It's Indie Ink Challenge time!
I remember the first multimonsterathon, the convention for scary creatures to bond and exchange ideas for best doing their jobs. I had been forced to go, the wife nagging me about the special presentation in my honor and how I couldn't miss it. “Drac, they bought you a blood-stained plaque and everything.”
I’m still not sure who thought up the whole idea and why they weren’t immediately run out of the monster union, but these days anything goes. If they had asked me, I would’ve told them that it wasn’t the best idea. Surely the man-eating squid wouldn’t get along with Frankenstein, and I could only imagine the nightmare when Godzilla’s cousin found out he had to room with the three-headed dragon. No, it really didn’t seem like the sorta thing that was going to be easy to deal with.
The reality was far worse. Humans make such a big deal about our ability to scare people and plague their lives with ghoulish nightmares, but if they saw us like this…maybe a good mob of townsfolk with pitchforks and fire was just what this crowd needed. Maybe it would’ve reminded the other creatures why we did this job. We needed to cultivate the best ways to ignite fear deep in the hearts of a generation of people who watched things that made me blanch. I mean, really, Saw V? Wasn't it covered in the first movie? We needed to reinvent the horrors that made each of us famous, bringing such torment into someone's life that the story gets passed on for centuries.
Instead, the multimonsterathon was like any other convention out there, filled with schmoozing and bragging. A lot of people don’t know this, but there are a lot of egos running amuck in the monster world. One dinner with these creatures and you want to claw your own eyes out before Wolfman ever gets the chance.
“Guess who just landed a commercial?” the mummy said.
Only to be topped by an exclamation from the Creature of the Black Lagoon, “My agent just called me. I’m the villain in an upcoming Hollywood Blockbuster.”
The honorary luncheon was nice – some of the best virgins I’d tasted in decades – but it just served to remind me of the good ‘ole days. Times when a monster could do respectable work and leave humans quaking in their boots. Nowadays, thanks to shows like Buffy and Supernatural, everyone’s a critic.
Someone actually said to me, “Was that supposed to be scary? And what’s with the accent?”
He wasn't so high and mighty when I pounced on him in the cellar. There was a look of fear on his face right before I drained him dry and left his body out as a reminder why Dracula was number one.
While it was good to see the original Mummy-man again, I'd much rather sneak into the science museum one night than attend another one of those insipid gatherings. It turns out that despite the hollow loneliness coursing through my veins where blood should be, I hate other creatures of the night.
This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Stefan, who gave me this prompt: write something fictional and exciting. I challenged Jules with the prompt you didn't expect to fall in love. Jules' great response is here.
