chapter three

The backroom of the Geraldine Rosemary Titty Showcase is dusty and full of cardboard boxes stacked along the walls. Most are marked “HOLIDAY: LEPRE-ASSES” and “HOLIDAY: SAINT FANNY’S DAY”. Pyre would be heavily offended by his surroundings if he wasn’t busy staring at the creature from his hotel room shower. It’s still attached to his front, wiggling around but clinging fast to his shirt.

The mouth part hasn’t opened again, at least. Hopefully if he doesn’t frighten it or offend it or make any sudden movements, it won’t eat him.

Shanks comes back in from the door leading to the club proper. There’s some kind of dubstep ranchera music playing loudly, a flashing red light, the heavy smell of cigar smoke. He closes the door behind him, and all of it is gone.

“The day they decided to cut back on live acts was a sad one for me,” Shanks says. He comes to a stop in the center of the room, puts his hands on his hips and narrows his eyes at the creature in Pyre’s lap. His light brown skin looks darker in the dim light, but also now has a sheen of glitter.

“You look like a stripper put out to pasture,” Pyre mumbles, averting his eyes from the man’s naked torso. He’s still wearing the damn coat.

Shanks grins and sits down right there on the floor. A plume of dust rises from the concrete as soon as his ass hits it. “You’re complimenting me again.”

“I have never complimented you in my life!” Pyre snaps. The monster shifts and raises its head, blinks its one eye at his face. He freezes.

“Stop looking like you’re gonna piss, man,” Shanks says, distant. He tugs off one of the boots he stole from Pyre’s closet, inspects the open wounds on his feet. They’re still sluggishly bleeding.

“These boots are ruined,” Shanks says, peering inside said boot. He doesn’t sound sorry at all.

Pyre grinds his teeth in lieu of a response.

The creature twists around in his lap. Its still holding on to him, but the eye is focused on Shanks on the floor three feet away. Shanks hasn’t noticed yet. He hauls off the second boot, which sends splatters of blood and fresh scabs all over the concrete.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Pyre asks, feeling impulsive.

Shanks shrugs and peers inside that one too. Then he grins at the creature and waggles the boot at it.

The thing goes still, doesn’t blink. “Hey, kiddo,” he croons. “Give mama a break and come play with me.”

“You sound like a playground predator,” Pyre says. He’ll object to the title of “mama” at a later date, when he’s less likely to be eaten for breathing wrong.

“I’d have to have a puppy too, then, wouldn’t I?” Shanks arranges himself so he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor with the boots in front of him. He grins at the creature and arranges the boots so they’re pointing their toes at Pyre.

The creature jerks, then freezes again. The grip on Pyre’s shirt doesn’t feel so tense, like the fabric is relaxing along with the monster attached to it. He wonders if he should try to put the thing down.

Shanks must figure out what he’s thinking, because he says sharply, “Let it get down on its own,” then refocuses on the creature. “Hey, little one,” he sing-songs, then nudges the left boot an inch away from himself, an inch closer to the monster. “Want to come play?”

The creature seems tentatively determined, if such a thing is possible. It wiggles away from Pyre, releases his shirt and slides down Pyre’s legs to land heavy on the floor. It whimpers on impact.

“You okay, kid?” Shanks asks it. “That probably hurt, but at least you got down, huh? You can take care of yourself, if you can get down on your own.”

The monster wraps a flipper around Pyre’s right calve, gentle, then releases and slowly slips away, uses a wiggling motion on its undercarriage to get from Pyre across the three feet to Shanks and the boots.
Progress is slow, but it gets there and promptly sucks up the left boot into its maw with a wet pop.

“You hungry, huh?” Shanks asks.

The creature shoves the second boot into its mouth with a loud sucking noise. Shanks props his elbow on one knee and drops his chin into his hand to watch.

“You haven’t got anything to wear now,” Pyre points out. He feels weary.

“I’ll borrow something off one of the girls,” Shanks says, dismissive. He’s grinning at the monster. Pyre can’t see the thing’s face, but he imagines there’s quite a bit of mutual appreciation society function planning going on without words between those two.

“Why are you smiling at a murderous creature?” Pyre asks. He’s not really interested in the answer.

Said creature wobbles in place, makes a loud urp noise, and spits up the two boots all at once into Shanks’ lap.

Shanks’ reaction is to pick one up and look inside it.

The creature makes the urp sound again, then vomits up a withered hand severed just below the wrist with a sparkling gold intricate rolex still on it. That lands in Shanks’ lap too.

Pyre feels as if he’s about to be ill. He wraps his arms around his middle and breathes as slowly and as evenly as possible.

“Shit, you okay kid?” Shanks asks. He puts the boots next to him, shoves the hand off to the side and leans close to the creature’s head, focused on its face.

“Don’t get too close,” Pyre hisses between a deliberate inhale and exhale.

Shanks waves a distracted hand at him. To the creature, he says, “Stinky feet don’t sit well on your tummy, do they?”

The monster burbles and makes a gagging noise. It inches closer to Shanks.

“Hey, you know what makes me feel better?” Shanks grins at it, it stops worming around to focus on him. “Singing! Singing makes me feel great!”

“Jazz standards are a bit too complex for an infant monster, methinks,” Pyre snipes weakly, crosses his arms.

Shanks shoots him a look over the monster’s head. “Will you cool it?” He returns focus to the monster. “Okay, hey. Repeat after me, right?”

The creature says, “Riiiiigh,” and wiggles in place.

“Great green gobs greasy grimy gopher guts,” Shanks sing-songs.

“Greeeem gop gop gop,” the monster says after him.

“Mutilated monkey meat!”

“Moootimon mee!”

“Itsy bitsy birdy feet!”

“Moooti monk mee!”

“And me without my spoon!” Shanks finishes with a flourish.

“Meeeee moooti monkeee mee!” the creature imitates.

“You’re Mutilated Monkey Meat?” Shanks asks. His grin is massive on his face.

“Monkeee Mee!” The creature warbles at him.

“What do you know, the kid’s got a name,” Shanks says to Pyre. He gently places his hand on the kid’s head. “Monkey Meat, the little princess.”

Pyre startles in his seat. “Princess?”

Shanks gives him a flat look. “She’s a pretty princess, obviously.”

A beat of silence while Pyre parses that. Then, “I think there’s something wrong with you, Langston.”

The creature goes urk and spits up a doorknocker that looks like it came off a convent in Medieval England. Shanks picks it up and inspects it. “This looks old.” He pulls the knocker away from the plate and the hinges break apart instantly, leaving him with two separate pieces.

Pyre rolls his eyes. “We need to find out what it is, and then we can figure out–” He scratches at his scalp, it itches like the Dickens with the mixture of dried booze sweat and dust that’s settled in the roots of his hair. “We can figure out how to deal with it.”

It’s Shanks’ turn to roll his eyes. “No shit.”

Pyre glares at Shanks, still scratching. “A friend once had a pooka follow him around, and once he found out what it was he could take care of the thing. I do have a reasoning behind this.”

“Does Monkey Meat look like a pooka to you?” Shanks jerks his head at the creature wiggling on the concrete floor.

“Pooka are invisible,” Pyre sniffs.

The thing starts to waggle its growing flaps, crows “Pooka pooka poo!” like the rattling chains of the dead in limbo.

Shanks pats it on its head, says, “What do you know, your momma can get the point on the first try! It’s a god damn miracle, kid!”

Pyre grits his teeth, bites back what he assumes are devastating and horrendous words that would rend Shanks’ ego in two. So instead he goes to the next step in his tentative plan. “We should call Tohew.”

Shanks goes still, then withdraws his hand and cocks his head. He looks like a dog when he does that. Pyre wants to hit him. “You still on that, huh?”

“I think it’s our only sane option.”

“We could always go on the run,” Shanks offers. “You and me, the kid. Riding the rails and feeding her hobos too sickly to continue on.”

“You are a disgusting individual,” Pyre says, fascinated despite himself. “Do you ever listen to yourself talk?”

The infant monster makes a distressed noise, wobbles fully into Shanks’ lap. He goes “oof” at the things’ weight.

“Your cell, your call,” he says, patting the thing on the head.

Pyre goes pale. “Are you sure about that? Why don’t you call?”

“My phone’s back in the room.” Shanks grins at him, waggles his eyebrows. The man’s normally thick and wavy hair is sticking up all over the place, he looks like an idiot.

Pyre can’t argue with the man, though he wants to. He rifles through his pockets until he produces a three-year old model of phone that he desperately did not want to purchase but had to because his ten year old model exploded on the metro.

Tohew’s mobile is number three on his speed dial. He doesn’t want to think about what numbers one and two are, it involves takeaway curry and he’s already hungry enough as is.

They pick up on the second ring with a low growl of “What?”

“Uh, Tohew?”

“Can you please tell Mister Shanks that I have his clothing in my possession and a box of matches, compliments of the hotel staff?”

Pyre pulls the cell away and looks at Shanks. “They’re going to burn your clothes.”

Shanks shrugs and rests his chin on top of the creature’s head. It flutters its eyelids and burbles.

Pyre puts the phone back to his ear. “He’s unconcerned. How did you know he was with me?”

“He’s always with you when we’re at Competition,” Tohew snarls. Pyre raises his eyebrows and glances at Shanks again, who is now poking at where the thing’s nose would be if it where human and making it giggle out a sound that imitates two rusty chains rubbing together.

“Right, well, we’ve got a problem.”

“Don’t say? I’m setting the clothing on fire now, by the way.”

“Of course you are. Do you happen to know anyone in the area who can assist in matter of monstrosity?”

Tohew’s breath hitches, the sound of crackling comes over the line. “Did trolls come and steal you two away?”

“Not quite.” Pyre watches Shanks tickle the creature under the mouth area. It wiggles and makes a noise like those same chains breaking, link by link. “There was a large egg in my shower that hatched. We’ve quite stuck with the thing now, I’d like a consultation in order to get rid of it.”

The crackling over the phone is louder. Tohew curses, a faucet cranks, and the distorted roar of water makes Pyre’s ears hurt.

Tohew must step out of the bathroom then because the noise dims quickly. They cough a bit over the line. “You don’t know what it is?”

“No?”

“Brilliant. I wake up alone, there’s a murder going on in the hotel so I can’t leave, and you’ve got yourself attached to something that you don’t even know what it is.”

Pyre doesn’t reply, though he does hunch his shoulders. Their tone has taken a tinge of irritation that he’s quite familiar with.

“I’ll find you something when I can get out of here,” they say, after a moment’s pause. “Can you two keep out of trouble before then? Stay away from unicorns, don’t get cursed by an angry djinn in the meantime, hmm?”

“We’ll do our best,” Pyre mumbles.

Tohew laughs shortly and hangs up on him.

“Tohew’s looking for an address, they’ll text when they’ve got something.” He grimaces at Shanks. “I think they really did burn all of your clothing, however.”

“It was just a shirt and some crappy boots,” Shanks shrugs. He holds up his hand to the monster.

It tentatively touches both its flippers to his palm and he whoops out a laugh.

A cab vomits Shanks and Pyre out onto the sidewalk in front of a narrow detached Victorian house with gingerbread trim. The porch is painted a canary yellow, and Tohew sits on the bench next to the open front door as they wait for them.

The two men look scattered and rumpled and they’re carrying something in Shanks’ coat, leaving him shirtless. Tohew had hoped he’d found a shirt elsewhere than the one left on the floor of their room, but apparently no such luck.

“I brought your cellular,” Tohew calls. Lifts the phone into the air as demonstration. “But you’re not getting it back until I say so.”

Pyre holds on to Shanks’ bundled coat. It looks like it’s squirming. That must be the creature, then.

Shanks leans down to pay the cabbie through the passenger window and waves a hand at Tohew without bothering to look around. The cabbie gives him a dirty look; probably because of all the chest hair he’s getting a liberal eyeful of.

Pyre wobbles his way up the steps onto the porch proper and sits down next to Tohew. The coat is indeed squirming. He has his arms locked around the thing to keep it from falling to the floor.

“Him? Really?” he says, watching Shanks snarl at the cabbie. The cabbie waves a fist at him and snarls back.

“Androgynous does not mean asexual,” Tohew sniffs. They fiddle with Shanks’ phone in their hands. “And besides, hate sex is quite fun when–“

Pyre slaps his hands over his ears and loudly hums the national anthem of Russia.

The coat wiggles and worms, Tohew sees a flash of something not quite pitch black but not merrily light in color either, then Pyre grabs it again to stop it from rolling off his lap.

“Well, let’s see the thing then,” Tohew says. Shanks comes up the walk, the cabbie speeding off into the distance.

“I told him if he wanted to take my shirt he was out of luck,” Shanks announces as he climbs onto the porch.

Pyre slides down a bit of Shanks’ trench, and a little head with one open eye and a lumpy formation everywhere else blinks at the light.

“Oh dear,” Tohew says. They feel faint just looking at it. “That was in your shower?”

“She was an egg, first,” Shanks offers.

“Yes, it was in my shower,” Pyre says. He leans his head away from it, clonks the back of his skull against the wood siding on the house. “And now it won’t leave me alone. It got off my lap for a minute when I called you, but now it refuses to let go again.”

“Oh dear,” Tohew says. Shanks coughs, raps his knuckles on the porch railing.

“You’re making it sound like she’s heavy or something.” He grins at Tohew. “She’s fine, just takes some getting used to.”

Pyre glares at Shanks, while Shanks serenely stares back.

Tohew stands up and sidesteps to the door leading into the house. “That thing is female?”

“It’s some kind of monster,” Pyre says. He stands too, juggles the thing in his arms so he doesn’t drop it. Shanks takes a step towards him, hand outstretched towards the creature. “Langston just has an issue with subjective standards of beauty.”

Shanks barks out a laugh and touches the creature on the head. It leans into his hand like a cat would.

Right. They’ve had enough of this. Tohew opens the screen door and enters the house. Shanks follows, still laughing, and Pyre takes up the rear with the creature. Except as soon as he takes one step past the threshold, the thing starts to wail like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Pyre stops cold and affects an expression of pure horror. Shanks shoves him out the door back outside and the thing goes silent immediately.

“What’s wrong with it?” Tohew asks. They realize that they’re hugging themselves around the middle, force their arms down to their sides.

Pyre shakes his head. “I don’t know it just–“

“It’s these things,” Shanks says. He pokes a cluster of brass bells that hang over the door frame. They jingle under his attentions.

“Please do not disturb my charms,” a frail male voice calls from the next room. “It upsets me.”

Shanks stops jabbing at the bells and looks at Tohew. They shrug.

“Okay,” he drawls. He looks at the creature poking its head out of the jacket and the eye rolling around in its socket. “Okay, you stay here with the little gal, we’ll be right back.”

He takes a step away and the monster whimpers. Shanks pauses on his way to Tohew, turns back. “I’ll stay in sight, okay? Just stay there.”

Pyre murmurs an “all right, then.” Shanks shoves Tohew at the shoulder and they both go down the hall to the open door that leads to The Office of Dick Burton, Prime Occultist.

An older man sits behind a small table in the dark room. He’s got rumbled paper skin, liver spots all up and down his neck, and white hair that looks like a tuft of spun sugar right on the top of his head.

“Mister Burton, hello,” Tohew says, offering a hand.

His fish-belly white hand grips Tohew’s strongly, then drops it like a leper drops body parts. “I hear something horrid on my porch. What is it?”

“She’s not horrible, come on,” Shanks says from the doorway. He gestures back at the screeching thing, and amazingly enough, it quiets.

Tohew waves a hand at Shanks. “We need your volume of knowledge to impart some information, please.”

Burton disregards Tohew with a flick of fingers. They try not to grit their teeth in frustration, but it’s a close thing.

Shanks shoots them a look, then says to Burton, “My friend found a huge ass egg in his hotel shower. It rolled around a lot, kinda felt spongy to the touch he said. When it hatched it took out a wall, then got hungry and ate a dude.”

Tohew stares at Shanks. “That thing ate someone?”

“Describe the creature,” Burton commands over Tohew’s shout.

Shanks’ lips quirk. “Well he deserved it,” he says to Tohew, then to Burton, “Big lump of solid seaweed with an eye on the top. Got a mouth somewhere up there too, small sharp teeth, it just sucks things in or spits them out. Little flippers on the sides, kind of cute.”

Tohew only saw the upper half of the creature, and none of it was cute. They make a strangled noise to infer that fact.

“Does it speak?” Burton asks. His face hasn’t changed one bit, it’s frozen in mild indifference like a stone cast from a really snooty Roman sculpture.

“Yeah, her syllables sound like something dying, but she can repeat stuff.”

Burton hums, selects one of three books on the table before him, and opens it at random.

“What’s going on?” Pyre shouts from the porch.

Shanks tilts his head back to look down the hall. He bellows, “I’M TAKING CARE OF IT,” then leans back to give Burton his attention.

Tohew smiles weakly at Burton. He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stop skimming a page in his book.

“A being of supreme evil,” Burton announces. He closes the heavy tome with a snap. “Ancient and anointed.”

Shanks leans against the door frame, cocks his head. “You sure about that? She’s pretty harmless.”

Burton raises an eyebrow. “You said it ate a person.”

“Yeah, I did.” Shanks grins at him.

Tohew pinches the skin between their eyes and exhales through their teeth. “What do we do about it?”

“Not your problem, hon,” Shanks says.

Tohew turns to glare at him. He puts up his hands in surrender.

“This larva of an Ancient One has The Abyss inside it. The Abyss can only be utilized if the vessel has gained power.” Burton skims his pointer finger across the cover of the closed book in front of him then inspects it for dust. “Give it a name, you’ve given it power. Never name it, and it shall die without ever reaching a modicum of its intended potential.”

“Got all that from my crap description, did ya?” Shanks drawls.

Burton looks up at Shanks, dead serious. “It shan’t be worshiped, it will never grow.”

Silence settles in the room. Tohew rubs their face and wishes they were anywhere else than here. Maybe back home in England. Or somewhere else, somewhere with sun and far, far away from these people.

Shanks coughs and crosses his arms. “Yeah man, I doubt there’ll be a legion of the faithful lining up to pay tribute to Monkey Meat.”

Tohew freezes. So does Burton.

“You’ve named the evil incarnate,” Burton says flatly.

“Ah-yup.” Shanks nods.

“You named, what is essentially a god, Monkey Meat.”

“That’s an affirmative.”

Burton narrows his eyes, curls his lip into a snarl.

“Get out of my house.”

“Hallo?” Pyre shouts from out on the porch. “What’s he saying?”

The yellow cab is full of three adults and one Ancient Evil. Tohew won’t turn their head from the window, and Shanks is starting to feel frustrated. They passed the gates into the Airport proper a minute ago, and he’s running out of time.

Monkey Meat shifts under Shanks’ trench coat. Pyre wraps his arms tighter around her, laces his fingers together to keep it still.

“You know, some children are just destructive. Doesn’t mean it has to ruin a perfectly fine polygamous relationship,” the cabbie says. He’s rather jovial for someone who has to combat traffic all day, and Shanks is pretty sure he’s nuts, to boot.

“No shit, man,” Shanks says, just to be friendly, then tries to talk sense to Tohew again again. “Come on, I don’t see–“

“You don’t see?” Tohew snaps. They’re still not looking at him, but he can see the planes of their sharp features in the window’s reflection. Tohew’s always had thin lips, but right now they’re almost nonexistent.

“I’m just saying that–“

“No good,” Pyre says softly as Tohew whips their head around to level the stink eye on Shanks.

“There’s no just saying about it!” They poke a finger at Shanks’ collarbone. He’s very glad they aren’t wearing their nails long this week. “This is your problem. You could have walked away and let someone else, someone qualified take care of it, but no. You had to carry it with you. Take some damn responsibility, Langston!”

“Oh he’s Langston now, is he?” Pyre sneers.

Tohew directs the glare to the other man and does a bit of snarling there, too. “Do. Not. Start. Marvin.”

Pyre slides lower into the seat.

“It’s always like this with expanding families,” The cabbie says. His eyes are literally twinkling in the rearview mirror, Shanks wonders if he’s on Angel Dust or something. “Hormones rise, fall, rise again. Like the tide of forever in the gate of heaven.”

Tohew turns back to the window and jams their shoulder violently into the back of the seat. “I’m going back to England and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

The cab rolls to a stop behind a line of cars waiting at the Airport Terminal.

“Best wait until we’re closer to the door, love,” the cabbie says.

Tohew jerks their head in acknowledgment.

“You’re easily the smartest person I know,” Pyre says. He sounds plaintive, and it is Shanks’ turn to shake his head, mouth “no good” at him.

“What does that have to do with anything, hmm?” Tohew asks. Their voice has taken on a nasty edge. “When you clearly have the sense of poorly trained small claims barrister thinking he’s about to enter the courts to defend a hamster.”

Shanks looks at Pyre. Pyre looks at Shanks.

“All the more reason for you to stay and help us sort this out?” Pyre tries. The cab inches forward as two cars leave the line simultaneously.

“I’d rather be elsewhere while you learn to take responsibility and take care of it yourselves,” Tohew snarls at the window.

Another three cars leave the line, and the cabbie stops right in front of the line of sliding glass doors leading into the airport terminal. Tohew has the door open and is hauling themselves out before the car stops fully.
Tohew slams the door behind them, whirls around and glares at Shanks.

Shanks does nothing to take the vacated seat, he wants to be out of range of more poking fingers if it comes to that.

“Give me a ring when you’ve both regained sanity. Not one of you. Both of you.” They whirl around stomp into the building.

“Don’t worry. She’ll come around,” the cabbie says. He’s watching them bulldoze their way into the terminal with a smile, and Shanks doesn’t have the energy needed to correct the guy about Tohew’s gender.

“Good digs, man,” Shanks says. He ignores Pyre, slides over an inch but not quite into the seat Tohew vacated. “Can you take us to the Block Hotel near the Competition Arena now? We gotta get our shit.”

The cabbie nods and merges back into traffic, leaves the airport behind.