The Monster of the West by Deion Nguyen

He was waiting for her.

Night fell in the time since he sat down. Crickets and their chirping spiels surrounded the park in lieu of people, yet lights dotted the empty paths leading to Romero Serling’s damp bench. The underside of his suit shriveled and clutched to his thighs, sickened with wet. A frigid stillness nipped at the seated man, through his scratchy suit and pale demeanor.

She was late, but that was fine. He could bear another hour.

There was a plot bunny hopping inside his mind, and it would not go away. It kept his gaze unsteady and his leg tapping the ground. Story ideas came and went, often taking on a title and a synopsis, but nothing beyond a chapter. But this one stuck around. Well, he pondered, I suppose a little writing would not hurt.

Romero reached inside his jacket, retrieving a brown, worn and stained notebook. His fingers picked at the corners, flipping through page after page. The Horror of Creekwood. The Disappearance of Shinko Noroi. For When the Sun Bled. Their respective scripts took up most of the papers. It took until the very end of the notebook until he found a blank page. It felt hairy; he felt as though the smallest of nudges could tear it.

A gust of wind made Romero shiver. He clutched the pencil in his hand and it threatened to snap. Regardless, it held, and it met the paper. “He was waiting for her,” he wrote. “Night fell in the time since. Crickets and their chirping spiels surrounded the park in lieu of people, and not a blink of light was there to accompany the young man seated over a damp bench.

"The man, a movie director, having reached the peak of his success not so long ago, now fell downtrodden on his luck. What he created raked in millions. Millions that he never saw. Out of options and desperate, he ran here. Waiting.”

“So this is the mug?” a deeper, man’s voice rang.

“That’s right! I ran over to you guys as soon as I saw him!”

Traveling in a band of eight, they surrounded the writer and his bench, all with their eyes on him. However, he did not even seem to notice the thugs and continued writing. “Romero, buddy, what’re you thinking? Running all the way out here when you still got a debt owed to the Tigers?” the first man remarked.

“The young man was tense,” Romero continued. “He could not discern what surrounded him in the blinding darkness but he knew something was there, lurking. His breath shook, a cold sweat drenching his entirety.”

Romero was getting somewhere now. The words spread from his brain, to his fingers, to his lips. As his shoulder-length hair fell before his gaze, his head shot up. “Show yourself,” he whispered. “The man yelled, trembling...” Just as quickly, Romero returned to the pencil and paper.

The boss of the group glanced between his team of rookies. “Grab him and we’ll be done. Doesn’t look like he’s putting up much of a fight, anyway.” They glanced nervously between each other, but did not waste another second closing in. Maybe their boss was right: the first mission would be something easy.

The path light popped with a dying glimmer, fading as darkness took over and blanketed all. The Tigers froze in place, suddenly wary amid the silence. The crickets fell quiet.

“Lights out. Then, sloshing, sloshing, sloshing.” The thugs could hear something coming from the distance. “The man glanced around, breath hastening. He did not move from the bench. Not even when the beast released its gurgling, clogged roar of bile and muck.”

A deafening roar tore into the air.

“What the fu everyone group up!” the Tiger boss yelled.

Romero’s pencil carried on. “It pounced forward, landing with a grotesque ‘squish.’”

A woman screeched cut short by the heavy landing of something. Their boss felt a liquid splatter on himself, but he didn’t know what it was. He could hear the rest of the rookies losing composure, their footsteps crossing the grass in every pattern. He needed to yell; to get everyone into order… but his voice could not reach past his throat. Guttural instinct told him to stand still.

“The man… he held his breath; an effort to remain calm as this Monster encircled him. Any noise could have alerted it in the darkness, and he could not take a chance.”

A drenched thrust against the ground, like fish being splattered against the floor. A scream cut short.

“It groaned… A bellowing sound that made the young man’s hair stand straight. It felt so close; as though right against his ear.”

The squad boss collapsed on his bottom, legs giving way around the now hysterical yells of the rookies: cut down, one by one. His head swirled, sweat and fear curling into a singular worm in his brain. Romero kept speaking, drawing out each monstrous footstep. The beast was nearing. Close enough until he felt its dog-like breaths. His own breath flew out of control, spurned into hyperventilating.

He grabbed a flashlight from his belt, shining in front of him.

“In the flicker of moonlight, clouds giving way, it was illuminated before his eyes. The young man met its gaze.” The boss raised his head. The flashlight toppled from his grasp. “Towering over him, four-legged and moaning a dry, pained moan, was a hideous mound of pulsing black ooze. Sloshing with slimy, writhing tentacles on its feet and face a bony snout engulfed in blood. Its eyes, empty and void, yet staring on. He knew full well: The Monster of the West had come for him.”

The boss screamed. Another crash. Another squelch. Another bite, plowing into the ground.

The Monster pranced over to Romero. His hand still moved along the page. “Yet, the worn movie director looked on ahead, ever hopeful. ‘I won’t move,’ said he. ‘She promised to come back. To stay with me.’ A foolish purpose it may have been… but he did not move.”

The Monster stared at him, silent. Its head then twisted around, and the body contorted itself away from Romero. It trotted until only darkness remained in its wake. The lights flickered back on.

Everything was as normal.

“Alas, the foul beast The Monster of the West retreated, deterred by the young man’s iron stance. The man on the bench watched it wander off, fading. ‘I won’t move,’ he repeated. ‘Darcy Morel said she would meet me here… After her mission…’” Romero bit his lip, pressing down with the pencil for one last sentence. “But she never came…” The lead snapped on the last period. He met the end of the page.

Romero clapped the book shut. “That will do.”

The Sun was rising. As the moon fell, so too did his tears.