Party on Horror Beach

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I’m sorry.” Hit Bobbi like a bucket of ice water in the face. She stared in shock and disbelief as she watched Roger run away.

“Rat BASTard!” was all she could choke out.

She frantically yanked and tugged at the ropes on her left wrist, which Thompson had loosened and nearly undone. Finally she pulled her hand free.

She immediately went to work on the ropes on her right wrist. In just a few seconds she realized why Roger had scrabbled so ineffectively at them. That knot was cinched too tightly to pull loose, especially with a half-numb left hand.

“Damn it, Bobby! Why’d you have to tie it so damn tight?”

The memory came to her unbidden and unavoidable.

“Tie it tight, Lover. Tie it real tight!” She’d whispered.

He complied, slowly cinching the knot while they exchanged breathy giggles.

“Oh. Damn it, Bobby! Of all the damn times to finally do as you’re told!”

Bobbi’s face flushed red and tears ran down her cheeks.

Thompson the cameraman’s headless body lurched by, almost bumping into her before finally dropping to the sand.

Bobbi screamed.

She pulled desperately at he ropes, to no avail. She broke two nails clawing at the knot.

Then a gust of hot air hit her cheek. She gagged on the smell of it, which reminded her of wintergreen and a refrigerator full of leftovers gone bad.

Fearful, she glanced up.

The Frankenstein Monster towered over her, just a few feet away. It’s square topped head was bent low toward her, looking down from above. The face was wrinkled and moldy gray-green, its eyelids half closed. But the hard as marbles eyes behind those drooping lids looked at her with a disturbing gleam. As if reading her mind, the Monster’s black lips curled into an ugly smile. It gave a little, almost imperceptible nod of its head.

The Monster was standing so close to her that she could feel the heat of its body against her skin, like the warmth from a roaring fire.

Bobbi screamed again.

Somewhere, in the distance, she heard Bobby’s voice, muffled by the heavy She-Creature mask, calling her name.

The Frankenstein Monster freed her from the driftwood cross, not by undoing the ropes, but by reaching past her arm and snapping the crossbeam like a dry stick. It reached down, huge rough hand sliding past and behind her hip, and did likewise with the thicker vertical beam.

With surprising grace and unimaginable power, the Monster scooped her up in its arms and lifted her effortlessly. The broken pieces of the driftwood cross fell away behind her, loose ropes dangled from her hands and ankles.

The Monster swung her around, like a man playing “airplane” with a little child, lifting and dropping her in dizzying swoops. A breast slipped out from the cup of her bikini. Hollow grunts that might have been laughter sounded from the Monster’s yawning maw of a mouth.

Somewhere, far away, she heard Bobby cry out again.

Bobbi, light-headed from being spun around, fainted, happy to escape into blackness.

The Creature could tell that something evil was at work. The skies above clouded over, but no wind touched the surface of the ocean. The seawater became bitter to the taste, tainted by an unseen presence. Beneath the small waves that rippled across the surface, the water was still and sullen, as if the ocean itself was holding its breath. Fish didn’t swim about. They floated frozen in place as if afraid to attract attention to themselves by moving.

The Creature glided up the sandy slope toward the shore, tracking the center of the disturbance by a kind of primeval radar. When it was close enough to hear muffled screams, cries from above the waves, it bobbed to the surface, floating with just the top of its head and eyes above the waterline.

The air-breathers were screaming and running about on the beach. The Creature cared little about them and ignored their scurrying.

Much nearer was a creature of a kind it had never seen before. Huge and blocky with broad shoulders and long, lobster-like claws, it was covered with thick armored plates and sharp spines. It looked like some kind of crustacean, but it was fiercely female with huge breasts and oddly flared hips. There was something powerful and primordial about it. It was wallowing toward the shore, bellowing hoarsely.

Something ancient and undeniable rose inside the Creature as it gazed at this weird She-Creature thing. Something stirred in its cold blood, flared to life, began to burn in its loins. Needs as old as Life in the seas swelled up like a powerful incoming tide. The pulsing of its heart sped up, pounding like waves upon a rocky shore, shaking the Creature’s body to its core.

A mate!

The thing standing before it, the fantastically strangely female Thing, might finally be the mate it had always craved. Solid and aquatic and not squallingly fragile like the air-breathers it sometimes fancied.

The Creature’s head sunk slowly beneath the surface and it began to glide silently, cautiously, toward the she-creature. Its mouth gaped and snapped shut, breathing fast and hard through its gills, charging its body with the oxygen it would need for… exertions.

Bobby lumbered about, waving the She-Creature’s claws. He tried to project menace and power through his motions, but the lower part of the suit was so heavy with absorbed seawater that he could barely drag his legs toward the shore. Between the oily smog that Frankie was pumping out of the smoke-machine and the mesh covering the She-Creature’s eye-holes, Bobby could barely see what was going on. He saw a lot of movement on the beach, frantic running about and Roger, that ham, gesturing wildly.

When the screaming turned shrill and great splashes of red blood erupted, Bobby knew in his bones that something was wrong, deadly wrong.

He dragged at this legs, trying to get to the others, but it was like trying to running a nightmare. He could barely move his legs and each receding wave seemed to pull him back. The sand under his clawed boots sunk and swirled away until he was standing in ankle-deep pits.

He swung his shoulders for momentum and huffed for breath. The mask was heavy, tight, and stifling. He gazed in disbelief at the huge lumbering black form that climbed off the flimsy table Mike had built. When Roger broke suddenly broke and ran away, his fears were confirmed. Something disastrous was going on! Roger would never leave a scene in mid-shoot.

“Bobbi!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. “Hold on, I’m coming!”

Head down, arms and legs pumping, Bobby forced the She-Creature suit forward. If he could have shaken off the lobster-claw gloves, he would’ve yanked the mask off his head.

He felt a pressure well up from behind him. Something big was swimming in the water nearby.

A shark?

Of all the times to have to worry about a damn shark! Bobby hoped it stayed away, or would choke on a mouthful of foam rubber if it dared to strike.

Either way, he was on his way to save Bobbi, and could not spare the time or effort to fret about a shark.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon reared up out of the water, blaring its harsh, raspy mating call. It wrapped its arms around the She-Creature and fell backwards, legs kicking, dragging them both out to deep water.

Bobby screamed in startled horror.

Bobby saw the huge webbed hands that clamped onto the She-Creature’s great foam breasts and the last thought that went through his mind before he was dragged under and off to what would prove to be an equally unsatisfactory coupling was…

“Why does EVERYBODY have to grab the She-Critter’s tits? Why?”