Upright Beasts

by Lincoln Michel

  There was a side door that opened to the backyard. Iris and I sprinted toward the shack, holding hands. My heart was pulsing like a strobe light.

  It was pretty dark out, and we ducked into the space between the shack and the covered cage to catch our breath. Iris leaned against the cage. “Those cocksuckers, those motherfuckers,” she was saying between huffs.

  I peeked over the edge of the cage and saw Feather in the light of the kitchen window. She was pointing out toward something behind their house with her deformed hand. It wasn’t in our direction.

  “We’ll sneak down that slope and make our way back to the road,” Iris said. “Then we’ll come back with police and guns and fucking rapid dogs.”

  “Do you mean rabid dogs?”

  “Both!”

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay. That’s a plan.” I was distracted though. My head was starting to buzz again, and the noise seemed to somehow be emanating from the cage. There was a presence in there cooing to me, like a mother to a child, without words. It wanted me to reach inside.

  Iris slapped my hand. “What are you doing?” she whispered. “We need to go. We need to help Dolan.”

  The buzzing in my head made me close my eyes. I couldn’t help it. It felt as if my insides were brittle, cracking glass. It was originating from the beesting on my neck. I reached back to rub it. When my fingertip touched the swollen sting on my neck, everything in front of me dissolved from black to white to black again.

  I wasn’t seeing Iris or any woods or house or tarp-covered cage. I was in a cyclopean pink cave at least as large as a football stadium. It was lit from undulating yellow orbs that sank from the ceilings, stretching out like drool from sleeping lips, until they snapped and splattered on the floor. When they splattered, their light disappeared. The cave itself was scaly, but pulsing. The floor surged and waned.

  When I crawled forward, the scales of the floor opened up around my hands and feet. I sank in, and then the scales closed back. The toothless mouths of the floor gummed my elbows and knees. I could feel my skin being rubbed off. I cried out in pain.

  There was a presence that was trying to speak to me, but it didn’t know how. It was assaulting me, yelling things at me that weren’t words or human feelings. I tried to say, “I don’t understand,” but when I did, a fissure opened between my bottom front teeth.

  The fissure crept down my chest. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it splitting open down my stomach and all the way around. I could feel myself opening. I was sliding to each side. I tried to scream again, and my teeth fell out, replaced by small, stunted spikes that hurt my tongue. Then my eyes dripped away, running down my checks and hanging over the floor.

  When they hit the cave floor, everything went black again.

  Welcome back to this realm.

  George was standing over me. He’d taken his scarf off, and I could see the swollen mound of spikes on his neck. He was holding a lantern with a bare, deformed hand. His other held the cattle prod at his side.

  I looked around and didn’t see Iris. Iris was always threatening to leave me, but I hadn’t thought it would happen like this.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” George said. “You can understand why we’re wary of strangers. If the government found us, who knows what experiments their sick scientists would do. We have to protect it. We’re all it has.” Plus you and me are brothers now, aren’t we?

  “Brothers?”

  “Let me show you something. Can you get on your feet?” He helped me up and motioned toward the cage. “Take a look and prepare to be amazed by what this universe contains,” he said. His smile was gigantic. I couldn’t tell if his teeth were real or covering something else.

  I could feel that presence again, humming something to me. It was vibrating my spine. I didn’t know what the hell it was trying to say. I pulled the tarp off the cage and immediately gasped and stepped backwards.

  I don’t know what kind of horror I was expecting, but my stomach was instantly filled with sadness.

  The creature was about the size of a Great Dane and rested on its side on the bottom of the cage. It wasn’t shaped quite like a dog though. The body was a distorted orb, wider at one end than the other. It looked almost like an elongated apple, except covered in cracked, pink flesh. Rows of translucent spikes ran down its body in five columns. They met up at a wrinkled sphincter at the top. The creature’s body didn’t move, but its spikes undulated up and down in a sad rhythm. Between the rows of spikes there were sets of large watery ovals that seemed to be eyes. A bit of yellow-green liquid, like pea soup, dripped out of one or two of them.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” George said. “We found this wonder in the cornfield back there, flopping around on the ground like a fish yanked out of water.” He held his hands together and bowed toward the cage.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It fell here from another glorious world. We found a thick round rubber vessel nearby.” He motioned off into the woods. “Its house, I guess. If you want proof of how mysterious the cosmos are, watch this.”

  George flicked on the cattle prod and jammed it inside.

  The creature began convulsing, its spikes flailing in all directions. A sweet stench, like burnt garlic, surrounded us.

  The message the creature was sending me was very clear now. Pain. Its hurt rained through my body, and by the scrunched-up look on George’s face, his too. Then there was a thick ripping sound, like someone pulling apart an enormous steak with their hands.

  “I can always feel its life force when I do that,” he said.

  When I looked back down, there were two creatures in the cage, identical in size and shape. They were both smaller than the one before.

  “This creature doesn’t even consume plants, much less animals. It sustains itself on electricity and makes love with it. It’s how it reproduces. We’ve been eating its bounty, using every part like the Indians. We always keep one half of it alive and strong. If it wasn’t for our care, it would have surely died already.” George hung the lantern on a hook on the wall of the nearby shack. “It’s been rewarding us too, transferring its aura to us and allowing our life forces to merge.” But you already know that, don’t you?

  He pulled a small black pistol from the back of his pants. He used the gun to scratch the underside of his chin.

  “I didn’t eat any of it,” I said.

  “No, but I suppose those bees must have communed with it before stinging you. The crow put something different in your fellow traveler though. He isn’t like you and me. Feather and I don’t even know exactly what he will birth, but I think you can understand why we couldn’t let you leave.”

  He pressed the side of the gun into his cheek, as if he was making a motion to fall asleep. “Well, I abhor guns, but I have to keep the forces in balance.” He lowered the gun and fired. The new creature trembled once, and then was still.

  The first creature’s eyes turned dark. The spikes drooped downward, and a cloud of rank gas whiffed out of its wrinkly hole.

  George scratched his beard with the barrel again. It must have still been hot, because I smelled a bit of singed hair. He smiled and put the gun back in his pants.

  “Can’t you feel how connected we are? I wasn’t sure at first, but after you spoke at dinner I knew. This wonderful being has touched both of us and joined our chis.”

  He leaned his head back so he was facing the stars and let out a whoop.

  I didn’t even see Iris coming, but she whacked George pretty good in the back of the head. When he fell forward, his chin hit the cage, and his teeth smacked together with a wet crunch.

  “You sick hippie hick!” She was on top of him now and gashing his back with a hatchet she’d found god knows where. His blood turned the dirt under him into mud. The mixture was dotted with broken bits of teeth. “You aren’t nice people! You’re sicko pervert assholes!”

  Finally she stopped and stood over him, breathing rapidly. When she loo
ked at me, I saw her face was splattered with blood. Some had gotten in her left eye, making her wink.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” I said.

  “It’s not hard, you just swing,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I said I thought I was and she smiled.

  “Then let’s get Dolan and get the hell back to the city.”

  “What about that thing? I don’t want to leave it like that.”

  Iris looked in the cage and groaned.

  “What kind of shit is that? A diseased walrus? I can’t deal with this right now. I’m getting Dolan, and you’re coming with me, and we’re never coming out to this shit hole again.”

  Feather broke down in tears when she saw us walk by splattered in blood.

  “Run, run to your room!” she said to Clover, shielding her with her body. She moaned George’s name and started chanting in a language I didn’t understand.

  Iris walked right past her though, and I followed.

  “Dolan,” Iris said quietly. The thing she was talking to didn’t look like Dolan to me. His flesh had sloughed off. His face was bunched up like a rubber mask on the floor.

  In the cavity of Dolan, a thick black orb was expanding. It was half in, half out of Dolan. Bits of him clung to its curved sides. The stench of the room made me pinch my nose shut. A few dark strands extended out of the orb, writhing on the floor. Another strand had made its way out of Dolan’s ear and slithered into the wall socket.

  Iris was throbbing with tears. I pulled her away and hugged her. “Hey, it’ll be all right. We’re gonna be all right.”

  Iris pushed her hands up my chest in what I took to be a tender way. But when her hands reached my neck, she shoved me back violently.

  “My fucking best friend is dead! It’s not going to be all right, you dick! How did I ever even date you? What is wrong with your fucking brain?”

  She tore at her hair and looked around the room with wild eyes. She ran a few feet toward one door, then turned and ran back toward the couch. She didn’t seem to know what to do, but eventually she threw the axe at the orb. “This is bullshit!” she screamed.

  I barely heard Feather yell, “It’s not safe out of the cage, go back!” When I turned around, she was trying to shove the creature back out the door.

  I’d left the cage door open before we came inside. I’d tried to project a message of peace and forgiveness.

  The pink creature was moving toward the Dolan-orb, inching along like a worm. It stopped and turned to Feather. She was chanting her prayer and pushing with all her might. Then the top of the creature, where the rows of spikes converged on the sphincter, expanded open. The creature bunched up and, I guess, inhaled.

  Feather’s leg got sucked right in up to the knee. She screamed, hopping on her other leg. Her right leg was inside the creature for about three seconds, then the creature spat what was left back out. Fleshless bones hung from her kneecap. She tried to stand on both legs, but the bare bones collapsed with her weight, and she tumbled to the floor. She looked completely confused, and her eyes darted around. Blood poured over the white bones.

  The creature did the same thing to her left leg. It sucked it in as she screamed, then spat it out as neat, white bones. The creature rolled a little to the left and regurgitated a pile of tendons, muscle, and blood. Feather was barely moving now. The creature shifted itself to face her twitching arm.

  When Iris saw the creature continuing toward us, she shouted, “You aren’t coming near Dolan, pus bag!”

  I pulled her out of the way just as the thing was opening its hole. Iris struggled against me, but I held on.

  Go on, we won’t stop you, I tried to say to the creature. I concentrated as hard as I could. I am sorry for what the man and woman did to you. We killed the bearded one for you.

  The creature’s opening was facing us. I could see a strange yellow light inside. It stayed there for a few seconds, then clenched back up. It turned toward the black orb.

  By this point, the orb had expanded to the size of the couch. The bottom was still expanding out of the cavity of Dolan. It didn’t seem fully formed. A half-dozen thin threads were wrapped around the appliances in the room. You could hear the hum of the electricity moving through them.

  The creature emitted a low rumble, and a part of the orb opened up, like a slit in a curtain.

  I saw Clover standing in the other entranceway. She was sniffling but watching intently.

  Dad, Dad, she said in my mind.

  Don’t worry, I said. Stay still and close your eyes.

  The creature started to crawl into the opening of the orb. The swarm in my head was intercepting something. It wasn’t quite words, but I could tell the orb was its ship, and that the creature was going to return home.

  “We have to get outside,” I yelled. “It’s going to break through the roof!”

  That didn’t happen though.

  Instead, a jolt of blue electricity surged up the orb thread from the wall socket. The lights started flickering. Clover and Iris screamed and ran outside. I started to follow them, but before we could make it out, there was a loud pop and all the lights shut off. Everything turned black.

  I could sense something, either panic or resignation, coming from the creature. I opened a long cut on my calf scrambling out of the house. Iris and Clover were already in the yard.

  “I guess the fuses blew,” I said.

  Iris smiled and guffawed. Clover was smiling too, but I didn’t get why.

  “We should move farther back,” I said.

  We don’t have to. He can’t leave, Clover said. The vessel was only partially born. He’ll have to stay with us!

  The air was cool outside, and the stars were shining brightly. We stood out in the yard for a while before the creature tumbled out of the house. It seemed Clover was right. The pink creature looked confused rolling around the wet grass. No one said anything, not even Clover.

  I couldn’t tell if it saw us, or even if it cared we were there. Maybe it didn’t care about anything now. It inched away in a different direction, moving slowly toward the dark, open woods.

  “Yes, leave, you asshole!” Iris finally said when it was almost out of sight. “I hope Dolan’s ghost haunts you all the way to Mars!”

  I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise, but Iris and I didn’t last much longer. We made it back to the city intact, but everything that had happened was too much for her. Or maybe we just weren’t meant to be.

  She moved out of her apartment a few weeks later, saying it smelled too much like Dolan. I never did learn if there was anything more going on there. Soon Iris left the city and flew across the country. She sent me one postcard with a picture of tanned bodies on the beach that said, “Wish you were here to oil me up!” but on the back she had written, “I know it isn’t your fault, but that thing that killed Dolan is in your bloodstream. I can’t fuck someone knowing there is an alien eye on the back of their neck. I hope you understand. Formerly yours, Iris.”

  I’m doing all right though. I’m not as angry as I used to be. When I get worked up, my head throbs, so I have to be calm and let things move through me. The eye on the back of my neck doesn’t look too much bigger, but it’s hard to tell. I wear a lot of turtlenecks.

  Plus, I’ve got someone to take care of now. Little Clover, who likes to play Nintendo and makes us go out on the roof to watch the sky at night.

  What happened to my second daddy? she asks me. When’s he coming back to take us away to a planet that isn’t full of jerks? She has more of the flesh in her than me, so I don’t bother lying to her. She’d know. I say it probably died in those woods. Most likely it got mistaken for a deer by a hunter and shot, or else chewed up by wolves.

  But Clover, I say, even when we die, we never truly go away.

  I don’t mean that hogwash about friends and family living on in our memories. I mean that creatures like Clover and me, those with the star-fallen flesh inside us, are not restrained by these bodies. W
hen we die, even the worms and bugs that inspect our remains become touched. Our life force multiplies inside them, creating yet more vessels that crawl through the dark soil with new purpose. They spill out onto the green grass to scatter and grow and spread.

  GETTING THERE NONETHELESS

  They found the first one behind an abandoned barn. He was tangled up in a mess of barbed wire and leaking opaque purple liquid from holes in his stomach. Tim tried to call Tracy but couldn’t get reception. Byrd hit the thing in the face with a stick. Charlotte screamed and snapped a few photos. All the man could do was moan, moan, moan. Then his jaw got unhinged from Byrd’s stick.

  “Hoorar? Ooorhar?” the man said.

  They left him there and went back to the house to get Tracy. Tim kept looking over his shoulder, but nothing burst through the leaves.

  It was a really spectacular July day in the country, so hot that even breathing seemed to burn your insides. Clouds of nearly invisible insects hovered everywhere. The four friends were taking a two-week summer vacation in Charlotte’s family’s cabin. Three months earlier, Charlotte had peed on a stick to confirm she was pregnant. They’d all cleared up time to celebrate before real life really took over.

  The reports of the disease were just starting when they’d driven out of the city, but each time one came on, they’d hit scan until they got music again.

  “Tracy, we found one of those moaning dead guys!” Tim shouted.

  “He means undead guys,” Byrd said.

  Tracy was tanning on the roof. She looked down at the upturned faces of her friends.

  “I thought he was just sick at first and tried to help him, and he clawed my shoulder like an asshole!” Charlotte said.

  “That’s awful,” Tracy said. “We need to lock the doors and search for weapons!”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Byrd said. “He was pretty trapped in that barbed wire.”

  “Well, let’s get Charlotte to the hospital before she turns.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Tracy. It was a scratch, not a bite. Plus, I have this amazing balm made with aloe and goji berries that can, no joke, cure anything.”