As Elizabeth and I ran down a flight of spiral stairs, a deep howl followed us—an earthquake from the throat of a beast that shook the walls and floor. Sparks cracked in the air and we felt electricity crawl across our faces, tingle the backs of our necks. We stopped on the stairs and looked back up from where we had come.
“Was that your wife bellowing?” Elizabeth asked as she took the bear cloak from my arm and wrapped it around her nude body.
“She’s not my wife…anymore,” I said, sticking my free arm through the vest arm hole and jacket sleeve, making sure they were both tight around me.
We headed down the stairs until it stopped at a landing. Hallways and doorways branched off in every direction. I could only assume we were on an upper level and needed at least to get to the ground floor to escape the house. Inch by inch we’d have to find our way out, hoping we didn’t get more lost than we already were. And hopefully not meeting any family, all of them distracted by the party.
What sounded like a wall smashing, wood splintering, echoed from the top of the stairs. I picked a direction and Elizabeth and I raced away from the staircase landing, and whatever was coming down it.
We stepped around a corner that led down a narrow hallway out of view of the staircases. I stopped her and said we should take off our shoes—the heavy metal clopping we made on the wooden floors echoed loudly enough to easily give away our retreat.
We stooped down to get a better look at what we carried on our feet this whole time. Strange characters, or runes, I’d never seen before were scratched into the black metal, a low heel and a split toe which neither of us could feel with our toes. They were practically vacuum-sealed to our legs, just above our ankles. Tried to pry them off for ourselves and for each other, but they wouldn’t loosen without taking our feet with them.
We would have to keep our steps as light as possible, stay on carpet when we could, walk slowly and hide to let any danger pass. If we could wrap something around the shoes to deaden their horse-like clop, that may have helped.
We winced with every step as we ran down the hall, leaving a clatter in our wake like falling pots and pans, until the wooden floor ended in a circular room, coincidentally covered by a thick bear skin. From one of the largest, fattest bears I’d ever seen. Its head still attached, about the approximate size of the head of a great white shark.
Elizabeth and I scrambled away from the yellow fangs of the beast, its thick red tongue about the size of a man’s arm lolled out of its mouth. The ceiling of the circular room was a terraced wooden cone with no windows, and there were no windows or doors in the room except for the one we had come through.
We started patting the walls, hoping for a hidden doorway. But we had taken too long to figure out the shoes.
A bellowing voice that was a cross between a woman’s scream and a bear’s growl howled at our backs. Through the open doorway we saw Venus stepping slowly to the door, her body filling it. Hair burned off, eyebrows gone, half of her scalp textured with bloated bubbles and charred skin, an ear melted like wax, the burn reaching down one side of her neck, exposing tight tendons, to end as a scorch that twisted the flesh of her left breast.
Still sticking out of her belly was the knife I had taken out of Gord’s jacket sleeve.
Through her legs we could see a man cowering on the floor. A bloody black hole where one of his eyes used to be. Naked but for a few patches of vest material welded to his skin, hair burned off with an eyebrow melted and raised into a permanent inquisitive expression, his entire head baked sunburn red, legs as black as tar, the bear fur gone, the metal shoes still encasing his feet but also melted up his shins. Venus must’ve let Gord burn a little longer. Astounding he wasn’t dead. But my mind tabulated quickly what I saw. The shoes couldn’t be burned off—fire only increased their melt up the leg. But the vest and jacket could be eroded by flame.
And Venus could be hurt!
“The cloak looks good on you,” she said to Elizabeth, words wheezing out with her smoky breath. “You better keep it on…you’re going to need it where you’re going.”
I edged over to Elizabeth, wrapped my hand around her arm to make contact, to go with her wherever Venus was going to send her.
“Oh, don’t worry, hubby,” Venus said, glancing at where my hand rested, “you’re going too. You picked the right room. But don’t ever say I didn’t give you a fighting chance. Prove your worth, and I may still be merciful. Your genes still have worth, even if your conscience doesn’t.”
She pulled the knife slowly out of her stomach, a pencil of blood flowing out with it, and threw it into the room. “Enjoy hell, you two.”
The door slammed shut, locking Venus and Gord out, locking Elizabeth and I in. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Scanned the walls and ceiling, waiting for what was coming next. I clasped my arm around Elizabeth’s waist.
The floor shuddered and trembled as the back of the bear rug raised up in a great hump. Its head lifted off the floor, mouth gaping twice what it had when lying on the floor. It was just skin and fur, but it came alive. Its claws distended and curved, arms wide to touch almost from wall to wall.
Elizabeth screamed and tucked into me, but a swipe of the bear’s claw sent her flying. Hopefully the bear cloak protected her from injury. I swept a hand down and picked up the knife Venus had left. One knife for me, but the claws of the beast were like ten knives. I held the blade in hand like a sword and ran it into the bear’s body, slashed the skin, jabbed in the point, then pulled down with all of my weight. But the skin was too tough for me to get more than a couple of inches tear through it. Then the beast fell on me, its body ballooning over me like a tent, then sucking in, squeezing me into a cocoon of leather and fur.
I could still hear Elizabeth’s screams and the clatter of her shoes as they circled behind the bear. Knife still wedged through its skin, I sawed the slit and used my hands to pry the gap wider as the knife sliced. I was able to open the hole in the skin enough to wedge my head through. Only to see the bear’s claws hook into the cloak Elizabeth wore and pull her into its jaws. She couldn’t get the coat off her arms before the jaws closed over her, the beast’s head sinking down the length of her body, swallowing her whole.
I sliced and tore enough of a gap to squeeze through the skin, clenched the knife in my teeth as I climbed the fur up to the back of the bear’s neck, slashed at its face and neck. As I did with Gord, I stabbed one of the bear’s eyes. I figured when attacked by an immense beast, the only chance I had at survival was to go for its eyes. It reared up, pinning me to the ceiling, wedging my arm so that I couldn’t get too good of a stab or slash. But I had hurt it. Its roar rattled the ceiling, breaking off plaster, exposing wooden tiles which then rained down on me and it. The thing spun away from the tiles, ducking low, back on all fours, and I kept my grip on its fur to ride it down.
The knife hammered into its face and neck at random as it bellowed in pain and tried to throw me off its back. Before it smashed its back against the wall, and me with it, I managed to swing my body off the nape of its neck, but still held onto its fur with one hand.
But I fell to the floor when it crashed into the wall. The beast swung its maw in the direction of where it must’ve heard my shoes, but I got to my feet and raced behind it. It couldn’t turn its massive body in the cramped space quickly enough. With its back facing me, I jumped back through the hole I had torn through it and kept hacking the knife through its body from the inside.
Its claw swept at me, tore four gashes across the back of my jacket, but it didn’t reach my flesh. I figured being outside the beast was better than being inside it. Wedged a foot on the tear and swung myself through the hole, put the knife in my teeth again as I climbed up its back. But its skin was looser now with the gaping split. It shook me like a flea crawling up its back, rammed its flank against the wall again and again. The back of my head knocked hard against the wall, punching an indent in the plaster. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have. I shook away stars and dizziness, and the knife flew out of my mouth and rattled across the floor. My fingers pried loose from the fur and I slipped to the floor as well.
The jaws opened like the mouth of an anaconda, yellow saliva dripping from wet fangs, and lowered toward me. I saw the glint of the knife, reached for it, got it in my hand.
Did what damage I could during the few seconds I was in its mouth before it swallowed me whole.