Ghoul Gang

The Funeral of Jane Bentley

First posted September 2020.

Author's Note

Hello everyone! This story is the beginning of a new project that I'm calling the Ghoul Gang. I've been trying to make this group of characters work in a novel-length story and they just don't seem to be on board with it. But what I do have is a series of short stories! I hope you enjoy this little found family of queer monsters as much as I do.

Jane was grateful, at least, that the skies were grey and stormy. She didn’t sense much sadness from anyone else, so if the clouds could spare some sympathy for her, that was something.

The rain fell steady and soft on the graveyard of Whitby Abbey. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and as Jane looked out to sea, she saw darker clouds dropping visible sheets of rain on the water, slowly encroaching toward shore. The longer grass at the edge of the cliff trembled in the increasingly strong wind. Her aunt’s umbrella shuddered under the pressure of the gusting blows and her uncle winced at the cold drops lashing his cheek.

As she looked at the small group of people closely huddled together, Jane realised she didn’t recognise anyone else at the service. She ought to have remembered the priest, but her aunt and uncle had only succeeded in press-ganging her into attendance at church on one occasion, and she’d been too sullen to pay much attention. It had been a joke, when she warned them she’d burst into flames if they forced her over the threshold. Pneumonia wasn’t exactly spontaneous combustion, but she still took a grim satisfaction in being able to say she told them so.

Or able to think it, anyway. She didn’t seem to be much of a talker in her current state.

The rest of the few people in attendance—in any other circumstance, she’d have called them mourners, but none in this cluster seemed to be mourning—must have been friends of her aunt and uncle’s. Her own parents hadn’t made the trip from London, and she didn’t imagine anyone in her family was keen to speak to any of her friends, even if just to inform them of her death. She wondered how long it would take them to find out; she wondered if they would miss her before they did.

Henry might be the only one who would properly miss her. She could feel an ache in the phantom organ of her heart, thinking of the dear boy who loved her. Perhaps it was better for him this way. Nothing about him was unlovable; he was charming, thoughtful, kind, dedicated, and handsome. And she did love him, truly. But he wasn’t the one.

Hannah was.

Jane had long known her desires exceeded one gender, but she had, perhaps foolishly, hoped to side-step the issue. Her circles in London of endless parties, dancing and drinking in throngs of beautiful, sparkling young people made the concerns and limitations of the real world seem distant and unimportant. While she enjoyed herself well enough, she was always too quiet of a person to want that life forever; she wanted a home, a family, a quiet, stable life. Assuming the desire for such a life would lead her to a companion society would accept, she expected never to have cause to act on the other side of her attraction. Henry could give her the life she wanted, and she loved him enough, or so she thought. But the eyes she fell asleep drowning in were Hannah’s deep brown and not Henry’s ice blue, and the touch that sent shivers down her spine was Hannah’s hand brushing hers as she reached for a champagne bottle and not Henry’s on her back as they danced.

When her feelings for Hannah became too consuming to ignore, she retreated to her parents’ house just outside the city to give herself time and space to think. The central question, to Jane, was not whether true love was worth pursuing, but whether she was prepared to give up the safe, comfortable life she wanted for an unpredictable, adventurous life of which she never dreamed. She was still lost in the vortex of her own thoughts when her parents’ suspicions led them to send her still further away, hoping the distance and her mother’s deeply no-nonsense sister would bring her back to her senses.

It was too soon for Jane to know if she regretted never saying anything to Hannah. Part of her seemed to have made up her mind to tell her after all, and the mourning of the life she had always wanted, and could never have, had begun long before her death. Having not had the chance to tell her, she had spared Hannah the burden of her doomed love. She had no idea how Hannah would have responded, which would have raised further problems, had death not solved them for her. It was better for Henry, so he could find someone worthy of him; it was better for Hannah, so she had no one more than a friend to mourn; it was better for Jane, now robbed of everything and as such no longer needing to worry about losing anything.

Still, the song of what might have been called to Jane over the graveyard grounds in a mournful, far-away voice.

Shadows engulfed the graveyard as the service concluded, and the small assembly dispersed with haste. Jane stood, leaning against a tall, weather-worn tombstone several rows over from where her own brand new one rose from the freshly turned ground, stuck between the desire to see her own resting place and the fear of confronting reality.

Amongst the throng of funeral attendants rushing downhill in the rain, a pale woman casually strolling beneath a wide, black umbrella emerged, heading up the hill through the crowd. She smiled to herself, appearing to consider herself on a leisurely stroll instead of a walk through a torrential downpour in a graveyard. She seemed to be Jane’s age, though her wrinkled black clothes were about a decade out of date.

“Lovely weather for it,” the unknown woman remarked. Her accent bore the traces of too many influences to be properly pinpointed: a Scottish lilt, a French tilt, a Scandinavian purr, an American harshness.

Jane looked around behind her, searching for the subject of the woman’s conversation.

“Yes, you,” said the stranger. She stopped in the dirt path, which was quickly becoming a slurry, and looked directly at her.

“You can see me?” asked Jane.

“I can. It’s more remarkable that you see me, really. I’m never out this early.” She grinned, displaying her canine teeth sharpened into fangs.

Knowing she should be horrified or frightened, Jane wondered at the amusement she felt instead. Of course, she was already dead; what more did she have to fear? She smirked, cocking an eyebrow as she retorted. “More of a night owl?”

“You could say that.” The fangs disappeared into a genuine smile. “I’m Ailsa.”

“Jane. Wait, were you coming to my funeral? Do I know you?”

Ailsa shook her head. “I just like to come meet the new neighbours. Was it a nice service?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention,” Jane shrugged.

“Understandable.” Ailsa looked her over appraisingly. “This doesn’t quite look like your scene.”

Jane appeared in her favourite peach drop-waisted dress, only peach in her memory and not in her spectral white apparition. Its floaty hem was unruffled by the breeze. A long strand of pearls and beaded headband sparkled, reflecting light from an unseen source. It was, admittedly, not typical of Yorkshire.

Ailsa looked amused at Jane giving herself a once-over. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m a stranger here myself.” She offered the crook of her elbow, and Jane linked her arm through it. Thunder boomed overhead as they walked toward the fresh grave.

The headstone was small and unadorned; not so much as a death’s head decorated the slab, nor did any words speak of any attachment to the world of the living—no ‘beloved daughter’ or even ‘tolerated niece.’ It read simply:

Jane Bentley

Born 14 August 1897

Died 1 January 1924

“1924? Goodness,” Ailsa sighed. “How time does fly.”

Jane looked at her tombstone blankly. Beneath the soil was something that was no longer her, but would forever bear her name. Every part of her life suddenly felt so much further away from her than it had a moment before. Instead of fond memories, they suddenly became something alive kept out of her reach. Remembering something gone is bittersweet; remembering something that lives on is only bitter.

Ailsa squeezed her arm, and Jane was surprised she could feel it. “As I said, I’m not usually out ‘til later, so I haven’t any engagements for a while. Would you like me to stay with you?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be very good company,” Jane replied in a low voice.

“My dear,” Ailsa said as she settled herself onto the wet ground, “without even trying you’ll be the best company I’ve had in centuries.”

She patted the ground next to her, and Jane obligingly sat. The storm raged on, and the vampire and the ghost sat quietly together in the graveyard, smiling in the light of lightning bolts.

The Turning of Ailsa Linden

First posted October 2020.

Ailsa Linden was a woman of many contradictions. She loved the rain, but hated getting her feet wet. She was hopeful, but she wasn’t an optimist. She wanted things to change, but she wouldn’t try to change them herself.

As much as anything else, this was a result of being a woman of her time. She had watched the French revolutionaries inspire a wave of independence talks amongst the Edinburgh rabble, and had also seen absolutely nothing come of it. She had seen the brave men who spoke of correcting injustice hanged by the corrupt hands they spoke against. The world around her was very exciting in theory, and very boring in practice.

Tracing her fingers along the spines of the books on the shop’s shelves, her mind conjured images of the worlds inside. Misty moors and Spanish plains, abandoned castles and seaside manors: tales of beauty and horror and wonder were the stories in which she preferred to live. All that people in the real world dreamed of could be achieved by characters in books, if nowhere else.

She paid for her new dream and left the shop, tucking the book into a pocket in her coat as it began to drizzle. The streets were full of people holding coats and shawls over their heads as they hurried inside from what was quickly turning into proper rain. Ailsa picked up her skirts as she ran, squinting in the grey haze, and ran directly into a man dressed all in black who seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, hastily recollecting herself and moving to continue around him.

The man stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Might I have the pleasure of knowing to whom I bestow my pardon?”

She looked up at him testily, uninterested in continuing to stand out in the rain and play whatever little game this man wanted. “Linden,” she said, tersely.

“Ah, Miss Linden.” He inclined his head courteously, as if they were meeting in a formal situation instead of on the street in the rain. “Is that any relation to Mr. George Linden?”

Of course, Ailsa thought. This man was clearly a business associate of her father’s and wanted her intercession or support in some manner. Why her father’s partners came to her for assistance, as if she held some sway over him by virtue of being his only child, was perpetually beyond her. At least the others didn’t accost her out in the rain.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir. Please let me pass.”

The man stepped out of the way, but an incongruous sly grin crossed his face. “As you wish, Miss Ailsa.”

Until she arrived at home, it did not occur to her that she had not given the man her first name, but perhaps he knew it as an acquaintance of her father’s. Satisfied that his business would no longer include her, she put all thought of him out of her head.

It then came as quite a surprise that he called at their home the following evening, not for her father, but for her.

Out of curiosity she allowed him to escort her out for the evening, and she inspected him intently all the while. Robert was tall—taller, in fact, than she, which was uncommon. He smiled with his mouth closed, which made him appear smarmy, but still she found herself intrigued by him. His blond hair was too long, often falling into his blue eyes, in which waves rose and fell as if they contained the sea itself. Vaguely annoyed with herself for being so predictable, she admitted perhaps the only thing about her which was not a contradiction; though her attractions had no preferences amongst gender, class, or profession, the one thing she did prefer above all else was a blond.

Ailsa permitted Robert to take her out nearly every night in the following weeks. She still perceived that he wanted something he was not telling, but she was enjoying herself too much to worry about it. Life had grown so intolerably dull in the months since her former lover, Charlotte, had moved away to the Highlands, and she appreciated the entertainment enough to overlook the eventual cost.

It was another rainy evening, much like the one on which they first met, when that cost became apparent. They sat in the warmth of a pub, in a corner which the low light barely reached, watching the other patrons from the shadows.

“You like watching people,” Robert remarked, his voice low and quiet.

Ailsa nodded. “You never know when they might do something interesting.” Her fascination with stories was more what led her to believe this might be so than anything else; in real life, as she well knew, the revolutionaries did not meet in pubs, nor did the uprising come from impassioned speeches in the streets. Some part of her still hoped she might see fiction become reality before her eyes. She knew better, but she hoped.

“You speak as if you aren’t one of them.”

“Maybe I’m not,” she laughed. “Or maybe it’s vain of me to say so. You know how one always feels as though they’re the only odd one out.”

He looked at her curiously, showing no sign of having comprehended her statement. His eyes fixed on her not unlike a cat fixing its gaze on its prey. Ailsa felt not fear or apprehension, but excitement; the interesting occurrence of the evening seemed promised to come from her companion, rather than the nameless crowds she observed.

“Ailsa,” he spoke through unmoving lips. “What do you think of immortality?”

Furrowing her brow, she thought for a moment before responding. She liked the idea of being able to watch the world forever. But supposing she remained bored, and nothing ever did happen, it would be excruciating to have no escape. Still, to never wonder how things would turn out—to see the end of every beginning—it did hold a certain allure. “It’s a lovely idea,” she said.

He smiled, and his mouth parted open just slightly. “What if it was more than an idea?”

“I do wish you’d just say what you mean, Robert.” She raised an eyebrow, feigning nonchalance while her heart’s rhythm beat a sickeningly rapid pace.

He opened his mouth wide, baring his fangs.

“Oh, go on, then.”

Immediately his beguiling smile dropped into stunned apprehension. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” She pulled at her collar, baring a small patch of skin on her neck.

Before she was cognisant of having been moved, they were in the alley next to the pub, the warm glow from inside meeting the cold moonlight halfway across her face. With her back against a wall, she wrapped her legs around Robert as he lifted her up and sank his teeth into her neck. The shock of exquisite pain made her feel more alive than she remembered ever having felt before, and death made the world over anew in her eyes. Into every corner and crevice dripped blood, soaking shadows scarlet and cracks crimson. Every life surrounding them, from the flies to the footmen, reached out to her and spoke with wordless sound.

Ailsa Linden added another contradiction to her byline: she was both alive and dead.

The boredom of immortality she feared did not come from the world around her, thankfully. She fell in love with the world of the living all over again, and observing from afar took on a new joy. In life she had felt unable to effect any meaningful change, but empowered with vampirism, she found a small way to contribute by selecting only victims she felt no moral quandary in killing. By and large, the true villains were not frequenting the high street, but one does what one can.

Where she grew bored, however, was in her vampire company. Robert had served his purpose, and now his beauty was not enough to entertain her. Whenever she asked him about leaving, he grew quiet and sullen. There was obviously a story there, but as reluctant as he was to share it, she was equally uninterested in pressing him for it.

Besides, there was more than one interesting blond in the world, as Ailsa cheerily reminded herself as she boarded a carriage headed for the Highlands.

Monstrous May 2021

First posted May 2021.

Author's Note

These drabbles and flash fiction pieces were written using the prompts for the Monstrous May challenge in 2021. The Ghoul Gang characters are a found family of queer monsters that I to this day haven't figured out a novel-length story for, but they've featured in a few short stories and flash fiction while I was putting active work into figuring them out. I always intend to come back to them - I figure they're simmering until whatever needs to come to pass for them to boil over occurs, and I'm happy to wait. In the meantime, have some disconnected snippets! Behind the scenes notes are available on Patreon and Ko-fi.

01. What is a Monster?

Andrei counted the passing seconds in taps on the cold, damp bricks. The points of his nails, gnawed into dullness, clicked and echoed in the dark chamber. “Sixty,” he croaked hoarsely, scraping a chunk of metal into the wall to make another line. He was running out of wall space.

The door above opened, and the wurdalak, shadowy against the candlelight behind him, shouted, “Do you know how long you’ve been down there this time?”

He responded without missing a beat. “Ninety-three days, eighteen hours, and four minutes, Father.”

The wurdalak’s laughter echoed off the walls, surrounding Andrei with thunderous mockery. “Were you a mere mortal, you’d have long since perished.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” Andrei’s self-amused chuckle turned into a cough.

The door slammed shut, and the echo of it eventually faded into the steady rhythm of the seconds tapped out by his fingers. He could keep me here for centuries, Andrei thought. Even with only half as much vampiric blood as his father, he would survive long after he lost the will to do so — a milestone already well behind him. I won’t be like him, no matter what. I won’t become a monster.

02. How to Talk to Your Monster

Falling snowflakes blurred Moroz’s vision into a wall of white as he bolted into the woods. Silently, he cursed himself for never learning. He knew he wouldn’t take the lesson to heart, though. No matter how many times the villagers chased him off with torches and pitchforks, he knew he could help them. He just had to figure out how to get them to let him try.

Back in his cave, he lit a fire and rested his forehead on his large, furry arms. A snapping twig caught his attention and he looked up to see a small girl with pigtails writing in the snow with a broken branch outside. Her mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise, but she did not make a sound. Keeping her eyes on Moroz, she placed a limp white flower next to the writing before running away.

Yetis don’t typically learn to read human language, and he was no exception. His eyes scanned the lines of the child’s writing without comprehension. Smiling, he picked up the flower. It was an early one — too hopeful in the early spring. Its curling, delicate petals had been no match for the snow. Still, it had tried.

03. The Vampire

When Ailsa was hungry, she liked to go to the theatre. In truth, she liked to go to the theatre anyway. The velvet seats, the click of her heels on the staircase, the warm glow of stage lights illuminating her face in the audience, the mighty roar of faux revolutionaries waging feigned war on the stage: sensationally speaking, there was no finer experience.

It was a false uprising on stage, but the tyrant the actors spoke of overthrowing was real — in deeds, if not in name, by the man seated in the first box. Real beggars in the streets outside the theatre had been evicted from their homes by him, and Ailsa was surprised he had the gall to walk past them into the glittering theatre for a night of merriment. Then again, she shouldn’t be surprised by people like him any more.

She didn’t raise a rifle, real or stage prop, but she had her own way of revolting. While his driver’s back was turned, she slipped into his carriage and waited. He exited the theatre in high spirits, and didn’t see her until her fangs were bared.

The driver opened the carriage door and Ailsa stepped out over the bloodless corpse, wearing his coat and hat. Smiling brightly as she took the driver’s hand, she chirped, “Thanks,” and emptied the coins from the dead man’s pockets into every beggar’s hat she passed as she made her way down the street.

04. Iconic Settings

“You’re late.”

Ailsa sniffed, tottering over the muddy graveyard ground in tall, black stilettos. “Like you’re going anywhere.”

Jane smiled. “That’s very mean, but I’ll forgive you.”

“You’re a doll.” Ailsa perched on the edge of a stone tomb next to the spectral image of Jane, holding her umbrella over both of them. With her free hand, she placed two coupe glasses down and pulled a bottle of champagne from within her coat. “Hold this,” she said, handing Jane the umbrella.

Lightning flashed and illuminated the graveyard of Whitby Abbey. Stone arches towered over the weathered tombstones, and the dark silhouette of the abbey was momentarily visible against a light purple sky. The usual fireworks had been thoroughly rained out, and the New Year’s revelers had all taken their parties indoors. Jane was grateful for the solitude; Ailsa never cared one way or the other, but it always made Jane feel self-conscious to share this celebration with the living.

The cork popped, followed by a roll of thunder. Ailsa filled the glasses and handed one to Jane. Even from within houses, the roar of hundreds of countdowns shouted in unison filled the stormy night sky.

At midnight, a clock in the town began tolling as cheers rose from the houses below. Ailsa clinked her glass against Jane’s. “Happy death day, kid.”

05. Feeding Time

It wasn’t easy to make a family dinner for this particular family; catering for a vampire, a dhampir, a gill creature, a resurrected corpse, and a yeti was not exactly a one-dish affair. It was less about the food, anyway. Jane just liked to have all her people at the table together.

She could feel Gabe looking warily over her shoulder as her spectral hands fumbled with the sushi mat. “Please leave the kitchen,” she said, as authoritatively as she could manage.

The corner of their mouth pulled back as they rubbed their scaly upper arm. “You really don’t have to go to the trouble— “

“It’s no trouble,” Jane interrupted.

“It looks like it is.”

Jane turned and pointed at the door, glowering. “Out.”

There were a precious few moments of peace in the kitchen before Ailsa barrelled through the door.

“Please,” Jane sighed, “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Just grabbing a juicebox,” Ailsa said as she pulled a bag of blood out of the fridge.

“I wish you wouldn’t call them that,” Jane said, but Ailsa had already skipped out of the room. Shaking her head, she continued working.

She managed to roll the rice into the seaweed wrapper in a way that stuck, even if it didn’t look very neat. It would have to do. She sliced and plated it, then turned to the grill to check Andrei’s blood sausages. The oven timer dinged, and she took out the chicken to split between Lilith and Moroz.

When she finished plating everything, she stuck her head out of the kitchen door without opening it. “Who wants to help with plates?”

Moroz leapt to his woolly feet and made it to the kitchen in three giant strides. “Thank you, Jane, this looks perfect,” he said, scooping up the chicken and Gabe’s vegetarian sushi.

Jane beamed. She put a hand on Andrei’s shoulder as she placed his plate in front of him. He looked up at her through his long, black fringe and murmured, “Thanks.” She kissed the top of his head before sitting down next to Lilith, and the two of them tried not to giggle at the flush of red in Andrei’s cheeks.

Ailsa, sitting sideways in her chair with her legs over the arm, slurped from the straw stuck in her blood bag. “Jane, you’re a star.” She raised her bag in a toast, echoed by everyone else at the table.

Jane leaned her chin into her hand and watched them all as they ate (or drank, in Ailsa’s case). Thinking of when she was a young ghost, lamenting the loss of the chance to build a family of her own, she wished she could go back in time to tell herself about this. Dreams come true in the strangest ways.

06. The Lycanthrope

Ailsa chewed on the end of her bookmark as she bounced her foot, hanging in the air off the arm of her armchair, and flipped a page in the copy of Dracula she borrowed from Gabe.

Lilith walked past toward the couch and shook her head as she looked at the cover of Ailsa’s book. “I don’t know how you can stand to read that.”

“It’s great,” Ailsa replied. “I love Mina.”

“Everyone loves Mina. That’s the point of the book, if I recall.” Lilith sat down and scratched at the stitches up the side of her neck. “I meant the inaccuracies.”

“It’s not that inaccurate, really.” Ailsa turned around to sit properly, though hunched forward. “Luckily everyone just forgot it’s garlic flowers that repel us, not the bulbs. Would make my life a lot harder if they hadn’t.”

Lilith raised an eyebrow as she rifled through the assorted bottles of nail varnish on the coffee table. “You can turn into mist?”

“One inaccuracy isn’t bad, all things considered,” Ailsa shrugged.

“He got you confused with werewolves, too.”

“No, that one’s accurate, I think.”

Lilith looked up, squinting. “You think?”

“Well, I did it once.” Ailsa looked at the puncture mark in her bookmark and sighed. “An accident. Haven’t figured out how I did it, though.”

“Huh.” Lilith held up two bottles and looked back and forth between them. She turned them so Ailsa could see, and Ailsa tapped the green one. Lilith nodded, put the green bottle back on the table, unscrewed the top of the yellow one, and began painting.

Ailsa rolled her eyes, unable to repress a smile. “Anyway, I think they should’ve let Lucy marry all her beaus.”

Lilith hummed in assent. “And Mina, too.”

07. Adverse Weather Conditions

Moroz pressed his lips into a wary line as he looked out the window at the darkening sky. People expected monsters to love storms, but in this house, it was more of a roulette wheel of trauma. Every flash of lightning froze Lilith in her tracks, her shoulders raised and her fists clenched. The thunder sent a shiver through Andrei’s spine, as if he could hear the echo off stone walls that no longer surrounded him. Moroz himself didn’t care for the rain, even though it was more snow storms that sent him buzzing with nerves. Even sweet Jane grew distant and moody as rain soaked the ground like it did the day she was buried. Ailsa was more or less alright with it, though, and on catching Moroz’s eye, she nodded wordlessly and picked up a stack of blankets as she headed toward the assembly in the living room.

There was, at least, one monster in their number who liked the rain. Moroz smiled as he looked down and saw Gabe jumping in puddles and holding their arms open to catch more of the falling rain on their scaly, green skin. Moroz grabbed a raincoat and headed downstairs.

Gabe flushed dark blue when they saw Moroz approach, freezing mid-jump and waving sheepishly. “I thought you didn’t like the rain.”

“I like you,” Moroz said. “And I didn’t want you to have to have fun alone. It’s friendlier with two.”

Gabe flushed darker. “I...appreciate it.”

Moroz grinned, jumping in the puddle in front of Gabe and splashing them with water as they laughed.

08. The Monster In Love

Lilith peered over the top of her sunglasses, permanently bloodshot eyes scanning the crowds of tourists at the abbey. She walked across the hilltop, veering away from the busy path and back toward a weathered headstone in the corner of the graveyard. Kneeling by the grave, she placed the large bouquet of peach-coloured peonies at the head.

“You could’ve given them to me at home.”

Lilith looked up, smiling at the spectre elegantly perched on the headstone. Plucking one stem from the bouquet, she rose and tucked the flower behind Jane’s ear.

“I like a little spectacle now and then.”

09. The Undead

She told herself if she was quiet, if she behaved, if she gave them no cause to look her way, they would not. She would be left alone to her own devices, isolated and safe. But it doesn’t work that way. When people want a monster, they will create one.

There was no evidence against her but the words of those who always hated her, but that, as it turned out, was enough. She heard the crackle of electricity powering up, and then the world went black.

She awoke with another jolt. Her veins felt full of tiny pins, sharp and hard and angled wrong. Head pounding, heart fluttering, and stomach full of stones, she sat up, panting with effort. The men in white coats looked at her in delighted awe, their faces cast in flickering shadows.

“Eve has risen!” the one standing by the operating table yelled, lifting his arms toward the ceiling.

She reached out and gripped his neck, years of silent hatred and undue pain funnelled into her strength as she squeezed. Her voice scraped her throat as she pushed out the words, “That isn’t my name.”

10. ...And Add a Monster

The forest materialises as the photographs develop. Deep green pine boughs sag under the weight of the accumulating snow, pure white and sparkling under the brief glimpses of sunlight through the heavy clouds. Remnants of human touches are visible: weathered wooden huts, rusting iron, fallen fences. A blur of colour indicates a bird flying through the scene, too fast for the camera to capture. A mountain of snow rises in the back, but the snow has two blue eyes with which to fix the gaze of the camera’s one. The next photo is nothing but a field of blurred white.

11. A Baby Monster

Gabe was seven years old when the first research vessel visited the lagoon. Though their parents wearily sighed, lamenting that their lagoon had not yet been forgotten by the scientific community, Gabe was excited. They hadn’t ever seen anyone other than their parents and the denizens of the lagoon, and new things were always exhilarating.

Swimming under the boat, they watched the scientists drop all sorts of strange things into the water. They weren’t sure what any of these things had to do with science, but they wanted to know. They wanted to pop their head up and ask, and learn everything the scientists must be learning. But their parents had firmly declared that Gabe should never, ever do anything to be noticed by the scientists.

Gabe sighed in a stream of bubbles, gazing wistfully at the underside of the boat. There was a muffled scuffling. The boat rocked and a book fell over the side. A scientist’s fingers breached the water’s surface, but couldn’t reach the book before it fell too far down to be caught from above.

It was, however, caught from below. Gabe clasped the book to their chest as they swam home, eager to get started.

12. The Alien

Gabe gulped as they pulled a book off the shelf. Bits of hardened fabric flaked off the ancient spine and stuck to their fingers. Another day, another pay deduction, they sighed internally. But it was worth it. It was always worth it.

Reading about the world outside the lagoon was like learning about another planet. It was so different, so wild, so surprising with every turn of every page that they couldn’t quite believe they inhabited the same world. They read about snowy mountain peaks, islands rising from crystal clear seas, shining metal buildings that rose into the clouds. They gasped in horror at stories of war and injustice, and they wept for joy at stories of lovers reunited and friends creating art together.

“Gabe.”

They turned to see their supervisor behind them, looking pointedly at the wet footprints leading from the shelf to their seat.

“Hi, sir,” Gabe said sheepishly.

The supervisor nodded toward his office. “Let’s have a chat.” Gabe picked up their book as they rose from their chair, and the supervisor held up a hand. “You can leave that there. I’ll take care of it later.”

13. The Domesticated Monster

There were many adjustments to be made from life in the forest to life in a house, but by far the most baffling to Moroz was folding laundry. He didn’t exactly wear clothes himself, and what few blankets he’d acquired in his travels, though he washed them in streams whenever possible, didn’t tend to come with him when he was inevitably chased out of his most recent cave dwelling, so there had been no point in figuring out how to transport them.

“I don’t think this is possible,” he said to Jane as he once again turned a fitted sheet into a messy wad of fabric.

Jane giggled. “It’s really very simple,” she said, showing him how to neaten the edges and fold them over to make straight sides.

“Don’t feel bad,” Lilith grinned as she leaned against the door frame. “I had to show her, too.”

Jane shot Lilith a playful glare before folding the sheet into a small, tidy rectangle. She picked it up and held it out to Moroz. “Now it goes in the cabinet.”

He took it from her and immediately dropped it. His eyes misted at the rumpled pile of fabric at his feet.

Jane picked it up and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t feel it, but he felt better all the same. “It’s all good, sugar,” she said. “Now you get the chance to do it yourself.”

He hadn’t quite got the crisp edges Jane showed him, but he managed to fold the sheet into something approximating neatness, and it was with something approximating pride that he put the sheet into the cabinet.

14. Clothing Your Monster

Ailsa had seen the dawn of many inventions in her last 236 years, but she’d be hard-pressed to name one she appreciated more than the shopping mall. Private seamstresses were expensive and gossipy, and their insistence on asking her too many questions meant she really burned through them. Being able to walk into a mall 10 minutes before closing and pick ten things off a rack while the staff were too distracted tidying up to look too closely at her pale skin and fangs certainly made her life easier.

Out on one of her usual late-night strolls, something new caught her eye as she left Borders. It was almost like someone had dumped a bucket of black paint on what had been Limited Too. The flickering red light in the sign was hypnotising, and without realising it, she had walked over to stand in front of the store.

In the windows were baggy black pants, dotted with metal rings and buckles that didn’t seem to support anything. Black corsets much flimsier than the whalebone to which she was accustomed, but much prettier, trimmed with vibrant purples and reds hung in rows on the wall. And in the centre of the store, rising on a spinning pedestal, were shiny, black boots, with heels as tall as her head and somehow even more useless buckles.

“Oh,” she exhaled as she stepped over the shop’s threshold. “I wish I believed in something so I could praise them.”

15. The Mermaid

Gabe’s parents had warned them about leaving the lagoon. They figured it was typical parental over-protectiveness — not that they knew much about anything ‘typical,’ considering the only contact they’d had with the world beyond the lagoon was the researchers who came to poke and prod at them. But Gabe knew there was more to the world than people like the researchers, and they wanted to know everything.

The first time Gabe thought they might have been right after all was movie night with their colleagues at the archives. No one would tell them what movie had been chosen until the title card appeared, and the words Creature From the Black Lagoon shone down on them. They slid down in their chair as their colleagues laughed, pointing at them and then at the man in a rubber suit on the screen.

“Is that really what it’s like?” Becca asked rhetorically between cackles and mouthfuls of popcorn.

Gabe didn’t respond, but the worst part, they thought, was that it was. The researchers coming to the lagoon and dropping garbage into the water, ripping up the coral reefs, caging their friends and taking them away: right up to the point that the gill-people fought back. Gabe and their parents had always stayed carefully hidden when outsiders came to the lagoon. They wondered if this was why.

16. The Gentle Kaiju

A/N: First day using the alternate prompt! Prompt: An extremely tiny monster or another monster very easily harmed by human activities needs to be kept safe.

Andrei could feel the cold night air through the layer of grime encrusted on his face, the still-bleeding cuts from stone and glass on his face throbbing. His anxious laughter sounded foreign and maniacal to his own ears as his wobbling legs took him in an erratic zig-zag down to the village. He was free.

He knocked on the door of the orphanage, feeling stupid about being a 20 year-old turning himself in, but he was scrawny enough that he could pass for younger.

“Oh, you poor thing, what happened to you?” the woman who answered the door asked as she gently herded him inside.

“Long story,” he rasped, and slumped into the first chair he saw.

17. Monstrous Transformations

There was a name before Lilith, and one before Eve. She remembered most of her life before — summers in the shade of willow trees, walking home alone at twilight, the electric current that was the last thing she ever felt — but she didn’t remember that name. It was just as well, she thought. That name belonged to someone that wasn’t her any more.

Messy scars stitched together without care twined up her arms like ivy, evidence of a greedy grasp that stole her from her rest. Thick, ugly bolts had been jammed into the burned flesh of her neck for reasons she decided she didn’t want to know. Something had, at some point, happened to her ankle, and she could never get it to hold her weight the way it should. Her physical transformation was something for which she was not present; it was something done to her, not by her.

There was a transformation she could control, though. She had always firmly believed that people always have a choice, and she had always chosen to be kind, quiet, and merciful. She had chosen to be small, holding on to hope that it would be enough for her to be left alone. Those choices belonged to a nameless past, and Lilith was not her. Now, Lilith chose to be the monster everyone had always perceived her to be.

18. Angels and Demons

A/N: Alternate prompt - A monster that is not a demon or angel decides to present itself as one or the other.

Gabe shrank back, eyes wide and filling with tears. “Please,” they half-whispered, not finishing the question they knew was pointless to ask. Their eyes darted around the lab, looking for a way out.

“That’s right,” the man holding the needle said, in the manner of soothing a distressed animal. “Nowhere to go. Just hold — “

A muffled roar gained its full volume as the wall exploded into a cloud of dust and plaster. Moroz kicked through, eyes red and flaring. He rose to his full height, menacing the scientist with arms raised and claws bared. The fluorescent light glinted off his fangs.

Frozen in place, the scientist didn’t so much as breathe as Moroz scooped Gabe up in his arms and fled through the hole he’d made in the wall.

Gabe looked up at him as they escaped. Moroz’s eyes had gone back to their normal blue, and all trace of menace had dissipated. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Moroz could do something like that, but somehow Gabe had never thought of it. It was so unlike the yeti they knew and loved that it seemed like he’d been someone else back in the lab.

They buried their hands in Moroz’s fur, clinging tighter as he ran.

19. Monstrous Flora

Andrei sensed life around him, even without blood. Auras pulsed from the damp dungeon floor as moss pushed its way through the cracks. He couldn’t imagine wanting to put so much effort into being alive.

Reaching out in the dark, his calloused fingertips brushed the soft patch. It seemed violent to him, this determination to live. How something so delicate and comforting could have pushed so hard to thrive in a place like this — he couldn’t understand it.

There was an insistent voice inside him, urging him to destroy the plants. It would be so easy. Hardly an application of force.

His father would be so proud of him.

Andrei took a deep breath, and patted his plant friends gently before curling up against the wall and going back to sleep.

20. The Monster in History

“Vive L'Empereur!”

Ailsa idly rolled the handle of her parasol between her fingers as she sat on a bench in the Champ de Mars. Cheers echoed through the crowd as Napoleon signed the charter, loudly proclaiming his intention to uphold the terms, despite what his opposition warned. Ailsa scoffed.

Marcie looked over at her with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “You don’t believe him?”

“I don’t believe anyone wearing a diamond that large to have my best interests at heart, no.” She sighed wearily, her eyes drifting from the crowd to the grassy expanses beyond them. “You know they executed the first mayor here.”

Marcie hummed noncommittally. She had become annoyingly inured to Ailsa’s provocations. Ailsa knew it was probably time to move on, but the thought tugged at where her heart once beat. She was bored with Marcie, yes, but not with Paris.

“I like how bloodthirsty the French are,” Ailsa continued. “No one else has the followthrough. You put your swords where your mouths are.”

“Some of us are not so thirsty for blood,” replied Marcie evenly. “I would like to see peace.”

When she’d first met Marcie, she would have argued this point. It wasn’t peace Marcie wanted, it was capitulation. She didn’t care if nothing ever improved, she had no interest in fighting for a better world — she just wanted everyone to stop fighting.

Ailsa was too tired for an argument now, though. And if that wasn’t sign enough that she was done here, she didn’t know what was.

-

“Isn’t it magnificent?”

Ailsa smiled as she walked behind Louis, who’d run ahead gaping at the tower rising into the sky in front of them. “Mostly I’ve heard people complaining about how ugly it is.”

“Ugly,” Louis repeated with obvious disgust. “People have no appreciation for science.”

“People have no appreciation for most things, dear.”

“It is an engineering marvel!” Louis continued with no sign that he’d heard Ailsa. She didn’t mind being ignored, for once; such passion, even for something so silly as a gigantic iron tower, was so rare amongst humans. “Monsieur Eiffel is a genius.”

Ailsa caught up to him, hooking her arm through his. “I’m sure you could do better.”

“Better than this?” He gazed in wide-eyed wonder upwards.

The wind whistled through the iron, filling the air with shrill, atonal music. Ailsa opened her bag and pulled out a handful of coins. “Shall we see what the view’s like from the top?”

-

The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower had changed significantly since Ailsa’s last trip. She looked down past the vendors, all selling the same cheap plastic garbage, down the Champ de Mars. She imagined the bloody scenes of the Revolution, the joyous revelry of the first Bastille Day, the guillotining of the mayor; illusory images spread out before her eyes, soaking red into the green grass. She remembered the pompous constructions of Napoleon’s Champ de Mai, and blinked as she saw two women sitting beneath parasols on a bench that hadn’t moved in hundreds of years. Phantom muscle aches twinged in her legs as she recalled climbing the thousand or so stairs with Louis before the lifts were operational.

It was so quiet at the top. She’d since travelled to the tops of castles, lighthouses, skyscrapers, and it never failed to strike her how loud the world was below, even in its most silent moments.

On the ground, she saw Moroz waving energetically with one hand, holding an ice cream in the other. She laughed, and the sound bounced off the iron, dancing around in the air long after Ailsa descended.

21. The Hybrid

How much of her, Lilith wondered, was still her? Her fingers traced the twining scars up her arms and legs, joining patches of different-coloured skin. She often told herself it didn’t matter — that who she was now was all she needed to worry about — but she wondered about the pieces of other people that went into her. As much as she tried to deny it, she was constantly aware she was as much an amalgamation of who she’d been before and who she was now, as she was a hybrid of other dead pieces brought back to life.

22. Kept Captive

Andrei had a bedroom in the castle, but he didn’t think of it as his room. He spent so little time in it, he couldn’t bring a picture of it to mind in the endless night of his time in captivity. But he knew the dungeon. He knew the outline of every stone, each divot in the brick’s surface, the shoreline of the puddle in the corner. He knew the way his father’s voice boomed down from the door at the top, and the way his own voice softly echoed like he imagined the whisper of a friend might sound.

23. The Human Is The Monster

Ailsa knew real monsters. They laughed with dull-edged teeth in glee over pain inflicted and lives ruined, they twisted their clumsy feet on the necks of the needy, they walked back to their luxurious caves with lacquered heads held high, knowing no one could, or would, stop them. Their blood tasted of stolen earth and polluted air; their fragile, perfumed skin tasted like chemicals and grease on her tongue. She swallowed their bilious blood down with ferocity equalling their own, fighting back the revulsion. They were devourers, but so was she. And those who never hunger don’t move as fast.

24. The Dragon

A/N: Alternate prompt - An ancient dungeon, temple, or some other monument, is marked by a huge statue of a dragon. Something else inhabits it.

In the village, there are stories. Whispering around fires at night, they tell each other of dragons coming down from the mountains to abduct the village’s maidens, of the dragon’s horrible fangs, of black wings spread wide to block out the moon. The dragon feeds on virgin blood, they say. The dragon sends famines to starve them out of hiding.

In the castle, the story they tell is different. The wurdalak bares his horrible fangs and holds his black cloak open wide. Blood stains the stone floors and trickles to the statue of the dragon, standing tall at the entrance.

25. The Monster Dies

The coughing wasn’t unusual. Even Jane’s aunt knew that much, glaring at her meaningfully as she shrugged and lit another cigarette. It was the fever that gave her pause. She was famously never ill, and at first wasn’t sure what was happening; the fever made her feel three glasses of champagne in, light-headed and dizzy. For a day or two, it was the nicest she’d felt since leaving London.

The last few days were a haze of blood on her handkerchief, pain in every breath, chills, and heat. She clung to wakefulness, knowing if her eyes closed they would not re-open. Tears blurred her vision, and the dim blues of the world faded to black.

Then, she awoke.

26. The Hive Mind

A/N: Alternate prompt - A being once a member of a hive-mind or a collective is severed from it, and now alone.

There was a time that voices bounced around Jane’s head, bursting out of champagne bubbles floating in a constant stream in her mind. “Just one more drink.” They twisted and tugged, pulling her in every direction ‘til her arms ached. “Just one more dance.”

“This is the last one,” she always replied, and eventually, one day, it was.

The silence in their absence was as much a relief as it was a sorrow. There is joy in companionship, even when the companions themselves leave something to be desired. Jane sat atop the stone bearing her name, listening to the wind.

27. The Fae

Ailsa found many things in her travels were the same no matter where she went. Magic, for lack of a better word, was one of these things, and it was not, as its nature goes. She wandered forests old and young, cold and warm, tall and short, and in them were beings whose life did not call to her from mortal veins. Humans called them many things, but names do not matter — except, of course, when they do. It was a strange meeting, each time: one immortal force gazing at another, neither of them sure what to do. In the end, she offered them no name, and received none in return.

28. The Monster Extinct

Statues bare dull stone teeth, their rounded edges belying the danger they meant to embody. Paint flaking on ancient wood clings to the outline of a beast covered in white hair, tearing trees apart in its frightful approach. Relics, they tell the children, of an ancient past, when we lived in danger and fear.

It is enough, they think, that the monsters disappeared. On occasion, someone whispers that gone is not dead, but no one pays them much mind. No beasts have been seen in centuries. If they aren’t dead, they’ve learned their place.

The wind howls from the distant mountains. Despite it all, the townspeople shiver.

29. Cultural Differences

Andrei sat at the piano, precisely pressing one key down with one finger. The low note filled the air around him and gradually faded into silence. He pressed the key again.

Jane poked her spectral head through the wall. “That’s not the most chipper tune, honey.”

He looked up through his messy black bangs. “Well, you know how chipper I am.”

Her merry laugh chimed like little bells as she fully entered the room. “I could teach you how to play, though, if you want.”

Andrei nodded wordlessly, and Jane walked over to stand behind him. “Okay, fingers on keys, please.”

Gingerly, he spread his fingers and placed them on the keys in front of him.

“I’ll just move you down here— “ Reaching to move his hand, she braced herself on his shoulder and he flinched.

“Sorry, honey, I know I’m cold,” she said.

“‘s not that,” Andrei mumbled. Even since leaving his father, he hadn’t become accustomed to casual touch. A hand was never placed on him in anything but anger.

“Oh,” Jane said in a small voice. It’d been a century since she had a body to throw into a tangle with others, but the thoughtless impulse remained. What was a mindless comfort to her was certainly something else to Andrei. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”

He shrugged. “I’ll get used to it eventually.”

Jane was, for once, grateful she didn’t have tear ducts any more. “You don’t have to, honey,” she said, her voice hushed like a summer breeze, calming and gentle. “I’ll be more careful.”

Andrei tensed and set his jaw, speaking through clenched teeth. “I don’t want you to have to be careful.”

“Well, I do.” She didn’t see any sense in lingering on Andrei’s past — not with him, at least. What happened was unchangeable now, and it was merely sensible to be as kind as she could. She sat next to him on the bench, arranging herself precisely so as not to touch his leg with hers. “It’s not about what you want.”

Andrei’s gaze focused on the keys, his hands still frozen where he had placed them. He was so tired of the black cloud of his father’s influence hanging over him; he wanted a future free of that influence. “I want to get used to it, though.”

A small, rueful smile touched Jane’s face. Ghosts have a hard time thinking of the future; for them, the world is static and unchanging. For Andrei, there was a changeable future — and one she could be part of, as a force for better. She straightened her skirt beneath her. “Okay then.” She put her hand on his, letting it linger for a moment before she picked it up and moved it down the keys, and he looked up at her with a wavering smile.

30. The Minotaur

A/N: I don't have a minotaur in Ghoul Gang, but I do have one in the novella I'm working on, provisionally titled Crown of Ivy. Today I've got a sneak peak for you, featuring the Minotaur! (Additional note: this passage survived editing and is still in Crown of Ivy largely unchanged!)

There was a time, once, that Crete felt Poseidon’s favour. King Minos asked for a sign in the form of a white bull, and Poseidon granted it. In exchange, Minos was to sacrifice the bull. The god gives, the god receives; the tide flows, the tide ebbs. But the bull was so exquisite, Minos could not bear to slaughter it. Poseidon’s vengeance for this refusal was as great as his blessing; the god drove Queen Pasiphaë mad with desire for the bull, and she gave birth to an abomination.

Mockingly, the child was called the Minotaur — the bull of Minos, evidence of the king’s hubris and greed. To his sister, however, he was Asterion. They were as all young children are, loud and frolicsome and exuberant. They built palaces in the sand and ran, laughing, down the beach. The queen watched them splashing in the rising tide, and could only see her own humiliation and pain.

Pasiphaë scolded Ariadne for her loud voice, her smile, her dancing, her running. The young princess was brought to the temple, pushed to her knees, and ordered to beg forgiveness for her disrespect to the gods. Hot tears streaked her face as she watched wax dripping from candles on the altar.

“What did I do, Mother?” She struggled to keep the telltale quiver out of her voice.

Pasiphaë stared unblinking into the candle flames. “The gods are cruel, Ariadne. We are not meant to be happy. Anything that brings you joy, they will take away.”

On the days that followed, Asterion took her hands and tried to pull her into his dance, but Ariadne tearfully shook her head. His fallen face and shuffled steps in the sand only made her tears fall faster. She did not know how to tell him she was only trying to save him.

It did not matter, in the end. One day, he disappeared, and she knew it was because she loved him. She sat on the floor of the temple and wept, unanswered pleas for his return echoing off stone pillars.

To be cursed by Poseidon and to live on an island is to always feel the curse around you. Ariadne heard him in the crashing of waves on the sand and saw him in broken seashells washed ashore. She felt him in the sharp sea breeze and in the cool water lapping at her ankles. It was like a storm was always brewing just over the horizon, and distant voices were always whispering words she couldn't understand.

Ariadne did not ask why the labyrinth was built. She had learned to accept less than she wanted in all things, hoping that it would spare her the jealous eye of the gods. The rumour was that a monster lived in the labyrinth, but she did not grant this theory much weight; after all, she knew no monsters on Crete.

31. Happily Ever After

The graveyard always smelled of lilies. The sickly sweet smell of bouquets decaying as they lay on remembered graves day after day was refreshed by offerings from old visitors and new mourners. Lilith had never had particular feelings about the scents of flowers, but she’d come to associate lilies with Jane, and therefore loved them. There were never lilies at Jane’s grave, but her favourite peonies could never overpower the sea of lilies around her.

Lilith stretched out her legs on the grass next to Jane. The sky went red as the sun descended.

“Sailors’ delight,” Jane said in a sing-song voice, her gaze lingering on a ship slowly heading out of the docks.

Lilith followed her gaze. They watched in silence until the ship disappeared over the horizon line beneath the darkening sky.

“Hey, Jane?”

“Mm?”

Lilith pulled her knees up to her chest, picking at the grass beside her feet. “Do you think...you’ll move on, someday?”

“No,” Jane replied decisively.

Lilith looked up at her. She couldn’t help but smile at the fierce expression on Jane’s heart-shaped face; if what she said wasn’t true, she was determined to make it so. “How can you be sure?”

Jane’s expression softened as she picked up Lilith’s hand and held it to her heart. “Everything I want is right here.”

Before Jane could see her tear up, Lilith closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to Jane’s. The gentle breeze rustled the lilies around them, and with the flowers’ scent on the wind and the feel of Jane against her, Lilith could believe there was no other world but this one.