5.6 A Monster Among Monsters

My claws—I had freaking claws—breached the surface.

“What the hell is the?” That was my prey. My ears were still underground, but I heard him loud and clear. Not just his voice, but also his heartbeat began to hasten in fear. “Bigsby! Where are the others?”

“I-I don’t know, boss. They should be here by—”

“Your gun! Throw it over.”

I burst out of the ground in a hurried fury as I heard footsteps. I wrinkled my nose. The scent of blood was thick in the air. Through the distractions, I picked up the trace of my prey. This was the first time I had smelled him to this extent, but I was certain this was him.

His name? I couldn’t remember. Didn’t care. Prey was prey.

He was on my left side.

Only the upper half of my body was aboveground. I looked up. He loomed over me, pointing a gun at my head.

“I don’t know what you are.” His face was equal parts confused and angry. His pupils dilated. His breathing was ragged. “And I don’t care. You should’ve stayed down, you animal, and I’m putting you down.”

He quickly emptied the gun. The pops merged with each other.

Searing pain peppered my face.

Pain? What pain?

Anger and hunger.

I was seeing red; my left eye had gotten shot. Some bullets pierced my flesh but stopped when they reached bone. They itched on my face. The rest of the bullets pinged off my teeth. I felt the impact radiate through my gums. I didn’t have time to wonder why my teeth had gotten so big to get hit by bullets because of an explosion of anger inside me. He drew my blood!

“Rhroaargh!” I bellowed. How dare you!

Weird that I didn’t speak words. Not a problem right now. I extended my arms and stabbed my claws into the floor.

Did my arms get longer? Anchoring my hands, I pulled myself out of the ground, breaking the concrete that held me.

My prey retreated a few steps, mouth open in disbelief, heart racing even faster. He threw the gun at me. It bounced off my head. Another utter disrespect. Such a disgraceful attack from my prey.

His dumbfounded face switched to rage. “You hid your true self! I’ll kill you for tricking me!” He crouched down and stabbed his hands into the ground. Liquid concrete crawled up his arms to cover the rest of his body, forming a spiky armor. A tiny bit of respect for not running away.

I leaped over the softening patch of the floor and tackled him. The spikes of his armor scratched my skin before they broke. I opened my jaws wide and aimed for the side of his neck as I had seen the lions do in nature documentaries.

The armor broke apart as my jaws clamped tight. My fangs pierced my prey’s chewy flesh. Tougher than concrete. Blood spurted out of veins and into my mouth, mixing with the rubble. My teeth found his collarbone. With rage and glee, I bit down even harder. The bone shattered.

“You damn animal!” Purple Mohawk hit the side of my head with a concrete-encrusted fist. His shoddy gauntlet broke apart.

The impact rattled my head, but it also made me angrier. And stronger.

My prey continued punching even as his knuckles crumbled and fingers got dislocated. Futile desperation. Exuded fear. Stank with anger. I tasted his flesh and blood. The old me would’ve puked, but the joy of biting down on my victim erased all thoughts of disgust.

I rose and pulled a huge chunk of flesh and bones from his body. I swallowed all of it in one huge gulp, satiating my hunger and anger.

Did that rhyme? A sense of myself pipped from behind the feral cloud covering my mind.

“Yeargh!” My prey tried to stab me with a concrete knife. The blade broke against my skin.

My rage was back. I caught his wrist. With my other hand, I grabbed his elbow. Pulling opposite ways, I tore his arm off. He screamed in agony, thrashing about from under me. Weak. Helpless. I was losing interest. At least his purple mohawk waving around in his struggles looked entertaining.

Purple Mohawk! Yes. That was his name.

No. His real name was different. Just the nickname I gave him.

“Do your worst, Adumbrae!” he shouted. “We will hunt you down! The others won’t give you an easy death. You’ll be a guinea pig, abused for experiments! You’ll regret the day—”

I grabbed his mouth and forced it shut. My claws pierced his cheeks. He continued to rage with muffled words.

What was that about experiments? A tiny sliver of memory surfaced. Something about eating the brain of mutants. It made Purple Mohawk stay human. Didn’t work with natural Adumbrae. Only with fake ones. The natural ones consumed brains to be stronger. That was what he told me.

It was fun to be strong. Purple Mohawk was like a toddler trying to stop me. Need to get stronger.

More fun.

More satisfying.

Excited tingles went up my left side. Powerful jaw muscles running down the side of my face throbbed with anticipation. I faced the ceiling and bit the air with my jaws. Fangs clashed against fangs. The sound, like a hammer striking an anvil, filled the warehouse. The force spread through my skull. Addicting. I bit again and again.

Then I bent down and chomped on the head of Purple Mohawk, removing the front half of his brain clean. A mushy mess mixed with his crunchy skull. There was life in it. Some energy. I swallowed and bit down again to finish my meal.

Purple Mohawk wasn’t moving. I’d be very surprised if he were still alive, given that the upper half of his head, everything past his nose, was inside my stomach.

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Will I get stronger?

Didn’t feel like it. Maybe later. The only change was my head becoming clearer with the death of my prey. There was no more target for my rage. Nothing that I wanted to consume. I stood up, examining Purple Mohawk’s hand that I had ripped off. It didn’t look appetizing now compared to earlier.

I looked around. Two others. One with a slow heartbeat. The other had a pounding heart.

I approached them. A blonde woman was on the floor. The front of her shirt was torn, displaying a lacy white bra. A large man knelt beside her, holding a long, serrated knife with both hands. His face was pale. Sweat ran down the sides of his neck. Even his hand holding the knife was sweating. He was rank with fear.

With shallow breaths, he shouted, “I’ll kill your friend if you come closer!”

I continued walking. What friend? Was he talking about the woman?

“Stay away, you monster! I’m really going to—”

I threw Purple Mohawk’s arm at this weird man offering me friends. It hit his head with a nice bonk. He fell to his side and spasmed on the floor.

“Rwoahrrr ghroar,” I said, looking at my hand. I have a good aim.

Wait. A. Fucking. Minute.

Why couldn’t I speak? What the hell was wrong with my mouth? I clenched my jaws and felt massive teeth grinding against each other. Such insane power and exhilaration from flexing the muscles of my jaws. Fun. And not right. Definitely not freaking right.

And why did I have claws for a hand? I moved my hand away and stared at the bloody floor. Why did the ground look further away than it usually did when I was standing? My eyes fell on my boots.

Boots? I was wearing sneakers earlier. Those weren’t my legs earlier either. And what were these boobs? These were capital ‘B’ boobs that might give Deen a run for her tons of money. Draped forward, down my chest, were two lengths of braided red hair. I had never braided my hair before. And when did I become a redhead?

Redhead characters rarely died in movies. They were usually the main characters or at least someone important.

I rushed to the crates and tore them open. Something reflective.

Here we go—a sheet of shiny metal. I propped it against the boxes and examined myself.

Staring back at me was practically a super model… with a monster mouth. I stood about a foot taller than my original height, and my petite frame became curvaceous to say the least. It was like some insane teen fantasy story where the unassuming, plain main character girl turns to the hottest girl in school.

With a monster mouth. No school would accept me with a monster mouth.

I learned forward to examine it. If I didn’t move my mouth, it looked like a mask shaped like an animal's snout with bared fangs. The mask’s design reminded me of an oni mask in a Japanese play I saw once, or of the Indonesian masks Mom bought as souvenirs when we vacationed in Bali a couple of years ago.

Matching the red color of my mask was my long-sleeved red hoodie, its hood pulled over my head. On top of the hood were two animal ears. Don’t tell me…

I thought of wiggling the ears, and they moved. They were real! How did they work? Was this hoodie an actual part of my body?

The rest of my outfit was quite normal. Under my unzipped hoodie was a bare midriff black top with golden patterns. I also had high-waisted mini cargo shorts, those heavy boots, and… gloves that were actually real claws. That part wasn’t normal.

I had asked Spooky Erind for a new face, and she did give me a literal new face. A new body too.

I was both Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf that tried to eat her. According to experts, the transformations and powers of Adumbrae usually had a connection with their personalities and life experiences. I confirmed that for myself with this body.

Before anything else, I felt compelled to do that bit of Little Red Riding Hood asking the wolf disguised as her grandmother, What big eyes you have. Well, they looked quite normal-sized, though my irises were pale gold.

What big ears you have. Really fluffy too.

What long arms and legs you have. There was a version of the tale where the little girl pointed those out. It felt awkward moving with longer limbs now that I had noticed them. It was like when someone commented on your breathing, and you switched to breathing manually.

What big boobs you have. Okay, that wasn’t in any version of the story.

And the last line… What big teeth you have. And the wolf would respond to the little girl, All the better to eat you with.

Eat.

Eat?

I looked over my shoulder. The man who had a seizure wasn’t moving now. He lacked the scent of life. Would eating a dead brain help me become stronger? No? A living one surely would. The blonde woman. She was alive. Just unconscious. Brain. Food.

As I walked up to her, a feeling that I should know her needled the corner of my predator brain.

How would I know the name of my food? She probably wasn’t important. Eating her would be a delight. A normal human, not an Adumbrae. Her flesh would be soft, unlike the tough meat of Purple Mohawk. Her bones would snap quite easily. And her brain… I bet it would make me smarter because she had higher grades than me.

Grades? My Erind self clambered from the background to the front of my brain. I held my head with my clawed hands as a rush of memories pushed away the consciousness that was only focused on eating.

I wasn’t going to eat Deen’s brain! That was gross as fuck. I didn’t even like her touching me. No way I’d bite her!

I ran my claws down my cheeks to my fangs. “Ghraoarrr?” Is this permanent?

Did Spooky Erind finally claim my body? How was I going to survive looking like this? Was this goodbye to my life? I despised change, especially quick ones. I didn’t even get to pack anything from my condo. My lazy ass couldn’t survive being on the run. I required the comforts of life! This couldn’t be.

I scratched the bottom of my jaw and my neck, looking for the edge of this wolf mask. If I could remove it, maybe I could turn back? A crazy thought. But this was a mask that I wore. I’d try anything to reverse it.

Turn back, turn back, turn back. I imagined my cute self. I wasn’t going to complain about being short again if I could return to my original body.

I wasn’t sure what happened next, but I somehow removed the wolf face. It dissipated in the air into thousands of red sparkles.

“Huh?” I touched my face. My chest. I checked my appearance on the metal sheet. “I’m back! Wohoo! Take that, Spooky Erind. You’re not going to get my body… and thanks for the help!”

I rushed over to Deen. She slumbered peacefully. I moved over to Bigsby—I remembered his nickname—and pulled his jacket off his body. It was quite a well-made leather jacket that didn’t tear despite my force. His arms did get bent the wrong way, though. He was dead anyway, so he didn’t feel pain. I was such a considerate person.

I draped the jacket over Deen. It wasn’t that I cared for her. I just didn’t want to see her half-naked body after losing the hot monster body I had a moment ago. At the least, I experienced being hot for like five minutes. Mental note not to accept any more offers from Spooky Erind. She was making me consume brains for her own purposes.

“Now…” I stared at Deen. “What do I do with—?”

KABOOM!

I crouched over Deen. An explosion! Was I getting attacked? No one entered the warehouse.

The noise came from outside. Gunfire followed. Shouts. There was a fight going on. I didn’t know what was happening. This must be what occupied the reinforcements that Purple Mohawk was waiting for.

Scooping Deen up and carrying her princess style, I went opposite of the way we entered the warehouse. I should clear out of here if this turned out to be the BID. I ran down the length of the warehouse, looking for a door. This was so awkward given that Deen was much taller than me. Her legs bounced around. I wondered if I should just tear open a hole when I found it. I rushed toward the door.

It swung open before I got there. I immediately dropped to the floor—I didn’t want anyone who entered to see me display superstrength. A wave of nausea hit me. Through blurry vision, I spotted a man wearing a ski mask over his face enter the warehouse.

“Erind Hartwell?” said the man. “Don’t be scared. We’re here to save you.”