Here Be Monsters - By M T Murphy Page 0,43

side and spoke for the beast: “No, Mickey, that doesn’t explain anything at all. I think you should rip off my other fang so people call me Hinesy no-teeth.”

“No! Don’t!” the thing shrieked. “As I said, I am a prince in the spider world. I found that I preferred to wear the ceremonial undergarments of a female spider under my armor. If my mother the queen had found out about this practice, she would have eaten my head on the spot.”

Mickey pondered the thought of an even bigger spider biting this one’s head off and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Go on,” he said.

“After I arrived here, I learned that human males and females wore differing undergarments. I found that I preferred the female human undergarments, but I was saddened to discover that this practice, while not a death sentence, was not widely accepted here either. I also discovered that humans had a fascination with vampires, though as a whole they do not believe in their existence. I decided to make them work for me and obtain the undergarments I desired before I fed on them. That way, I did not have to endure the ridicule they invariably pushed upon me whenever I would enter one of their undergarment retail establishments.”

The werewolf now saw something else in those eight beady eyes: pain.

He considered ripping off the remaining fang, just to be safe, but a tiny shred of sympathy wormed its way into his head. Mickey hated the wormy sympathy feeling. It never led to anything good.

“When I was a kid…a human kid,” Mickey said, “I had a little rag doll that looked like me. My mother knitted it for me when I was a baby. I carried that thing everywhere. I was still carrying it around when I turned seven years old. The other kids made fun of me until I cried, so I put it away.”

“What are you getting at?” Hines asked.

“I can kind of relate,” Mickey said.

The spider erupted into laughter. “Wait. I don’t see the correlation. You carried around a mottled old toy when you were far past the age to know better? Was there something wrong with you? I may wear women’s under things, but a seven-year-old acting like a baby is rather pathetic.”

“I just realized something,” Mickey said.

“What is that?” Hines asked. “Do you miss your dollie?” He broke into raucous laughter again.

“I realized why I hate spiders.”

“Do tell.”

Mickey jabbed his massive talons into the soft flesh between the spider’s head and its body.

“No! Stop that!” Hines cried.

Mickey dug his foot into the opening and pulled on the thing’s head with both hands. With a wet ripping sound, the head, along with two of the legs, tore free from the body. The other six legs danced for a moment, then curled up against the bulbous body.

Mickey tossed the lifeless head to the floor and pushed the body to the side.

“Spiders are arseholes.”

He stood and placed his weight on his bitten leg. It hurt, but he could move it again. He limped out of the room and headed for the door. Webs still covered the room, but all of the spiders were gone.

He picked up his leather jacket from the floor, quite relieved to find it also arachnid-free.

The front door was open. He distinctly remembered it being closed before he entered the other room. The spot where the human’s body should have been was also oddly vacant. Could the man have gotten out? Had the spiders eaten every bit of him, including the silly silk shirt? Mickey didn’t really care, but the possibility seemed highly unlikely.

He ducked through the front door, cringing as the tips of his ears brushed through the now unoccupied black widow spider webs.

“You’re a werewolf, aren’t you?”

The man’s voice took Mickey by surprise. Chad was sitting in the grass in front of the house, looking disheveled and sporting a dark bruise on his forehead, but otherwise no worse for wear.

“I mean, you look the way I figure a werewolf would look if they were real, which, apparently, they are. I mean you are.” Chad let out a laugh tinged with madness.

Mickey dropped the jacket and stretched the fingers of his right hand, displaying his massive claws. “Idiot human vampire wannabe number two? I thought the spiders got you.”

“Me too. It’s Chad, actually. They buried me with their bodies and scratched my neck. I don’t know what they did, but not one of them bit me.” He looked up into Mickey’s eyes. “I guess