Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  Evil-and-Cute laughed.

  “OK, let’s start with something easier. Why are you here? Just to pick a fight with me in the park?” I lit the wick and it started sizzling as a small flicker crawled down the string.

  “Oh, Jean—arrogance does not become you. You are but a bonus in our plans. But make no mistake: me being here has very little to do with you.” She spread her fingers together again, forming a diamond in the empty space between her fingers. “We are about to enter the next phase of our conquest.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Terror.”

  As if on cue, we heard screaming from the houses just beyond the park. A whole lot of it.

  Evil-and-Cute smirked. I threw the glob right at her. She dodged it, using her preternatural speed—but speed can only transport you in one direction. And besides, I was aiming behind her—I didn’t want to get Penemue and Sinbad with that stuff. As soon as the glob was about two feet past her, it burst out into a million little pieces that flew at her from all directions.

  Several of them hit her.

  I swept the sword from the grass and plunged it into Tonka’s head. Using my full weight, I pushed down, gutting the anomaly from forehead to naval. It shrieked in pain and released Penemue and Sinbad, before bursting into foam that slowly seeped into the stream next to us, frothing the water’s surface.

  The two of them jumped to their feet and came to my side. Now it was three against one, but the odds still weren’t great. Not with the kind of abilities Evil-and-Cute showed in the desert. But they were still odds I was willing to gamble with. Even gam-bol with.

  “Where are the children?” I pointed the tip of my sword at her.

  Evil-and-Cute ignored my question, rubbing some of the pink, mucus-like goo between her fingers curiously. “What is this stuff?”

  I smirked. “Play-Doh with a firecracker in the middle. I wanted to make you sweat. The way I figure it, you’re somehow controlling these creatures. If I distracted you, that meant that it wouldn’t be able react either.” I pointed at the foam. “One monster down … one to go.”

  Still rubbing the Play-Doh between her fingers, she sniffed it. “Clever.” She cupped a hand to her ear and listened to the screaming in the distance. The screams were getting louder. “But you’re not going to fight me.”

  “Oh, yeah? How do you figure?”

  “Because there are monsters wreaking havoc over there.” She pointed toward the screaming. “And you are a hero, are you not?”

  I growled.

  “Go on,” Evil-and-Cute said. “Save them. I’ll find you again. And soon … I promise.”

  We heard another scream, then two more—all from different houses. We could stay and fight her, or help those who were in trouble, but we couldn’t do both. And as for the divide-and-conquer tactic—no way could any one or two of us take her down. I seriously doubted three of us could, either. No, we needed to stick together and save those people.

  Another scream. Kidnapped children and now Others terrifying the villagers—this wasn’t going to go well on a global scale. In terms of helping with that, going after the anomalies was a more immediate concern. After all, the kidnappings had yet to enter the news.

  “Damn it,” I growled. “Let’s go.”

  “But Mr. Jean,” Sinbad protested.

  “Don’t worry—we’ll be back for her. Promise. Now let’s go help some terrified humans.”

  As much as I wanted to throw down with Evil-and-Cute and fight until we were both bloody and screaming, I knew there was a bigger “bloody-and-screaming” that needed to be dealt with first. The anomalies were roaming the streets of a quiet suburb on the mainland and if we didn’t deal with them quickly there would be hell to pay. Tensions between humans and Others were at an all-time high. All we needed was one roaming monster killing someone’s grandmother for us to teeter over the edge.

  Not that there was anything we could do to stop it. I was pretty sure that dealing with the monsters or not, kidnapping or not, we were all going to fall down into more distrust, more hatred. That wasn’t what I was afraid of. No, what made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention was the thought that we were headed to another war. And as much as I wanted out, that was something I couldn’t turn my back on.

  I’d seen war. I knew what it could do.

  And if I could play a part, however small, in stopping it.

  Save Us, Sinbad, Angel and … Weird Guy in a Black Jacket?

  As I ran into the backyard of an otherwise typical two-storey suburban home, I was hit by a smell so familiar in its simplicity, so common place, and yet so unusual in its effect. It was like walking into a kitchen and getting a whiff of your favorite pie cooling on the window sill, except the smell wasn’t of a fresh pie, but of pie that once was. Somehow the soft aroma of cooling pie crust and apple filling also carried with it a very real sense that the pie was now gone. That I was too late to have partaken in its gooey, bready goodness. And with that smell came a dampening sense of loss, regret and frustration.

  I hadn’t even seen whatever anomaly waited for us, and yet it had already disarmed me somehow. With a smell.

  From the back garden, I could see it lurking, its shadow cast on the wall. But I wasn’t close enough to make out a form or figure. I couldn’t tell how many claws it had, if it had sharp teeth, or what other nasty weapons it carried. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a bludgeoner, a stabber or a slasher. All I did know, besides the disarming odor it gave off, was that it was utterly terrifying. I knew because no one who was simply just scared screamed like that. No one.

  There was more screaming in the street. I gestured for Penemue to go there. “Sinbad and I will join you after we deal with whatever’s inside.” Penemue nodded and took to the sky as Sinbad and I burst through the back door.

  Inside, we saw that the kitchen had two doors: one to the dining room and the other to a hallway that led to the living room and a stairwell.

  I put a finger over my lips as I pointed to the living room. A side lamp or other nightlight from within the living room cast a large shadow on the hallway wall, and from the shape of the shadow, I couldn’t tell you what kind of monster it was. Damn anomalies. Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, I crawled into the living room from the hallway while Sinbad made her way around to the other side from the dining room entrance.

  Another scream cut through the otherwise silent night and I braced myself for what was waiting inside. But bracing yourself for some terrible horror and actually facing it are two different things entirely, and I would argue that there is no point in trying to mentally prepare yourself for facing off against a monster. I say that because no amount of mental preparation, training or years of therapy could have prepared me for what I saw.

  The huge monster sat cross-legged in the center of the room. Except to call this creature a monster would be a gross understatement. She was what nightmares were made of, the embodiment of evil and the source of all pain and anguish in the world … if I were her big brother.

  She wasn’t a monster. She was my baby sister.

  That’s the only way I can describe the feeling that washed over me when I saw the creature. But there were several problems with that: One—I didn’t have a sister. Two—even if I did, I doubted she would be eleven feet tall, with a hideously disfigured face that made the Swamp Thing a serious contender for Miss Universe. Her skin was made up of broken Legos, snapped train sets and half-burnt doll heads whose eyes peered out like macabre warts.

  Huddled on the coach was an elderly woman who tightly hugged a shawl around herself. Evidently this woman also saw this monster as her baby sister, because she cried out in fear and frustration, “You broke my horsey on purpose. I know you did!”

  I knew exactly how she felt, except my rage and anger was because the monster pulled off all the arms on my GI Joes.

  Baby Sis didn’t try to hurt the woman on the coach, nor did she make a move against me when she saw me
enter. She just sat there, mashing her hands into the carpet and flailing about just like a ten-month-old would.

  “What the sugar?” Sinbad said.

  Baby Sis saw Sinbad and threw her weight forward, crawling over to Sinbad with all the grace and care of a bull in heat. Her massive weight shredded the coffee table into kindling and the La-Z-Boy between them was nearly flattened as Baby Sis made her way to the pirate warrior.

  “Look out!” I said, snapping out of my horror just in time to grab Baby Sis’s leg. I might as well have tried to stop an elephant. The bulk of her leg threw me forward, the thousand little melted doll faces suddenly animated and biting at me.

  I pulled away and drew my sword, but it was too late. Sinbad had already taken out her daggers and thrust them into Baby Sis’s eyes. She twisted until she literally ripped the anomaly’s head in half. Baby Sis went down with a yelp, turning to foam that I was sure would ruin this poor woman’s floor.

  As Baby Sis fizzled away, both the elderly woman and I cried out in anguish. I was devastated to see Baby Sis go, angry at myself for ever being mad at her and bargaining with the GoneGods that if they brought her back, I’d let her rip all the GI Joe arms she liked. I was mourning her death, near paralyzed with grief … until the last of her body turned to bubbles. Then I realized what she was and felt nothing.

  Monsters were one thing. But this creature, something that toyed with my nightmares and made me simultaneously hate and love, was another thing altogether. This was getting weird—but I knew that before this would end, it would only get weirder.

  “Ma’am,” I said to the elderly woman. “Are you OK?”

  She looked at the puddle and nodded. “I had a little sister once,” she said. “Died from a heart attack years ago. I loved her.” She looked up at me and pointed at the bubbling puddle. “What was that?”

  I tried to think of something to say to explain this away, but there was nothing believable to say but the truth. I could have said something like a hallucination or a government experiment gone wrong, but she’d see right through that. Anyone would. In this new GoneGod world, there was only one thing that could cause something like what we just experienced.

  I sighed. “Magic,” I said. “And I’m sorry that you had to go through that, ma’am. I really wish—”

  My words were cut off by another scream from the street.

  Hellelujah!

  ↔

  I instructed the old woman to go upstairs and lock herself in the bathroom. She gave me a defiant look that I didn’t know how to interpret, but nodded and tramped upstairs.

  Sinbad and I hurried out to the front. Penemue was standing in a puddle of foam, wrestling a second anomaly which looked like a spider with a clown’s head. Talk about hitting two phobias in one proverbial nightmare.

  The angel produced two grappling hooks from his forearms that dangled on chains from the lower parts of his wrists. Think of Spider-Man, but trade out the webbing with chains and the sticky end of the web with menacing meat-hooks.

  Using the hook ends, Penemue stabbed deep into the clown’s eyes and smashed the monster’s head hard against the pavement, where it splashed into the dissolving corpse of its comrade, adding its own foam to the mess.

  “How many?” I asked.

  Penemue was breathing hard. “I’ve killed three so far. You?”

  “One,” I said. “But it was a doozy.”

  “Hey,” Sinbad admonished.

  “Sorry. She killed one. And it was a doozy.”

  Sinbad nodded with satisfaction.

  “OK.” I scanned the streets. “I’m guessing there’s more?”

  A scream from up the street answered my question, and another cry of terror from a block over concurred.

  “Dammit,” I growled. “There are too many of them in too many locations for us to effectively deal with them all. We need to gather them into one place if we’re going to be of any use.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Penemue asked. “Invite them to a jamboree?”

  I looked down at Sinbad and thought about the kind of power that created her. Then my mind went to the Baby Sis and the Spider Clown, the Tonka and the Vampire Bowser. They were the stuff of nightmares, sure. But not just any kind of nightmare. Children’s nightmares.

  And what do you do when you want to calm an upset child?

  “Yeah,” I said to Penemue. “A jamboree. That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

  The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

  When I was a little kid, I used to have a reoccurring nightmare.

  It would always start with a woman’s voice in the next room. Sometimes she was singing, other times she was talking to herself or calling for me. A voice I had never heard before, but a voice I knew all the same.

  My mother’s.

  In my nightmare, I would go to the voice, knowing that she was on the other side of the door or just beyond the hill or in the next room. I would run to her, desperately wishing to meet the woman whom I never knew yet loved so dearly.

  But no matter how fast I ran, no matter how hard I tried, I was always too late. I would miss her, if only by a second. Those nights were the worst … for as much pain as I’d had in my life, nothing compared to the complete sorrow that greeted me in those empty spaces.

  I would wake with cries of terror. No, not terror, for I was not afraid. I was angry, alone, abandoned … sad. I would wail, followed long gasps of anguish in which I would try to scream, but my own breath would be caught in the impossible task of expressing how I felt.

  There is no pain so complete like that of an abandoned child. I knew that then and I still knew that now.

  My PopPop would run into the room and hold me until the pain receded enough for me to fall back to sleep. He always sang me the same song—a little tune he’d made up that will never win any awards, but to me was the greatest song ever written. A song that evoked comfort and love, a song that eased my soul and calmed the storm in my heart. “Hi Jean,” he called it.

  I needed to chase away the nightmares and I only knew one way to do so.

  I stood on a nearby car, cupped my hands over my mouth and sang. I sang my PopPop’s song, and hearing the words echo through the night, I felt what I had felt all those years ago when I was a child: comfort.

  “Hi Jean, come out and play with me,

  Under the apple tree.

  Bring your dollies three.

  Under the rainbow and through the cellar door …”

  “What are you doing?” Penemue asked.

  “What do you think I’m doing? I’m singing.”

  “Hardly … and why?” the angel asked.

  I looked down at Sinbad, who stared up at me, mesmerized and still, her lips copying the words I had just sang. I pointed at her. “That’s why,” I said, and cupping my hands again, I sang:

  “We’ll be fri-i-ends …

  Forever more.”

  Sinbad crawled up onto the car’s roof with me. “Can I sing?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Do you want to use your name, instead?”

  She nodded with all the vigor of a child being offered her favorite ice cream. “Yes, please!”

  “OK,” I said. “On three … one, two, three.”

  “Hi Sinbad, come out and play with me.

  Bring your dollies three…”

  Our voices echoed in the night, bouncing off of houses which were starting to turn on the lights, one by one. Light—another way to chase away nightmares.

  “Under the rainbow.”

  Two anomalies made their way onto the main street, emerging from humans’ backyards.

  “And through the cellar door,

  We’ll be fri-i-ends forever more!”

  Sinbad giggled at this. With her elation, I saw three more anomalies lumber onto the main road. Penemue pointed behind us, where another two monsters approached.

  On “more,” the little warrior pirate and I leapt off the car and, together with the twice-fal
len angel, charged at the monsters creeping from the dark. One by one, the three of us hacked and slashed and cut down until all seven anomalies were nothing but foam on the street and bad memories in our hearts. I never felt such rage before—and that’s saying something. I was cutting down my demons. Literally.

  Once the seven creatures were nothing more than puddles on the asphalt, we stopped, all three of us breathing hard—but now only our labored breaths could be heard. The screaming had stopped.

  Sinbad stood near a hedge by the house where she had dispatched Baby Sis. She surveyed her work with satisfaction. As if she were born to destroy nightmares. Which, I had to admit, she probably was. She waved at Penemue, who was covered with the viscous liquid of the vanquished, and said, “Did I do good, Mr. Penemue? Did I—”

  Sinbad’s words were cut off by two spikes that pierced the little warrior pirate’s chest.

  ↔

  The ShouldNotBe took another of its spiked hands and stabbed into Sinbad’s stomach so deeply that a solid foot of sharpened exoskeleton penetrated out of her back. The pirate slumped on the needles, her eyes wide with shock, as her tongue hung lifeless out of the side of her mouth.

  Penemue and I both screamed “No!” as we ran to her, too late to save the little warrior.

  Except that we didn’t make it three steps before Sinbad’s eyes blinked back into life and she giggled, “Just kidding,” like a kid who was playing dead.

  The ShouldNotBe must have also been shocked by her resurrection, because it stood perfectly still as Sinbad took out her duel daggers and chopped the creature’s head clear off its neck.

  We ran to Sinbad’s side. She sat with the spikes still through her body. If she was in pain, she made no indication of it, except to say, “I’m stuck, guys.”