Her words echoed down the mall corridor. She’d left her things on the seat beside her as she waited for coworker Cynthia to open the shoe store.
‘I looked away for a few seconds and my purse was gone!’
‘I’ll cover sales,’ Cynthia said. ‘While you deal with this.’
Mall security guard Herman Bruns limped in after fifteen minutes, nattering on his cell phone. Janine overheard him tell his supervisor, ‘The camera shows a couple snatched the stuff… one looks like a guy in red pants, or maybe he’s bleeding.’
Janine sat in the tiny shoe store, with the door open so she could observe the mallway, her hands trembling as the shopping centre filled up.
‘No one’s going to get away with robbing me!’ she vowed.
Then she saw them, moving with a flash of scarlet. Two bent over individuals in matching black hoodies stumbling along together, holding hands. One wearing red pants.
‘Returning to the scene of the crime,’ was Janine’s first thought.
She leaped from her chair and out of the store, tap tapping down the mallway in her blue pumps.
‘You! You there! You stole my purse!’ she yelled.
They looked back, started running. She grabbed at a sleeve, and a face turned around. A skinny, female face with bulbous, red veined eyes and deep lines running down both cheeks. ‘You took it when my back was turned!’ Janine held on to the sleeve as the face contorted in a grimace.
A cracked, whiny voice spat out from the near lipless mouth. ‘We didn’t steal it, Blondie! We just took it!’
Herman the guard appeared, far down the other end of the corridor. He limped towards them, still on his phone.
‘Thief!’ Janine yelled. ‘Robbery! Where’s my purse?’ The pinch faced woman flung her free arm in the air and pushed at Janine’s face. ‘Let go of me, you perfumed bitch!’
Janine held on. ‘I’m not gonna let you go until you tell me what you did with my purse!’
‘You’ll regret this!’ the tiny, blotchy cheeked lady screamed. ‘We can’t help who we are!’
The other figure, the one in the red pants, gesticulated.
‘Okay, okay, we left it at the bus stop.’ He stared at Janine with a dull look. ‘It’s not wise to grab, my friend.’ He lifted his hand. Deep, blue tinged cuts ringed the back and wrist, seeping with some kind of red ooze. ‘See?’ he said.
‘I’m holding on to her until you bring my purse back!’ Janine shouted, but she felt her grip on the skinny woman’s sleeve slipping already, with the thief’s palm pressing into her chin.
‘You shoulda held onto that purse instead, Blondie!’ the skinny woman hissed. ‘Now you’re in a world of trouble.’
‘Let her go!’ said the gnome faced man. ‘We’re not responsible.’
Herman still moved towards them, it seemed in slow motion.
‘Listen, lady. I’ll go get your things!’ the red pant man said, in a surprisingly urgent tone, ‘I’ll bring them here!
He lurched off down the hallway, turning once and calling, ‘Nobody go anywhere!’
‘Aren’t you going to grab her?’ Janine yelled at Herman.
‘We aren’t allowed to touch anyone,’ Herman said, hitching his trousers up over his belly. ‘You need to let her go, Janine. That could be classed as assault.’
‘Yeah, let me loose!’
As the skinny woman yelled and yanked, her hoodie sleeve ripped right off from the shoulder. She staggered away, then ran, her bare arm twitching.
Janine stared at the empty sleeve for a moment, dropped it and tore off after the thieves. As she ran, she thought she wouldn’t have tackled them if they were big and strong looking. The word ‘Frail,’ came to mind, their faces gaunt as ghosts, the skinny lady’s arm sticking out like a white bone as they raced through the mall exit and out into the parking lot. Janine had been poor herself, raising three kids as a single mother, but there was no excuse for thievery.
‘Entitled,’ she thought. ‘They felt entitled to my property, just because I left it for a second.’
These thoughts spurred her on as she dashed around cars, across the asphalt. She wasn’t strong herself, five foot four and forty five years old. She looked back to see Herman Bruns coming out the entrance, calling someone on his phone, hopefully the police. As she looked back again, the mall entrance seemed to fade.
‘Funny,’ she thought.
The fleeing couple ahead of her reached the end of the parking lot and stood at the busy intersection. The traffic coming in each direction looked blurry, too, as the two thieves turned, gazing at her. And what was with this thick grey mist? The couple held hands, jumped into the traffic. Janine stood at the edge of the road and watched as they darted around braking, honking cars.
Janine scanned the far side of the road with one thing on her mind. ‘Those robbers can’t get away with this!’
A passage through the traffic seemed to open ahead of her. The cars slowed, then stopped without a sound. Janine stepped into the traffic pathway, ran between the cars. The couple disappeared into the mist on the other side of the road, and Janine found herself lost in the grey gloom, as sunlight and car horns faded.
‘Maybe there’s been some kind of eclipse,’ she thought.
An object flew towards her and crash landed at her feet. A whispery, dry voice announced, ‘Here’s your purse, lady!’
Janine reached down. She checked inside. Everything seemed to be there, even the cash.
‘I wonder why they didn’t take anything?’ she thought. Then she felt the earth sliding. ‘An earthquake!’
She tried to run back to the road but felt herself falling into the ditch at the side of it. Something caught her, some kind of netting, covered with a sticky substance. She moved her arms and legs, tried to break free, but couldn’t move. The more she struggled, the more she stuck.
A voice came out of the culvert hole beside her, the same whispery voice that had announced the arrival of her purse.
‘You believe your possessions are your soul. This is what you value. Did you feel pity for the gnomes? No, you wanted your possessions back.’
Janine watched as a bulbous wide form covered with rough, rusty hair pushed its way out of the culvert, and stepped towards her on six skinny, shiny blue legs. She held her breath and did not scream. She’d never been afraid of spiders, snakes, or whatever combination, but this half human half beast form looked horrible, especially in its sideways walking, like a crab. Janine tried to bring her hand to her mouth, but her fingers were stuck in the sticky web.
The thing speaks English, she thought. It has some kind of brain.
Whatever this was, though, no matter how evil or crazed, it had no right to trap her in its sticky stuff.
‘I’m raising three kids on my own,’ Janine yelled out. ‘I need every penny.’
The thing raised its snakelike head and a forked tongue flicked out. Above that tongue, two dirt encrusted holes appeared to be its breathing in area. Huge blue ears loomed out behind its scaly black sideburns.
‘You smell delicious,’ the thing said.
The creature crooked a skinny leg and used its toes to take something out of a pocket sunk into the back of its head.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ Janine said, keeping her voice low so the creature would think she wasn’t scared.
‘Predators always attack if you act like prey,’ she thought.
‘Just take a bit of your blood,’ said the creature. ‘It won’t hurt a bit.’
‘Why me?’
Janine felt herself shrinking back.
‘Courage makes us high,’ the thing said. ‘We Methanyls love to feel courage. And you have it. You chased unpredictable people and ran through dangerous traffic to obtain what you value most.’
It came closer, smelling like swamp water crossed with ammonia.
‘Get away from me!’ Janine screamed, the fog swirling all about her and about the creature’s face as one of its spindly legs lifted a needle to its claws poked a needle into her neck.
‘Get away!’
‘We take the blood, so,’ the creature said. ‘And we replace it with our own blood, so.’
Another needle came up in a second spindly appendage. Janine felt a jab in her left shoulder.
‘Here’s some gnomish liquid.’
Janine felt a warm rush all through her body, then a floating sensation, like being lifted to heaven.
‘Nothing’s better than this,’ the creature smiled, its voice sounding like a caress under the effects of the liquid. ‘We take your hard working blood but give you this beautiful elixir.’
Janine moved her leg and found that she could lift herself from the net, the sticky bits had vanished. She stood, as the elixir infused her with sensation. Even the creature appeared beatific to her, its face more like a smiley man in the moon now, all pale and friendly.
‘Go into the culvert, Janine. You’ll find a lot more elixir,’ said the creature.
Janine briefly wondered if this was another trap, but the thought of the elixir pushed her forward.
She moved her arms and legs around, to make sure they were completely unstuck, then ducked down and bolted through the huge culvert opening. ‘Wow, do I have a lot of energy!’ she thought, but at the same time another part of her mind, the practical part that worked an eight hour day and raised three sons told her ‘Be careful.’
The dark, bumpy floored culvert smelled of ammonia, but Janine saw at the other end a circular exit showing a haze of light and fog. The huge pipe must go under the road, though she couldn’t hear or see any traffic.
‘This might be the way back to the mall,’ she thought, although she also reflected on what the creature said, ‘You’ll find a lot more elixir in the culvert.’
She ran, her footsteps clattering on the metal culvert bottom. She thought of the creature, taking from her but giving back too, with a serpent smile. She thought of her kids, in their early and late teens now. They no longer needed her like they did as children. But she needed them, something to live for, besides her job and this elixir that floated inside. She stopped, glanced down at her purse. That object had got her into a lot of trouble, but she’d held onto it through everything. It had her cash, credit cards, her I. D., She pressed the strap close and ran on.
The other end of the culvert opened to more swirling mist, with many pale figures moving within it, all in rags, pushing and pulling tiny wagons and carts, they appeared more like outlines than humans, wraiths in the fog, no sound except for the squeaking of rusty wheels.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked a bony faced man in red pants.
‘Doing the work for the high,’ said the man.
Janine saw his skull, translucent beneath the skin. Part of her felt elated, from the initial rush. She felt like she needed another shot of that elixir, but what this man said worried her. She took a closer look at him. Veiny arms, rotten teeth, a smell like marsh water and rotten cabbage. It was the guy with the girl who stole her purse! He still had cuts all around his wrists.
‘I fell into your trap,’ she stated. ‘How could I be so stupid!’
‘You should have let Lana go.’ He ran his hand along his sores. ‘I tried to tell you.’
‘You both led me to the spidery snake that’s taken my blood.’
‘The Methanyls are our suppliers, lady,’ said the man, blue veins bulging all along the top of his head. ‘I’m sorry we led you here. But it was your will, too. You wanted that purse so bad.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Janine said.
‘It was also because the thieves were weak,’ an inner voice told her. ‘I knew I could take them easily.’
Many times, she remembered spending her last dollars to buy groceries for her sons, when she didn’t eat much for a week. It was scary, not knowing where her family’s next meal was coming from, but she worked two jobs and paid the bills and gave her family sustenance. She’d always been strong.
‘I’ve still got my own mind,’ she told the gnarly man, though the feeling of the elixir was fading fast, and anxiety rushed through her brain.
She looked about her. Thin, red eyed people swayed in various positions, stooped over, heads nodding, with hair all falling on one side. A trembling old man rode by on a small bicycle, a backpack over his shoulder. As he passed, he gave a shout. ‘Wanna buy some of the good blood? Only need a thumbful of yours.’
A girl, bent over at the waist, picked something shiny off the ground. Her cheeks ran gaunt with sores on her face, eyes full of intense focus as she scrambled along. From out of the distance Janine noticed another of the creatures, shiny needles wrapped in its toes.
‘You call them Methanyls?’ she asked the man in the filthy red pants.
‘They take our blood for their high, in exchange, we work for them and obtain the elixir for ours.’
He turned away, his head quivering. ‘I’m sorry. I must go to work for my shot.’
At the word ‘shot’ Janine felt a craving come from her entire body. She grabbed on to her purse strap, and made her mind concentrate once again on her sons. She had raised them the best that she could. She would give them anything. They were something to live for, beyond the elixir. She had to keep her mind on that. Any wavering, and she’d be carried off into the fog like the others. She took her phone out of her pocket and tried to turn it on. All that came up was the signal ‘No internet service.’
‘I’ve got to get back to the mall!’ She stepped in front of a hunched over woman carrying a mattress on her back. ‘How do I get back to the mall?’
The woman looked up and spat in her direction. ‘Cut your arms. Release the blood. Then the ambulance will come.’
Janine saw it was Lana, the gnarled man’s girlfriend, the very person she’d grabbed in the mall.
Lana glared at her.
‘I know you, Blondie,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t set me free.’
‘Only because you stole my purse,’ Janine said. ‘I should have let you go, but I didn’t know where you were going to lead me. What do you mean, I should cut my arms?’
As she spoke, a Methanyl creature scuttled up on its many hairy legs.
‘You’ve carried that heavy mattress remarkably,’ the Methanyl said to the hunched over Lana. ‘Now your blood is fit for the taking.’
Its leg reached back behind its fat, green coloured head and pulled out a needle.
‘I’m a hard worker,’ Lana said. ‘I’m not a thief.’ She threw the mattress on the ground and stood with her neck bared as the Methanyl stuck her.
‘They’re sucking out her strength,’ Janine thought. ‘And that’s what they want to do to me.’
The Methanyl pulled out another needle. ‘Now for the elixir, in return,’ it said, and plunged the shiny steel into the thin woman’s shoulder. ‘You’ve still got lots of veins in that body.’
The woman staggered back and sagged against a rock wall, her face slackening as she bent over almost double, then stopped, her hair dangling to the ground. Then she collapsed onto the mattress.
‘She’s in her weakness now,’ said the Methanyl. ‘So how about you, Missy? Do you want to get high again?’
Janine’s anxiety transformed to anger at the creature’s smug smile. How dare the Methanyl take Lana’s strength? On the other hand, it would be so simple. Just say ‘Yes,’ and donate the blood, and in exchange, the pleasure of the elixir, no more dry throat, no more nervousness, no more feeling alone. She felt her fingers trembling again.
‘But too easy,’ Janine made the thought hammer through her head. ‘Too fast.’
She thought about what Lana said about escaping this Methanyl world.
‘Release your blood and the ambulance will come.’
In her pocket she carried a pair of sharp scissors. How would it feel to stab herself and let the liquid flow? That would take a lot of courage. If she faltered now, though, she’d never leave this place.
‘I could take this creature out,’ she thought. ‘It’s frail too, just like the others.’
She forced her anxiety into anger once again, pushed fury from her gut into the world.
‘Get away from me!’
The creature smiled in a half grimace and scuttled backwards, its incisors yellow brown and its ammonia breath like poison gas.
‘Alright, lady. I’m not a fighter. You’ll come crawling soon enough. Unless you get caught in a net again!’
Janine yelled again ‘Get away!’ as the Methanyl jumped into the culvert and regarded her from the opening with its huge liquid eyes.
Then all was silent, except for the rustling wraiths moving through the fog around her. All silent, all suffering.
‘I’ll never crawl to you!’ Janine shouted. She felt better in her head just from expressing her tumult. She yelled again. ‘You’re not going to get any more of my blood!’
From atop the culvert, she saw a flash and heard a roaring sound. Could that be a car?
She turned and yelled once more, ‘I have a life!’
She looked up again above the culvert opening. As her voice faded, so did the motor noise.
The Methanyl smiled and whispered from below. ‘You are working up a lot of strength and independence,’ it said. ‘We can use that!’
‘You’re a weak creature!’ Janine shouted. ‘I can tell... I could snap off one of those legs in a second!’
She was still strong. If it wasn’t for the couple leading her on, and the sticky trap, the Methanyls would never have caught her. But Janine understood that the more blood she gave, the more she’d become like these creatures. ‘Maybe they even used to be human,’ she thought, as she looked past the Methanyl’s red rimmed eyes.
Only her will that kept her from searching out another high, and the more highs she chased, the weaker her will would be. How could she escape?
The thirst she felt for the Methanyl elixir raked her throat. The air burned dry, right down to her lungs, so that she coughed for relief. She needed to give a little more of her own blood, her own strength, and she’d feel wonderful again. She reached for her phone and checked it, still no service. This time a face came on the screen, the snakelike face of a Methanyl, and the face said, ‘Dial emergency and get our emergency elixir services, first shot free!’
Janine snapped the phone off and slammed it into her purse. When she yelled again, another flash appeared from the berm atop the culvert. Janine yelled again, and there came another metal shine.
‘The cars!’ she thought and yelled again.
Every time she shouted, and exercised her anger and her will, the world of the Methanyls faded and another car glittered by.
She pushed by an old, gnarled man carrying bicycle parts, ‘Don’t push me, lady,’ he said in a weak, whispery voice, and as she glanced back, she knew that the man’s face was young, though clawed and scarred with lines and pockmarks. It could have been anyone, even one of her sons.
Janine dodged around him, pushed herself to the top of the berm.
All lay silent, enshrouded in mist.
She cried out ‘Set me free!’ and another flash appeared, inches away, with the sound of an engine.
Janine stepped out into the fog.
Her hands trembled, her legs shook. She felt the dryness of her throat, the quaver in her voice. She must scream, while she still could, to bring back reality. Or else she’d fall down the slope again, into the land of elixir. She felt herself stagger.
‘Let me go!’ she cried and jumped forward in one final lunge.
Another flash, an engine roar. A blue vehicle flew out of the distance. A massive screeching sound filled the air as a car smacked into her upraised arm and shoulder. She fell back, grabbed her own hand as the blood trickled down. As she bled, the mist faded back, replaced by the stench of rubber and the clearness of the sky. She smelled fresh air. Above her, the shining sun.
She tried again to raise her bleeding arm. A girl ran over from the sidewalk.
‘What happened? Are you okay?’
‘I’m free!’ Janine said, although her voice came out a whisper.
A large man pushed himself around the side of his stopped vehicle. His giant legs quivered, his orange T shirt clear against the sky, his bulging horrified eyes stared into hers.
‘She ran right out into the road!’ He knelt beside her. ‘I tried to stop!’
‘Are you okay?’ he asked Janine. ‘Geez, she’s bleeding.’
He took off his shirt, tied it tight around her arm. His voice quavered. ‘Call 9-11,’ he told the girl, who was already on her phone.
Janine tried to speak, but only a hoarse croak came out. She felt the tourniquet around her shoulder, regarded her bare feet. She’d been lucky. All she’d lost was her shoes.
‘You couldn’t kill me, you stupid Methanyls!’ she tried to yell, as the ambulance sounded in the distance.
She thought of the frail couple, stooped over in their red hoodies, holding hands as they stumbled down the mall. There’s no way she’d run towards their world again, be trapped in the elixir net. Her life was much too precious.
She peered to one side. Her purse lay on the asphalt, a few feet away. She tried to call to the kind man, who placed his own coat over her.
‘Could you pick up my things?’ she asked, and he did.
Yet there, just beyond the purse, sticking out from the ditch, was that a hairy blue leg?
The girl calling emergency acted like she saw nothing. She just kept talking and stated
‘The ambulance will be here soon, ma’am.’
Janine tried again to cry out, but it seemed she was the only one who saw the creature. She knew she would struggle in the real world—the world of work, her sons, the world of human connection—every day for the rest of her life.
‘I’m in control,’ she told herself. ‘I will be strong enough.’
