Chapter Thirty-One

I went for the closest cover—the overfilled dumpster. Right as I turned the corner behind it, my good foot hit something on the ground and I went face-first into the dirt. Benjamin was already outside, screaming, “Where do you think you’re gonna hide, Jack? Don’t you know that we own these woods now?”

I looked around for any kind of weapon. The only thing nearby was the pile of store garbage I was waiting to burn, but in a situation as desperate as this, I wasn’t going to be too picky. The best thing in arm’s reach was a Coke bottle, which I grabbed and pulled closer, just to realize that it was only plastic. While still technically better than nothing, I couldn’t see myself winning any monster battles with it. I guess this is what I deserve for putting plastic in a burn pile, I thought.

But then I thought, wait a second… burn… pile??? I looked at my feet to see what it was I’d tripped over. Then I formed another quick dumb plan. It was the gas canister. The one I’d been using to jump start the garbage bonfires. And it was almost completely full. But not for long.

Benjamin calmly walked over to where I was hiding. By the time he emerged on my side of the dumpster, he looked perfectly normal, save for a single hole in his bloodstained shirt. He smiled, showing off his perfect pearly whites, then said, “I thought you were going to make a run for it.”

Part of me wanted to make a snarky comeback like they always do in the movies, but a bigger part of me wanted to get this over with while he was still standing in a fresh and flammable puddle of death. I flicked on the Zippo lighter and dropped it to the ground, where I had run a short trail of gas to the puddle at his feet.

As usual, it did not go quite how I was expecting.

The thing about gasoline fires is that, even with the extensive amount of experience I’ve had with them, one can never really predict what’s going to happen. Maybe the gas is old. Maybe it sank into the dirt too fast and there’s nothing left to catch fire. And maybe, the fumes had already settled onto the ground everywhere in a ten-foot radius, and you didn’t even need to leave a fuse because the entire earth around you was about to turn into a fireball before the lighter even touched the ground.

In an instant, everything turned orange, and then the FWOOM blasted into me. I was certain that my pants and shoes, at the very least, were on fire. And I couldn’t breathe. All of the air was sucked into the fireball blasting upwards into the night sky. I fell to the ground and began violently coughing. I coughed and hacked and gagged way longer than I care to admit, but then the ability to breathe came back, and I rolled over to see the damage.

My pants and shoes were not on fire. But the man leaning against the dumpster was. The ground around him was solid black, and a swirl of flames danced up his body. It was difficult to watch for more reasons than one, but I forced myself to. The thing was burned down to almost nothing but a head, torso, and four limbs, all solid black. Then, thousands of spikes erupted from all over, inches long and thin as nails, wriggling and dancing and burning right up into nothingness. And then, when it looked like it had to be over, the creature pulled its hand away from the dumpster and took a step towards me.

Oh shit.

And then another.

Ooohhh shiiit!

And then it fell forwards and didn’t move again.