Page 11 of Clutching Cthulhu’s Pearls (Time for Monsters)

Mr. Breyers left when it was dark, and now the early morning sun shines through the tiny windows just below the ceiling. Please allow those happy rays to reach Hairy and my hatchlings wherever Papa hid them. My broken mind drifts to Harriett’s beauty to warm the cold corners of my soul. Her hair glows like fire when the sunlight hits the reddish-brown strands. I’ve watched her from afar. Her skin collects the sun’s warmth in little brown spots like the toasted bread I loved in the nursery.

Oh, how I miss bread and stories from books instead of my head.

Harriett can read. I just know it. She lives in the big house without chains like the humans who can read. She will teach our hatchlings. Can I listen to her lesson to improve my stories? Will I create stories without my fellow hybrids who need my words to ease their fears? If only Harriett had time to teach the other hybrids about stories. Even if she survived claiming my eggs, the birth will probably kill her. All human women die. All my hatchlings die. Even most of the eggs die before their precious little ones can hatch.

I roll to press my face onto the floor, releasing the strain on my tentacles and barbels. Sobs shake my shoulders. They yank my facial limbs, which stick to the cement with dried blood. The sting is a constant reminder of how powerless I am in this cell.

Mr. Breyers left hours ago… Please don’t let him find Harriett. Do I trust Papa to protect her from Mr. Breyers, even if he has bad reasons? More tears flow. Maybe they will soften the blood, release my barbels, and allow me to lift my head. I must stand on my feet before Papa or Mr. Breyers returns. I’m not ready to die. Ever since I was a hatchling, their taunting has haunted my nightmares…

Footsteps, too real to be in my daydreams.

Panic squeezes my chest. Aaah! I cry out as I rip my limbs from their bonds on the floor, leaving green strips of flesh in the stains. The worst pain is from the sucker torn from my right-most barbel. I suck on that tentacle in a child-like attempt to stop the pain. My shoulders scream as I boost myself to sit on my knees. The soles of my feet no longer have skin .

I test placing the bottom of my right foot on the floor without weight. It’s like stepping on a hive of angry bees. Running a tentacle over the chopped meat attached to my foot bones feels like combing through a carcass for offal. I can’t stand, let alone fight my way out of here. It’ll hurt too much. How will I save my family?

The heavy iron door of the dungeon opens.

Keys rattle from their hook at the doorway.

Fear silences my pain. My knees slide in the puddles of blood as I crawl to the darkest corner. I curse the sun’s rays for shrinking the one hiding place in the empty box. My tentacles and barbels curl under my chin. I place my back toward the cell’s door, hugging my legs to my chest. My neck presses against the wall to protect my head in the corner. If Mr. Breyers comes in swinging, he will add more lashes to my back…not my softer spots.

“Phin, oh my Phin.” Hairy’s voice soothes my heart like a healing salve from the nursery. My mind must be defeated because my soul reaches for its mate for comfort on the journey to the afterlife. Will I be judged at heaven’s gates and sent to hell for punishment? Will the angels listen to my misspoken words or give me lips to beg for forgiveness? I close my eyes to drift into the void with Hairy’ s kisses on my brow.

“Phin, Phin, can you hear me?” Her worried voice mends the cracks in my mind.

“His heart beats.” How is Ruth here? Did they throw Ruth down here to break me? Have they run out of flesh on my battered body to cut?

“We must move him.” Thomas? There are only two cells in the second dungeon. Who’s sharing a cell?

“You can’t move him without wrapping him in wet cloth. We can’t risk tearing the exposed muscles,” my darling Hairy’s voice wraps itself between the voices of my swamp friends.

“Why wet?” Listen to her, Ruth!

“Dry cloth will stick to the wounds as the blood dries,” Hairy says as her palms cradle my cheeks. If this is a dream, my mind will burst into pieces, but I must know if I can say goodbye to my unhatched young.

I risk opening my eyes. Ruth’s bright coloring fades as she leaves the room in a hurry. My eyes focus on the most beautiful vision I’ve ever imagined.

So beautiful, she must be real.

“Hi,” my mate whispers.

Her eyes shimmer like the swamp's surface on a hot summer day.

“Hi,” I reply in a croak. I can’t bear more strain on my throat.

“They aren’t clean, but they’re wet,” Ruth says from behind a stack of cloth .

“They will have to do. Thomas, take him to the kitchen and lay him on the table. The sheets are to protect him in transport, but once he’s on the table, gently peel them away from the wounds. If they stick to him, leave them.”

“Ruth, in the upstairs laboratory, there is a bottle of carbolic acid spray—never mind, I’ll have to get the bottle because only I can read the label.”

“I read,” Ruth snaps. “I read all the storybooks in the nursery. Finding the letters to Car Bowl A Sin Spray won’t be difficult.”

“It’s a brown bottle with a pointed, black lid,” Hairy calls after Ruth as she runs out of view again. The scratchy sheets don’t bother my wounds because her slender hands place them on my body. Oh, I didn’t think I deserved one more touch! What a gift!

Her little mumbles tempt my smile, but it would pull my cracked jaw. “I’ll set a kettle to boil for clean water, grab the whiskey… I’ll need some of Leopold’s surgical instruments. Maybe I should set these sheets to wash before we wrap him again. No, there’s no time. The swamp’s not clean, but we can’t stay here.”

She kisses the space between my eyes before covering my head with an itchy sheet. I’m tossed and bumped. The fabric rubs every wound like I’m consumed by fire. My screams of agony fill my ears. I’m burning from head to toe. It’s too much for my simple mind to bear. My mouth tries to yell for Hairy, but I can’t force her name through the inky dark that consumes me. My mind shuts down with regret flooding my soul as I prepare to die without saying goodbye to my greatest love.

Phin

I don’t know this room. Bright and yellow, like buttercups. It’s comforting and promises happy times. I don’t trust it. There are no happy spaces in this house.

“He’s waking—” Thomas’s anxious face appears inches from mine. “—you must go faster.”

“Any faster, and the stitches will break open when you carry him,” my love scolds. “He must be stable for travel. Ruth, give him the whiskey.”

Ruth’s frown replaces Thomas’s face. She lifts a bottle to my mouth and tips the liquid into my dry throat. I scream with the burn, but it comes out as a drowning gurgle. My friends roll me to my side to let the fire water drain. Hairy curses. My moving must have interrupted her.

“Phin, my love, you must drink the whiskey, or this will hurt too much. I know it burns a little, but that’s nothing compared to stitches below the—oh hell—under your skin.”

“Dry, forest fire, burn for you,” I mumble as I fight to stay with her. My mind can’t keep up with her words.

“Here,” she says at the end of a string of words I can’t piece together. She tips a glass of clear liquid into my mouth. The cool rush of water! I gulp greedily until it’s nothing more than an echo of my slurping. Hairy smiles as she tips the bottle of firewater into my mouth. Does it burn less because I’ve had water or because she smiles as I drink? I’d drink the whole bottle if I could watch her face as it burns a trail to my stomach.

“That should do it,” Hairy says, dabbing a cloth on my chin. “More water?”

I groan in hopes she agrees to give me more.

“Ruth,” Hairy asks over her shoulder. “Will you refill the water cup and hold it for Phin? I need to finish these stitches.”

I sip from Ruth’s clumsy pouring. Why isn’t Hairy in my view? Somewhere far away, my bones scream in pain, but I don’t seem to care. Dandelion fluff invades my brain. I’m already slow, but now I fight through white puffy clouds to gather my thoughts .

The screams fade into the background. Hairy and Thomas chatter, but I can’t understand the words. Her voice pulls my face into a smile, which spills water over my chin. It’s pink. Ruth scolds me. She looks funny, yelling with no sound emerging. I can’t laugh, or I’ll choke on the water.

Why didn’t Hairy feed me water? It tasted better then.

Where am I? Why is it so bright? I hate this room.

Harriett

Phin’s busted smile warms my heart as he glides in and out of consciousness. His expressive, intelligent eyes take in my small kitchen like an explorer discovering a new world. Then they roll back into his head as his pain consumes him once more. I’ve closed the wounds over his large femoral artery, carotid artery, and every other major vessel I can remember. He can’t bleed out in transport.

Being the daughter of a botanist, I’m a decent surgeon, but I have no idea what I must fix within Phin’s body. My hope is that my mediocre skills, Leopold’s equipment, and all the prayers of the hybrids are enough to keep Phin in this world.

“His feet,” Thomas whispers over my shoulder. “The cuts on his feet will hurt the worst. He’ll want them healed first…if there’s anything you can do to help.”

I nod and pour the carbolic acid over the wounds on the bottoms of Phin’s feet. The wounds sizzle. Steam rises from the table, scaring all of us. We check Phin’s reaction. He twitches but otherwise stays blissfully unaware. I don’t ask Thomas about his experience with such deep lacerations on the bottom of his feet. If these cuts were placed by a switch or whip, as I suspect, I don’t want the details. The worst wounds cover the soles of his feet, so I wrap them in the yellow curtains I ripped from the windows.

“He’s back! He’s back!” Roy’s feet leave the ground as he flies into the kitchen. “Two carriages turned onto the driveway from the road. One of them is the doctor’s!”

“Did he see you?”

I pause my stitching, tying off the last stitch in a knot. Pushing sheets into Thomas’s arms, I wordlessly command him to moisten them at the manual pump. My arm sweeps Leopold’s surgery equipment into a large bowl I had hoped to use to soak bandages. Ruth secures the cap on the disinfectant and places the bottle into the bowl with a clink.

“No,” Roy says with a smirk. “We fly too high. Raymond watches him. I came inside to warn you. Shall we distract him?”

“Too much risk,” I say, grabbing random items from my kitchen drawers. “Make sure everyone is out of the house. Go out the backdoor and disappear. We will meet you at the swamp.”

“Hairy,” Phin moans.

“No, no, no,” I mumble. “You can’t wake now. This is going to hurt, so if you can hear me, go back to your happy place.”

“Hairy,” he moans again, fighting to awaken. He thrashes his head from side to side, threatening my stitches. Wounds with fragile scabs on his face break open. I grab the nearest strip of cloth and wind it around his forehead. Ripping the sheets from Thomas’s hands, I wrap his body as tight as possible. He resembles a mummy more than a monster. “Hairy reads stories to hatchlings on the raft life.”

“What?”

“He wants his storybook for the hatchlings,” Ruth translates.

“We’ve got to go now,” Thomas whispers.

“He doesn’t want to leave without the book our mothers read,” Ruth snaps.

I don’t have time for their arguing when I know where the book is. As long as the storybook is the same book as on the nursery floor just inside the terrible room where I received Phin’s eggs, I can grab it before the end of their bickering.

“I’ll get the book,” I blurt out, thrusting my bowl of stolen supplies at Ruth. “Thomas, you and Ruth carry Phin to the swamp. Find the group making our escape raft like the one in Phin’s stories. I’ll meet you there.”

My heart pounds until they nod.

Phin moans my name as Thomas lifts him off the table. Ruth throws open the door to the mud room to escape the way we came. The pool of blood left behind on the kitchen table is unmistakable. I fight the urge to wipe it clean as I tear up the stairs. The sooner I leave this house, the sooner my eggs will be safe. While the puddle will tip off Leopold that something’s amiss if he sees it, he may never enter the kitchen.

That’s a woman’s domain.

With any luck, he will host his visitors in the parlor like a gentleman. He will rush to my rooms to collect me to serve them…and to parade my egg sack for their examination. However, knowing Leopold, he will want to take them to his lab post-haste to show off his creatures. If that’s the case, I’ll be trapped in the breeding room—or worse, the nursery—until they mo ve onto another part of the house.

As I pass the hall window upstairs, the carriage approaches the front door…

I’m out of time.