The Boy with Words for Skin

Chapter 30: The Monster

The world fizzled out of the darkness in a lazy and confused way. The first thing that came to me was the pain—in my head, my chest, my legs. The next thing was that I was on my side. On cold dirt. With something on top of me.

When the spinning stopped and the blurs came into focus, I found a dirt wall just a few inches in front of my face. I turned to see what was on top of me.

"Z?" I said. My head pounded even worse when I spoke. "Z? Are you okay?" He didn't move, not even when I tried to squirm out from under him.

Every part of me was stiff, so it was hard to do, but I managed to twist onto my back and roll halfway off me. I pulled my legs free and sat up. I looked around. We were in a tiny rectangular room with a dirt floor and dirt walls. D-rip and Light were on the floor, also unconscious.

I realized that I could see because light came down from above me. My eyes slid up one of the dirt walls. The room didn't have a ceiling, but there was a ceiling high above the room. I stared for a moment, confused. And then I got it. We weren't in a room. We were in a grave.

I fell back but didn't go too far because my back hit a wall. I reached out to my sides and could touch the walls on either side of me. It felt like they were closing in.

"Looks like our brave hero's finally awake."

I looked up. Face stood at the edge of the grave, a shovel in one hand and his free arm around Keys' shoulders.

Keys' wrists and ankles were tied together. Dried blood ran down the side of his face. There was a gag in his mouth and his eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

I did my best to shove the panic down. I needed to keep my head. I glared and tried to sound intimidating. "Let us out of here right now."

"Let me think about it," Face said. He tilted his head from side to side. "Yeah. No!"

Z stirred. He moaned and rolled halfway over into a wall.

I noticed that none of us in the grave had our hands or feet tied. The grave had to have been about eight feet deep—almost three feet taller than me, the tallest in the group, but we could push someone up and out of the grave easy.  We just needed to wait for the right moment, and get everyone awake.

"And what's the big plan?" I asked. I pressed my shoe into Z's back. He moaned a little. "Feed us to the monster?"

Face laughed and shook Keys so hard his head flopped around. Then he threw his arm around his neck and pulled him close. "Ooooh! Isn't he so smart? Wow!"

I really dug the toe of my shoe into Z's spine. He whelped, jerked, and pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked around, dazed.

"As much as I look forward to actually killing you losers, we do have some business to attend to," Face said.

"What happened?" Z asked. He pulled his legs out from underneath his brother, who was starting to wake up.

There was a noise and Face turned to look at it. "Great. Bring it here. Take the shovel."

Tang appeared at the edge of the grave. He took the shovel and then handed his brother a butcher's knife.

Z kneeled next to his brother and slapped him in the face.

D-rip, suddenly awake, screamed. "What'd you do that for?" He sat up and cringed at a twist of pain in his shoulder. He pointed a finger at his brother and sprayed him in the face with a jet of water.

Z swatted his brother's hand away. "Stop, you idiot! They're going to kill us!"

D-rip looked around at the dirt walls of the grave and then up to find the two standing at the edge of the grave. "Oh. Well, we should've seen that one coming."

Face and Tang looked at each other. Tang's face showed no emotion as his brother burst into laughter.

D-rip shot Light in the face with a stream of water. That woke him up. His arms flailed and he gasped for air. He sat up and wiped away the water from his face. "What's going on?" he said. Half of the glass discs on the left side of his face were broken. The shards that had fallen away revealed red flesh underneath.

"Mirror, Mirror and Mr. Mumbles are going to feed us to the monster," D-rip said.

Face's laughter cut off. "Give me a break." He smacked his brother's arm. "They still don't get it."

"What don't we get?" Z asked.

Footsteps rumbled from another part of the basement. With each step, they grew louder. Keys tried to twist around to see it coming, but Face held him too tight to let him.

The footsteps entered the room. They were so loud it hurt my ears. The four of us in the grave looked up, waited to see the monster look down over the edge at us at any second, terrified to watch but too terrified to turn away.

Then everything was quiet.

I listened for its breathing. I listened for a growl. Nothing.

Keys kept looking around like he didn't know where it was. But that did make sense. It was right there.

Face broke the silence by bursting into laughter. "You guys are so dumb!" He laughed so hard he had to lean against Keys to keep from falling over. He laughed and laughed and I started to wonder if he'd gone crazy. Finally, his laughter wound down. He straightened up and when he spoke, his voice was filled with pride and hate.

"Let me tell you something important about the monster in the basement," he said. "Tang and me? We are the monster."