American Monsters

“How many eggs?”

“Ah,” he said. “Typically six, though I have seen some bogles lay nine.”

Amber lay there and tried not to breathe through her nose as more eggs plopped out, joining the sticky mess on her belly. A group of bogles stood close by, their eyes on the eggs. They all wore ties around their necks, and stood like expectant fathers. They were short, furry and they all looked the same.

The pregnant bogle was done and it collapsed, but there were others to catch it before it hit the ground. They held the bogle overhead, like it was solemnly crowd-surfing, before dumping it behind a display. Amber counted the eggs. Seven of them.

“How long?” she asked Axton.

“Mere moments,” he answered, jotting something in a little notebook. “Try not to move. They’ll emerge feeling nauseous if you move too much.” He checked his watch.

One of the eggs cracked, and Axton scribbled furiously.

A clawed fist punctured the shell from the inside, and the baby bogle squeezed its mucus-coated, furry head through the gap. It looked around with huge, crazy eyes, drawing a chorus of ooooohs from the assembled crowd. A fist burst through another egg, and another, and suddenly it was a race to see who’d be the first one out.

Amber didn’t bother keeping track, but one by one the baby bogles emerged, already scratching Amber’s belly with their sharp claws. When the last baby hatched, there was a cheer from the tie-wearing bogles, and Amber watched as one of them handed out cigars. Another of the little bastards had a lighter, and soon they were all puffing away like proud fathers, chattering in that nonsensical language of theirs.

Amber watched them puff those cigars, watched the cloud of smoke slowly rising …

An alarm went off and the sprinklers activated and the bogles, every one of them, looked up to see where all the water was coming from. Amber turned over, brushing the chittering babies to the floor, and scrambled up. Axton saw her coming and shrieked. He ran and she followed, knives flashing at her heels. He slipped on the wet floor and she grabbed him, swung him round, used him as a shield as the bogles closed in.

“Tell them to back off,” she ordered, and gave him a violent shake. “Tell them to back off!”

“Ah ween oh shah!” Axton cried over the sound of the alarm. “Ah ween oh shah, kah plemby!”

The bogles kept coming.

“What did you tell them?” Amber snarled into his ear as she dragged him backwards.

“I did what you asked,” Axton said. “They’re just not obeying.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know,” said Axton, listening to the bogles babble. “I … I don’t think they like me.”

“Seriously?” said Amber, spitting water.

“Also, they don’t like getting wet. That’s one of the rules. It puts them in a most disagreeable mood. So this …” He looked up at the sprinklers, still spraying water. “This is bad.”

As one, the bogles screeched in homicidal rage, and swarmed in. Amber spun, Axton right behind her.

They ran and slipped and scrambled and fled, and the bogles screeched and snapped and swiped and pursued. The water shorted out something over in the home-entertainment aisle, throwing sparks into the air like fireworks. The bogles stopped running and stared in wonder, and Amber and Axton ran on, deep into the grocery section.

Amber threw Axton behind a freezer in the middle of an aisle and fell to her knees beside him.

She grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted. “How do we stop them?”

“We run,” said Axton, still panting. “We get in a car and we drive away. They won’t be able to follow. They can operate machinery, but not very well. It’s their short attention spans – they’re always crashing.”

“We’re not going to just leave them here,” Amber said. “They’ll kill people. They’ll spread.”

The water cut off, but the alarm kept wailing, and Axton blinked at her. “So?”

“So I don’t want innocent people to die,” she told him.

“What do you care? You’re Astaroth’s representative. Saving innocent people isn’t exactly your job.”

“Yeah, well, I’m changing the terms of my employment. How do we stop them?”

“We can’t,” Axton said. “There are too many.”

Amber resisted the urge to throttle him. “Can we draw them all into one place? Is there something they can’t resist? Catnip for bogles?”

“Not … not really.”

She leaned in. “You hesitated. There is something.”

“I … well, I’ve always worked hard to keep them away from alcohol. They have an … unhealthy reaction to it.”

“Unhealthy how?”

Axton looked conflicted, and Amber punched him.

“Ow! Why did you do that?”

“Because you have a face I like to punch, and you’re holding something back.”

“Fine,” he muttered. “I introduced five bogles to alcohol in a controlled environment in order to study the effects it might have on them. None survived.”

She frowned. “Alcohol kills them?”

“No, alcohol gets them drunk. Really fast. Once they’re drunk, they argue and kill each other. At first, I thought it merely heightened their violent tendencies. Then I realised it just made them bigger jerks than they already were.”

“They get drunk, they annoy each other, and they fight until they’re all dead,” said Amber. “Okay, that’s a definite weakness. So how do we get them to drink?”

“Well … that shouldn’t be a problem. You just need to show them booze, and they’ll do the rest.”

Amber jumped to her feet, took Axton with her.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked as she dragged him after her. “You’re going to lead them to the drinks? Where will I wait? I can wait over there, if you want.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Is that strictly wise? As you have seen, I’m not very good at physical confrontation.”

“Is it my fault you sold your soul in order to be a bigger nerd than you already were?”

“I – I guess not.”