Mail Order Massacres. Hunter Shea

monster still hadn’t fallen, but it no longer looked like it was breathing. Patrick still couldn’t believe that this thing came from a simple, stupid Amazing Sea Serpents kit.

      “That’s okay,” David said, grabbing Patrick by the elbow. “Thank you for saving us. We’ll be fine.”

      The man glared at them with narrowed eyes, his lips drawn tight. “I’m not asking you, boy. I’m telling you. It’s for your own good.”

      “No, really, we can take it from here,” David replied, sounding very nervous.

      Patrick was transfixed by something else.

      He watched the bullet holes start to close up, the puckered flesh flattening out, stopping the rush of vital fluids from pouring forth. The sea serpent’s chest heaved once…twice.

      “Uh, David.”

      “Now get inside before I get angry.”

      Patrick’s stomach dropped when he saw the rifle pointed at him. The old man looked mad enough to spit nails.

      David whispered out the side of his mouth, “We can’t go in there. That’s the pervert everyone talks about. They say he went to jail for messing with a ten-year-old boy.”

      Patrick looked past the man at the worn colonial house behind him, suddenly realizing it was the place parents warned them never to go near. Patrick’s father made him promise he would always cross the street when he came near it and never, ever engage the man who lived there.

      The hammer clicked back on the rifle.

      “I’ll give you boys to the count of two.”

      Patrick jumped when the revived sea serpent used its tail to launch itself at the aging pederast, sailing the fifteen feet between them with savage ease. It soared onto him from above like a bird swooping down for a fat worm. It opened its mouth wide, swallowing the man from the head all the way to the middle of his chest.

      The rifle went off. David spun on his heels, crying out.

      The sea serpent gnawed on the man as if he were a hunk of rawhide.

      “Are you hit?” Patrick asked, wondering what the hell he would do if David was shot and couldn’t keep going.

      David had a hand over his upper arm. A small trickle of blood snaked down to his elbow. He pulled his hand away. There was a bloody furrow in his flesh.

      “I think it just grazed me, but it burns like hell.”

      “Can you run?”

      “Of course I can. He shot my arm, not my legs.”

      “Well then, hurry up, before he finishes eating the kid toucher.”

      The old man was much more substantial than the dog. The sea serpents couldn’t seem to break away from a meal once they started. Hopefully that would give the boys enough time to get well away from this one.

      Patrick and David dashed onto Tuckerville Road. The shops were empty, the entire street closed up, probably for the first time ever.

      “We’re screwed,” David said.

      They kept running, wanting to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the masticating sea serpent.

      Then Patrick saw something in the distance, right where the funeral home would be.

      “Maybe not yet,” he said, using the little stores of energy he had left to pick up the pace.