Page 25 of A Very Monstrous Desire

It was all so…odd…

“Are you descended from primates?” he asked after a moment.

The monster answered instantly. “Not in the same way you are.”

“From what then?”

“Why do you ask this?”

“I’m trying to understand why you look so human,” Theo said.

Did the monster growl again? Was Theo being too human-centric? What was the etiquette in a situation like this?

“It is a successful design,” Baku eventually said. “Evolution encourages successful designs.”

“But we are so similar! All the features!” Theo said, flicking off another alien maggot. This one had wiggled onto his chest. Theo dearly hoped they did not find a way to wiggle under his clothes.

“The basic structure of life between our dimensions is the same,” the monster said. “Life started in the oceans and evolved from there. And then, the rips between the dimensions we see now are not the only rips that have ever existed. I am sure that we have cross-contaminated each other’s dimensions for millennia.”

“We’re related?” Theo said.

“Yes.”

They had made it across the waist high grass now, but Theo was slightly dispirited to see that it was just one of many, many such fields. The coast was behind them, and they were moving firmly inland.

“How far do we go before we loop round?” he asked.

The monster described their route, and Theo was able to visualise it in his mind by considering the map he’d been shown in the briefing room just yesterday morning. How was it such a short time ago?

“That route doesn’t give us that much daylight.”

“We will not make it to the edge of the forest until late afternoon,” the monster replied. “There is a shelter there we can wait in until the following morning.”

“We go to battle tomorrow?”

“Precisely.”

The image of one of those monsters tearing Gill’s ear from her head filled Theo’s mind. He swallowed uncomfortably, not at all pleased to be reminded of what the monsters could do. There was no question that Baku was big and presumably strong, but even he wouldn’t be able to stop hundreds or thousands of them and by this time tomorrow there would be many, many more unless the other members of the wider squad had gotten to them.

Theo shivered slightly as he thought about them, and about his colleagues. Were they okay? Were they looking for him? Had he been presumed eaten? Had Joel shaken his head, flexed a purple, goo-splattered arm, and set them off towards the coast regardless? It would take them and more to stop this group of munchers.

He and Baku were just two.

How were they going to stop them?

“Baku,” he began. “Do you have a plan for how we’re going to stop the munching monsters?”

“Yes,” the monster replied. “You are an essential part of it.”

“What am I to do?” Theo asked as it suddenly occurred to him that if Baku had gone to the trouble of snatching him from his dimension, then there must be a very good reason for that.

“It is a complex plan,” the monster said, his chest rumbling again. “And I will explain it to you in detail this evening when we have made shelter.” He paused before adding, “I will explain exactly your role and why I am so appreciative of your aid.”

Appreciative.

And Theo remembered exactly how the monster expressed that. The image of him, topless, bulging, filled Theo again. He shuddered and snuck a look at him, shaking his head slightly at the sheer size and musculature of the monster. Why couldn’t he have looked like a spitting monster, all insect legs, and creepy fingers, and gaping mouth?

No, he had to look like this.

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