The Monsters

Brad led us into the cafeteria, and it was just as you'd expect. Long tables and chairs, an open kitchen at the far end. It was well lit and cleaner than I remembered my school cafeteria being. We walked ahead slowly and carefully, maintaining our formation. I couldn't hear any monsters scuttling about, and I hoped that if we stayed perfectly quiet we'd have an early warning.

Walking through we made sure to look under the tables, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary there. We got to the opposite end of the lunch room with no issue, and Brad looked back to me. I shrugged and pointed at the door on the side that seemed to lead into the kitchen. Brad slowly pressed down the handle and pushed the door in making not a single noise.

As soon as he stepped into the room something gross and spiky fell onto his head. It hissed and screeched, and it looked like an overcooked steak covered in porcupine-like spikes vaguely shaped like a toddler. Brad shouted "fuck" and went to grab it off his head, but instead impaled his hand on some of its spikes. I finally snapped out of it and stabbed at the creature with my "spear", and while it didn't do any obvious damage, I managed to leverage it enough that Clara could get in under its spiny back and tear it off of Brad's face. Brad's pretty face was a bloody mess, but I couldn't say how bad it was.

He was gritting his teeth and obviously distracted by the pain, as the creature hit the floor and started crawling with surprising speed for its strange biology and small size, rushing under the tables. I got on my hands and knees and crawled after it, catching it by the disturbingly child-like foot. I pulled at it, and swung it back out into the open, where Brad was ready for it and slammed down on it with his bat, producing a grotesque, bone crunching, meaty sound. The monster was defeated.

'Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," Brad said, as he hissed with pain. There was scratching from all of our notebooks, but we rushed over to Brad to check him over. There were bleeding puncture wounds all over his head and face, and head wounds bleed badly, but fortunately none of the spines had made it into his eyes. He was bleeding, but I didn't think it was that bad.

"You'll be fine. Into the kitchen, there'll be water there, this needs to be washed out before anything else," I said.

Brad waved away my suggestion at first, saying he was fine, but with some urging from Clara we did eventually get him to the sink inside the kitchen. Once again, everything looked exactly like I would expect it in a decently funded middle school. Cupboards lined the walls, there was a large sink and several sturdy stainless steel workplaces, with cutting boards and chef's knives on them. I made a note to pick up a knife after we were done here.

We got in there and turned the water on in the sink. It worked perfectly, so I turned it to lukewarm and washed Brad's wounds out with soap and water. I still didn't trust the water here, but what were we to do? That thing definitely looked dirty enough to be infectious.

"Okay, I think you'll be fine," I said, "I've only just cleaned the most obvious wounds with soap and water. We should find some clean cloth, head wounds will bleed a lot and look bad, but you won't bleed out. I did find some probably vodka if it needs to be disinfected, but that really shouldn't be our first step." "Like oldschool pro wrestling," Brad said. "What?" I said. "Old school wrestlers would always razor their heads to get bloodied. It always looked real gnarly even if they never were in real danger," Brad said. "Uh, right. Let me have a look, are you sure you didn't hit your head?" Clara said. Clara looked him over and came to much the same conclusions that I had. "Just hurts," Brad said, "I'll get over it. Any more of those little freaks around?"

I looked over the kitchen, but there were angles I couldn't be sure about. I walked over to the corpse in the doorway. It was a disgusting little creature. It looked enough like a baby to trigger a deep sense of wrongness in me, so I shoved it back under a table so that the kids wouldn't have to look at it.

"I don't really know. I don't think so. Check your notebook, did you get your healing thing?" I said. We all checked our notebooks. I had two new entries in my log and nothing else:

Log: Discovered Cafeteria#2435, 1.05 exp rewarded Helped defeat a juvenile spine gremlin, 1.05 exp rewarded

It would take 20 experience points with others around in order for the human ability to come to one full point, but again, I assumed that this ability would be most useful after hundreds and thousands of log events. I added up my points and it came to 6.1 exp. Assuming a base 10 system, I hoped we would level up at 10.

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"Just some experience for me, Clara?" I said. "I got the Quick-thinking title, I guess for grabbing the thing off of Brad. And a few points of experience," Clara said. "Oh shit this is cool, I got my class," Brad said, then quoted from his notebook : " 'When in dangerous situations you stand in front of your allies to protect them. You have advanced to the Defender class, which gi-"

The double-door fridge in the kitchen swung open and a bone spike as thick as a wrist and three foot long burst through Brad's chest and a mass of flesh fell out of the fridge. Clara looked at it blankly and I screamed. I could have checked the fridge. I should have checked the fucking fridge.

As the human-shaped lump of burned meat crawled out of the fridge and started standing up, metal and bone spikes broke off and regrew until the creature standing in front of us was a man-sized flesh core covered in armor of long spikes, some as long as three feet. It dripped with blood and yelowish pus-like fluids as it screamed a scream of a creature without vocal chords. Brad looked at me with shock, questioning, trying to say "now what?" still thinking I could help him.

"I- I- You-," I stuttered. I had to think. There must have been something I could do. What should I do in a situation like this, think, dammit.

I couldn't look away from the spike-covered flayed man thing that had come out of the refrigerator. Brad pulled out the spike, which was the only thing I knew that he shouldn't do, but I couldn't stop him. Blood spurted out of his wound and a terrible smell filled the room almost instantly. Organs smell a certain way. I would learn to know that smell very well with time, but this was the first time I smelled it.

"Fuck," he said, stumbled, but squared up and held the bat ready to swing. The monster that had awkwardly stumbled out of the fridge and seemed to not be able to stand properly on its own two feet suddenly lunged and dashed towards Brad with incredible speed. I didn't see what happened, but he screamed. I had never heard a scream like that, it froze my blood. When I looked back to Brad, there were six, seven, more spikes jutting out of his back. He was still fighting, putting his hands up against the monster's face, trying to squeeze, or twist it, but nothing worked and his struggles quickly grew weak.

And the monster started stabbing with the spikes of his hands, finally embracing Brad fully before kicking him back away from itself.

When it let go there was not enough solid skin and whole muscle left to keep Brad's torso together. He stumbled, and in that stumble there was the sound of breaking bone as his spine snapped, unable to hold up his upper body without the help of his abdominal muscles. His torso fell on the floor a few seconds before his lower body followed. There was so much blood, and meat, but I couldn't take my eyes off of the shiny white of his bones and the browns and green splotches of his organs.

"Bra-, Brad?" Clara said, and as the creature turned to us and moaned something snapped. We both started running. I was a little closer to the door, so I got out first, but Clara was right behind me.

"Stay close to me, don't look back," I cried. "Brad, what happened to Brad?" she said. She had seen it just as much as I had. But neither of us were thinking. "It'll be fine. We will all be fine, just go," I said. I don't even know if I was lying or actually believed it.

I looked over my shoulder and the creature was still looking, head turned sideways, in much the same way as a dog trying to figure something out. Then it came to us, awkward stumbling, punctuated by dashes of incredible speed. I turned back and kept running, Clara just a few steps behind me.

I heard a thwump sound and then she screamed. I glanced behind and saw that a thrown spike had impaled her through her left thigh. She fell on her face and grabbed the edge of my robe.

"Alex, Alex please," she said.

I couldn't do anything. I couldn't face the monster, I couldn't carry her, there was nothing I could do. I swear I couldn't think of anything that I could do to help. I pulled my robe out of her hand and I ran.

"Alex, no, please!" she screamed.

The monster was closer to her than I was, and it was faster. Oh god, oh god, oh god, I turned and ran and then she screamed louder and then not at all.

I got out of the door back into the hallway, I put my hand on the door and tried to visualize the sigil, I tried to chant the words, then BLAM. None of the spikes made it through the door, but the force threw me back and to the right- the side of the door we hadn't explored. I turned and I ran hard, I didn't look back and I ignored the pain from my seldom-used muscles and broke out in a sprint on pure panic and adrenaline

I ran faster than I ever had in my life before. Somewhere along the way I dropped my 'weapon'. But it followed.

I ran and I could not see where I was running. Tears blurred my vision and I swear I could see their faces in front of me as clear as day. Brad. Clara. Monster. Brad. Clara. Monster.

Brad looking up to me, confused, asking for help without words. Clara, begging for help, as I left her to die and ran. The monster. Confused, bloody, grotesque, stumbling forward to kill me too. I still heard the wet footsteps behind me in an arrhythmic pattern.

After two or three minutes, or an hour of sprinting all-out I saw another door with a sign above it, this one said LIBRARY and without glancing behind I ran into it.

I held a hand to the door, I saw the sigil in my minds eye and I said "Ka-Te-Mo" and when the monster slammed the door behind me a blue light exploded into the room, but the door didn't so much as tremble.

I sat there shaking and sweating. How long had it been. A minute? How long did the spell last? God, I couldn't remember. "Ka-Te-Mo," I cast it again and the monster slammed against the wall again. How did it work, why couldn't I remember the exact wording? And the sound of scribbling in my notebook went on for what felt like minutes.

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