A Monster Girl Kindly Took Me Away from Home, Pt. 2
Jackie sat on his office chair and he had to shove her away to crawl from under the counter.
“There you are again. I took over your store for you while you were out. There was only one guy whose TV you fucked up and I was like ‘I can’t see the problem’ and the guy just left.”
“Well, it’s nice you’re having fun driving away my customers, it’s not like I need the money.” he dusted himself off. He knew never cleaning under the counter would bite him in the ass one day.
“So, I’m a monster boy now?”
“Yeah. I’d rather have been a werewolf, but tongue monster is fine too.”
“Kind of a random monster if you ask me, but hey, better than giant feet monster. What can I do now, other than finally being able to lick my elbow. Not that that isn’t enough, that fucker taunted me long enough.”
“Well, you’ve got the claws, right.” Jackie’s spiky claw grew over her hand within a blink. “You can pretty much only use them for destruction, but they’re handy sometimes.”
Sullivan saw the arm spikes cut holes through her sleeves and decided: “I’d rather not ruin my suit.”
“Suit yourself. Then you also got your new teeth, equally sharp. I could bit through steel with these babies.”
“Isn’t that kind of counter-productive, with your main organ being a massive tongue, to have teeth that could easily bite the whole thing off?”
“No it’s fine. I guess if you really wanted to, you bite it off, if you chewed on it long enough, but on accident that never happens or even when someone tries to do it on purpose. Someone tried to cut off my tongue once and I don’t even have a scar… I think.”
Sullivan stuck his tongue out until it reached the end of his tie and squeezed it.
“Hmm, it’s so soft and barely seems to weigh anything, it’s hard to believe that this would offer much resistance.”
“Keep in mind, we’re part magical creatures. That’s how we do the claws too, biologically those make no sense either.”
“Oh, one of my favourite things is, we can stomach anything, like I said, I ate steel once. I think we can stomach things so well even, we don’t produce any waste. Everything we eat just disappears.”
“How the hell does that work?”
“No clue. Everything I told you I just figured out by myself. Nobody really bothered to find out how every part of us works exactly. Additionally, we’re a pretty young species, I believe even in my home world, we’re not older than seven, eight years. And in this world, there are probably not more than ten of us. At least as of now.”
“You look older than eight though.”
“Because I wasn’t born like this, dumbass. I was turned when I was ten or something. I’m actually one of the original, I wasn’t bitten to be turned.”
“Ah, so I’m a generation 2 then? Do the further generations get weaker powers?”
“You know what? That’s brilliant. Nobody researched our kind yet, you say?”
“How about I do that? I will write a big science book over how… what are we called again?”
“How New-English work! It’s gonna be my name on it, I’d be the expert for New-English anatomy, I would’ve created something that matters, it’s gonna be my big thing!” Sullivan jumped up and down overjoyed.
“I guess if that’s important to you, do it.” Jackie said unimpressed.
“I think it is very important to contribute something lasting to this world. Well… shall we escape then?”
“You mean science class is over? No way.”
Sullivan followed Jackie outside and to the big wall surrounding Last Hope. It was at least twenty meters high.
“So, how’d you get over it?”
“Easy. See those posts up there?”
“I bet you’ve noticed our tongues are dry. It’s to keep a better grip on things. Grab one of those posts up there.”
“There’s no way my tongue is long enough for that.”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Jackie’s tongue shot out of her mouth and actually did reach up all the way to wrap itself around that post.
“See? Then you just use your claws to stab into the wall for stability and pull yourself up.”
Sullivan kept eyeing between the post and Jackie, wondering where she stored that organ.
“Wait… claws? But my suit!”
“You better hurry up before the people see us.”
“Damn it… Wait, I got it!”
Sullivan pulled out his tongue and tied it around his waist, then around Jackie’s.
“Now you can pull me up with you! Like mountain climbers!”
“Well.. alright. Creative.” Jackie began climbing up the wall and soon Sully was lifted up in the air too. This was such a bizarre experience.
“Just for future reference, you have to stab your claws into the wall sideways. If I stab them in with the sharp edge at the bottom, I can’t hold any weight on it as I’d just slice further down.” Jackie explained.
“Thanks, teach.” Sully saw people gathering below them, looking angry. He wanted to stick his tongue out at them childishly, but then realized he’s already doing that.
Soon they reached the top and Sullivan finally saw the world beyond the wall for the first time in five years. Not in a TV, but for real. It was just a wide meadow, but so much larger than any meadow he had seen. He wondered what the world had changed into since then. He had seen animal people, demons, vampires, tongue monsters like him now, other strange creatures, all just sitting on couches to be interviewed or appearing in music videos. It looked like a beautiful world. And even better, a world that has a birthday going on ever since it was born and Sullivan finally knew that present to get them: Science! Biology! He’s gonna research a species most people didn’t even know about here.
“So, let’s climb down and get exploring!” Sullivan cheered.
“What do you mean climb? Let’s jump down, it’s fun!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve jumped down a few high places in my life, our bones can handle it. If I can handle the concrete on your side, we can handle the grass and dirt on the other.”
“No, sorry Jackie, I’ll play it safe. My bones might make it but my suit.”
“Wow, you’re no fun at all, Sullivan.”
“I’ve wasted my college funds on this, I’m not gonna ruin it.”
“... Really. I mean, really, you have to pay money for education in there? Wow.”
“As you can tell, the whole system in there is fucking archaic. I hope I’ll never see this wall again.”
“Well, see ya below, nerd.” Jackie jumped off the wall and Sully wondered, even if you don’t break your bones, how much fun could slamming into the ground really be?”
