Hometown - Chapter 6: Maternity

Hometown – Chapter Six: Maternity

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	Susie saw a dead body inside the car.

	The driver’s door seemed to have been torn off with a tremendous force and tossed aside, as it was nowhere to be found nearby. This gave Susie a clear view of the corpse slumped over the steering wheel.

	“It has to be dead,” Susie thought, holding her mouth with one hand to contain a gasp as she walked over to examine the body.

	From its massive and bulky frame, its limbs thick and muscular, Susie guessed that it was a monster. Moreover, the body had feminine curves and long, wavy hair that, although messy, was discernibly ladylike. She was wearing a jacket that was covered in so much brown, dried-up blood that it was impossible to determine the true colour of the fabric underneath.

	Susie wrinkled her nose and sniffed. She could smell the rich odour of iron in the air, either from the blood or something in the car, but there was nothing else. She could not pin down the stench of a rotting corpse, which she thought was odd because it looked like the driver had been dead and abandoned for days. It made no sense. There was nothing about her that made it seem like this was fresh.

	The shaft of the fire axe creaked as Susie squeezed it tightly. She decided to look at the body even closer, though with some hesitation. Monsters did not leave bodies when they die, and the last time she had stumbled into a creature like this it had attacked her.

	There were no visible wounds on the body, but her brown, dishevelled hair that covered most of her face looked like a bloodied hairball caught in a shower drain. From what else Susie could see, the body’s pale purple skin looked drained and clammy, and there was an uncomfortable heaviness in her posture that made Susie uneasy.

	She thought bodies were supposed to look like they were sleeping. She’d been at a funeral before, and the body there was nothing like this one. It looked like the driver would wake up with a massive pain in her neck from how it was bearing her entire weight as it rested against the steering wheel, but Susie figured that the dead did not care about those kinds of thing

	“Uggh…” Susie murmured. She considered turning the corpse over to get a better view of her face, but her once active sense of adventure had died hours ago. She’d rather not try her luck.

	Susie glanced inside the car through the windows, spotting two brown paper bags in the back seat. She thought nothing of it at first, but she licked her lips when she noticed the familiar packaging of Human-Os and other tooth-rotting snacks.

	Pausing for a moment, Susie pondered on whether the food would even be edible after all this time. Assuming the car had indeed been abandoned for days. However, a low rumbling sound from her stomach persuaded her to take a risk.

	‘Modern food’s like fifty-percent plastic anyway. It should be fiiine.’

	Susie walked over and opened the rear door of the car, and while the buffet of food in those paper bags made her mouth water like she had swallowed a rainstorm, there was a moment of apprehension as she looked back at the body in the driver’s seat.

	‘Feels kind of weird to be looting this dead chick’s groceries.’

	With a shrug, the monster did not think about that subject much further, instead opting to move the brown bags over and sit down on the leather seat beside them. She placed her axe and backpack on the carpeted floor by her feat, and while she did not think much about it at the time, there was a faint dampness to the floor that Susie thought was odd.

	“Jackpot,” Susie thought as she shoved her hand deep inside one of the paper bags and pulled out a party-sized bag of cheese chips.

	While the mauve monster was worried about getting another mouthful of ash like she had at Martin’s campsite, she was too starved to turn back now, and she popped open the bag and poured down her gullet bundles of cheese-sticks like it was a thresher.

	Susie gagged, but unlike the previous dinner she had before, this time it was only because of the sheer amount of chips she was stuffing down her throat. It was like a river of cheese dust and cheap cornmeal, but it was nourishment for the hungry monster all the same.

	“Food. Real FOOD,” Susie mused with her eyes closed in blissful thought. She’d smile from ear to ear would it not have interfered with her cheese puff crunching. Finding something to sate her hunger after all that time felt so good that she thought she was going to be sick. Susie was so content in the moment that she wished Kris was there with her just so he could see her chug all the chips down; she must have eaten an entire bag in one breath.

	A loud crackling noise radiating from somewhere between her feet stole Susie’s attention away from her snacks. Susie bit her tongue as a thick, cold drop of sweat rolled down her forehead.

	Susie looked down between her legs and saw her backpack, and she let out a sigh of relief when she noticed that the noise coming from her bag must have been from the broken radio she’d been carrying around all day.

	As the radio continued to blare out static sounds, Susie began to worry. ‘Is someone trying to communicate with me? Sheesh, what an awful noise.’ The dragon inhaled and held her breath, her jaws clenching and making a sharp “KRUNCH” sound as her teeth smashed the one remaining cheese puff in her mouth. ‘I’d toss this thing, but it’d probably come back to haunt me like my axe.’

	Susie looked up and saw the dead driver leaning over the backrest of her seat. Its neck was twisted around almost like an owl as it stared at Susie like a mother checking up on her child strapped into their safety seat.

	“Stare” might have been too strong of a word, as there was a black void where the driver’s face should be, like someone had fired a cannonball straight through its head but it never came out the other side. Around the dark hole was a rim that resembled parts of its chin and its cheeks, but the skin was swollen and cracked, from which a black tar-like liquid oozed all over the floor near Susie’s shoes.

	Susie whimpered a “N-No” as her limbs cramped up. Her first instinct was to explode off her seat and run out of the car, but she was locked in place.

	The corpse was also still to the point of seeming lifeless again. It was like a statue, but Susie knew better than to presume it moving was all in her imagination. She clearly remembered seeing the body resting against the steering wheel and not watching the backseats while its face drained like a sewage pipe.

	There was nothing worse to Susie than this motionless stalemate. She could handle the body lunging and clawing at her like in those zombie movies she would watch with Kris, but this was like waking up and finding a tall stranger in the shadows watching you sleep. You can look him in the eyes and acknowledge his presence, but all he does in turn is continue staring.

	Susie had no idea how to respond other than to let out a gasp, which then turned into a brief scream as two gnarled arms surfaced from the hole on the driver’s face. It looked like the head was growing antennae like some strange insect, but instead of standing tall in the air, the cold, clammy hands reached down at the corpse’s clothes and clenched on tight. It started to pull as more of it flooded out of the hole.

	Susie looked at the creature in front of her bug-eyed, her nails digging into the leather she was sitting on as her muscles came back to life. “I’m not having any of this!” she shouted internally as she reached for the door handle beside her, but as she pulled the handle it snapped off like it was made of foam.

	A strong shiver ran down Susie’s back as she looked out the window, towards the freedom that seemed so far from her.

	Susie stared back at the broken handle in her palm, and the material began to bubble and dissolve like a chocolate bar exposed to a radiator. Susie dropped the melted goo on the floor as if it were molten lava, though strangely the liquid did not seem hot on its own.

	Susie turned her attention back towards the driver, and she wished she hadn’t. The hands were pulling what seemed to be the rest of its body through the hole, and Susie audibly gulped as she spotted what appeared to be the crown of someone’s head rising from the void. It was like some swamp-monster coming out of a black bog.

	Suddenly, the world was spinning around and around. Susie could hear a high-pitched wailing sound that deafened her ears. The howling seemingly came from the driver’s gaping hole as if it were a speaker. Even looking at the body sent a searing pain through Susie’s core, but she could not tear her eyes away no matter how much it hurt. It was like watching a train wreck that was about to happen, but Susie’s feet were nailed to the tracks.

	“My child?”

	Susie closed her eyes and blinked. She could feel a murmuring throughout the car as rows of trees passed by in a blur of brown and green.

	The car was moving along a road, that much was certain to Susie as she looked out of the windows. She rubbed the sweat off her brow and then bent over to reach for her axe on the floor, gripping the handle tightly as she rested it on her lap. Even if the weapon would have been useless in the tight confines of a car, it at least brought the monster comfort.

	“Susie?” a familiar voice rang out from the driver’s seat in front of her. The eldritch monster was gone, and in its place was the back of a familiar white-furred neck.

	Susie gulped as she gripped her axe. “Mrs. Dreemurr?” she asked with a weak voice.

	“We’re almost home now,” the goat mother said in a sweet, calm voice that would calm a crying baby. “Did you bring Kris a present?”

	Susie held her head as it throbbed. She had a lot to piece together, and Mrs. Dreemurr was already tossing a curveball at her. ‘What the fuck is she talking about?’

	“What?” the dragon tersely answered with some difficulty. Her mouth felt heavy, not quite numb but almost like she was losing control of her muscles. Strangely, this did not bother the monster too much. It was almost soothing.

	Toriel did not budge. She kept her eyes on the road, her hands gripping the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o’clock. “Alphys is hosting a spelling bee today. Did you forget?”

	‘What the FUCK is she talking about? How does that have anything to do with giving Kris a gift?’

 	An endless line of trees continued to pass by the car, almost making Susie sick as she tried to track each individual trunk. She released a slow, dragged out sigh as she realized that she was on the same narrow road as before. ‘How did I even get here again? What’s going on?’

	Susie brought her gaze back to Toriel, who was humming a playful tune. She could not get a good look at the goat’s face from where she was sitting behind her. ‘It had to be Toriel though… right?’ Susie scooted over and looked for Toriel in the rear-view mirror, but as misfortune would have it, all she could see was Toriel’s neck and below in the glass.

	Toriel took her attention off the road to lean over and look at Susie. “Is there something wrong, dear? You’re quiet today.”

	As if by instinct, Susie turned her vision away from Toriel as soon as she started moving. She had no idea why, but something told her it was the wisest decision. All she knew is that if she saw Toriel, she’d never see again.

	‘Maybe I’m just being paranoid. I already know I’m going insane.’

	Curiously, there was a human sitting in the backseat across from Susie. He was a short thing with brown hair, and the coat he wore hugged his body as if he wanted to hide inside it.

	“Martin?”

	“Susie,” the human simply responded. He turned his body towards her, his face giving the monster a warm but empty expression.

	Martin lit a match in front of his mouth as if to light a pipe or cigarette, but Susie was having a hard time determining if Martin even had anything in his mouth to begin. She could feel her vision fading and blurring. In one moment, Martin had a long pipe in his hand, but in other moments he might as well have been holding nothing. Still, there was a dull orange glow that lit up the human’s face followed by puffs of smoke as he parted his lips.

	Blowing out a ring of smoke from his mouth, Martin gave Susie a weak but friendly smile. “It would not be appropriate for someone like me to lecture someone such as you on this topic, but it would be wise to abandon your burdens.”

	Susie tried to respond to Martin, but her confusion came out as nothing but a “Wuh-Wuh?”

	Martin took his wooden pipe out of his mouth and waved it in the air. “The King is back, did you hear? It would appear that we have to begin our adventure all over again. Fine with me. I did not get the ending I wanted.”

	Susie closed her eyes as a wave of smoke wafted towards her face. She had experimented with a discarded cigarette or two before, but this smoke was something else. She had no idea what was burning inside Martin’s pipe, but it must have been something rancid. Heavy, thick, black smoke was beginning to fill the car and Susie was finding it hard to breathe.

	When she felt the smoke beginning to clear up, Susie opened her eyes and saw Kris sitting across from her. His colourful green sweater was like a beacon of light to her, and the warm, gentle smile on his face felt so much more genuine than Martin’s that Susie was embarrassed she had mistaken him for her friend.

	“Kris!” Susie managed to shout, but she could not say anything else as if someone had sown her lips together.

	Kris pointed towards the front of the car. “You need to keep your eyes on the road, Susie.”

	Susie blinked and glared ahead. She was shocked to find that she was looking through the windshield, watching the road being consumed under the car, as she held onto the steering wheel. She was now driving the car. Somehow.

	Keeping the car on the road was an arduous task for Susie. She could feel the steering wheel fighting against her with each turn she made. It was like the car was stubborn and wanted to drive itself onto the sidepath beside the road.

	Susie furrowed her eyebrows and frowned. ‘Wait, what’s going on here?’ She looked over to her friend, who was whistling a tune as he kicked his feet up and down. Kris never whistled, and Susie was sure that he’d always sit perfectly still like he was a background character in a painting.

	“What’s going on here?” Susie repeated aloud.

	Kris stared at her and smiled. “You need to keep your eyes on the road,” he seconded as well.

	Susie shook her head, gripping her steering wheel. She was getting nothing out of him.

	Looking up at her rear-view mirror to get a look at the backseat, Susie noticed that the glass had been charred by what seemed to have been from a fire. The entire thing was blackened and rendered unusable, and it was a shock to Susie that it had not fallen off entirely. The bits of plastic that held the glass in place had mostly melted off some time ago, leaving behind a pocked surface.

	Susie thought about turning around and checking on the seats behind manually using her own eyes, but she could feel a presence behind her that sent a shiver down her spine. She could tell that there was someone sitting behind her. It was taking all her strength to hold back the temptation to peek, but she managed to contain her curiosity. “Never look back,” she whispered. Besides, she thought, she needed to watch the road.

	There was a gigantic monster in the distance. It was the tallest thing in sight, and it was so massive that even when Susie leaned her head closer to the windshield, she couldn’t get a full view of the monster. It looked to be an enormous mountain of pure white with legs as thick as redwoods that shook the earth with each passing step.

	Remarkably, this sight did not faze Susie much. She could feel the hair on her body pricking up from the looming danger at what was up ahead, but for reasons she could not explain, she showed no outward reaction to the giant.

	Susie turned her head back towards Kris, giving him a questioning look as she would sometimes do.

	“There’s a garage over to the side of the road ahead. We can hide from the monster in there.” Kris pointed at an even narrower path down the road, which could hold only one moving vehicle at any given time.

	“Huh,” Susie thought, seeing the path come up ahead herself. It seemed like this entire stretch of highway was a one-way road to nowhere, but she did not question her fortune.

	Susie turned her steering wheel towards the new road but panicked when she heard a bump shake the car, grinding the vehicle to a sudden, dead halt.

	“What did you do?” Kris asked, holding onto his head.

	“What the fuck?” Susie shouted, pounding her foot against the peddle and flooding the car with even more gas. “The stupid car stopped for no reason!”

	What could be best described as a wave of fear flowed down Susie’s face and body as she heard a loud splash when she stomped her foot against the peddle one more time. She could feel her socks getting soaked, and whatever was drenching her was rising fast as she could feel it crawling up her leg.

	Susie became terror-stricken when she considered that she might have crashed into a small stream or river off to the side of the road. She immediately went to open the door and jump out, even forgetting that she was stills strapped to her seat by its belt, but it would have been all for nothing anyway as the door handle snapped off and melted in her hand like last time.

	What Susie saw through the window shook her. It was not just the car—she could see everything flooding outside. It looked like a dam had broken as water steadily rose like someone pouring water into a saucer.

	The frigid cold water had risen to her knees now, soaking her lower-half completely. She needed to act quickly.

	Susie looked around for some way to roll down her window, and she could feel her hands shaking as she found another handle beside the door. The car must have been an old model, as it appeared that this handle was used to roll down the window.

	Susie almost squealed with joy when she managed to grab the handle without snapping it off. She did not hesitate using the handle for its true purpose and began winding it in circles, but instead of fresh open air greeting the draconic monster as the window rolled down, a huge deluge of water spilled through the crack she had opened. The sheer water pressure exerted on the window snapped the glass straight off, smacking Susie in the face as tons upon tons of water flooded into the car.

	Her vision had gone to black and water was filling her lungs at an alarming rate. She was going to die here. She knew it. She could feel it.

	Susie panicked and reached to unbuckle her seat belt, but it was like her arms were weighed down by heavy shackles, and when she did manage to grab onto the buckle it seemed as if her fingers were sliding through the metal.

	Then suddenly, Susie could feel someone grabbing her from behind and pulling her off her seat. She was too weak to fight back anymore, and she was not sure if she even wanted to. Her fate was out of her hands.

	And then there was nothing.

	…

	…

	…

	Warmth.

	Susie felt warm and secure under the covers as she held onto her stuffed dragon plushie. She’d always hug the stuffed monster whenever she was scared or needed to have a good night’s rest, so yesterday must have been something awful if she needed to pull it out.

	She didn’t want to get out of bed. Her blanket and comforter were like a pleasant barrier protecting her from the waking world. She was safe and comfortable in her bed, and she even pulled her covers up over her head just to block the bright morning sunlight from assaulting her eyes. She could stay like this forever.

	KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

	Susie groaned. “Just give me five more minutes!” she shouted, rolling over to her side as if to bargain with herself. She could never sleep on her side, but it was still comfortable. She’d slowly wake up doing this, it was foolproof!

	“Nuh uh uh! You told me that five minutes ago, missy!” a feminine voice shouted back. It was strong and authoritative but also kind and motherly at the same time. “Get your little butt out of bed before you’re late for school! Mrs. Dreemurr invited your dad over to talk about crime and safety, and you’d embarrass him by showing up late!”

	“Uuuuugghhhhhhhhhhh,” Susie moaned for as long as she could for emphasis. She threw her sheets off her body and laid on her back like a starfish. Waking a sleeping dragon was no easy task, and Susie was going to drag this on for as long as she could.

	“Come on, Susie!” the voice shouted through the door again. “I’ll even drive you over! All you have to do is get changed!”

	Susie sat up, running her hand through her bedraggled hair. ‘School blows. It’s not like I have any friends there waiting for me...’

	Shaking her head, Susie mustered up the strength to swing her legs over the side of her bed. “…Yeah, sure, whatever. Just give me a minute to get dressed, mom!”

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Next on Hometown - Chapter Seven: Forgotten