This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
They were face-to-face. The crackling and sparking of the dying computers in the elephant died down. They stood a few feet apart. Her hat was gone, and her hair fell, mussed at her shoulders. She breathed heavily, doing her best to stay calm and catch her breath.
There was a failing light. He drew closer to her and relaxed his arms. He’d been at the ready, struggling for so long. Nothing came out when he tried to speak.
She reached up and shushed his lips with her finger.
“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
She grabbed his body in a great hug, drawing his powerful body to her. He was about eight feet tall next to her, five feet nine inches.
He reached his great arms around her, his claws pressing into the small of her back. He kissed her. It took her by surprise, and she let him draw all the breath out of her before they disengaged. She hugged him back, grabbing at his waist.
“Janet,” he said in the near dark. “I… I… Janet.”
“I know. It won’t be long. We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t let them find us.”
They could hear the muffled screams from the distance, people breaking through the back door, headed here to see if maybe the monster had killed the girl.
“We’ve got to hide.”
He turned his head and sighed, then turned from her.
“We’ve got to go now. I’d rather be with you and never see them again. They can’t find you, they’d just kill you.”
He turned his head again, this time in the sense of letting them try to kill him. In the meantime, however, he took her by the waist, incredibly delicate for the honking claw he had there, and reached up, and tore out the ceiling tiles with his other clawed hand.
He didn’t have claws like hey I’ve got claws over my fingers. He wasn’t a werewolf. There was a crab in this picture. His claws were long, red, hard chitinous shelled single clasping claws. Little teeth-like ridges lined the claws on the inside. Imagine grand clipper limb cutters for hands covered by thick muscle and armor, yet with a delicate touch.
He tore the ceiling out just as they heard the cries for “Janet! Janet! Has it hurt you? Janet!” They broke into the room just as the monster lifted Janet lightly onto his left hip and jumped into the ceiling, using his other claw to pull himself up into the structure of tubes, rafters, and the backside of all that interior fake cave facade.
“It’s got her!” yelled one of them.
They looked like a combination of cops and park security. Some held guns, some were holding baseball bats, and one had a rake. Janet wasn’t sure what he thought he was going to do with all that.
They vanished into the ceiling. The men below argued about shooting or not shooting, using ‘he’s got her’ as a reason either way. Janet watched them below with a smile on her face, holding onto her man, her monster. She pressed her nose into his armored chest and smelled a faint salt and sweaty smell. He was working hard, but lifting her with him wasn’t hindering him that much. On his own, he’d been hiding in here for some time.
He looked back at the men arguing about how to continue and laughed as he jumped to the next platform and ran through the caves. The spotlights never went to the caves where he was up high. He ran across the catwalk with purpose, but in near silence. Only the occasional padded footfall made a noise, and his breathing was up.
Janet hung on his hip, but eventually climbed to his shoulder as he traversed the caves. They watched below them as men, still. A compilation of regular police and park security ran across the cave floor, totally missing them because they were riding the line of shadow so well.
The creature jumped from one catwalk fifteen feet to another one, with Janet clinging to his face. Her shoes were gone. She grabbed on for life, but felt secure with him.
Below them, Janet saw Jeff was now leading the pack. “Janet! There she is!”
They pointed flashlights up and saw Janet and the creature bounding from platform to platform up in the ceiling. They stomped past flood lights, fog machines, and speakers that were bolted to the walkways. She wrapped her legs around his waist to hold on.
The people climbed and climbed.
“You can make it,” she said. “You can do it. Nothing is impossible.” They leaped to another ledge, and the creature punched a hole into a floor above the caves. It was a secret floor where people gathered who were member card holders were.
There were about twenty-five of them in the lounge, looking out at the park through tinted windows disguised as a rock on the outside, drinking champagne from little flutes. They wore suits and dresses, hardly park material, and were more interested in impressing each other than anything else.
Below them, the floor in the lounge, which had plush leather couches scattered around and art on the walls they only bought because someone convinced them it was cool, cracked open and the creature tore it open, shining a bright shaft of light down into the caves. He pulled his way up, jet hanging from his shoulders, occasionally caressing his face. He pulled himself up and jumped into the lounge.
A gentleman wearing a polo and a sweater tied over his shoulders fell through like a rag doll toward the men searching below. He hit the walkway like a ton of bricks, and rolled, crushing one man’s left arm, and snapping, breaking his ankle. He didn’t fall with a scream, but more of a ‘huh?’ He lost his sweater on the way down, and with the pile of men under him, he said, “What about my sweater?”
One cop elbowed him in the jaw and decided he’d deny that later when they were in court. It felt good.
Everyone else in the lounge screamed, except one woman, who had had one too many already and might mix her drugs and alcohol. She said, “oh, neat, is this what we’re doing now?” She jumped, or rather simply fell, through the hole into the caves, drink in hand, and with a scream of delight, fell to the cave floor to land in a great pool of water. Three men jumped in after she splashed down to save her. They pulled her up to the surface. Dragging her, she now sees through a white dress out of the water. “That was great!” She kissed the guy on the right and started telling anyone who would listen to her what her phone number was.
In the lounge. The creature stood, full red crab man, in full light. Janet clung to him up the wall but jumped to the floor to run with him.
“This way.” She ran towards the door, a black electric thing, and he ran after her, lumbering under the roof that was now too low for him as business people, a couple of yuppies, and their second wives ducked for cover left and right, jumping over couches or diving under glass coffee tables.
They bounded through the room and the creature exploded through the electric sliding glass door. It shattered everywhere as he tucked Janet up onto a hip again. She kissed him and held onto his neck as they ran out into the sun.
Inside the cave foyer, Jen was trying to help the lady. One of them gave Terri’s jacket to her and was trying to lead her out, but she kept talking to another guy, who didn’t want to leave her alone.
They brought up the house lights, so you could see everything, and the cop with a baseball bat in his hands said, “Now, why didn’t we do that, to begin with?”
They scattered, after hearing Jeff say “the private lounge.”
As they led the young lady to the exit, her eyes bugged out when she saw one of the chiming clocks in the gift shop.
“Oh, I want one of these!”
Janet and the creature ran together through the open, no longer disguised as a big credit card door.
Was he real? Was he a monster, a character, someone in a costume, or someone they should fear? Pepe dodged them. They got out of the way more because they were running through the middle of everyone than anything else.
He waved his big crab arms, jumped over carriages with various people in them, and bounded by elderly and otherwise disabled people, one of which was wearing a fedora and dark glasses, and careened through and ran behind another ride building.
“In there,” said Janet. “Back door.”
They knocked open an emergency exit, which briefly blinded everyone on the dark ride. There was a series of boats headed around the bend, and in a nearly empty boat, they jumped into the back. The boat splashed, jolting everyone.
A lady dropped her camera into the water where she was videotaping a bunch of singing animatronic animals. Another man nearly fell out trying to stand up to the creature, but when Janet smiled at him and gave him the shh with her fingers on her lips, with a great smile, he turned around and just sat there wondering how it was going to go when they got out of here, would they all just get shot?
The boat stuttered. It stopped. Over the public address someone, a young girl, said “Janet, is that you?” Janet waved, looking around for a camera. It was hard on the monitors not to miss an eight-foot-tall thing in the seat by her.
The boat started back up again. “Were started up again folks, sorry about that.” before she could drop the phone and turn off the thing. “This might not be the best place to hide.”
“I’m tired of hiding.”
“I know. I don’t know what else to do with you. Out there, they’d kill you,”
“You know that’s right,” said the other guy in the boat. The lady, almost noticing for the first time they were sitting in the back row, turned her hand to get them in camera, realizing she had no camera anymore for the first time.
“What?” she said.
“Camera trouble?” said the creature.
“Um, I think so.”
“Come on, we’ll take a selfie. I’m Janet.” She pulled her camera out and helped the other lady, then got the other guy in the picture and took it. The flash rebounded through the ride, disturbing some of the light-sensitive machinery.
“Please refrain from the use of flash photography while enjoying this attraction,” said a youthful voice.
They looked at Janet. “Ah, I figure I’m in enough trouble as it is, right?”
“Right,” said the guy. They turned a corner and went down the region’s longest indoor log flume drop. It blew Janet’s hair back. The picture the automatic cameras took is of everyone, including two incredibly frightened middle-aged people covering their eyes and Janet kissing a giant crab mobster with her leg up over his lap while her hair blew back, eyes closed.
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