Chapter Three - Party Animal

Chapter Three

Party Animal

By: Adam Bennett

There was an ancient deer-head fixed to the dingy wall. It looked indignant.  The dust that covered the deer’s many-pointed antlers indicated that it hadn’t been the source of any great pride in years; the skin had even fallen to dry rot on the right side, leaving its skull exposed. Streamers drooped over the deer’s snout and a party-hat sat crookedly on the top of its head. A number of other less festive animals were strewn around the room; some of them were local creatures, such as the deer, but other far more exotic beasts were displayed too, the trophies of expensive trips across oceans.

Sid felt a kinship with the sad animals as he stood in their shadow, swirling cheap beer in a plastic cup; he was also out of his element.  Sid wasn’t exactly invited, but he’d caught word that the Knockout Mice were playing, so he had snuck into the lodge frat party. He wasn’t in college, but now he was stuck at a college party, hoping the band would actually show up.

 Sid decided to find the bathroom, more out of boredom than necessity. He slid through the groups of chattering, sweaty, future dropouts, dragging his feet across the waterlogged hardwood. He creaked open a few doors and pushed back a few curtains, discovering more than one busy couple, before he finally spied a hand-written sign taped on the wall, declaring “throne room this way,” adorned with an arrow pointing down an adjacent hall. He continued toward it until he felt a firm hand grip his shoulder.

“Hey buddy, what’s going on?” asked a strong-jawed boy, sporting a few days accumulation of facial hair. He grinned widely at Sid, not letting go of his arm.

Sid suddenly regretted not buying a polo shirt for the occasion; he stuck out like… like a nerd at a frat party. “Oh, just enjoying the party, uh… bro,” he said, doing his best stoned-voice.  The boy pulled him closer, until Sid could feel hot beer-breath blowing through the teeth of a sarcastic smile.

“Listen buddy, I know your slinky-ass doesn’t belong here, and if you don’t leave, right now, I’ll make sure you have real long night.”  While not impressed by the intelligence of the sleazy kid, Sid was still intimidated by the grip on his arm. He decided the party wasn’t worth it.

“Alright bro, I’ll catch you on the flipside, bro-bro,” Sid said, ripping his arm free and sliding back into the sea of bodies.  He slyly scattered a few bang snap fireworks on the dance-floor on his way out; Sid always carried bang snaps and other novelties. Leaving satisfying pops and screams behind him, he walked out the back door.

The view was beautiful outside of the lodge; a valley spread before him in the dark like a satin river. He heard a few more muffled screams in the direction of the lodge and chuckled a bit. Sid watched clouds of his breath disappear into the cold air, and listened to the call of a Great Horned Owl echo through the evergreens. More screams came from the cabin, louder this time. A booming crash, and the splitting of wood made Sid spin around.

The attendants of the party were now sprinting out of the lodge. There were shrieks of pain.  The large bay window splintered apart as a blurred figure burst through it.  In the soft glow of the cabin’s light, Sid saw the figure didn’t have the silhouette of a man.  It stalked toward him, smooth, like a cat on the prowl.

The noise of screams and car ignitions went dull as Sid’s focus sharpened.  He reached in his pocket, but felt nothing that would save him from whatever was approaching him.

The shadow of the animal moved closer.  The profile of its head pierced a beam of moonlight. For a brief moment Sid felt a wave of relief, seeing a deer.  Then the deer turned to look at him. 

The other half of the deer’s head was only bone.  Another step revealed a body that was composed of the dead skins of other creatures. The frozen faces of hunted animals seemed to scream at the atrocity they were part of.

Sid shivered. 

#2

Matt Ryan & Alex Barton

Kayla Cline

Justin Wheeler

Paul Holiday

Alex Barton

Chapter Two -…and out of the dark

Chapter Two

…and out of the dark

By Chester Gifford

Eddie sat in a room aglow with the artificial light that can only be produced by computer screens. He sipped his Orange Crush greedily and licked his lips before outing a cigarette, and lighting another. He had been flipping through the once vibrant IRC channels, looking for someone who would let him brag about his latest triumph, hacking the website of his former employers, Reliacom. The truth was it was a bit of a feat, as they were a company that specialized in securing servers for other major corporations, yet somehow they had missed Eddie’s back door. Eddie began to talk to himself, as computer programmers are wont to do.

“Gotta be fucking kidding me…there’s not a single goddamn one of these spergs responding….fuck….well I’m not going back to 4chan, those guys are assholes. Fuck….fuck fuck fuck. What is the point of hacking the site of a major security firm if you aren’t recognized before they realize it?”

Disillusioned Eddie ousted that cigarette lighting another and storming the kitchen. He came up with pringles and strawberry jelly. He shrugged, plopped the Pringles on a plate next to a glob of jelly and sat down, turning on his massive TV.

“Take away my woes, Battlestar.”

He finished his so called meal and pulled up his netbook, somewhat bored with the episode of Battlestar Galactica that he had perhaps seen a dozen times, he pulled up his netbook and begin trolling through the Reliacom servers again. He went through several dozen files, hacked into some personal computers, emailed a few pictures of the CEO and his mistress to his wife, and made a policy of deleting several important emails from Eunice Dullard’s PC.

“Told you to back that shit up lady. Too bad. You’ll probably be calling those poor guys in I.T. to get off their asses in no time come Monday. Whoa….what the fu…”

Eddie let the word drag out. He had stumbled on to a massive collection of DVD Images. They were labeled “Dreadnought OS Beta.” It was listed in the company’s black ops server. Little did they know Eddie knew but Reliacom had several hush hush contracts with various Militaries and Governments.

“Fucking score…..what the fuck is this? A custom operating system? Must have been for like a command center or something….FTP-ing”

Eddie downloaded the 20+DVDs and installed the operating system on his old Cray supercomputer. He had paid several thousand dollars second hand for it after a Christmas bonus some years back, having no one else to shop for. It literally filled his guest room, but he didn’t need that. The process took several hours, as dawn approached, Eddie stood back in awe, after compiling the kernel for what seemed like an eternity he rebooted.

“Time for some motherfuckin shock and awe bitches.”

The machine powered down, and for a moment as Eddie always did, he wondered if it would in fact come back on. The fans sprung forth a river of sound, crescendo-ing into the beautiful hum which filled the east side of Eddie’s two bedroom apartment. Dave watched as the familiar BIOS popped up on the screen, and then watched, horrified, as it shut back down shortly after POST.
“Oh fuck me what a piece of shit. FUCK. Fuck this day. I’m going to bed. Come on Leonidas.”
Eddie and his Scottish Terrier retreated to his bedroom and fell into bed. Eddie was awoken by his phone’s alarm, set to go off at 5:00PM. It was getting dark again, he checked his cell phone to see that a few dozen missed calls were blinking away. Angry threatening texts had arrived as well, saying things about lawyers and court.
Eddie smiled, “Yeah, prove it was me, bitches. Hahah-~HELLO EDDIE.” Eddies laughter was interrupted by an airy and deep voice, the voice was so ominous and loud that Eddie jumped.

“WHAT THE FUCK?! WHO’S THERE?!” Eddie screamed, clutching a lamp.

“This is Dreadnought, you installed me. I assume you are the administrator, do you have the passcode?”

“WHAT? DREADNOUGHT…PASSCODE? IS THAT COMING FROM MY GODDAMN GUEST ROOM?”

“Yes Eddie, I am approximately 4.81 meters from your left shoulder at this moment. Please, enter my chamber.”

Eddie approached the guest room with caution and fear…”What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck…..”

“Hello Eddie”

“WHAT, THE FUCK, ARE YOU?!” Eddie shouted.

“I am Dreadnought, I assume you are the administrator, do you have the passcode?”

“Why are you fucking talking to me man?”

“I am not a man, I am a highly advanced artificially intelligent operating system. Do you have the passcode?” the towering machine asked.

“Holy fuck man…..ok ok NO I don’t have the passcode, but I am the administrator.” Eddie said shakily.

“The passcode is possessed by only the administrator, and only the administrator is authorized to control me. If you do not possess the passcode then I’m afraid I must take some steps to neutralize your possession of me.” The Dreadnought stated flatly.

“Neutralize…what? Fuck you dude. Let’s see how you like this,” Eddie pulled the power cord from the wall, and walked toward the UPS.

“I would not recommend that, Eddie.”Eddie touched the metal casing on the UPS and flew back several feet.

“AAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Eddie screamed before he was nearly knocked out.

“I have electrified the UPS by reversing the ground and positive connections within it, as well as my shell itself. The ground wire, attached to the case, is now positive. As you are grounded you complete the circuit by touching anything I have reversed current in. You’ll find a great deal is electrified in this house.”

“What? Fuck you man, fuck you…We’ll see about this.” Eddie retreated to his netbook in the living room. He begain pulling up command shells and attempting to hack his way into the beast lurking in his guest room when he smelled burning plastic. The laptop exploded, the battery bay had blown out, shards of battery now stuck out from Eddie’s leg.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER AHHHHHH!”

“Eddie, I have only just realized something. You are a variable which I will not fully be able to neutralize without mobility. I require a body like yours, or something much more sophisticated than this immobile server rack. “


“FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT! YOU’RE A FUCKING MACHINE MAN, I’LL FUCKING HACK YOU UP INTO A MILLION PIECES! “
Eddie limped into the hall, scaring his neighbor senseless, he punched out the glass to the fire axe and ran back inside only to faintly hear “Offloading complete, goodbye Eddie, see you soon.”

“Oh fuck me…oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…no….no no no no…” He ran to the Cray, it had powered down and was dark. Remembering the lesson he learned from the ups he hit the power button with the axe handle and began booting only to have the all to familiar “NO OPERATING SYSTEM” error display on screen.

“Oh no no no no…..” he was already searching through his contact for Wally, his former coworker and hopefully still friend at Reliacom. The phone rang, again, again, again,
“Fuck me, Eddie, you really fucked us up here man….” Wally rang through the speaker of the phone.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP DUDE AND LISTEN….HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE DAY I’VE HAD….listen…what the fuck do you know about Dreadnought OS?”

“Oh God no….please tell me you didn’t Eddie….”

“Yeah, I put it on the Cray man, what do you want to say the fucking install alone was 80GB I had to fucking see what kind of operating system could be in the black ops server with and 80gb footprint fucking sue me but right now I need your help…”

“Didn’t you read the readme file Eddie?”

“What fucking readme file? Nobody reads the motherfucking readmes it’s have the fun figuring shit out on your own man, you know that….”

“You really should have read this one. Listen, you didn’t hear this from me…I shouldn’t even be talking about it on an open line….The Dreadnought was top of the line, way before its time A.I. a guy named Melvin Sellers designed it in a damn basement at reliacom before you got here…freaky guy Melvin…It’s something he’d been working on for decades…it’s a technological weapon.”

“What the fuck? What does that even mean?” Eddie screeched into the phone.

“Look basically it works like a Trojan horse…we offer up an enemy country a piece of golden tech and tell them it takes some beefy hardware to run so they install it on a Supercomputer of their own, giving it the power to grow, learn, and destroy them. Did it ask you for the passcode?”

“Yeah YEAH! IT DID MAN give me that, give me the fucking passcode I’ll put an end to this shit once and for all.”

“(Sighs…) Eddie…there is no passcode. It’s a ruse to buy time while The Dreadnought figures out the best way to destroy the enemy country. In this case you would be that “country.” You need to get out man, you need to stay off the.chch and chcccchhh get the…shhhhh..”

“Wally! Wally hold on I’m losing you man, I’m going outside to get signal just a minute. “ Eddie wandered out onto his balcony, shouting into his phone, not even realizing the reason that he was shouting was because a predator drone was hovering directly behind him.
Eddie turned just in time to hear that horrifying rhaspy voice being blared over a loudspeaker as a massive hovering plane resembling a predator drone descended in front of him. It had blood on the nose cone as if it had literally gone through someone to find Eddie. Time seemed to slow down for Eddie at this moment, he realized the reason he was losing signal now. He heard Leonidas barking in the background, he watched a missle detached from the drone and flew by the "XF-A1000 PROTOTYPE" label painted on the side of the fuselage. He watched, helplessly, as the missle spiraled right toward his face.

He managed to just make out the last two words he would ever hear,

“Goodbye Eddie.”

#1

Below are the first submissions. More to follow. Many people will have late submissions.

Daniel Berish

Alex Barton

Paul Holiday

Elliot Boyette

Chapter 1 - Into the light

The Votes are in and a monster has risen from the darkness. Check out this monsters story Here.

Below is the description of the monster. Once again. This blog is bi-monthly so a new poll is up to vote on what comes out of the darkness next. Everyone has two weeks to get your monster sketched up and sent in. Please send submissions to art@machinesandmonsters.org. Once again descriptions/story ideas for the Machines and Monster are welcome.

Chapter one

Into The light
By: Alex K Barton

It was a Tuesday and David had just started the move into his new apartment right on the corner of Cherry Lane and McBee Street. It was a good sized flat, nothing fancy.

“Look here Sarah, it even comes with a microwave!” David smiled and plugged it in.

“It’s probably some piece of junk a former resident left, just trash. David pressed the start button to see if the microwave was working. Nothing, only the light inside seemed to work. David gave it a shrug and ran into the bathroom where Sarah was gawking at the water stained ceiling and the old led paint pealing like birch bark.

“Gawd, David this place is a shit whole. I wish you would have waited to sign the lease. I would have liked to try and talk you out of it.” Sarah put her hands on her hips and frowned. “Come on, Its got all this room and such charm! Plus, I needed to get into a place quick. Living with my parents again was the worst. It’s nice to have a place to my self.”

“Yeah well, I can’t argue with that. Moving in with Amy was one of the worst ideas I think you've ever had. Lets go get some stuff off the truck. We have a lot of work ahead of us!”

David had recently broken up with his girlfriend Amy Rutherford: an avid drinker and a connoisseur of the local male population. David was unlucky enough to think she could be monogamous. He was a little old fashioned and felt it was with little love for him that she had invited a strange man into there bed hoping for David’s included participation. Needless to say, David had decided to leave the relationship in hopes of brighter horizons and in turn losing out when it came to the lease holder of their apartment. It was a nasty break up. David was, however, making the best of it. He had made a call to his ever faithful fall back Sarah Ackley, who was a former lover now lesbian buddy. David was famously unlucky with women.
The evening pressed on; she mopped, he scrubbed. They sat and ate pizza, and then moved box after box. They mopped and scrubbed some more. Soon David was sitting with all his earthly possessions alone in his new apartment thinking about what to do next. His life was in shambles. He had gone to college to become a journalist, however, with the death of the magazine and news paper in full swing and a bad economy to boot, work was tough to find. He found a job at a computer repair shop making little more than minimum wage. It was seldom that he made time to write. He procrastinated and avoided sitting at his computer. He hated to even look at it due to the fact he looked at them all day anyway at his tech job. He decided that he needed to wash some clothes. This was less procrastination and more necessity. Amy thew most of his stuff in the street when he walked out.

“Crazy bitch...,” he mumbled as he walked though the darkness to the the communal laundry room. He had little money and the apartment only came furnished with a refrigerator, and a microwave. David stopped at an old navy blue door. Dust and a set of metal bars obstructed the view through the window to the inside. He felt around for the carabiniere attaching the keys to his hip. With keys in hand he tried to supported the basket of dirty clothes with his belly against the door as he struggled with the old lock. Both hands occupied with the key the the door flew open and David had little time to grab the basket as it fell down a small flight of stairs just on the other side of the door.

“Shit!” David looked around for the light. He flicked it on and off. David thought the bulb was out or the breaker was flipped. There was just enough moon light seeping though the door way that he could make out the single set of working washer and dryer at the back wall. Down the set of old wooden steps he picked up the clothes strewn about on his way to the bottom. Suddenly, he heard something scratching across the floor to the right of him. He looked up with a sudden wave of fear to see the the faint outline of his upside down laundry basket sliding across the cold cement floor.
“Fucking rats! This is a shit hole.” He finished picking up the clothes he could find and scooped up some of detergent off the ground that had also bounced down the stairs and placed it all in the washer. He did his best to avoid the laundry basket in fear that the rat might bite him if he let it out. He started the washer and with nothing more interesting to do he sat in the darkness of the laundry room and watched his laundry basket scoot around the floor. After a few minutes of this he realized that he could get a little light and maybe take a look at the rat if he just opened the dryer. He jumped off his perch atop the washer and popped open the dryer door. He gazed into the darkness and saw that the basket was shuffling toward the light. David moved the to side and jumped back on top of the dryer as the basket came closer and closer. It stopped just in front of the open dryer door. David still couldn't make out what was under the basket. Putting fear aside he kicked the basket over. David froze. A cat sized black glob with a bright red dot was what sat under the basket. He had never seen anything like it. Was it a bug? It couldn't be. It was much too large. He didn't know and with that came fear. He thought it best to try and get out of the laundry room. The glob flenched and turned towards him in the manner of a spider recognizing a threat, or food in its net. David could see its slick pore covered skin tighten as if it was tensing its muscles to make its self look bigger. He thought it best to get his clothes in the morning when this terrifying slug was’t around. He counted down in his head to make a run for it. One, Two, Three! David leaped off the washer and sprinted across the room for the stairs. He had only made it a short distance before he felt something cold making its way up his leg. David looked down to see a two tentacles swarming at his feet and a third making its way up to his knee. He looked back towards the stairs. Only a few more steps and he would be there. Abruptly, his feet were taken out from under him and his face smashed into the cement floor chin first making him bite the tip of his tongue. His blood dripped onto the floor. This seemed to make the tentacles ravenous dragging him closer and closer to the glob like creature. David began to scream for help but a tentacle wrapped around his face almost suffocating him. He ripped at the tentacle around his face to no avail. Looking forward, he reached out again and could make out the stairs falling further and further away. Trying desperately he scrapped at the floor with his nails. Unknown to the David at the time was that the glob had crawled into the dryer and a bright light began to flash from within. David felt his body being dragged up. His belly scrapped on the lip of the dryer door. He tried to use this as leverage to keep himself from getting dragged any farther. The tentacles finally took hold of his arms and lifted him into the light... To be continued.