hadn't reformed into her real body after several minutes had gone by. “Sis? Can you hear me?”

Flies buzzed around, but there seemed to be no focus to their flight pattern. Dexy panicked. “Willex! You have to come back! You have to remember who you are!”

“Chill out, little bro,” Willex said, reforming instantly behind him. She burped and rubbed her tummy. “Remind me to eat humans more often. They're tasty!”

***

With Buxtak gaining control of his size, he was able to shrink down small enough so that all three monsters fit snugly inside the stomach of the ring-breasted human—after they'd extracted most of her innards, of course. They trudged along inside Ring Breasts for several miles.
The vast devastation of their beautifully horrific city caused Willex to start crying again.

Flesh cannons ten times the size of those the children had encountered thus far boomed in the distance. Those machines must have required a hundred or more men to construct the bio-mechanical weapons. Explosions rocked the sky, blasting their fellow monsters blessed with flight right out of the air.

The death was nearly palpable. The scent of it—of mutilated corpses both human and monster—created a dampness to the air they breathed. A silent dread grew stronger with every step they took. And still, the Overmind's eye glowed strong as ever.

A rumbling behind them caused the little monsters to stop. What this time? Some new death machine to delay their voyage further?

Worse.

It was the army. The fighting forces of humans were all converging together into one gigantic legion of millions and millions. And they all walked toward the Overmind. This was it. The humans would overtake the Overmind with the sheer vastness of their numbers, like an entire colony of ants overwhelming a bird or lizard.

The gargantuan army marched right past the monsters, paying the bleeding, ring-breasted woman with the huge gash in her stomach and less an arm no mind.
The monsters fell in line and marched along with the humans. They were, after all, headed to the same place.