Page 1 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

LOST AND FOUND

ALLEGRA HALL

Zak

“I appreciate the help,”I say, setting down the final cardboard box of stuff in my new room.

Josh, a tall and lean werecat I only met an hour ago, grunts as he also sets a box down on the hardwood floor. “It’s all good.” He’s one of the other guys living here. “I’m glad you’re moving in; it’s gonna make a difference to the rent each week, that’s for sure. I’ll see you later tonight; it’s $4 day at Pizza Parlour, so that’s dinner sorted.”

“Sounds great,” I say, doing my best to keep my tone light as he leaves.

I start unpacking, shoving clothes into drawers and setting up my laptop on the desk that’s far too small for me. The bed is also too small, so I’m going to have to work out something better in the long term. For now, I’ll have to sleep diagonally across the mattress and curl up on my side, I guess.

I’m trying not to feel like an absolute failure moving into this place, but I’m not having much success. The house is nice enough; an old bungalow in Grey Lynn with high ceilings — a must for a guy my size — and a tidy back garden, but it’s the fact that I’m sharing the place with four university students. It’s a flat. I’m thirty-one, and I’m moving into a student flat because I couldn’t afford my own apartment anymore.

It’s not uncommon these days. There’s nothing wrong with it — that’s what I keep trying to tell myself — but I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve taken a huge step backwards when everyone else I know is moving forwards.

Mum and Dad had tried to tell me that this would happen all those years ago when I decided to study dance and drama. “Acting isn’t a real job,”Mum had said, but it was my dream, and it was going pretty well until the Unravelling occurred and the show I was about to start filming in the States was cancelled before it could even get off the ground. That opportunity was going to be my big break.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened, had the Unravelling been delayed for a few months. What would the studio have done, when their lead suddenly changed from the handsome human to the giant orc overnight?

Probably what all the other studios did. Pause production. Put out statements about supporting non-humans while quietly recasting roles. The stories were abouthumans, after all. That’s always the excuse. There’s never any roles written for orcs specifically. The supporting role, the background character… that’s been my thing for the last five years, and I’ve been making just enough money to get by.

I’d be absolutely fucked if I didn’t have my regular weekend role as a ‘zombie monster’ at Haunted, the haunted house attraction out West. Like many actors starting out, I’d worked there years ago, doing every Friday and Saturday night for a year while I was finishing up my study. I hadn’t wanted to go back, but just like moving into this place, there came a point last year when I needed to. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

I’m folding down an empty box when movement outside the window catches my eye. I walk over to the glass pane, a cold chill settling on my neck as I stare at the house next door, searching in the fading light for whatever I thought I saw. I could have sworn there wassomethingperson-like moving there in the backyard, but that makes no sense.

The place is a run-down and abandoned version of this house, with a rusted roof, broken windows, and graffiti everywhere. The garden is overrun, too — with my height it’s easy enough to see over the fence, and it looks like a jungle, all tall weeds and grass that would go up to my knees.

Some developer probably owns it.

The economy is only just starting to recover now, four years post-Unravelling. I know a whole lot of building projects went under or were put on hold when the glamour fell away. Iwouldn’t be surprised if someone is just holding onto that house until it becomes more economically viable to bowl it and build three more in its place.

I jump as a black cat suddenly appears on the fence directly in front of my window, my heart racing.Fuck.That’s all it was — an animal.

“You’re going crazy,” I mutter to myself. “Too much time spent at a fake haunted house, and suddenly everything’s creepy.”

“So what’sup with the house next door?” I ask, watching a few of the other guys clear away things after dinner. I’d help out, but there’s no room in the kitchen for an additional body. Most of the house isn’t set up for seven-foot-five orcs like me, so I’m just doing my best to keep out of the way.

“It’s haunted,” Vellar, a lanky mothman, answers, his dark wings shuddering momentarily.

Blake — a wolf shifter with the brightest yellow eyes I’ve ever seen — scoffs immediately. “It is not. It’s just been a dump like that for decades. No one around here knows how to contact the owners, and the council can’t do anything about it. I grew up across the street,” he adds, with a nod towards the front door.

“It gives me the creeps,” Josh declares, his voice sounding almost authoritative. I found out over dinner that he’s the werecat version of an alpha, though they don’t organisethemselves the way wolf shifters do. “I’ve never seen anything, but I’ve sensed it.”

That cold chill settles on my spine once more. “Sensed what?”

Josh shakes his head. “I don’t know. Creepy shit. We just ignore it. That’s my advice — stay away from there.”

“Right,” I say with a nod. “Trust me, I will.”

I listenfor the footsteps approaching in the dark, ignoring the icy chill of the midwinter air. It’s always fucking freezing doing this shift in the middle of winter, but I know I’ll forget all about the cold in a minute.

The outdoor maze is barely a maze at all — it’s really easy to navigate, if you’re walking around during the day. At night though, while being chased by ‘zombies’… I can’t blame any person — especially the humans — from panicking and getting trapped in a loop.

For me, as the actor here, that’s always the goal. They’ve paid to be terrified, so I’m going to scare the shit out of them. I always try to push them far enough that they’re debating pushing the emergency buttons on their wristbands, but not so far that they actually do it and call off the game.

I hold my breath as they near. When the first human is on the cusp of walking past the alcove where I’m crouched, I jump out with a roar.

---