My Black Beast

My Black Beast

Copyright © 2014 by Randall P.
Fitzgerald.

All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews.

For information contact;

www.randallfitzgerald.net

Cover design by Randall P.
Fitzgerald

Cover art by
Emmy Wahlbäck

ISBN: 1500947334 (Print)

Smashwords Edition: September
2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

My Black Beast
by Randall P. Fitzgerald

Thanks for buying my book,
wonderful person.

Check out my other books at
randallfitzgerald.net

Chapter 1

It was pissing down with rain
and cold
outside. That sort of late autumn Seattle that you can’t quite
escape even when you’re inside. If they had a problem with the
cold, the flowers didn’t seem to show it as Lowell walked around
watering them a last time and turning off the lights. He could feel
the chill through the single paned glass of the large front window
but he was used to the cold by now.

When the plants were all seen to and
everything was in its place, he moved to the back room of the shop
to grab his coat. It was a ragged, old olive-drab canvas thing that
regularly got mistaken for army surplus. He traded the shop’s apron
for the coat and left the room, making his way out to the
exit.

The door pulled open and let in the sounds of
the rain outside. It was a quiet night, otherwise. The neighborhood
generally was at this time of night. He pushed his key into the
lock on the door and shimmied it a few times. The door never wanted
to lock. Every night he closed, it was the same.

“
God… damn…”

The key finally turned and sounded a metal
thunk and he let his complaint end there. He pulled the key free of
the lock and looked up at the store. It was hip for a flower shop,
run by some daughter of a friend of his mother’s. She was a nice
enough girl, maybe about five years younger than him. She was
tattooed and pierced, like so many tended to be. The girl had her
life together though. Or at least she had an idea of what it meant
to have her life together.

She insisted the shop be open until ten, but
Lowell could scarcely remember a time they’d had a customer past,
say, eight. There was a pizza place at the end of the block, and he
often closed early to get a slice or a plate of spaghetti before he
headed home. Tonight, the allure of poor eating decisions didn’t
pull at him like it so often did and so he stayed until he was
meant to.

He sighed at the darkened windows and turned
toward the street. There was no traffic to speak of so Lowell left
the protective cover of the awning over the shop. The rain
immediately dotted his head. A few seconds later and the dots
turned to full wet. The street was running with thin rivers as he
moved across and turned at the far sidewalk.

The walk to his apartment wasn’t a
particularly long one and that was part of why he’d taken the job
when his mother urged him to. The apartment complex was a fairly
modern one, the sort that overcharged for rent because the building
was more rectangular than the older ones. As though you couldn’t
carpet some old hardwood floor. With the money he pulled in at the
flower shop, there was no doubt he’d have not been able to afford
it. He hardly paid attention to the checks anymore, just sent them
off to his mother who handled it and tried to keep his father from
being too blatantly disappointed in what their son had
become.

The job was the first time he’d been out of
the apartment in years, it felt like. He’d been there just over six
months now and it was easy enough. There was certainly an amount of
pathetic to his lifestyle. Nearly thirty and still being paid for.
It wasn’t as though they couldn’t afford it, he figured. And he was
contributing now, even if it was pretty meager.

It wasn’t something he thought of particularly
often but every now and again there was a sense of guilt that he
wasn’t doing enough. Probably pretty common among people in his
situation. He was running through the typical justifications when
the sound of thunder and the rumble of the ground brought his head
up to look around.

The night was dark and the streetlights were
their ugly, orange brand of dim. He looked up at the street with
drops of water moving down the side of his face waiting for another
flash of whatever lightning made the thunder. If it was close by,
he’d want to hurry up. A few seconds went by, and without a flash
to be seen he shrugged and looked back down to keep the cold drops
from assaulting the bare skin of his face.

The distraction of the sound was enough to
remind him of the cold and the canvas jacket did little to keep it
out. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the coat and pulled it
down tight over his shoulders, picking up his pace. Usually he
didn’t mind the half-mile or so walk back to his apartment, but the
cold was more biting than he’d expected it to be when he left that
morning.

There were a pair of nondescript red brick
buildings that he always passed just before the turn to the street
where his apartment was. He’d never paid them much mind though he’d
used the thin alley that ran between the buildings as a shortcut a
time or two. He thought about doing so now, as he approached the
buildings. There was a little square in the middle of the alleyway
that held industrial trash bins and not much else other than the
refuse of the companies.

He came to the alleyway and looked down. There
was an orange light in the little square where the trash bins sat
and he thought he saw movement. A girl, a small one. He closed his
eyes just for a second to wipe away the rain and when he opened
them, she was gone. He squinted down the alley, hoping to pull more
light into his eyes somehow, but it didn’t help.

The light went out first, and the alley went
dark. Lowell had taken half a step forward when the blast of too
hot wind hit him in the face. The wind was strong and grew to
something more like a shockwave in the space of half a second. He
heard the crack of the thunder from before, but now so much closer
and so much louder. The force rolled over his body at the same time
as the cold, wet concrete met his back. He could feel his head
strike hard on the ground below and for a second the world went
away entirely.

He opened his eyes as quickly as his body
would listen and the world spun in front of him. A blur of red
brick and black sky. He pushed himself up onto a sore bottom and
did his best to look down the alleyway. It was pitch dark but he
could see the shifting of dust.

Lowell forced himself to his feet and the
vague picture of the girl flashed across his eyes. He’d seen her,
he knew it. What was she doing there? At this time of night
especially? He hurried into the alleyway with what little speed he
could manage and thick dust began to clear in the rainfall. He had
made it halfway to the little square with the trash bins when he
considered his phone. Whatever the issue was, he needed to call for
help. For himself, for the girl. Maybe there were workers as
well.

He pulled out the phone and was greeted with a
rectangle of cracked glass over a black screen. The buttons did
nothing. He shoved it back into his pocket and moved forward to the
square. It was close now and the dust was dying down. That was
where he saw the source of the sound that put him to the
ground.

There were holes, one in the ground and one
along the wall of the far building. Bricks fell away from what was
left of the wall and he saw a girl pushing herself up. She took a
low, awkward stance under the drape of a strange cloak. Her hair
was light and hung in tight dreadlocks over a pale face, dirtied
with the dust of the debris. She stared with steely eyes across the
small yard.

It took Lowell a moment to realize that the
two were not alone in the yard. He could hardly comprehend what it
was he was watching, even. A girl, no more than twelve, maybe
thirteen at the most. What was she looking at?

His eyes tracked across the yard and found her
target. For a moment, his brain refused the shape of the thing,
telling him that there must be some mistake. Muscular, slimy legs
reflected the world just barely and the ambient light of the city
gave away the figure. He strained to put together a thought about
it. A six foot long frog with the legs and teeth of a
tyrannosaurus? The words rolled through his mind and he almost
laughed until the beast craned its rounded, knobby body back on the
too thick legs and let go a roar.

The sound shook him to the core and nearly
took him from his feet again. He looked away and covered himself
with an arm. The roar was not only loud and throaty, but hot. The
air in the small square heated to the feel of a wet summer day and
Lowell forced himself to look back. He could see black dripping
against the pale concrete. It was too dark to be any other color. A
black, thick sludge oozing out of a ragged tear in the underside of
the creature.

When the roar was down, Lowell’s wits
returned. He looked around for something, anything. This girl would
die, there was no doubt to his mind she would. The beast shifted,
never looked away from the girl. Its breathing seemed somehow
ragged, but what was ragged for such a monster? There were no
bricks close enough so Lowell took a step forward into the square
proper. Should he distract it? She could get away then. He wanted
to yell to her, yell at the beast. He wanted to yell in
general.

He felt his foot lift for another step but
before he could take it the girl vaulted from her position on the
bricks. It was the motion that caught his eye. She was across the
yard faster than the muscles in his neck could respond. He just
caught the blur of the girl’s body slide under the snarling
creature. It snapped jaws shut too slow to catch her and the loud
clack of sharp teeth echoed briefly in the broken
square.

The girl was under the monster now, one foot
on the ground and the other drawn close to her chest. He could see
the cocked leg glow a black-lit purple just before she forced it
upward. The beast grumbled as the meat fought the inertia of the
bones beneath. Black ooze trailed the body into the sky and the
squat body wriggled in the air, trying to right itself. The
flailing was unsuccessful and the bricks caught the full weight of
the falling mass of flesh and skin.

A loud crunch sounded as the bricks shifted
under the weight of the strange animal. Lowell watched it writhe as
more of the black ooze fell out of the hole in its body. The hole
was facing front now and he could see a rough tear running across
half the underside of the creature, deep near the mouth and
shallower as it ran down. A miscalculated attack that was meant to
gut the thing.

A red-orange blur shot across Lowell’s field
of view and slammed into the side of the misshapen lizard. It
jerked as the brick landed and shattered against its thick hide.
Another followed and Lowell shifted his gaze to the
girl.

Her eyes could see nothing but the enemy
before her as she flipped bricks onto her bare feet and sent them
flying at an impossible speed toward the dying animal. She took a
few steps forward with every brick she shot across the yard with
practiced precision.

She had nearly made it to the pile of fallen
bricks when the giant frog beast had managed to right itself. It
was unsteady on the bricks, but it squared itself at her and
managed a choppy, barking roar. Less than half the sound it had
mustered before. The girl broke into a slow jog and closed on the
beast. It opened slavering jaws wide and lurched at her. The
monster was slow and tumbled over the girl as she slid under his
attack. Fangs again slapped shut on nothing but air.

She was quick to stand and turn, flipping a
brick over onto the top of her foot. Her enemy rolled over and
wriggled to its feet, turning as best it could with whatever
innards it called its own leaking out onto the ground. The girl
kicked her foot the slightest bit and put the brick standing
upright on her foot. The black-lit glow covered her legs again, and
she kicked up with insane speed. The air seemed to crackle around
as the brick found the soft, slick underside of the drooling
head.