Day 137 Writing Short Stories

Killer Queen

Monsters are made from the darkest reaches of our psyche. They are us. It is my task to hunt and kill them. I got this job from my father, who got it from his mother, and so on up the family line to the first days of the nation’s founding. I had known nothing else since my birth. No formal education, no friends, no summer camps, no proms, nothing other people got to experience. Not in the normal way, at least. I was there when the lake monster drowned the entire camp of kids. But it didn’t; I killed it before anything happened. I was there when a vampire thought it was a good idea to crash a school party. There was one casualty, but those things happen—poor kid. But at least, it was just one kid rather than the entire senior class.

Sometimes, I found it hard to accept what my life had become. My father told me we did it to make other people’s dreams possible. After a while, I stopped asking ‘what about my dreams,’ tired of hearing the same speech over and over. I stopped dreaming about anything else, not knowing what even to dream.

I chewed a cherry-flavored bubble gum and popped it into a bubble. My father was dead now. It was just me, and my future kids I was obligated to have. There were other families like us, but I stayed away from them. Some of them were crazy fuckers, and others were unbearable goody-two-shoes.

I watched as the new mall cast its lights on the wet asphalt, mixing with the parking spots’ lines. Tomorrow, it would open. I had to christen it before the doors opened to the public. Some idiot had thought to build it on an ancient burial ground, having paid off the inspectors and destroyed the remains found on the site in the dead of night. Then, the deaths of the construction workers started to pile up, and even the news picked it up. The mall was declared the most haunted place in the city. The last draw had been the death of a shop assistant yesterday.

It might be that no one would come tomorrow, and the mall would die before it even opened its doors, but it didn’t console me. Kids would find their way in, and the deaths would begin again. I had to nip this thing and move on to the next town and so on.

I took my necklace out from under my shirt; all the symbols, from cross to witch’s knot to Nazar, dangled against my chest. Sometimes they worked. Other times, they were just dead weight. Then, I took out something mightier than a pen from my backpack: the good old crossbow that had been with me in countless fights. I marched in, my gun with silver bullets, blessed with holy water and all sorts of symbols, tied against my leg.

I sniffed the air, smelling new things: plastic and artificial flavors. Not something rotten, then. Not ghosts either. They were just bad memories needing an ear to chew on.

I let out a light whistle. “Here, boy,” I shouted, knowing it would piss off even the most ancient evil.

I hummed Killer Queen and advanced into the heart of the mall: the food court. The hairs on my back rose before I even got near the first welcome: the Jungle Juice Bar. The good old alarm system still worked. It would be a bad day when your natural instincts stopped working, and you got too used to killing nasty things.

Something moved in my peripheral vision, up on the second floor. I pretended not to see it. I moved past the juice bar and the first tables, chairs stacked over them. Somewhere in the distance, the robotic cleaner began its hum.

Something dashed, again, on the second floor. This time to my left. I began humming Don’t Stop Me Now, putting my finger against the trigger and tensing my hand.

Then came the howl. It was meant to freeze my blood and terrify me into my spot. If I were anyone else, it would have, but I had heard enough of those calls to know that a wendigo was coming toward me, and I would be its meal.

And I saw it. It had awakened into its full form. Its horns looked out of place inside the shiny new mall. Its ribs poked out of its death-elk flesh. Its teeth were red from something. I knew I would soon find out what.

They must have sealed the wendigo in the burial ground with its victims to keep it from rising again, and now, as the dead were moved, it was back. The ghosts must have caused the incidents to stop the construction, but it didn’t work like that in a world that knew nothing about the strange and what to do with it.

But I did. I didn’t hesitate. I drew my crossbow between us. It was already flying down the standing escalators into the food court. I squeezed, sending the first bow to meet the monster. It ducked and howled. My arrow went through a window, shattering it, making the mall’s alarm system howl.

That was for it being in and out without being noticed.

I dropped my crossbow and took my gun out. I hated leaving behind bullets. They were easier to track than a self-made arrow, but the wendigo left me no choice.

It was already on me, and I had to slide between its legs as it swung at me. I pirouetted around and let my gun sing. I watched as a bullet after a bullet hit against the wendigo, splattering its blood against my face. Then it collapsed just before it got to me.

I heard sirens wailing outside.

“Shit.” I jumped up and took the monster by its horns. I had a few seconds to drag it out the back before the security guys came flying in. Whatever it had been eating would have to stay. So would my arrow and crossbow. I hated losing those things, but sometimes monsters didn’t let you make a clean break.

—

Silly me. I wanted to write a longer fighting scene, but I was constrained by time, so here we are. But at least, she got it. What I got today was a contemporary action about overcoming a monster written in the first person. I always love it when stories about overcoming monsters come up. I could write forever about all sorts of monsters: mythical, new, cruel, terrifying, and kind and cute.

I have an equivalent of a wendigo from Finnish folklore tattooed on my arm. Horned spirits that roam our lands; they are made of greed, but not in the way wendigos are. They are more like trickster spirits, guiding you down the wrong path, forever lost in the woods.

Thank you for reading! Have a killer queen day, and see you tomorrow ❤