MonsterVille
Twenty

Mellie needed some time alone, time away from her life; unfortunately someone had other plans. She approached her home to replace the door frame was splintered—the impression of a thick boot indented in the sturdy wood. Somebody very determined had forced their way inside, which was actually kind of stupid given they could have walked around the back of the house and just pulled down the sheet of cardboard that was tacked up. While a broken door would normally have been her cue to turn and walk away Mellie was feeling a touch antagonistic, she was tired, she was grumpy and those few drops of River’s blood surging through her had brought her inner monster closer to the surface than she had ever experienced.

With that molten strength flowing through her she was aching for a fight. She frowned at that thought and made a mental note to watch out for it in future, her monster side made her feel painstakingly aggressive. It was good to know.

Mellie made no effort to move quietly, she could already smell the acrid body odour of whoever was waiting for her and if she could smell them with her limited senses then it was a good bet that they had smelt, or heard, her coming long before she reached the house.

She casually strolled into her lounge room and she found it utterly trashed, more so than it had been by the rat monsters. Someone had literally upended her garbage bin in the living room and liberally spread the detritus and filth around. She was pretty sure someone had defecated in the corner as well, not to mention the harsh red graffiti sprayed all over the walls. It looked like some kind of sign, slogan, tag, whatever it was the alleged street artists called their work, to her it was all indecipherable jibberish that made the streets look cheap and the town look tacky.

So it came as no surprise to her when she followed the sounds of laughter to replace a group of berserkers on her deck. The barbeque on the other hand was a surprise. It looked like they had raided her fridge and decided to cook it up while they waited. Slabs of meat were sizzling while one of the six foot two leather clad berserkers stared intently and prodded it with a skillet.

“It doesn’t actually cook faster if you poke it,” Mellie pointed out. The berserker glanced at her before he looked back at the meat and took a swig of his beer. Oh and when Mellie said they were having a barbeque; she didn’t own a barbeque. They had built a makeshift fire pit in the middle of her deck and had slung some metal plates over it to cook the meat. She was surprised they hadn’t burnt a hole through the wood yet, that was until she noticed the bricks they had lined beneath their ‘fire pit’.

“Also there’s a stove inside?” she mentioned.

Another of the berserkers stood up and brushed crumbs from his jacket, Mellie took a half step back as she prepared for the fight of her life, but the man appeared less interested in her than in taking a hunk of burning meat, slathering it in sauce and jamming it between a couple slices of bread. Thick, fluffy, homemade bread. She also didn’t own a bread maker so she had no idea how they had whipped that up.

Something was very wrong with this picture and Mellie didn’t even know where to start. Half a dozen berserkers, four guys, two girls, had trashed her place and now they were just enjoying the morning sun on her deck and having a barbeque. None of them were overly interested in trying to kill her, if anything they looked content to laze about, eat, drink and speak in some Old Norse language she didn’t have a hope of understanding. But whatever they were saying it was apparently hilarious since they kept bursting into raucous laughter.

“Melanie?” She pivoted to replace a seventh berserker standing behind her. The man was immense, easily seven foot tall in his human guise and he had a litany of scars crossing his bare chest. He wore biker boots and black leather pants with an open leather vest.

“Aha! It is you! We’ve been waiting!” he announced excitedly.

It was at that point she expected the fight to kick off; her monster side was certainly aching to come out and play. Only when the man moved, and he moved fast, he didn’t strike her. He wrapped her in a meaty bear hug and lifted her from the ground with bone crushing strength as he embraced her. “Haha! I told the boys if we waited you’d be back sooner or later.”

She was tempted to say something sarcastic like ‘Well duh this is my house,’ but given her ribs were aching from his version of a friendly greeting she thought better of it and suppressed the instinct. The assembled berserkers raised mugs and beer before sculling them down in wild actions that splashed more beer on them than in their mouths.

“I’m confused,” Mellie said as she stared up at the mammoth of a man, “Or maybe you are.” She pointed out, “Why is no one fighting?”

“Because we’re drinking!” the man announced jovially before he patted her on the head roughly enough to mess up her hair. He stepped past her and scooped a bottle of beer off the table; he smiled happily as he smashed the head off and sloshed the beer all over himself before taking a deep swig. The jagged glass cut his mouth but he didn’t seem to care. Berserkers were known for their high threshold for pain, or maybe for their rather high enjoyment of it. “But if you wish us to fight!”

He grabbed the man cooking the meat by the scruff of the neck and gave him a hearty swing, he flailed through the air and crashed into the wall with a meaty smack and one of the other berserkers promptly planted a fist in his face and knocked him out cold.

The mammoth berserker nodded happily in approval; “Yes?” he nodded, confirming he had done what she wanted.

“Not exactly…” she said a little hopelessly, “Maybe we should start at the beginning. Why are you having a barbeque on my deck and what are you doing here?”

“We were hungry!” he announced happily, “killing rats is hungry work.”

“Rats?” she asked.

The berserker scratched his head and pointed off the side of the deck. Fearing it was some kind of trick Mellie very gingerly looked over the edge only to do a double take as she looked at the bodies of dozens of the pincer wielding bipedal rats. Most of them were in full grotesque rat shape while a couple of them were caught between rat and teenage human street kids. She frowned down at them.

“Why are there are a dozen dead rats on my lawn?” she asked.

“We found them in your house,” he boomed back, “at first we thought they were friends but friends don’t spray the paint on the walls.” He gestured to the living room; it was only as she glanced back in did she see it. Tears welled in her eyes and her jaw quivered. The graffiti was just messy but hanging above the fireplace where the beautiful portrait of Katie-Cam hung there were jagged streaks of red spray paint in the places that hadn’t been slashed open by pincers.

The rats could have shredded every piece of furniture in her house, broken every plate and gummed up the plumbing for all she would have cared, but that picture… it had been a masterpiece, she had spent months shaping every line to exquisite detail, every brush stroke had been thought out days ahead… but more than that, it was the violation. The desecration of her friend.

The mammoth berserker clamped a hand down on her shoulder.

“Aye,” he commiserated with her, “that is how we felt too.”

“Why did you come here?” Mellie asked again. She turned away from the house. She couldn’t bear to look at the picture for a second more. It was breaking her heart.

“We came for your head,” he said with the same enthusiasm he had thrown his comrade into the wall. “You killed head of berserker pack and frightened men away. We couldn’t let that stand, thought we should make an example of you.”

“So now we fight?” Mellie asked just a touch eagerly.

“No,” he corrected; “Now we drink!” he shoved a mug into her hand and Mellie sighed as she threw her head back and tried to scull it. She had no idea what she was drinking but it was good, warm, and it went down smooth. Although she spilled a good portion of it down her shirt when the berserker clapped her on the back in a hearty fashion.

“Another!” he declared and she smashed that one down too, which left her feeling a might tipsy. Not the best idea when she stood amongst a group of monsters who professed they had come to kill her.

“Now we fight?” she asked as she blinked rapidly.

“Now we eat!” he corrected her. He plopped her down on the deck and served up a hunk of sizzling bacon which made her stomach turn at the thought of it putting it in her mouth. She couldn’t handle cooked foods, her body rejected them viciously but the berserkers had gone to the trouble of cooking it up so she took a nibble, just a little bite that she had to force past her gag reflex. She already felt sick to her stomach.

The berserker laughed at her expression and switched out her plate with a hunk of the uncooked meat which she dug into with voracious abandon. She tore it with her teeth and the juices coated her hands as she worried at it and the berserker just continued to laugh. Like her he had taken a chunk of the raw meat and ripped a hunk off with his teeth.

“Cooked meat is for the weak.” He declared with another hearty clap on her shoulder, “Raw meat is for men.” She assumed he meant men in the figurative sense of being strong and not in the sense that she needed to have external reproductive organs to qualify.

“Now we fight?” she asked again wearily.

“You are very eager to fight little berserker.”

“Well I- wait, what? Little berserker?” she repeated dumbly.

He nodded sagely, “You are very small for a berserker but it is ok, you have a big heart and a big appetite. We make exception.”

“You think I’m a berserker?” she asked like he was crazy.

He barked a laugh, “Berserkers are made not born. You killed our leader,” he shrugged. “We kill you, or we make you berserker.”

“So um, you said you came to kill me,” she reminded him, “why the change of heart?”

“Bad form to kill girl with big heart, big appetite and can drink like berserker.” To him that probably even made sense.