Amelia crosses the steel drawbridge to the island and pushes through the ticket barrier. A bunch of children run past holding multi-coloured balloons, baby vampire and werewolf cub pictures on them twirling around in the breeze. So cute. And so wrong.
She reads the giant notice board and scowls:
The amusement park is vast and claims to have every monster in existence. Amelia very much doubts that. Spawling rollercoasters and ghost trains weave between giant cages and reinforced glass enclosures, between horrifying museums, gruesome food halls, and a colossal amphitheatre set around a concrete pool. A small island deforested to build a modern-day freak show. They created a Monster alright, as humanity always does.
Her legs itching, Amelia rubs her heel against the calf of her other leg. She clutches the compact wire cutters in her hoodie pocket with clammy hands. She shouldn’t be doing this, she tells herself. She should never have signed up when she saw the Monster Aid call stuck on the college notice board. But there’s no turning back now.
As she always does to calm herself, she pictures a sparkling sunlit sea, breathing deep to the rhythm of the tide in her memory. She wishes she were back there now and reminds herself that is exactly why she is here instead: to protect the sea life and all other life facing extinction.
She pulls down a NY Yankees cap and looks around to check no one is watching her. Most of the adults are already on their phones, frowning when they realise there’s no signal, already pretending they aren’t using their cameras.
She can’t help but smile a little despite her unease. Clearly, they haven’t checked the T’s and C’s of their park tickets. Their phones will be checked before they leave the place, and any monster pics and vids wiped.
Someone in the crowd catches her eye, his sunglasses blocking his sea-blue eyes. What is Johan doing? she thinks of her fellow activist. If someone notices … Amelia looks away, pretending not to know him, rubbing the shaved side of her head.
She picks out a pair of voices in the line next to her:
“Careful, honey. Don’t get too close to the cage now.”
“But, Daddy, I wanna see its big teethies!” a little girl squeaks, about to burst.
A barrel-chested, red-haired monsterkeeper smiles at the girl and turns to the knackered-looking father. “Don’t worry, sir, it’s perfectly safe. The werewolves learn in their teens not to get close to the bars. They’d never harm a child.”
The father’s face tightens a notch.
Artificial moonlight spills from the cage, lighting the girl’s gap-toothed smile and the spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She imitates a roar as she watches the werewolf that is half-asleep and clearly in no mood for entertainment. Its wide fury back is turned away from the onlookers as it lies in a super-sized doughnut position.
Amelia is glad to see the werewolf is not chained, but the cage is still far too small, even more cramped than her college dorm and without any room for “Wolfy” to get out of sight of the hundreds of uncaring eyes on him. Amelia feels her hand ball into a fist, rubs it against the side of her thigh.
The kid soon gets fidgety. “Daddy, let’s go see the vamps!”
“Okay, dear,” he says, exhaustion heavy in his voice, sounding like he’ll barely last the day. He catches Amelia’s eye. She smiles at him in that “you can do it” kinda way.
Monstopia is alive with the cacophony of humanity: screams and whoops and bickering. Impossible for the monsters to relax. Amelia can almost see the werewolf’s broken spirit lying on the floor next to him. Without even the energy to howl.
Kids of all shapes and ages wear blood-red smiles from eating too much cotton candy, dripping green goo from their mouths as they eat “mummified” hotdogs with dyed mustard. The 6-inch sausages — “Vicious vegan alternative also available” — are wrapped in onion rings to give the same effect.
The smells turn her stomach as she sees families enjoying themselves, smiling and laughing at the caged attractions. Sure, they may be monsters, but they still have rights, deserve so much better than this!
Amelia stomps forward, holding the wire cutters tight in her hoodie pocket. When she feels someone touch her shoulder, Amelia jumps away.
“Hey, sorry.” The guy with the kid stands in front of her. “You dropped this,” he says.
“Oh, yeah, thank you,” she stumbles. “My insulin.” Always a terrible liar.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
The kid gives her a blue milkshake-moustache smile.
“Aren’t you adorable?” Amelia says as she puts the tranquiliser shot back in her pocket, pushing it deep.
“Yep,” she says, without batting an eyelid.
“Well, thanks again. Hope you both enjoy your day.”
The girl drags her father away, and Amelia heads to the vampire enclosure, looking for weaknesses.
There is a group of frat boys taking pictures with their phones of the vampire in a curtained cage. Amelia tuts. Devolution right there, she thinks. They scratch their heads when they see nothing in the pictures but the old leather chair the Count is sitting on beside a red table lamp as he reads a book titled Fifty Tips for Good Dental Hygiene. No doubt a book forced onto him to keep the crowd smiling. Behind bulletproof glass, the vampire looks smartly dressed. Does he look content? No, he is incarcerated. It must be a show. He bares his fangs at the kids, getting a scream or two, but you can tell his heart isn’t in it. That he just wants peace and quiet.
Amelia walks away, looking at the signs for ‘monsters’ of all shapes and sizes until she finds the one she’s been searching for. The tartan billboard reads Nessie in a splashed effect typeface. The largest monster in the park. If they could fit in a kraken to go with it, they probably would, but they haven’t been able to capture one yet. After all, Amelia knows they were down there in the dark depths of the ocean floor, she has seen such a majestic creature.
A thousand miles away from the loch she calls home, Nessie appears forlorn and giant in the aquarium. As large a whale’s, Nessie’s immense blue eye stares at Amelia, sending a shiver down her spine. And a thousand miles from the shy person people know her to be, she says, “I’m getting you out of here!”
Her activist group Monster Aid has already hacked into the security cams, leaving her free to do her work. A group she had been so nervous of joining, but the only one she has felt she belongs in. She moves carefully as the crowd is distracted by Nessie’s calls, monstersong to his kind, maybe to all monsterkind? Amelia knows a bit of whalesong, but not a lot. She plants the charges on the base of the giant aquarium, signals to Nessie to swim over to the other side of it. Someone turns around the corner, one of the park workers. He looks like security. She pushes her cap down further, scalp prickling, and quickly walks away. As soon as he is out of sight, she punches the fire alarm.
She runs out of the aquarium, worrying that people are coming for her when they run past to escape. Parents and teachers shout at children to get clear, monster-faced balloons drifting up in the air with the rush. A man with a shaved-headed man pushes a woman out of the way in the rush; the woman picks herself up and chases after him, hurling abuse and French fries at him as she hunts him down. Monsterkeepers struggle for control as they call for calm on the other side of water fountain running blood red with dye.
Every part of Amelia wants to flee, to escape it all, and a dark memory resurfaces in her mind, flooding her with cold dread. The giant whale, one of the last of its kind, lies dead on the bloody sand. Seagulls squawk and circle wildly above, and the fishermen laugh as she screams at them, their harpoons held high and threateningly. Salty tears streaming down her face, her younger self shakes with hurt and anger and hatred.
The chaotic shouting of the park replaces the squawking as Amelia is ripped back to the present.
She had run away from them that day as fear closed around her heart, getting the better of her. But she won’t run away today.
Determinedly, she scans the aquarium, making sure it is clear. Just one more minute. She thinks of the little girl with her father. They have to be elsewhere, safe. Don’t they?
She sprints back to the aquarium entrance to double check.
No one is around.
She can’t wait any longer. She runs back up the ramp and hits the detonation button in her pocket. The blast forces her forward, the sound of cracking glass and crunching concrete filling the air.
Smoke drifts up the baking sun like octopus tentacles.
Monstopia erupts in chaos. People run like wild animals, as if it’s they who are escaping from captivity. She spots Johan in the distance busting open the caged stables. Centaurs gallop free, trampling through the food court.
She sprints to the vampire enclosure, jumping over an upturned hotdog cart, and in the diversionary confusion, she reaches the back of the marked “Vampariaum.” She dusts the keypad and punches in the code. The door swings open with a satisfying whine.
“Go,” she says. “You’re free.”
“Thank you, my dear,” the Count says with a posh British accent. “At least now I can read some proper literature again.” He calmly puts his book down and steps outside the cage. He nods at her and his clothes drop into a pile onto the floor, a black bat soaring to the heavens, heading back home that she knows is nowhere near Eastern Europe.
Relief floods through her and she re-treads the way from the park entrance that is almost empty now. Her fellow activists will already be setting free other monsters across the park.
She notices a bunch of rich kids still hanging around, near the werewolf enclosure. A boy with fluffy blonde hair and beady eyes bangs on the cage. “Here, little doggy. Got a treat for you. Now bow down!”
Wolfy — clearly having a pet hate for being treated as a pet — growls at the kid and snarls with vicious teeth. This would be enough to scare away even the bravest of kids, but this one only laughs.
“Oh, so scary. What’s wrong little one? Mommy didn’t love you enough? Shared with your pack was she?” A couple of snickers come from behind him. They take pics and a flash blinds the werewolf. Amelia can’t believe it. Everyone knows you shouldn’t take a picture of a werewolf, and never with a flash.
The werewolf shakes his head. Amelia’s teeth grind, hand gripping the wire cutters vice tight. She remembers all the times she was name-called as a child, all the times she never stood up for herself like she should have.
“Hey, bullyboy!” she shouts. “Why don’t you pick on someone who isn’t behind bars?” She shouldn’t be doing this, she is drawing too much attention to herself, threatening the mission. Threatening to get caught before she does her part. But she can’t stop herself. They are the fishermen she cowered to all those years ago, they are the next generation of will show cruelty to animals if they aren’t stopped.
His smile thins, and he sweeps back his messy hair in what Amelia is sure he thinks is a cool way. “Ha, what you?”
“Yeah.” She takes her stance, gives him the “come to me” gesture with her hand. He hesitates when Wolfy howls. Then goes ballistic as he bends the bars apart and slips through the gap. Screams carry across the park as the straddlers scamper towards the park’s exit.
“Get away from it now!” the barrel-chested monsterkeeper bellows, snatching at his gun. He takes aim at one of the last of its kind when Amelia runs and jumps in front of the werewolf, hoping it’s a tranquiliser gun and not something more serious.
“Ahh.” Her ankle has twisted. “Go. Now!” she tells the werewolf, wishing she knew his real name. Her cap has fallen off, revealing the long green-blue hair on one side that she’d bunched up under it.
The werewolf doesn’t have to be told twice as he jumps clear onto the nearest roof, the park eerily quiet now, gone are the cries of happiness.
The monsterkeeper growls at her and chases after the werewolf. “I’ll be back for you!” he says over his shoulder.
“And I’ll be gone,” she tells him, winking, wincing with the pain. Her ankle is on fire as she stands, but she won’t need to use it much longer. You can do this, she tells herself, dragging herself forward.
Of course, the monsters are carrying trackers, embedded beneath their skin as they were drugged unconscious, but they’d planned for that. Monsters Aid planned for everything, or so Amelia hopes.
Her waterproof watch bleeps to signal the EMP detonation. Her waterproof watch stops, and she sighs with relief. It worked. She ambles over to the park’s perimeter, the pain in her ankle subsiding slightly. Come on, time to go.
People stupid enough to film anything will be realising now that the recording was for nothing anyway, even if they got through the exit without checks — the EMP making sure of that. At least they have their memories; that’s if their memories are better than a goldfish in an age when Google does all the work.
Her part done, Amelia hobbles to the barrier overlooking the calm sea and climbs over it. She steps over it and balances over the edge, then takes a deep breath, peering down at the incredible drop. She puts a strand of hair behind her ear. And dives. The air rushes past her as she plummets, her legs burning as they transform. She hits the water like an Olympian, gracefully swimming in the place she calls home.
Amelia flips her shimmering tail hard and rises from the depths, the pain gone now as her head breaks the water and she reveals the real her. Exhaling long and deep, she looks up at a beautiful blue sky and promises herself to never change back again. She will fight them from the water to do her part.
Giant winged creatures cut across the sun, howls of freedom echo in the distance. She looks at the empty prison of Monstopia and smiles at humanity’s futility.
They’d no doubt try again, but this time her kind will be waiting. Together. As one. And ensure all the tech humans use to hunt them is destroyed before they have a chance to use it again. Ensure that the creatures they will never understand are free.
An ear-piercing wail cuts the air, followed by an earthquake-loud rumble. Amelia turns around to see Nessie, moving freely as she bends her giant neck down to the park’s platform. Nessie emerges with a blonde kid dangling from her mouth.
Amelia shrugs. “Meh.” And swims away to leave Nessie to her meal.