Monster Within, by MakeBelieve

Chapter 1
Monster Within

Chapter Description: by MakeBelieve (now known as Entropic).

Author’s note : Well, this is my first submitted story to a site. I’ve lurked at AR sites for ages (the term ’parasite’ springs to mind...) so I thought I should give something back. This is it. I hope you all enjoy it. (It’s only male AR, so you probably won’t all enjoy it...)

*by MakeBelieve (now known as Entropic).*

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Jack was in despair. He was 13, and his life was pointless. He had no friends and many enemies. Well, one in particular. Chris, a big, tough, brainless bully who seemed to just love stealing Jack’s…anything Jack had. He had no idea why Chris had even chosen him as his archrival.

‘Rival’ made it sound as if Jack and Chris were equals, but the latter was 17. Chris was a monster, he had a muscled body and a low enough level of intelligent to rely mainly on it. All Jack had was good grades…but not good enough to figure him out. Jerk.

How he’d like to pummel his stupid, ape-like face into…some sort of gooey mess. But that was not likely, considering Jack was not the athletic type. He wasn’t fat or anything…he just wasn’t the sporty type. He was the ‘read a book rather than get skin cancer from going out in the Sun’ type. The type Chris loved to pick on.

One particularly uneventful day, Jack was coming home from the library. He was carrying a big, heavy book about Greek mythology. The librarian had given him an odd look when he checked it out. He told her it was to reach a high shelf. Then they both gave each other odd looks, and Jack left in a hurry.

He was walking past an alley, when something in the alley caught his eye. A big, empty cardboard box. Normally he would not be interested in cardboard boxes, but he needed one to work on a school project. He walked dejectedly into the alley after checking no one was around and inspected the box. To his horror the inside was half covered in some slimy, unidentifiable stuff. It figured. A big cardboard box appearing when you needed one was too good to be true. He looked at the others around the alley. They looked about as much use as the slime covered one. He turned to trudge back out of the alley.

Suddenly, he heard a woman scream. He stopped dead in his tracks. A moment of silence followed, then the sound of running feet could be heard rushing towards the alley. A cry of “Thief! Thief! Stop thief!” went up, and Jack started to panic. He did the only sensible thing he could think of – he dived behind the piles of boxes. A moment later, a tall, shifty looking man in a leather jacket ran into the alley. Jack held his breath for what seemed like an eternity, but was, in reality, only a second. Then the man opened a door in the alley, ran in, and slammed it shut. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He slowly got up and retraced his steps out of the alley, shaking slightly. Strangely, there was no one in the street. No woman, no onlookers, nothing. He thought that was strange, but began to walk off. Then he heard a humming noise, building to a crescendo behind him.

He was wondering whether to go back when suddenly he heard a scream coming from back down the alley. He knew that was not good. He gingerly walked back down from the street. There was a window behind a pile of the boxes that looked into the room that the man had entered. Jack knelt down and peered through the window.

The darkness of the room was illuminated by flashes of light, as if a lightning storm was localised in the room. Jack could see the man who had entered…or was it the same man? He looked strangely different, but Jack couldn’t place it. Charges of electricity were pulsing into the man’s body and he was…melting? Jack looked on in horror at the spectacle, as the man seemed to disappear into his clothes! Then the man turned and looked straight at Jack. Jack just stared, stunned, unable to move. The man’s face was changing before his eyes, becoming rounder, and loosing its definition!

The man’s chin had been covered in stubble, but as Jack watched the stubble it disappeared, replaced with smooth skin! The man’s face looked like a teenager’s face, there was no hint of adulthood. Somehow the man was going back in time! Jack watched in fascination as the man, soon to be boy, slipped back into his childhood and lost his jeans as they fell off his smaller waist.

The man’s leather jacket looked ridiculous on his scrawny body, his manly figure replaced with a boy’s frame. The man sank lower and lower, the jacket slipping off as the last traces of adulthood, then childhood, and finally even infancy were stripped from him and he was left lying on the floor, now just a tiny newborn baby! The baby began to gurgle and squirm in vain at the clothes that surrounded him. Jack just stared in wonder at what had been a strong, good-looking man only moments before. He had been reduced to nothing but a wailing, helpless baby!

When Jack went to investigate the room, he found it was locked. Strange…the man…well, now he was a baby, he supposed, had got in with no trouble. He would have a bit of trouble getting out in his present state, though. Everything there was weird. Men just didn’t turn into babies like that. It wasn’t right. Perhaps he should leave the room well alone…there was a monster inside, and it didn’t take kindly to strangers.

It was while Jack was standing in silent contemplation that he saw a shining object in the slime-covered box. He was sure it wasn’t there before. It was covered in the slimy material, and he wasn’t very keen on touching it. On closer inspection it appeared to be a key. Perhaps it was…only one way to find out. He carefully reached in and pulled out the key. Ew, icky. He slid it slowly into the lock, and pushed the door open.

Inside the room was…darkness. And silence. No sound of electricity, no sound of a baby crying. Peering through the darkness, Jack saw…nothing. No baby. Nothing. Perhaps there was a light switch. Jack looked at the walls. By the door, there was a switch he reached up to press it. Suddenly the key burned red hot, and he yelled out in pain. He instinctively dropped the key.

Lousy key. Lousy room. He reached down and poked it to check it wasn’t still hot. It was cold. He picked it up, but as he did, he could faintly make out some writing scrawled on the wall: ‘MONSTER’ it said, and an arrow pointed up to the switch. Perhaps he shouldn’t press that switch. The room was giving him the creeps. He decided to leave.

At the end of the alley, the street was still strangely quiet. Not a sound. Not a single person. Then he spotted a single person. The only person it could be, using the maxim of ‘all things that can go wrong do go wrong’. Chris was standing along the road. And he had spotted Jack. Jack could turn to walk away, but it would be no use. Chris would easily catch him and torment him. Better to take it like a man.

Chris strode up to Jack.

“Hello, Jackie!” he sneered to Jack. Jack said nothing. “Got any money? I like money, you see, Jackie boy, so I was hoping you had some.”

“Go away…I have none!”

“Been to the library, eh, Jackie? Got a nice book?” Jack really didn’t think Chris was planning on reading the book “I’d better have that then!” Jack realised the book probably cost about £20. It was a big book.

“No…I have…£10?”

“Then that’ll have to do, my boy! Hand it over!” During the conversation, Jack had felt a presence swelling in his mind…a foreign, yet not wholly unwanted presence. Was it confidence? The presence spoke to him, mentally, somehow…he could hear himself saying word to himself, but the words weren’t his.

‘The monster within him…can it stand the monster within…the room?’ Suddenly, Jack knew what to do. He ran back along the road and down the alley, before Chris had time to react. There he waited. And he wondered what he was doing while he clutched the warm, comforting key.

Chris was soon standing next to him again.

“Always running, sissy boy!” he scorned. “Always afraid!” he taunted. “Hand over the money!” Jack thought he must be desperate for a measly ten pounds.

“Why would I be standing here, waiting for you to pummel me?” Jack yelled defiantly: “I chucked the money in this room, so you’ll never get it!”

“What will stop me going in the room and getting it, little boy? Is it locked?”

“Uh…no…but there’s a monster in there!”

“Yeh right, kid! As if you think I’d fall for that! Maybe you’re scared of ‘monsters’, mommy’s boy!”

“Well…go in and get the money then, if you ain’t scared!” Jack cringed. ‘Ain’t’? What kind of language was that? Chris looked down menacingly at Jack.

“If I didn’t need that money so bad, I’d pummel you right now…but first…” Chris entered the room and looked around in the gloom.

“There’s no monster here, you wuss!” he sneered.

“Then you won’t mind if I …close the door? I don’t want it to reach to me.” said Jack, trying to sound cool.

“Be my guest, scaredy cat!”

Jack swung the door closed behind Chris. He looked at the key in his hand. He could swear he heard a small voice in his head screaming, “Lock it! Lock the monster in!” Before he could stop himself, he had locked Chris in with the monster.

“Still no ‘scary’ monster in here, Jacky! I’m coming out to get you!” Jack gulped.

“Uh, no! I bet it’s dark in there. You probably can’t see the monster! Flip the switch by the door to turn the lights on.” A moment of silence. Then Jack heard the fateful click, followed by the sound of batteries charging.

“What the…?” began Chris. Then the sound of electricity began in earnest and Jack could hear Chris scream in agony. Jack knew screaming meant pain and it was going too far. He reached out to unlock the door…but found himself walking round to the window! He wanted to see Chris pay!

The screams grew louder, and Jack could see through the window that Chris was being zapped full on by the ray. He watched in amazement as Chris’s muscles began to melt away. He was surprised to find he was watching in glee. Chris was apparently 17, but he looked more like 13 now, just dropping out of puberty.

His screams were getting higher and higher as he retreated back into his childhood. Chris’s jeans were bunching up around his ankles, and as Jack watched they slowly slipped down his regressing thighs, exposing his baggy boxers. He was now even younger than Jack, his face replaced by the sweet innocence of youth. By age 10, only a scared little boy stood where Chris had been. His jeans finally lost hold and fell down around his ankles, dragging his manly boxers with them. His shirt by now hung down to just above his knees, but it was slipping lower as the process continued! He looked about 8, a mere child, and his shirt was slipping off one shoulder. Jack watched with malicious glee as Chris was transformed into a snivelling child, even smaller!

Still the monster raged. It remorselessly sapped his age and soon a little boy of 6 in a ridiculously large shirt stood in shock. He shrank into a toddler, the shirt slipping from his young frame, leaving him totally exposed. Not that there was much to see now. His naked body finally slipped back into babyhood, collapsing onto his clothes as his legs became too weak to support his own weight. The monster powered down.

Jack had been mesmerised by the whole experience. He rose slowly to his feet. He walked back to the door and gently slid the key into the lock. The door swung open. It was a pitiful sight that met his eyes, but at the same time a triumph. There on the floor was his nemesis. His monster. His nightmare. He was sitting on the floor naked, bawling his eyes out like the little baby he had become, struggling to get out of his clothing that he had fallen into. Jack could see that the excitement had been too much for little Christopher, and he had wet himself. No longer the big boy, reduced in age and in status.

Jack felt something perversely pure call to him from that scene. As he went to pick up little Christopher, he smiled to himself and realised there was a monster within the room. The monster laughed and lifted Chris out of his soggy clothes.

The End