Monster - A. Lee Martinez [85]
“Yeah, well… there’s no reason we can’t be civil about this.”
“You weren’t such a bad guy either. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Liz cracked her knuckles. “I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.”
“You’re still going to kill me? But I thought we were parting on good terms.”
“Oh, we are, but I’m still kind of mad that you never did the dishes.”
“But you never asked me to.”
Liz said, “I shouldn’t have had to.”
She exhaled a cone of fire. Monster shielded himself with the stone. It absorbed the flames, becoming bright white.
The stone spat the flame back at Liz. It funneled down her throat. Her crimson skin turned a dull copper. Glowing fire spread in a spider-web pattern under her skin. Her inflammable hair sizzled and burned away at the tips, and her eyes burst from their sockets, replaced by orbs of seething flames.
She put her hands on her hips and scowled. “Monster, you always were a blessed son of a—”
Liz exploded in a shower of ash and bones.
He stood, wiping the ashes from his face and hair. He covered his mouth, trying not to breathe in too much of the soot.
“Sorry, baby.” He nudged her cracked and blackened skull with his toe. “I don’t do dishes.”
It was a bittersweet moment. Liz hadn’t been a great girlfriend, but she’d been the best he’d ever had.
Chester threw open the bedroom door and came running out. Intense light poured from the other room, but Monster didn’t have trouble seeing. It must’ve been the stone. If it could repel hellfire and bend the laws of space, it probably didn’t have any problem protecting his eyes from bright lights.
Chester ducked behind Monster. “I think you screwed up somewhere.”
Monster moved toward the light.
“Shouldn’t we be heading the other way?” asked Chester.
“It’s okay,” said Monster. “Nothing can hurt me while I have the stone.”
Chester stayed back, but Monster entered the bedroom.
Judy hovered in the air. She was still asleep, snoring louder than ever. He looked away from her radiant naked body, but then he remembered that he’d just killed his girlfriend, so it wasn’t a problem anymore. Her nudity wasn’t what drew his attention anyway.
Golden lines of power spiraled and whirled all over her body. They slipped off her skin and floated around her. The revelation rune spell beneath lifted off the paper and orbited her. This was rune magic way beyond his community college education.
The golden runes joined with the revelation spell. The stone trembled violently in Monster’s grip. His hands sizzled. There wasn’t any pain, but he tried to drop it. The stone was stuck in his hand. Strange letters carved themselves into the tablet. They held his gaze, filling his mind with information.
Monster knew.
He knew… everything, and that was a lot to know. Too much. He didn’t so much lose his mind then as close up shop and go running, screaming, into the dark and welcoming alleyways of his unconscious.
21
The storm brewed overhead—a maelstrom of colors and shapes, ancient secrets written in the dark clouds.
Monster stood on an expanse of dusty, cracked earth. There was nothing else around him. Not a tree, bush, or rock. Just the rumbling storm above and the ground beneath.
A drop of rain struck Monster in the eye, and he knew that the universe began on a Tuesday. Another drop fell on his shoulder, and he realized that the most recent beer he had drunk had three atoms that had passed through the bladder of Confucius. A bigger drop splattered on his neck. He knew the name of every pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
The light sprinkle of information continued. Most of the rain passed right through him, sizzling away on the dry earth. But a few drops, here and there, fell into Monster, filling his head with trivia without rhyme or reason. The history of a single hydrogen molecule, the flight pattern of migrating geese, Nero’s exact height and weight, Bashō’s six least-popular haiku poems, the current record r the number of angels dancing on the head of a needle, and the true inventor of the cotton gin.