Robots versus Slime Monsters

by A. Lee Martinez

  Monster

  Not to spoil anything, but this story takes place before the novel it’s based on. If you have read Monster, you’d understand why. If you haven’t read Monster, well, it won’t much matter to you. The original novel was intended to be urban fantasy without the glamor or grit, just an everyday world where magic happened to be real. It’s another common theme in my stories, but it’s the central theme of the novel and continues into this short story.

  The divorce didn’t bother Kristine. Mom and Dad had been at each other’s throats for a year, and the only reason they’d stayed together as long as they had was due to a well-meaning but doomed effort for Kristine’s sake. Whatever the hell that meant. It sucked being from a broken home, but it sucked worse having a home where everyone was always shouting about some stupid bullshit that wasn’t what they were really mad about in the first place.

  Worse, were all the glares. Even when her parents weren’t talking to each other, they were always giving each other dirty looks and mumbling under their breath. They thought she didn’t notice, but she did.

  When they finally called it splits, it was a relief. She hated that they’d been so miserable for so long, and she hated that she was indirectly the cause of it.

  She wasn’t happy with the new situation, but at least it was a new kind of suck to deal with.

  Dad motioned to his new house. “What do you think, Krissy?”

  Kristine cringed. “Dad . . . .”

  “Sorry. It’s Kristine now. I forget.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied, both to his apology and the new house.

  “I know this is tough,” he said.

  She nodded as he droned on. She hated it when her parents were understanding. He carried her bags into the house for her, saying stuff as he did so. She followed. The house was wholly unexceptional. Two stories and a basement. Not much furniture aside from the few pieces Dad had gotten in the settlement. Her bedroom was at least nice, though it only had an old dresser and a sleeping bag in it.

  “I’ll get you a new bed soon. But for now, it’ll be like camping.” He realized how dumb that sounded and frowned. “Look, Krissy, Kristine, I know this isn’t easy for—”

  “It’s not easy for any of us, Dad. But it’s better.” She went to the window and parted the dusty old flower print curtains. The view was nothing more than the brick wall of the neighboring house.

  He smiled. “Okay. Dinner’s in an hour. Oh, and the cable or internet isn’t hooked up yet. Sorry.”

  “Whatever.” She grumbled. She despised when she sounded like a teenager. “I brought a book.”

  “That’s good. And at least we still have electricity, right?” He flicked the light switch off and on. The bulb popped. The little bit of sunlight that could filter through the window cast the room in a gray darkness.

  “Shit. Don’t worry, honey, I’ll change that.”

  “Whateve . . . I can change it. Where do you keep the bulbs?”

  There weren’t any. For dinner, Dad had planned his famous spaghetti, foiled by the realization that he didn’t have a good pot for the pasta. A few other necessary supplies quickly popped up, and Dad made a run to the store. Kristine elected to stay home and read at the dining room table, where the only comfortable chairs were. She didn’t listen to music like she normally did because the sounds of the house, creaks and mysterious pops, put her in the mood of a put upon fifteen year old in an unfair universe. Suitably melodramatic, she knew, but she indulged herself.

  Rodents skittered in the walls. She ignored them until they started scratching rhythmically. One long scratch followed by two short scratches followed by two long scratches. The pattern repeated itself for a few minutes before she noticed.

  She set down her book and put her ear to the wall.

  The scratching stopped. When she turned back, her book had moved. It was halfway under the refrigerator and wiggling its way out of sight. She stepped on it, only afterward thinking it might be a rat or some other unpleasant creature stealing it.

  She moved her foot. The book shimmied an inch deeper under the fridge. Kristine was almost finished with the book, and though it wasn’t a very good story, she hadn’t invested 312 pages of her life to watch the last forty get stolen by a rat. She yanked the book away, delicately but firmly.

  A little blue creature clung to the book. Only a few inches tall and with a small, green-cheeked face, the humanoid stared into Kristine’s face and smiled sheepishly. The pixie dropped to the floor and zipped under the refrigerator.

  Kristine knew there were such things as faeries. She’d always known. But she’d also learned at thirteen that the part of the brain that allowed people to acknowledge such things atrophied. She was an exception. She’d passed an aptitude test last year when she’d been shown a small dragon in a cage. She’d spent an afternoon in a special class where she, along with two other students, were told they were magically cognizant children born to incognizant parents. It was a rare thing, but it happened.

  She’d already figured it out on her own when her parents were oblivious to the weird creatures they refused to acknowledge. It was relief to learn there was an explanation for it. When Dad came home, she thought about telling him about the pixie, but he wouldn’t get it. The counselor told her there was no point in trying to talk to normal people about stuff like this.

  She stayed up the first night in the house, tucked in her uncomfortable sleeping bag, armed with a flashlight, listening to every little noise. She didn’t spot one pixie, and all she did was deprive herself of sleep.

  The next day, she had Dad take her to the library, where she checked out some books on faeries, and, after a short nap, read up on what to expect. Dad was just happy she was engaged. After they went to bed, she decided to try an experiment.

  She found a pair of Dad’s old shoes, used some sandpaper to scuff them, and put them in the kitchen, along with a slice of bread and several grapes. When she woke up the next day, the shoes were shined, and the food was gone.

  The pixies made her life a lot easier. All her chores were taken care of by her new faerie workforce. She rarely caught a glimpse of them, and those glimpses were fleeting. But they were there. In the walls. Taking care of stuff. They proved more adept than she would’ve imagined, hooking up the cable, assembling furniture, and fixing some loose, leaky pipes. And they worked cheap, for cookies or half-a-sandwich. She’d once given them a Big Mac, and they’d cleaned the whole house, spotless, top-to-bottom.

  “I really appreciate how much you’ve been helping out around here,” said Dad one afternoon.

  “Happy to help.” She liked the faeries, liked having a secret that she didn’t have to feel guilty about because Dad couldn’t understand even if she had told him. He still blamed the scratching in the walls on rats.

  He kissed the top of her head. “It’s good to see you smile again, Kristine. Things are going to be all right.”

  She nodded. “Things are going to be just fine, Dad.”

  Things started not being fine three weeks later.

  She was awoken one night by the shaking of her bed. She turned on the lamp by the end table, and expected the faeries to flee like they always did. But seven of the little blue creatures perched at the foot of her bed.

  She avoided any sudden movements as her eyes adjusted.

  “Hey, girls.”

  Two of the faeries carried her iPhone between them. They dropped it on the mattress and chirped.

  Slowly, she took it. The faeries jumped back while chattering.

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  They squealed curiously.

  “What? You want something for this? It’s mine. You don’t get food for bringing me something that’s mine.”

  The creatures flapped their butterfly wings, flying in small circles. They squeaked sweetly.

  “No.”

  The pixies chirped among themselves before flying away into a vent. Kristine rolled over to go to sleep. A leg of her bed snap
ped off and jarred her awake.

  Dad inspected the damage. “Nothing serious. Just a loose screw. I can fix it.”

  Kristine imagined she could hear the pixies chuckling in the dark vent. “Guess you get what you pay for,” she mumbled to herself. She’d given them a potato and a pudding cup to but her bed together.

  In the morning, Dad informed her that the shower wasn’t working.

  “Pipe must be clogged,” he said. “I’ll get someone to take a look at it.”

  After he’d left for work, she addressed the house. “Okay, I get it. You’re having a little fun, but enough is enough.” A cupboard door broke off as she opened it, and Kristine gritted her teeth. “Very funny, girls.”

  Dozens of faeries perched atop the refrigerator and along the countertops.

  “Okay, I shouldn’t really do this, but just this once. But only if you promise to fix everything.”

  The pixies danced around, whistling sweetly, as she gave each of them a Cheerio. They thanked her by cheerfully whistling as they disappeared into the darkened corners they called home.

  “Enjoy them, but just fix it,” said Kristine.

  They kept their side of the deal, repairing everything when she wasn’t looking. She started feeding them more regularly, even when they didn’t do anything, and things were fine again.

  Until a month later when they stopped being fine again.

  She awoke in the middle of the night when her bed came crashing apart. She turned on her lamp to glimpse hundreds of pixies flying around in her room.

  She rubbed her head where a part of the frame had smacked her.

  A pixie settled in her hand and chirped. It gently nipped her fingertip. She shook it off.

  “If you think I’m going to pay you—”

  A picture frame fell off her wall and broke. It had belonged to her grandmother, who had died before Kristine had met her.

  “You little bastards. That’s it. No more food then.”

  The pixies unleashed a cacophony of off-key chimes and chirps.

  “I said no more!”

  They scattered in all directions, and Kristine went to tell Dad what had happened. He might remember long enough to help her figure things out.

  Dad was in his room, dancing around in wild circles, laughing and singing nonsensically. When she tried to stop him, he nearly smacked her in the face with one of his flailing arms. Manic delight swirled in his eyes as he twirled.

  The lights went out, and the house became quiet. Faeries skittered around in the darkness. Downstairs, something broke. Loudly. It sounded like dishes were being shattered.

  Kristine swept her phone across the hall to see the dozens of little blue creatures in the hall.

  She shut the door. Dad’s crazy dance occupied the center of the room, so she flattened herself against the wall. She dialed 911. The operator didn’t call her a nut, but she was also told this was the wrong number for crazed pixies. They transferred her to a different department, where someone took her report again and got her address.

  Dad continued to dance, though his energy flagged, and it became more of a limp trot. The pixies didn’t come into the room, but she could hear them breaking stuff in the house. It was thirty minutes later when she heard another human voice. She ventured out into the dark while all around her the pixies flittered.

  A guy at the bottom of the stairs shined a flashlight in her face. “Are you the one who called for crypto containment?”

  She covered her eyes from the light. “Yeah. That’s me. Are you the guy who . . . of course you are. Sorry. They did something to my dad.”

  The man climbed the stairs, ignoring the pixie-filled air. He wasn’t much to look at, though his skin was a deep, deep emerald hue. A smaller man she hadn’t noticed before followed him. She hadn’t noticed the smaller one because he was made of paper and very, very flat.

  “Quite an infestation you have here,” said the guy. “You haven’t been feeding them, have you?”

  “No.”

  Kristine grumbled to herself.

  “Maybe.”

  The man sighed. “Chester, recon. There has to be a nest around here somewhere.”

  “On it, boss.” The paper gnome folded into a bird and soared downstairs and away.

  The guy, his name was Monster, asked to take a look at Dad, who was now wheezing and marching in place.

  “How long will he keep going?” she asked.

  “Until he dies,” replied Monster.

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” He had her hold his flashlight while he flipped through a pocket-sized book and scribbled on a Post-It note.

  “So it’s bad to feed them?” she asked. “But they’re so cute.”

  “So is the blue-ringed octopus, and you don’t want to mess with one of those. The common house faerie is a clever little thing. It’s not smart, like you or me, but it can be trained. Has a knack for household tasks, cooking cleaning, TV / VCR repair, that sort of thing. Give it a reward, and it’ll be happy to do that stuff.”

  He slapped the Post-It onto Dad’s forehead. He went stiff as a board and fell over with a thud.

  “That’ll keep him calm until we finish.”

  She knelt beside Dad and checked him. His face was a blank, but he was breathing. “He’s not hurt, is he?”

  “He’s fine.” Monster opened his satchel and rifled through the contents. “How long have you been feeding these things?”

  “Couple of months, I guess. Why did they do this to my Dad? And why are they breaking stuff now?”

  “When you feed one, others find out about it. Then more. Then more. Eventually, there are too many faeries and not enough work to go around. They start breaking things so that they have more stuff to fix. It makes sense to them, I suppose. The more of them around, the bolder they get. Your dad must’ve frightened them, so they hexed him.”

  Monster removed a water bottle from his bag, used his flashlight to read an incantation on the bottle’s label. The liquid contents flared with a bright golden light. He squirted a bit of the liquid in the air, where it gathered into a little ball of illumination that hovered in mid-air. They walked through the house, and he lit their way with globules of magic light.

  She touched one, and it popped in a flash.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  Hundreds of pixies crawled along the walls and ceiling. They zipped through the air, chattering in their squeaky, high-pitched voices.

  “Why aren’t they hexing us?” she asked.

  “I’m wearing my underwear inside out and backwards and my shoes on the wrong feet. Standard faerie proofing.” He wiggled and twisted as he adjusted his underwear. “Wrong day to wear briefs. They probably haven’t hexed you because they think you might give them something to eat.”

  The pixies had inflicted a lot of damage in the kitchen. The sink was busted, leaking water everywhere. The cabinets and refrigerator were opened, and all the contents spewed about haphazardly. She stepped around a pile of snack cakes and a bag of opened Cheetos.

  “Why break everything when they could just take the food themselves?”

  He shrugged. “Work ethic?”

  The destruction didn’t stop at the kitchen. They’d also done a thorough job on the living room, tearing up the sofa and smashing the television. The rug had stains on it that she deliberately avoided looking at closely.

  “This is all my fault.”

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t know this would happen.”

  “So feeding the weird little creatures that lived in your walls seemed like a good idea?”

  She said, “I don’t know a lot about this magical stuff.”

  “All the more reason you shouldn’t have been messing with it,” he said. “I’m a professional, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Didn’t your school give you a pamphlet?”

  “I lost it. I was going to ask for another one. I just n
ever got around to it.”

  “Look,” he said. “You seem like a bright kid. Nobody is going to watch out for you in this world. You screwed up. Be a grown up and deal with it.”

  Chester, the paper bird, flew into the room and folded into his gnome shape. “He’s not the guy to be giving that particular speech, but he isn’t wrong.”

  “I called you for help,” said Kristine. “Not a lecture.”

  Monster said, “None of my business. You want to go on feeding every strange crypto you come across and getting bailed out of your messes, doesn’t affect my life. Find the nest, Chester?”

  “Basement, boss. It’s a doozy. There must be thousands of them.”

  They headed toward the basement, and Monster rifled through his bag again.

  “Can you get them to fix the house before they’re gone?” she asked.

  “Faerie repairs are always slipshod, Miss. Mostly glamour magic,” said Chester. “They only work for a little while. Considering the size of the infestation, you’ll be fortunate if this place doesn’t come crashing down on your heads in a week once they’re cleared.”

  “Oh.”

  A pixie landed on her hand, and the petite, beautiful little creature whistled. It looked up at Kristine with bright green eyes.

  “This is all your fault.”

  The pixie flitted away.

  Kristine noticed a hairline crack in the wall and traced it with her fingers. There was a dank stink she hadn’t noticed before. The house rattled. The floor trembled under her feet like it might give way if she stepped on it too hard.

  She tried pushing the blame on her parents for their divorce, Mom for not fighting for custody, Dad for buying this house. But she’d screwed up. She hadn’t thought it through, and everything was all messed up now.

  “My fault.”

  “Uh huh,” said Monster as he removed a plastic container with a glowing puffball in it.

  “To be fair, Miss,” said Chester, “the house was likely infested before you moved in. We’ve had reports in this neighborhood for months now.”

  “Yes, you probably only made it worse faster,” said Monster as he descended the stairs.