I Kill Monsters

by Dennis Liggio

  "What should I do?" I said, my foot still hovering in the air.

  Mikkel shook his head to make the dizziness pass. "Step back here," he said.

  "Okay," I said, slowly shuffling backward, my nerves on edge, my muscles tense.

  Mikkel typically gets a vague idea of what might be wrong, but he says it doesn't always translate into a cohesive thought, it's more like an instinct or intuition. So he can't explain it and often doesn't quite know what the warning means, only what he might need to do. Once I was safe, he grabbed the wooden baseball bat we had brought with us. Stepping very delicately forward, he crouched down and then reached out with the bat. He gingerly poked around the refuge heap with the bat.

  It didn't look like anything was in the trash, it just looked like he was poking garbage. And then in one second it all happened. There was a quick sound of metal scraping against metal, a flash of movement, and the bat was yanked from Mikkel's hand. We both freaked out, Mikkel falling backward and I raising my flashlight as a weapon, ready to strike.

  But there was no assailant. In front of us we saw the bat lodged between the jagged metal teeth of a bear trap. The teeth had gouged deep into the wood of the bat. I swallowed slowly realizing that could have been my leg.

  "I think it's fair to say that this place is trapped," said Mikkel in a low voice.

  It took me a moment to come out of my shock. "And I thought it was the rev himself that would be the one to kill us."

  Mikkel gave a wan smile and stood up. I looked around for something else to poke with. That had been our only baseball bat and the wooden plank we had with us was for other purposes. I borrowed Mikkel's crowbar and poked the rest of the area around the door. I found nothing else. Then I stepped to the door, pausing for a moment.

  "No bad feeling or anything?" I asked.

  "None yet," he said.

  With a moment of hesitation, I slowly pulled the door open. It scraped against some of the trash, but otherwise wasn't loud. Since we were on our guard, I shined the flashlight all over before even taking a single step in the room. My caution was rewarded: I found a tripwire just past the door.

  "At least one more trap," I said.

  We entered the room, stepping over the tripwire. I swept the room with my flashlight. I nearly jumped when it revealed the cot with the revenant in it. I quickly moved the beam off the revenant, worrying that the light would wake him up. But he didn't move.

  "I guess some light will be okay," I said.

  Since we no longer had to follow a dim UV trail, Mikkel and I clipped LED lights on our jackets. This filled the room with ambient light, rather than merely the directional light from my flashlight which made everything look like a horror movie. The LED lights only dimly illuminated the room, but we now had more peripheral awareness.

  First Mikkel set up his own trap at the door. Clipping the revenant's tripwire, Mikkel set up our own short range motion detector[22]. Attached to that was something even more low tech, pretty much an old camera flash bulb. Only one flash, but it would be super bright.

  One thing we know is that revenants don't do well with light. Paulie's experience and information brought this fact up time and again. Revenants always hunt at night and will go to great lengths to not be anywhere near sunlight. I don't think they would be vaporized like Hollywood vampires, but I imagine light at least causes them great discomfort, if not pain.

  Mikkel put down our duffel bag. We had another waiting in the van if things went well. But for this first trip we took only a few essential items that wouldn't be loud. First he pulled out a sharpened wood plank - a wooden stake, if you like. Yes, now we do sound like we're out of a bad horror movie. But this was not our idea. This comes from Paulie and collected monster hunter wisdom. For whatever reason, a wooden stake works on revenants. The first hunter gave it a shot due the legend and it surprisingly worked. Would stakes of other things work? Maybe. But most hunters are not going to experiment with their most dangerous adversary and risk having a pissed off revenant in their face with a metal stake through its chest. They're going to use what has been known to work. Scientific method takes a backseat to survival.

  We walked over to the cot. I was holding the flashlight and the crowbar while Mikkel hefted the plank. I won't say that he was stronger than me, but he had the height advantage, so he had better leverage. As I shined the light on the revenant's chest, I confirmed he still wasn't moving.

  "So I just drive it into his chest?" whispered Mikkel. "No little hammer or anything?"

  "That's what Paulie said," I replied.

  "Right," said Mikkel.

  As he readied for his stabbing with a wooden plank, I nervously swept the flashlight over the revenant. And that's when I made a mistake.

  When the flashlight beam touched the revenant's eyelids, it was too much light. Before I had just shined the light on his body and it wasn't enough to wake him. But a direct light that close right on his eyelids? That's where I fucked up.

  The revenant's eyes fluttered open. My light shined now on those unfathomably dark eyes. And then the revenant recoiled in hissing pain. Before Mikkel could even start his thrust of the wood plank, the revenant had rolled off the table and was stumbling to his feet.

  "Get him!" cried Mikkel.

  I turned, trying to throw the flashlight beam into the revenant's face or hit him with the crowbar. But the revenant was already running for the door.

  A second later there was a blinding flash. The revenant had triggered the flash bulb trap. He hissed and recoiled, temporarily blinded. Of course, I was looking at him as he ran for the door, so I was also blinded. Not completely, since I had a revenant-shaped blocker on the most intense part of the flash. I could see light and dark blobs. Knowing that swinging the crowbar would be useless with my vision, I simply jumped at the biggest dark blob.

  I connected, grabbing the revenant by his legs, pulling him down to the ground.

  "Now, Mikkel, now!" I said as the revenant writhed below me. My arms and my body weight were keeping him down for the moment, but as soon as it calmed down and could see, it was going to shrug me off.

  I heard Mikkel move above me. With a grunt I heard him thrust the plank. This was at the point where I wondered if Mikkel missed would I be impaled on it instead. That would be a very anticlimactic conclusion to this hunt.

  There was a wet-sounding thunk and the revenant below me went still. I kept holding on, just in case. After thirty seconds, my vision was clearing and I saw the inert body below me.

  "It's done," said Mikkel, the distaste in his voice.

  I stood up. The revenant below me had the wooden plank sticking from his chest.

  "And now for the rest of the plan," I said.

  I looked over to Mikkel to see if he was going to argue or object. He was simply looking down at the revenant, his lips a tight line. He just nodded faintly.

  The revenant wasn't dead. No, the wooden stake through the heart doesn't kill. It immobilizes. As long as the wooden plank was imbedded in his chest, that revenant wouldn't move. It would stay as dead as a corpse until that plank was removed or I guess maybe rotted away. Then some reaction in the revenant's body would start healing and it would eventually start moving again... and probably be very pissed off. Staking a revenant was only step one. You had to destroy them, usually by beheading them. Only then were you done with them.

  We had other plans.

  We went back to the surface, trusting the plank to keep the revenant immobile. There was none of the relief or triumph you might think we might have from stopping the revenant who killed our mother. We were in too dark a place for that, me especially. I hadn't done all of this for justice. I had done it for revenge. And my cold rage hadn't yet exhausted itself.

  There was only silence as we went up to the van and then came back down. Neither of us wanted to talk. We were (mostly) of one mind about this, but that didn't make either of us happy about it. I knew Mikkel was less okay with it than me. I've always trusted Mik
kel to balance me when my rage or darkness was too great, but in this he was also in a dark place. The death of Mom was too much for both of us. There was too much hatred of this revenant. Monster or not, he was not getting off easily.

  Returning to the room, we flipped over the revenant. Then we began our ugly business. We took metal stakes and hammered them through the revenant's shoulders and into the floor below him. Once they were solidly in the floor, we attached chains to them and to rings we drilled into the walls. We made sure those were very tight, very secure. We did the same for the revenant's thighs. We wanted him to not be able to move no matter what strength he possessed. Based on Paulie's info, we believed this would be enough. But we hadn't told Paulie about this part of the plan. We didn't tell anyone about this. This was our secret. This was our own darkness.

  Once we were ready, we took up positions on either side of the revenant. I brandished the crowbar, ready to strike if necessary. Mikkel put on gloves. He grabbed the part of the wooden plank that had gone entirely through the revenant. He grunted a few times doing it, but Mikkel then pulled the plank through the revenant. With a final grunt, Mikkel yanked it totally free.

  As Mikkel tossed the plank aside, I was ready for any movement, any sign that the chains wouldn't hold the revenant. At first, the revenant just lay there as inert as before. But less than a minute after the plank was removed, he moved again. There was a weak moan and then a hiss. Then he began thrashing.

  I watched my feet, making sure the revenant couldn't grab me. Mikkel grabbed the flashlight and pointed it in the revenant's face. Then we waited cautiously as the revenant thrashed and writhed, hissing the whole time. After about a minute, the revenant finally realized the futility of movement and stopped.

  "What do you want?" said the growling voice of the revenant.

  "Do you know who we are?" I said, sticking my face within two feet of his.

  A moment of pause. "No," barked the revenant defiantly.

  I lifted my head and nodded to Mikkel. "And that's why you're here," I said. "You're a killer and you don't care about your victims."

  "You are not my victims," he growled, almost offended. His accent was weird, but I couldn't place it. "My victims I know. I care about them. I specially pick them."

  I gave his body a kick with my steel-toed boots. That response had made me even more angry.

  Mikkel picked up the interrogation. "Your victims have families."

  "I care not for these families," said the revenant.

  "Well, we care for you," I said. "And we're here for revenge. For our Mom and anyone else you've killed."

  The revenant made something like a smile. "This will not bring them back. Nothing will bring them back."

  "No, but it will sure make me feel a whole lot better," I said, giving him another kick. I went to the second duffel bag and pulled out two gas cans that weren't filled with gas. They were filled with the most undiluted chlorine I could find. I pulled on my gas mask.

  Mikkel opened his mouth to say something, but then didn't. He shook his head and turned away, looking at the wall. I knew he had a breather mask in his backpack if he needed it.

  "What is that?" said the revenant as I walked over to him with the gas can.

  As I crouched next to him, I simply smiled. Using my hand around his jaw, I forced his mouth open. And then I began pouring the chlorine down his mouth.

  Of all the things I've done in my life, this has probably been the darkest. This has been the most selfish, most cruel. This is the action most resulting from my broken emotions, erupting out of the worst part of me. It didn't matter than he was a monster, it didn't matter that he killed our mother. Mom wouldn't have liked me doing this. Mikkel had agreed to it but could now not bring himself to watch me do it, much less touch the containers of chlorine. I did this. And I only had the will to do it because of that very broken place inside me.

  I'm not going over the gory details. I'll just say that chlorine is corrosive. In high concentrations, chlorine gas has been used as a chemical weapon for what it does to lungs. I was pouring highly concentrated chlorine down the throat of a functionally immortal being. You figure it out.

  The revenant screamed. He fought against the chains and my hand at his neck. But something in my dark purpose gave me a strength greater than normal as I held his throat straight, as I ignored his thrashing. I poured the entire gas can full of chlorine down his throat, slow enough that it didn't splash all over but fast enough that there was a steady stream.

  When it was empty I stood up and tossed the gas can against the wall with anger. The revenant coughed and gagged behind me. The room was full of chlorine fumes. Despite all my bluster, this act didn't make me feel better. Of course it wasn't going to make me feel better. Why did I think it would do anything but make me hate more?

  I ran over and kicked the second gas can, toppling it over and causing chlorine to leak onto the floor. We weren't using that. We had planned that we both use one of the cans. But Mikkel wasn't going to touch it and I could now see what an insanely stupid idea this was.

  I was supposed to wait. We were supposed to do more. More torture, if I'm going to be honest about the things we had talked about. But instead I just grabbed the axe from the duffel bag and quickly walked over to the revenant.

  "W-what are you -" he started to gasp, but he had no time as I slammed the axe down on his neck once, then twice, until it was completely severed. Then I used my boot and slightly kicked the head away from the body to know it was done. Even knowing he was a monster, seeing the head tumble from the neck turned my stomach. But it made us sure. The revenant was dead now.

  I pulled off the gas mask and I screamed - in rage, in sadness, in anger, in confusion, in all the terrible sounds and shades of human emotion. Then there were tears. Sobbing tears. Mikkel came over to me and put his arms around me, tears in his eyes too. I had cried when Mom died, but I hadn't cried enough. It wasn't until this point that I truly cried. For her, for Mikkel, for me. Especially for me and the horrible things I saw inside me.

  When we were finally done, we gathered up our gear and closed the door. We broke the handle and tried to nail the door shut as best we could. We didn't want it ever opened again. With red spray paint I simply tagged the door with RIP MOM. And then we walked away.

  "I'm still not sure how I feel about that all," I said, finishing the story for Jessica. "I'm proud that we got Mom's killer. I'm proud that we stopped him from killing again. But even if he was a killer and a monster... I'm not sure about what I did."

  "That's..." started Jessica before trailing off.

  "Seriously fucked up?" I said. "Yeah, I know."

  "Tragic," she said.

  I shrugged. "I got a world of hurt inside," I said, at my most emo. "Maybe I'm not the best guy to hang around with. I may be a monster myself... albeit a metaphorical one."

  "I'm being hunted by monsters. Right now you're the perfect guy to hang around with," she said.

  "Yeah, well, we'll see how much you like me once there are no monsters in your life," I said.

  She said nothing to this, she just looked at me for a moment, then looked away. I'm not sure whether I offended her or my comment was too truthful. Maybe she had nothing to say. Instead, we just lay there, bodies touching, but each staring at a different part of the room. Eventually my fatigue caught up with me and I fell asleep.

  Ivan Meets GI Joe

  My dreams were strange and troubled. The revenant that killed my mother popped up in them a few times, the spiderweb scar nearly as big as he was. Then I recall dreaming that a crowd was chasing after me, which wasn't all that strange, since being chased was the highlight of my evening.. well, it was before the sex. Then the sex was the highlight. Priorities, people.

  The dream turned into a nightmare and I awoke with my eyes wide. I wasn't quite in a cold sweat, but I felt uneasy. The room was dark, only vaguely lit by some light that streamed in through the blinds. It was still night, but my block is very urb
an so there are lamps and signs on at all hours, keeping it from ever being truly dark. I looked over and saw Jessica still in bed beside me. She was breathing in a loud enough volume that I could call it a cute snore.

  I smiled. For once, it felt like things were going right in my world. Maybe our little hookup didn't have any relationship potential, but it was good for what it was. I turned over to face the window, a contented smile on my face.

  And that's when I noticed someone on the fire escape. Just a dark shadow in the shape of a person. The fire escape for my side of the floor is adjacent to my bedroom window. If I wanted to do an impression of a spider monkey, I could probably step from my window, grab the fire escape, and climb onto it[23]. It's more difficult to go the opposite direction: climbing over the railing of the fire escape and stepping to my window.

  Except that's just what I saw someone do. There was enough light from a streetlamp that the form was silhouetted on the blinds. It was very obvious that someone had just stepped to my window and was crouched on the edge.

  I shot up in bed. Was I really seeing this? Or was this some remnant of a dream that had latched onto my waking consciousness?. I had heard if someone had sleep paralysis they could see a witch or something. Was I seeing a phantom window person?

  There was a loud sound of glass shattering behind the blinds. Nope, this was definitely not a hallucination. Jessica now jerked awake in bed, her face a mask of fear in the half light. I was already out of bed, grabbing the aluminum bat I kept next to my nightstand. I keep it home because it's only aluminum - in my opinion good for deterring burglars, but not so good for beating the crap out of monsters like most of our arsenal.

  The bat in one hand and wearing only boxers, I grabbed the blinds and pulled them back. I wanted to know who the hell was the asshole trying to burglarize my apartment while I was still in it.