The Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  Nelson felt his shoes fill with water and spun around to see the pond overflowing. The black water belched out of the ground before bulging as Carla broke the oily black surface once again. This time her entire body launched out of the pond, like a killer whale in a sea-park display, scattering Nelson and the monsters, who fled just in time to avoid being crushed. Carla’s phenomenal blubbery bulk slammed onto flowers and grasses and bushes and plants that were clamoring for their place in the sun. The tremor of her landing knocked everything, including the jelly freaks and several nice new trees, to the ground.

  Behind her, the pond that had once been as black as an inkwell now overflowed with sparkling spring water and ever so slowly began to shrink, its grassy banks drawing tighter and tighter as if to close completely.

  Suddenly Carla gave a great belch, opened her huge mouth, and Celeste slid out, down Carla’s fat purple tongue and into a bed of spiraling orchids.

  Nosh, Spike, Puff, Miser, Hoot, Stan, and Nelson all cried her name in unison.

  “Celeste!”

  (Crush honked, of course.)

  Nelson ran through the swaying grasses toward his sister, skidding to his knees at her side and cradling her sleeping head in his arms. Her blond hair was black now, and her skin as white as the moon, but these were utterly insignificant details compared to the gigantic and wonderful fact that Nelson had found his sister at last.

  The monsters pushed and shoved like paparazzi trying to get near a movie star, knocking Nelson over.

  “Hey, watch it,” Nelson laughed, but the monsters were desperate to be as close to Celeste as possible now, as if the ache that they had been cursed with since they were created would finally be cured.

  It was the happiest day the jungle had ever known in its entire billion-year history. And it should have been for Nelson and the monsters too, but it wasn’t.

  As warmth and color saturated the world around him, a rush of ice-cold horror ran through Nelson’s veins when he realized his big sister was not asleep in his arms.

  She was dead.

  THE DEADLY SEVEN

  Look, I know some of you might have been quite upset by the end of that last chapter, but I’m afraid this story is not without its tragedies. I mean, did you really think Nelson would just turn up and everything would be fine? I am sorry to say, that’s not what happened. So before you read on I must warn you that things will get a lot worse for Nelson before they stand even a slim chance of ever getting better again …

  * * *

  Celeste would never know how Nelson had tried to save her. Never again would he sit at the kitchen table and play Uno with her while they ate pistachio nuts. Or have his hair cut by her in the yard. No more dancing to the White Stripes in her bedroom. No more terrible Yoda impressions. No more Celeste. It was the end of life as he knew it.

  Laughter rang out through the jungle. It was Carla, her heart filled with a joy she had never known—her father’s love.

  Nelson knelt by his big sister, a great surge of grief rising in his belly like lava and bursting out of him in a savage howl. It was an awful sound, made worse by the fact that it was just one voice in a chorus. All of Nelson’s monsters were howling and screeching with him, for they shared his pain right down to the very marrow in their bones.

  Without the pendant to soothe or steady his feelings, Nelson screamed and raged and howled until all the misery and confusion and pain he felt was boiled into just one, simple emotion: pure hatred.

  Nelson’s monsters felt it too. The hatred was so powerful it made them bigger and stronger.

  “Destroy her!” screamed Stan, his eyes no longer small and black but large and red. He was already charging toward the gelatinous creature that was Auntie Carla, but he was blocked by one of her jelly freaks smashing a fist into his face and sending him reeling backward.

  Auntie Carla was still giddy with happiness and laughed as if she’d just heard the most wonderful joke, while her body started to evolve back into human form.

  “It worked! The pendant worked! I am saved!” she cried.

  Her laughter only fueled Stan’s hatred, and as he rolled from the blow he grew and grew and grew.

  Nelson felt something hit him hard in the back and he fell forward onto the grass. Looking up, he saw Crush towering above him, as tall as an oak tree. His usual honk was replaced with an earsplitting roar and his mouth was now lined with razor-sharp teeth. Those little arms that used to cling lovingly to Nelson’s legs were now as long and as thick as anchor chains, and Crush beat them against the ground, over and over again.

  All the monsters were growing larger, but not just into bigger versions of their former selves. They were more powerful too and, unfortunately, they were completely out of control.

  Hoot’s red eyes became wide and manic, while his beak twisted as he screeched and clawed at the ground beside Nelson.

  “Watch out!” screamed Nelson, but Hoot never heard him over all the screeching.

  Nelson pulled Celeste out of the way just in time to avoid being squashed by Nosh, who had swollen to the size of a bouncy castle and was rolling forward to join Stan.

  Stan was no longer just a little red monster. Hatred had made him gigantic. He was now six meters tall, with fists the size of wrecking balls and horns as long as elephant tusks.

  One by one the monsters gathered together to face Carla and her jelly freaks. Puff had only grown a little taller but had stretched massively lengthways, like a hairy purple serpent. Those huge eyes that had been closed for most of the time were wide open and burning red. Spike had become a gigantic swollen version of his former self and bristled with needles as long as spears. Miser had grown huge, with even more tentacles thrashing from his barnacled green body as if they had a mind of their own. Everything Miser had stolen on his journey was falling out from the pockets in his flesh: medals, coins, jewelry, wallets, keys … hundreds of stolen objects poured out of him and fell into the grass below.

  They were no longer seven little monsters. They were huge. They were angry. And most of all, they were deadly.

  “Destroy!” roared Stan, and the deadly seven charged toward Carla.

  They may have been bigger than the ghastly jelly freaks, but the deadly seven were outnumbered. The two armies clashed in the middle of the prettiest battlefield in the world. Fists pounded monster flesh, razor teeth snapped, claws slashed, hooves kicked, and the ground shook like an earthquake was happening.

  Crush and Miser gripped several jelly freaks at once, allowing Stan to knock them silly with his hammer-blow punches. A jelly freak leaped onto Hoot’s back and tried to topple him, but Hoot pinned the creature to the ground with one of his enormous claws and yanked at its rubbery arm as if he was trying to extract a gigantic earthworm from the ground. Spike swung one of his arms and it slammed into the belly of a jelly freak—sending the creature flying backward into Nosh’s wide-open mouth. Nosh bit down on it and swallowed it in two huge gulps.

  “Jelly!” he roared, before his head erupted in a crown of flames—setting fire to the branches in the trees above.

  The flames tore across the jungle canopy and showers of sparks rained down.

  Nelson cowered over Celeste’s lifeless body until the sparks had passed. When he opened his eyes again, the ground around him was peppered with tiny fires.

  And that’s when Nelson saw Carla.

  The monsters were all so busy fighting, none of the deadly seven noticed Carla crawling farther and farther away. Though her flesh was still translucent, her whale-like body had lost its flippers and fins and she now had stumpy little arms and legs. Her face was still large but clearly deflating toward a human shape.

  Nelson was already running toward her before he knew what he was doing. He ran so fast it was as if he had miraculously been turbocharged and he scattered the rising ferns like a grass cutter.

  Whack!

  For a second Nelson flew backward through the air before he hit the ground hard. The breath was knocked rig
ht out of him, but he managed to roll to the left just in time to avoid a second blow from a jelly freak who had singled him out. None of Nelson’s monsters noticed he was in trouble.

  For the first time since the monsters had arrived in his life, Nelson felt as if he was on his own.

  “More jelly!” roared Nosh and another crown of flames ignited from his head with the roar of a hot-air balloon.

  As Nelson scrambled to his feet, more burning branches fell to the ground around him. The jelly freak who had singled him out picked up one of the largest branches and the flesh of its hands sizzled like steaks in a frying pan. This should have really hurt, but it didn’t make the jelly freak put the branch down. Instead the creature brandished the flaming branch at Nelson, as if to make it quite clear that it intended to wallop him with it.

  Nelson scrambled to his feet, but his escape was cut short when he ran straight into a tree. This was not a good time to be running into trees, but that’s what Nelson did. He hit the tree with his entire face and fell backward, on the ground, with a rather pathetic whimper.

  The jelly freak raised the still-flaming branch above its big head, smoke billowing from its sizzling hands, and it roared, which in jelly-freak speak probably means “I am going to crush you!” It might have managed it if it hadn’t been for the stormlike rumble preceding the extraordinarily well-timed arrival of the cows.

  Yes, the cows.

  The very same herd Nelson and his monsters had hitched a ride on earlier, the ones who had been told not under any circumstances to stop until they reached a girl called Celeste, had finally arrived at their destination. And having not let anything get in their way, not even the traffic on a very busy highway, the bull at the head of the herd slammed into the jelly freak about to strike Nelson, sending the freak flying through the air, where it was caught by Stan, who pulverized it by slamming his two massive fists into either side of its jelly head at the same time.

  Nelson stared openmouthed as the cows continued to run toward the spot where his sister lay, surrounded her, and then proceeded to feast on the fresh grass as if it was perfectly normal to graze right next to a giant monster fight.

  Carla’s new arms and legs might still have had a way to go before they looked like they used to, but that didn’t stop her from dancing and singing. She was as full of love and joy as Nelson was of rage and sadness. Carla finally had what she had always wanted: her father’s love. The pendant had dissolved inside her and released his unconditional love into every part of her being. I hope you know what a wonderful feeling it is to be loved. You feel happy and content. Having been weighed down by heavy feelings like envy and greed for almost her entire life, Auntie Carla now felt light as a feather and giddy as the winner of a TV game show. She even reached down to pick a flower that had touched her new happy heart with its profound beauty. It was while she was giving it a sniff with the nose that had started to form on her face that Nelson ran into the back of her with so much force that both of them fell forward and tumbled through the swaying grasses. Auntie Carla merely laughed, as if this was all part of a silly game, which just made Nelson even angrier.

  Nelson would have loved to see Stan smash her to bits, or Nosh eat her up like a dumpling, but it was up to him to settle this score. He got to his feet and would have charged again had he not been knocked flying by a jelly freak who had been tossed from the battle by Miser.

  * * *

  Nelson and his auntie Carla fell into the ever-shrinking pond with an almighty splash. Suddenly everything was cold, quiet, and suffocating. Nelson was underwater and struggling to swim out from under his aunt’s flailing body toward the shrinking circle of light above, but it was Carla who broke the surface first. She gasped before roaring with laughter.

  “What fun this is!” she cried, as her body bobbed up and down like a buoy.

  Nelson hadn’t taken a proper deep breath before falling into the water and he was starting to feel the terrifying thump of his heart in his chest as his body screamed for air. He needed to get to the surface, but the way was now blocked by Carla’s great bulk. And the hole was getting smaller, squeezing her gelatinous body tighter and tighter.

  “Ooh! Goodness me! I’m well and truly stuck!” exclaimed Carla, bracing her hands against the encroaching mud. Beneath her, Nelson pushed and heaved with everything he had left, but it was no use. Carla was in his way.

  She pushed her hands down in the mud with all her might and heaved her great body upward. Her large tummy flopped up onto the bank.

  Nelson could see the hole was now only the size of a trash-bin lid, and getting smaller, but Carla’s legs still thrashed around as she tried to get out. One of her large rubbery feet accidentally struck him in the head, and Nelson grabbed it to stop it from hitting him again.

  “Oh, that tickles! You must let go! You must!” chuckled Auntie Carla as she heaved onto her side, too full of joy to care that Nelson was in danger.

  “Get out! Get out!” were the words Nelson could hear screaming in his head, but he could not get past his auntie’s massive leg in time, and the hole closed just below her knee.

  There was a pop as the bottom of Auntie Carla’s jelly leg was separated from the top half, and then complete darkness. Nelson beat his fists against the soil and rock, but it was no use.

  As the ground closed above him, poor Nelson realized he had not only lost his sister but he had also taken his very last breath.

  THE LIGHT IN THE DARK

  Some people who have experienced a close shave with death talk about seeing a light and heading toward it. And this is precisely what happened to Nelson.

  As the monster battle continued to rumble like thunder aboveground, and Nelson began to lose consciousness, through the dark water came a tiny light that grew and grew until it was almost blindingly bright. But unlike the usual near-death experiences, there wasn’t just one light. There were more approaching, above and below him too, and it seemed to be vast down here—much bigger than the surface of the small pool had suggested. As the lights drifted closer and closer, Nelson could see that they belonged to various kinds of fish. Like the strange luminous creatures that lurk at the very deepest parts of the ocean, all of these fish had glowing scales, and though they looked a lot like the creatures that had evolved into the jelly freaks, these fish did not have the same soulless eyes. Their eyes were bright and clear and they looked right at Nelson, who looked right back at them in astonishment.

  It was at this moment that Nelson asked himself a very good question.

  “How come I can breathe underwater?”

  * * *

  It was true. Nelson was breathing. He thought that maybe he had died already and this was what it felt like to go to heaven, but the real answer was revealed as he looked down at his sneakers, which he could feel slipping off his feet. The lights from the fish surrounding him illuminated the water enough for him to see his shoes floating away and revealing not feet, but fins. Where there had once been two pink feet and ten pink toes, there were now two green flippers.

  His T-shirt billowed around him and Nelson saw that his stomach was covered in scales and his hands were fins too.

  As if failing to save his sister wasn’t bad enough, he was now going to spend the rest of his life as a fish-shaped boy. He couldn’t see his own head, but it looked something like this.

  * * *

  This was, after all, the River of Life. Anything that left the river evolved into something new, and it worked the other way too. Nelson was devolving, just as Carla had all those years ago, back into the sort of creature that first popped its head above the water of the primordial soup millions of years ago and thought, “It looks quite nice out here.”

  * * *

  Though Nelson was new to life as a fish, it seemed to him that he was welcomed by the luminous creatures. There was something pleasant and friendly about the way they looked at him and waved their pearly fins, and he was right, they really were pleased to see him. As far as the fish were
concerned, this little boy was a hero. For ten years their precious water had been poisoned by that wretched woman, and anyone who drank it fell under her spell. Now that she was gone, the water was back to being the pure source of all life once again. They owed this boy their gratitude. If they could have thrown a party for him, they would have done so, but fish don’t have the means to stage a decent party, so instead they nudged Nelson and invited him to follow them.

  In the past, Nelson had always resisted making friends. He’d always felt awkward and unsure about making the commitment, but now he had a simple choice: stay in the dark on his own or follow the light being offered.

  Nelson chose the light.

  THE GIFT

  The fish turned and headed down into the depths and Nelson found it was fairly easy to follow them. Though he still wore jeans and a T-shirt, his flipper feet and hands propelled him on with glorious ease.

  As they sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, Nelson remembered a biology lesson that covered the topic of fishes’ gills and the way they are able to extract oxygen from water. Though he could not see his own face, Nelson could feel a very pleasing rush of water passing over his cheeks and assumed that this was his new set of gills in action.

  It was the first time since his journey began that Nelson wasn’t thinking of his sister or even of his monsters. His brain was so busy dealing with this new and bizarre situation that there weren’t any brain cells remaining to think about what he had left behind.

  Down and down they went. Usually his ears would have popped by now, but then again, maybe he didn’t have ears anymore. The other fish kept glancing at him and he could somehow tell that it was out of kindness, as if they wanted to reassure him he would be all right. He tried to smile at them, but he wasn’t sure how to use his new fish face. As he contemplated his new body and the new life he was going to have down here in the dark, Nelson noticed that the cold water had gotten a lot warmer. In fact, the deeper they swam, the more it was like swimming in bathwater.