by Alan Spencer
Hide and Seek
Regina Highwater knew there was strength in numbers. That's why she stayed with the chunk of the group that didn't scatter. She hid with twelve other members of the cast. They had made the right choice by staying out of sight. Staying put would save their lives.
She couldn't say what they were hiding under exactly. Crudely put, they were underneath a giant spinach leaf roof with a crispy texture. At their feet were shoots of random vegetation. The shadows underneath the leaf ceiling kept everything limited to a guess.
Whispers spread once the island went silent.
"You think it's safe?"
"How can I know?"
"How can any of us know?"
"The boat is gone. We're not getting off of this island."
“We’ll find Bruce. He'll come up with a way of contacting help—there has to be a way."
"That idiot can't help us. If I find him, I'll kill him. What the hell did he get us into? The first chance I get, I'm calling my agent."
"Yeah, me too. I'm suing the bastard."
"I say we make a break for the beach. Maybe we can find enough pieces of the boat to make a raft. It might work. I was in Boy Scouts."
"Make a raft? Yeah fucking right. Nobody's going to do any of those things. We're not getting off of this island. You're forgetting about our giant green friend out there."
"We are going to make it. I'm not giving up on hope."
"Like hell we are!"
"Everybody be quiet. I can't hear."
Regina kept her ears trained. They were talking too loud. The last thing they needed was to draw attention to themselves.
"It's not going to do us any good being quiet. This island's full of monsters."
"This isn't Pagoda Island. Where are we then?"
"That idiot, what's his name? Mark Rodman. Yeah. That's right. Mark. He didn't know what the hell he was doing. If you guys weren't too drunk to notice, Mark looked scared the whole time he was at the wheel."
"Oh yeah? Then why didn't you do anything about it?"
"I didn't know. I wasn't sure. Even if he did take us to the wrong place, I never thought it would turn out to be anything like this."
"And now we're fucked."
"I never should've signed on for this third-rate crap."
"I'm never going to see my family again. They'll never know what happened to me."
"Shhhhhh!"
Am I the only one that doesn't want to get eaten?
Regina didn't hear the noise. She felt it. This wasn't the sonic boom of a giant's steps. Those were soft, slow, and creeping. The sound that disturbed her was the strange sniffing. She couldn't see beyond the spinach leaf ceiling to view the source. Regina didn't need to see it, because she knew what was smelling them out.
The sniffing stopped yards from their hideaway. Everybody was stock still and holding their breath.
The silence gripped them all in terror.
Had they been discovered?
Was the dinosaur about to move on somewhere else or go in for the kill?
A rush of air careened against them. The spinach barrier was lifted up like a stiff tarp and blown away. They were the insects revealed beneath the rotting log. Everybody froze. Others ducked. Many cried. Regina heard prayers to God. One of her co-stars flipped T-Rex off and unleashed a colorful tide of insults.
Regina did what many did and cried for her life. T-Rex bent down and scooped them up in one big bite. The giant tongue, the dark colorful flesh walls of its mouth, the solid-as-bone roof of its mouth, everything blurred as if she were in a washing machine's spin cycle. She watched teeth crunch down and cut people in half, split people long ways, and dismember them. The mouth closed completely.
Darkness engulfed them.
She couldn't think with all the events taking place. The enormous tongue threw Regina upwards. She struck the ceiling. She was dazed but still conscious. If nature was merciful, she would've died then.
The mouth had turned into a mosh pit as the tongue swished them around. A tide of mouth juices covered them in a pool of burning acid. Everybody was turned into boiling blood and bone soup by the time T-Rex swallowed them all.
The Mission
The chewed up torso with a blue bikini top was Michelle Kelly. The arm torn from the shoulder with the Jesus fish tattoo on the bicep was Vick Lumley's. The single breast left with deep nibble marks—well, Bruce thought, that could've been anybody from his cast. The pieces of victims were scattered everywhere.
Bruce couldn't avoid that sinking feeling.
He didn't know how to find Candy and Zoe.
Blast was getting impatient with the search. "Where the hell are we going, Bruce? Face it. We're clueless as to the direction that guy went with our girls."
The forest seemed to spin fast on an axis. The trees got taller, and denser, and impossible to take in with the naked eye. Bruce was too angry to give up and too realistic for false hope.
"Look, man, if a big helicopter arrived to pick us up, I wouldn't leave without Candy or anybody else who might be alive. I owe them that much. This was my movie. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't arranged for us to be here."
"It's not your fault on that account," Blast argued. "That idiot Rodman kid took us to the wrong island. It's clear this isn't Pagoda Island. Pagoda Island is inhabited. This place is overrun by monsters."
"Yeah. We can't forget we're still in danger ourselves."
The Dino Buffet movie was cancelled, but the buffet itself was not. The wild spatters of blood randomly spread out on the ground proved that much.
Get it together.
Focus.
How do you find someone you're looking for?
Of course! You find their tracks.
He shared the idea with Blast. Blast wasn't pleased with the suggestion, but he scanned the mossy ground for indentations anyway. They had nothing else to go on except for blood and fear.
They scoured for half a mile, trudging through thick bamboo patches, stomping on a hill of fallen boulders a strange fuchsia color, and stopping at what looked like a man made pathway. The stones were bizarre. The surface was smooth and multicolored. They reminded him of prisms.
"Bruce, you see these?" The special effects guy pointed at a pair of foot prints. "You ask me, these don't belong to anybody on our crew. They're from heavy duty boots. Everybody here is either wearing sneakers, sandals, or going it barefoot. Assuming this island is unpopulated by people, best bet, this is from our guy."
"Look. He stepped onto the path. I can see blood drops." Bruce bent down to touch them. "They're not dry. These are fresh. If he's done something to them—"
"We'll pay him back in spades. I'll make sure of it. Who do you think this guy is anyway?"
"Some castaway creep. Who knows?"
Blast clutched onto his 9mm that much tighter. "Figuring he's survived on this island, he's got a few tricks up his sleeve. He knows the terrain and the places to hide."
"Why hide here at all?"
"Maybe he's running from something. Or he's a crazy miserable castaway, like you said. God knows what's up with this fucker."
The roar in the sky gripped them both. They could see the T-Rex's shape from afar. The mega reptile had its head tilted back. It opened its mouth and chewed down hard. Blood from all sides of its mouth gushed forth. Bruce imagined mowing down on a burger smothered in way too much ketchup. Blood and human pieces erupted from the sides of his mouth.
"Get down," Blast said. "Stay low. Be quiet."
Bruce had no problem obeying the commands.
They listened to the chomping and groaning of hunger satiated and created in the same breath. Bruce shivered picturing himself being eaten.
This beast's appetite is bottomless.
How many people were in its mouth?
The T-Rex was gone. It bounded after the next prey. How many members were left in his crew by now?
"Bruce, my God, are you seeing this?"
The sight up a
head was very morbid.
A Bad Sign
The path of prism stones abruptly ended. Bruce could only describe what was up ahead as a sacrificial or ceremonial circle. Animal skulls and bones lined that circle. These skulls were made of antelope, gorilla, boar, pig, and skulls that could've passed for cavemen skulls. At the center of the circle was a steel pole jammed into the ground. There were chains and shackles attached to the pole. He knelt down on the dirt and saw more of the blood drops. The guy had crossed through here recently.
"We're on the right track. Keep following the blood."
Blast was fixated on the steel pole and the skulls. "I don't get it. This guy arranged the animal skulls. He set up this pole and the shackles."
"Yeah. So what? Let's get moving. The guy's fucked up. Easily established."
"But why is he sacrificing people here? How did he get people to sacrifice in the first place? People don't come here. So how did they get here?"
"Maybe these people were like us. They happened upon the island on accident."
"Yeah, but with the number of human bones here, it's impossible. This guy has to be leaving the island and coming back. He must bring people here to sacrifice."
Bruce was hit by the implications of the question. "Why would he do that? If he's not a castaway, and he can leave the island, why come back at all?"
Blast's face was locked in worry. "This guy's got something super fucking weird going on here."
"Then let's hurry up and find this guy."
The concerns had them moving much faster now despite the heat and humidity. The sun was bearing down on them hard. They took turns drinking from a bottle of water.
The blood drop trail took them near a sizeable lake. There was a wild boiling in the blue waters. Bruce imagined something huge rising up from the depths.
Director and special effects man both hurried away from the lake. After the lake, the blood drops seemed to stop completely. They faced a wide open valley of grass with no trees or vegetation. Across the way, there was a large hill. On top of that hill was a two-story mansion.
"That has to be where the guy took them," Bruce said. "Come on, let's go."
Once they stepped into the open valley, things came at them from all angles. It sounded like a roaring stampede was coming right for them. A wall of dust obscured what was drawing nearer. This was easily the most danger they've been in thus far, Bruce thought, and it wasn't going to get any better from here on out.
Separated
Bruce didn't know where Blast went. The special effects guy's shape was engulfed in the flying dust wall. Sounds of grunting, squealing, and animal cries of panic circled him. He caught fifty boars with giant tusks and eyes covering their bodies from top to bottom book it in the opposite direction. Zebras, antelope, and deer with taller legs, thicker bodies, bulging muscles, and rainbow stripes were racing to safety. The sight would've been amazing if it wasn't so alarming.
"Run, Bruce! Get to the hill. Save the girls!"
That was Blast's voice. Bruce still couldn't locate him.
The 9mm barked. The shots echoed from everywhere. Bruce called out to his friend, and he didn't answer. If the man did, the stomping of hundreds of hooves covered his words up.
STOMP.
STOMP.
STOMP.
T-Rex was charging. Its mouth was slightly open. Drool edged down its face looking like rubber glue mixed with diseases and old blood. The dinosaur was about to lunge forward and swipe at the weakest row of animals running for their lives when out of the dust came something just as big as T-Rex and ten times as wild.
The creature was squat, and its surface area was huge. This thing weighed many tons. Its skin was bumpy with ridges that were sharp as bone. The colors along its body were magnificent. The orange, black, and white of tiger stripes and the body of a toad.
It used its back legs—those taught, tight, and ripped powerful muscles interlaced with even more muscles—to butt its head into the side of T-Rex. T-Rex didn't see the opponent coming. The tiger toad's head struck with earth shaking impact.
With a roar of pain, T-Rex went head over heels onto his back. Tiger toad stayed in place, all four legs bunched up against its body. The toad opened its mouth. The act was the unhinging of a great drawbridge. Skin stretched, and stretched, and stretched. The sound grated against Bruce's ears. The toad's belly expanded in anticipation of filling it.
The pink tongue blasted out of its mouth. He imagined a machine gun spitting out bullets, how the tongue flick, flick, flick, flick, flicked in rapid succession. Each lashing touched onto a boar, an antelope, a buffalo, and more, and more, and more. The toad dragged them all into its mouth. Each animal was swallowed whole. Twenty seconds were spent eating when the toad closed its mouth and hopped away.
When T-Rex rose back up from the attack, the other animals were long gone. T-Rex was alone. The king of the island, now dethroned, threw its head back and roared with fiery anger. It stomped the ground, kicked at the dirt, and kept roaring and screeching.
Bruce didn't wait for the dinosaur to see him standing there like a big idiot. He searched for Blast. There was no way to know where he had gone or if he had survived. He ran towards the hill, made it across the long front yard, and located a back door at the mansion. He prayed this was where he would find Candy and Zoe.
Rex Rage
The dust from the stampede had settled, and T-Rex trudged towards the shelter of the forest. One side of his ribs were crushed. He had to recoup, strategize, and come back one hundred percent before going on with the hunt, because the hunt had changed.
It wasn't the pain that enraged him, nor was it the hunger, or the denial of a good meal.
This was his island. He was king. He inspired fear. He dominated. He was the last of his kind, and he knew it. Before going completely extinct, he wanted to live out his final years enjoying complete dominance.
But now, he was being challenged by an adversary he hadn't encountered before. The primal inner workings of the dinosaur's brain imagined hundreds of ways he could tear the tiger toad into bloody ribbons.
First, he had to recover. He crouched down low, closed his eyes, and slept. For when he awoke, he would be a new beast. Everything in sight was going to die. Every piece of meat and drop of blood would cross his teeth and wet his palate.
The tiger toad would perish by his will.
T-Rex vowed it as the primordial jellies in his brain boiled for revenge.
T-Rex dreamed of death and feeding.
When he woke up later, no life on the island would be left unsettled.
Toad Dreams
Tiger toad burrowed itself in the soft cool mud located around the nearby sizeable body of water. It wasn't injured nor was its pride damaged by the short-lived battle. Even conquering the king of the island wasn't on its mind. The magnificent toad only wanted to digest its food and eat some more.
The toad closed its eyes. The creature could feel animals being melted down in its acid pit for a belly. Hooves and animal cries beat against the walls of his stomach only to be reduced to liquid moments later.
Like the T-Rex, this toad was the only one of its kind. A misfire out of a toad's womb. Something that was meant to be aborted by nature had somehow survived and was rapidly growing. Nature couldn't contain this toad's insatiable instincts. Eat, and eat, and eat, and grow, and grow, and grow.
The toad was now a ten ton force. There were no limits to how huge it could become nor any limit to its hunger. Even full to the point it could burst, the tiger toad imagined its next meal. The crunch of bones. The way it felt to stick and wrap his tongue around a fighting, crying prey.
There was one item on the menu the toad especially craved. This required every vacant inch of his stomach. He would burrow in the mud for weeks after eating this grand meal.
The tiger toad slept and dreamed of how magnificent it would be to eat T-Rex.
Gory Sights
Candy opened her eyes and fought through
the fogginess of being knocked unconscious. She didn't expect to wake up in a room. The first instinct was to believe she was back home. She was saved. Everything was going to be okay. Nothing was going to eat her. The one thing that kept her from believing that was the wretched smell. Something in this house was rotting, and she stifled her need to wretch against the stink.
When she tried to move, she realized she was strapped to a steel gurney. Zoe was beside her in another gurney. The girl was unconscious. Candy envied the girl. She was still a child safe in her dreams and not awake in this nightmare reality.
This wasn't a single room. This was the entire top story of a big house. The walls looked to have been knocked down by a sledgehammer. It was easy to deduce why the walls were knocked out. Every inch of space was used. Strange things were propped in corners and held up in proud displays.
A collection of hideous collages.
God, the smell, she kept thinking. I'm going to choke on the smell.
The windows had no curtains. Sunlight bled into the long and wide room. Everything was illuminated with perfect lighting. There were no shadows to mercifully conceal what occupied the area with her.
Her eyes studied the sights and tried to dissect them and understand them. Blackened skin. Dried up husks for bodies. Blue-black flesh. Yellow-purple bruised skin. Every shade of death and decay, these collages featured them in every color.
Sharpened poles were jammed through human torsos to prop them in standing positions. Another sharpened pole was jammed crossways so severed arms and legs could create a rough cut of a human body. Male and female arms and legs and heads were used at random.
