Dark Blue Monstropolis

Ken sat on the beach, waiting like he was told to. The sun had set over the water to the west nearly a half-hour before, and fifteen minutes before that the mobile floodlight units had shown up. Now this one patch of beach looked like the sun had finished setting in the west and then showed up to have a bit of a lie-down right here.

Ken was eighteen. He was clad only in cargo shorts and wore a full body tan like only those who live perpetually on beaches seem to be able to do and do well. He leaned back against the peeling paint of the lifeguard stand and simply marked time. They told him not to go anywhere, so he had complied. Said someone would come to talk with him. Fine. He waited.

After another ten minutes of nothing–nothing but people in the hazmat suits wandering in and out and around the hastily constructed tent on the sand like overdressed ants–one of the ants came out to speak with him. Between the tent and the suited-up ants, Ken was reminded somehow of a circus.

“Ken?” he asked, smiling. “Ken Amorri?”

Ken stood up, brushed sand from the seat of his shorts and nodded. “That’s me.”

The man kept smiling. He was dressed in a hazmat suit–except the head piece and gas mask were missing, with no sign of them. “I’m William Holland,” he said. “I appreciate your patience, but I just wanted to make sure I talked with you so we could have a complete report of what happened.”

Ken crossed his arms. “I already told the two men who showed up first what happened.”

Holland smiled and nodded, “Of course you did. But let’s just pretend I haven’t already been briefed by them and you tell me. How’s that?” Holland reached inside the hazmat suit and pulled out a small device he had on a lanyard around his neck. He pressed a button and a dark blue light began to flash slowly. “Start from the beginning.”

“I was taking a walk on the beach…”

“Uh-huh. And what time was that?”

“Before seven.”

“And where did you find the body?”

Ken pointed at the circus tent. “Pretty much where you found it. I didn’t go near it. I didn’t touch it.” He added after a moment, “I remembered the warnings at the entrance to the beach.”

Holland nodded, still smiling. “That’s excellent. That’s good work.” Holland tucked the device back into the hazmat suit, waited a moment, then tilted his head, looking at Ken with a different sort of smile. “You’ve…never seen one before…have you?”

Ken raised his eyebrows. “So he’s…it’s…one of….?”

Holland nodded again. “Oh yes. You were right to call it in. But you’ve…never seen one before.”

Ken shook his head. “No. I mean…I’ve seen vids. Heard stories. But…no.”

Holland’s smile changed again. Not necessarily in a pleasant way. “Well…this will be educational then. Come with me.”

Before they entered the circus tent proper, Ken stopped. Holland immediately sensed this and stopped at the flap. “Don’t I…?” Ken began.

Holland tugged at the headless hazmat suit. “Need one of these? Not really. He’s fully isolated now and at this point these are just a formality. Reassuring, but…you won’t be in here long enough. I’ll give you a peek and then send you on your way with our thanks.”

Ken shrugged. The curiosity of youth pulled him forward and Holland held back the flap for him.

When Ken walked in, two men in full hazmat gear stepped forward but Holland held up a hand. “He’s with me. He called it in originally.”

The two nodded and went back about their business, both with handheld devices, tapping away with a stylus built into the finger of one glove.

In the absolute center of the tent there was a clear cube that looked to be an inch thick. Were this an actual circus tent with actual rings, this would have been the center ring: the star attraction. Standing eight feet high and eight feet across, it seemed to be of transparent steel or some other such substance. Around the cube, at a distance of eight or nine feet, a red circle had been laid around the cube on top of the sand.

Inside the cube stood a terrified man.

The man had his arms wrapped around himself as though he were cold, and he was slowly turning and turning in a circle. His face was a mask of misery. Until his turning brought him to where he could see Ken clearly.

“You,” the man said simply. “Listen…you look like a reasonable young man. You have to tell these people there’s been a terrible mistake.”

The man was completely bald on top, wearing bifocals, and dressed in what seemed to be jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. He looked…incredibly ordinary.

“I don’t know how I got here,” the man continued. “I just woke up and was in this box. Please…I have a wife and child. They’re waiting for me at home.” His face seemed to grow more frantic. “Please. Listen to me. Can…can you just bring me a phone? I’m allowed a phone call, aren’t I? Can’t you bring me a phone?”

Ken looked at Holland, who was in turn looking at him, watching for the younger man’s reactions. Ken became increasingly uneasy. Whatever he had expected to see inside the cube, it was not this.

Holland cleared his throat and said simply, “Step over the red line.”

Ken blinked and looked from Holland to the line and back again. “What was that?”

“Step over the line,” Holland repeated. “It’s fine…you’re safe. Trust me.”

Ken decided that he didn’t trust Holland, but again…his youth betrayed him and sent him, nodding slightly, over the red line.

It happened so fast, Ken never saw the man change. One moment the man was there–the worried, balding man wanting to get back to his wife and child–and then the voice disappeared. The man disappeared. And something else was there in its place.

Looking back over the incident–which is something Ken would find himself spending far too much time doing over the rest of his life–he found that it had happened just that quickly. One minute man, next minute…not. It had happened too fast for his mind to fully process it.

The main thing he remembered was the face. The man’s face had changed–more specifically, the jaw had become detached from the rest of the face, and it stretched downwards, stretching the skin with it: a gaping mineshaft of a mouth.

The arms, folded previously, now were no longer arms at all: they were not unlike a swarm of angry bees, though still attached to his/its body. Still attached, because they banged on the transparent steel. Over. And over. And over again.

Despite the horrific sight the befuddled man had become, it wasn’t the savage attack on the cube that convinced Ken that he had come so close to dying. Not just now–not just the seemingly mindless assault on the barrier that would have been, could have been him. Had he not heeded the signs on the beach…had he approached the body washed up on the shore…

No, none of that brought Ken to grips with the fragility of his hold on life. It was instead: the sound.

No longer a befuddled stream of pleas, it was instead the cry of a beast. More to the point, the roar of a lion as though it were crying out through a throatful of locusts…who were also roaring.

Ken stood for a moment, dumbfounded, watching this creature that so clearly wanted him and every other living creature on that beach dead. Watching it attack the cube with a never yielding ferocity.

He felt a tug at his back and was grateful he didn’t piss himself right then and there. It was Holland.

“Just step back across the line. That’s it.”

Ken was complying and as he left the circle around the cube, he saw the man stop, and the man’s skin began to run. It flowed together and apart and eventually reformed into the man who had been there originally. The man stood motionless until one black crawling thing scuttled into place on the side of his nose.

Then the man moved and spoke once more. “Aren’t you listening to me? I said I’m hungry. Please bring me something.”

Ken’s mind was reeling and his throat a desert as Holland led him back to the entrance of the circus tent. “What…what are you–”

“Going to do with it?” Holland asked for Ken. “There’s nothing else to be done: we feed it into a plasma furnace, so that there’s nothing left to infect anyone.”

Ken nodded, as though this made perfect sense. Which, given time away from his own befuddlement, it would.

Holland continued, “It’s important that everyone be aware of what can happen when an Australian washes up on the beach. Make sure you tell your friends about what you saw.”

Ken nodded and said he would. He turned and made his way up the beach, back towards the lifeguard stand. Once Holland had gone back into the circus tent, Ken leaned over, hands on his knees, and dry heaved into the sand. After a few minutes, the terror subsided and let go of his insides…just a little. Enough to get him home, anyway.