Hey everyone. Here’s an all-new chapter. As always, please let me know your thoughts. You are my “test readers” before the story becomes permanent. Podcast coming soon… Enjoy!
-KC
THEN:
If only the boy had only known what Mr. Snatchum would become, and that his once boring life would turn so quickly sinister and deadly, filled with constant danger.
But in the early days, it was a hard-fought battle just to keep Mr. Snatchum alive.
After rescuing Mr. Snatchum from the hidden cave prison, the boy took pity on his pitful condition and brought him home.
The wretched creature appeared fragile and near death, too weak to pose a threat to a dust bunny, let alone the notorious monsters to come that would challenge the most warped imagination.
The boy decided to keep Mr. Snatchum hidden, so he stowed him away in a shoe box under his bed. Although he felt guilty about not telling his parents, there was something about the creature that made him instinctively guard his secret. He sensed that there was more to his mysterious pet than what met the eye.
The boy feared Mr. Snatchum might die as he refused all food. The boy tried to feed him live mice, dead mice, crickets, grasshoppers, and even an ugly black rat he had caught after suffering countless nasty scratches and nearly getting his finger bitten off. The creature under his bed refused the bouquet of rodents with a turn of his dented mushroom head, much to the relief of the squirming vermin.
“What do you want to eat?” The boy repeatedly asked his finicky familiar.
Every time, Mr. Snatchum would pivot his mantis-like eyes and stare with apparent malice toward the woods lining the horizon.
“Something out there in the woods?”
Mr. Snatchum slowly blinked. His blinks were always as good as a yes. He hooked a sleek claw around the straw in the glass of water and met the boy’s eyes with his unflinching gaze.
“More water?”
Mr. Snatchum slow-blinked again.
So for months on end, the boy brought his pet water by the gallon. An idea came to him to give his weak pet a sports drink to provide it with an energy boost through enrichments he learned about called electrolytes. Mr. Snatchum eagerly slurped up the nutrient-rich liquid—especially the yellow-flavored kind.
Within a few weeks, Mr. Snatchum began to show signs of increased strength and mobility. He effortlessly ran laps around his bedroom walls and ceiling by scuttling about like a spider in training. He still flat-out rejected any solid food, alive or dead, insect or animal.
So, the boy had to convince his parents that he suddenly craved lemon-lime-flavored Gatorade more than any other drink.
For the first time since spotting Mr. Snatchum suffering in the cage, the boy had hope for his survival.
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Not long after, the boy awoke with a start in the middle of the night to find Mr. Snatchum missing from his shoe box sanctuary beneath the bed.
His window was slightly ajar. That explained why he could see his breath escape in billowing puffs, the crisp autumn air making him shiver.
The boy walked over to the window and gazed at the moonlit meadow behind his house. The grass was covered in dew, which sparkled in the magical light.
Beyond the field, there was a blanket of complete darkness draped over the landscape in the form of the woods that covered the foot of the chain of mountains that surrounded their valley as if in a protective embrace. It was on that very mountain that the boy had discovered Mr. Snatchum’s hidden cave, despite being warned against going up there alone.
The sudden eruption of terrifying yowls, growls, and shrieks from the woods made the boy feel frightened.
The ruckus continued, traveling at astonishing speed from deep within the grove until it reached the edge of the forest, where the trees violently shook, then stilled.
A new trail emerged from the woods, slicing through the meadow and winding ominously towards his house.
The boy gasped, feeling unsettled about what might be coming. He backpedaled and tripped over a pair of sneakers he had recklessly discarded on the floor.
Something hurriedly skittered up the outside of his house, rattling the siding.
There was a wild determined scratching at his windowsill.
Two huge claws, too big to be Mr. Snatchum’s, slipped through the gap beneath the window and sank, stabbing through the wooden frame as easily as if it were a stick of butter. Then another four-fingered hand with long slender fingers dark as midnight pushed the window up.
The boy shuddered and looked around frantically, spotting no good hiding place. He dove behind his bed at the same moment he heard something of significant weight drop onto his bedroom floor and let out a wheezing rasp that almost sounded like a hiss. A smell not unlike rotting fish wafted through the air.
Then the boy heard rapid sniffing and creaking floorboards; something big was prowling about his room.
The boy slid under his bed, praying he hadn’t made a sound, fighting the urge to cry. He was too terrified to call out to his parents for help and found it hard to breathe.
The sniffing sound grew closer, as did the creature’s hideous crooked black toenails tapping the wooden floor as they approached his hiding place under the bed. The creature’s feet were covered in a constellation of oozing warts on swamp-colored, sickly-looking skin.
The boy was still trying hard to hold his breath to avoid being detected. Suddenly, the creature made a growling noise that sounded like a small motor starting. The boy recoiled in disgust as the creature made a revolting smacking sound as if it was slurping its lips together.
The boy was about to try to escape the way he had come in when he noticed the springs on the bottom of his bed move.
Familiar eyes with slits for pupils, backlit by an eerie yellow light, suddenly opened, staring at the boy.
Mr. Snatchum!
His pet monster gave him a slow reassuring blink, then, with what looked like a devious gleam in his eye, turned in the direction of the monster’s feet and sprang out from beneath the bed quick as a shot.
The repulsive feet flew up off the ground, followed by a yelp, then the devious hiss he had heard before.
The boy heard a loud commotion in his room, with objects crashing to the floor as a squall of pencils and papers flew everywhere, scratching and banging against the walls.
The ruckus ended with an odd sound: like someone was choking, and he was pretty sure it was Mr. Snatchum.
The boy poked his head out from the end of the bed and froze in horror.
A spider-like creature with multiple hairy long legs was perched between two walls.
The boy shivered as the monster held Mr. Snatchum by the throat between the sinister claws he’d seen come through the window.
The monster had a dark appearance with wet, stringy hair that writhed like moving shadows. Despite having barbed hairs on its insectile-looking legs, the rest of its body was mostly hairless and covered in repulsive warts.
As it opened its mouth, an enormous amount of drool spilled onto Mr. Snatchum's head, creating a clear bubble that looked like a helmet. Mr. Snatchum's eyes were bulging, and his pupils had shrunk to mere specks as he made gasping sounds, indicating that he was unable to breathe. He would drown in the thing’s spit!
The boy searched the corners of his room and spied a baseball bat his dad had given him, hoping to raise a Major League Baseball star with little luck so far.
The more practical side of his conscious screamed at the boy to dart back under the bed and let this thing take Mr. Snatchum and go about his way. But he just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the right thing to do.
The boy decided then and there that Mr. Snatchum was no longer a pet, but a dear friend. And his friend had taken on something way too challenging for his first hunting attempt. He needed his help.
Mr. Snatchum raised his head and met his eyes, giving a slow but desperate blink.
The boy swung as hard as he could in a downward chopping motion, aiming for the thing’s joints on its skinny legs.
SWIP!
“Huh?” The monster grunted, turning its bloated demonic face to see what had gotten Mr. Snatchum’s attention. As it protectively shifted its leg, the bat hit the wall, leaving a sizable dent. The monster had lopsided green eyes with red pupils, and they narrowed, staring at the boy with evil intentions.
The monster screamed in a rage, and leaped, unhinging its jaw until the boy saw nothing but a large gaping hole coming at him lined with razor-sharp teeth.
The monster had his mouth fitted over the boy’s head, about to swallow him whole when a spiked tongue shot out of the darkness, stopping just short of the boy’s nose, before retreating like an elastic cord.
It turned out the harpoon tongue belonged to Mr. Snatchum, who had speared his quarry from behind by punching straight through its head.
The monster’s jaws flapped back uselessly like a deflated balloon, and the fiend went cross-eyed and toppled over, now stone dead. Even at his diminished size, Mr. Snatchum was able to catch the gruesome creature’s body before it could fully crash onto the floor, but he struggled to keep it upright. The boy grunted as he jumped in to help steady the thing’s repulsive, greasy body.
“Hey, what’s all the racket about? You okay?” came the voice of the boy’s father. His parents must have heard the ridiculous din they made. How could they not?
A light flipped on in the hallway and there was a thumping as hurried footsteps arrived outside of his closed bedroom door.
Mr. Snatchum gestured towards their felled foe and then indicated the open window with a nod of his head.
“Just a second,” the boy answered as groggily as he could manage, hoping he sounded sleepy and out of it, as they dragged the immense monster’s corpse with great difficulty to the window.
The boy gagged, nearly throwing up, as the expired thing reeked of vile, rotten meat. The boy strained with all his might to hold up the monster’s oily legs while helping Mr. Snatchum shove it out the window. The slimy disgusting warts oozing all over his fingers were almost too much to take.
“Hey, why’s this door locked?” The boy’s father said, frantically wriggling the knob from the other side.
They pushed the monster out the window, causing a loud thud as it hit the ground.
“What was that?” Asked the boy’s father.
Mr. Snatchum leaped onto the windowsill and turned his spindly body now silhouetted against the moonlight, then did a backflip, disappearing into the night.
The boy panicked as there was no way Mr. Snatchum would be capable of dragging the body away by himself before his father saw it.
The boy closed the window as quietly as he could manage and locked it.
“Hey! This isn’t funny. I’m breaking down the door!” warned his father, hurtling all of his weight against the bedroom door.
“Hold on, I’m awake!” Said the boy, unlocking the door. The boy was tap dancing in his head about how to explain everything.
His father flung open the door and flipped on his bedroom light, wild-eyed and checking every corner top to bottom. The boy cringed as the monster’s sludge would be everywhere. But to his amazement, the floor was bone dry and clean.
“What happened?”
“Oh, uh… I must have had a nightmare and fallen out of bed.”
“All the way over here?” His father asked incredulously, running his hand over the dent in the wall.
“I-I guess.”
“You guess? Did you not hear strange noises outside? Whoa.” His father approached his window. “What did this to your windowsill?” his father said, inspecting the huge gouge marks the monster had left in the wood.
The boy shrugged.
His father hurriedly unlocked his window and flung it open, sticking out his head.
“Dad wait!”
“Wait for what?”
Did he not see Mr. Snatchum and the bloated dead monster on the ground?
The boy leaned over and stuck his head out of a small corner of the window his father wasn’t occupying to investigate, looking down with as much confusion as his father.
No Mr. Snatchum.
No dead creature.
“Could’ve sworn I heard something,” his father muttered.
“I think there was a catfight earlier,” the boy suggested.
“Or raccoons. Probably just a rutting buck out there banging into trees. They’re obnoxious this time of year.”
“You know what? I think I did see a wild buck charge at my window, but I thought it was only a dream. Yeah, that must be it. I opened my window just a crack because I got too hot.”
His father paused as if sniffing the air for a lie. Finally, he scratched his head. “Okay, well. Just go back to bed, we’ll investigate in the morning.”
As things returned to “normal” and his father left the room after tucking him in again, the boy wished he could tell him about everything. But where to start?
He did know a couple of facts that only an hour ago would have seemed impossible:
Monsters were real, and always on the hunt.
And Mr. Snatchum needed his help more than ever to rid the world of them.