Helium House

Mama warned me not to go into the barn. She said the back yard in general was filled with monsters and if I go there, I’ll be surely doomed.

“Mama, can I play outside?”

“No, Charles, the monsters will get you.”

“But I’ll stay close to the hou—”

“Charles, I said no.”

And that was the end of that, so I took my sneakers off and rushed upstairs to construct a masterpiece out of Lincoln Logs. I started with the two base pieces, then began with the perpendicular sides, smiling to myself when the wood fit together ever so nicely. I constructed a house with a roof just like ours, and a barn in the back. I even made a fence around the yard like we have, meticulously organizing the small pieces so the fence posts matched, and in the front yard I used a red roof piece as a mailbox, pretending it said “Helium Household” like our real mailbox did.

When I was done and had nothing else to do, I knocked my masterpiece down with my foot and began again. I was on my third rebuilding stage when I heard screaming and a loud crash of metal from the kitchen. Were monsters attacking the house?

I rushed downstairs, using the last beam of the banister to hurl myself around the corner so I could get to the kitchen quickly. The room was a mess. One of the cupboards was smashed in with the door hanging on one hinge, and bits of raw chicken were strewn everywhere. Mama had been cooking, but now she was nowhere to be found. Where was Daddy? But I remembered Mama saying he wasn’t going to come back.

“Daddy is gone,” she’d told me softly.

“Where did he go?”

“The barn.”

I tried not to think about Daddy after that, but now I couldn’t help but wish he was here so I would know what to do. He would probably tell me to go looking for her. Hesitantly, I peered out through the glass window on our backdoor.

“Put your shoes on first,” Mama would have told me.

“Right,” I said as if in response.

I ran to the closet to get my sneakers, then put my hand on the doorknob, trying to build up the courage to enter the backyard.

“Where is your weapon?” Daddy would have asked. “A monster-slayer must always be prepared.”

I didn’t know what kind of monster I would be facing, so I grabbed a knife and some monster-repellent and hoped that would do the trick. When I stepped outside, the air was colder than I expected. Though the sun was shining and the sky was a perfect, mournful blue, I could see my breath puff like smoke from a train. I debated going back inside to get gloves, but there was no time. I had to find Mama before they turned her.

The barn loomed near the back fence, and I started toward it. If that’s where they took Daddy, Mama had probably been brought there, too. My body shook, but I forced myself to approach the heavy wooden doors. The paint on the barn was a dull red, but I remember it being so vibrant before the monsters took Daddy. It was as if they had leached the colors away. Even the white paint somehow looked blander, and for a horrible second I wondered if that was what they had done to Daddy. Is that what they were doing to Mama right now?

With sudden vigor, I hurled the doors open, aiming my monster-repellent into the dark space before me. My eyes took a while to adjust to the blackness of the room, so I did not see when a massive, slimy hand grabbed me by the ankle and hoisted me upward.

I screamed, but no one was there to help me. The monster’s skin was wet and leathery like Daddy’s hands after working in the rain. It held me tight, and I blindly sprayed the repellent, hoping to hit something soft and monster-like. The creature wailed, and almost dropped me on my head. Bad idea, I thought, swinging upside down from the monster’s grip at my ankle. If I wanted to live through this, I had to think of a better plan or my skull would get crushed before I even got to Mama.

“Hello, Charles,” the monster crooned. My eyes were beginning to adjust, and I could just barely make out the monster’s figure. He had six bulky arms and an angular face. His eyes were so big they practically bulged from his sockets, and his skin was a happy red color like the barn used to be.

“Give Mama back,” I demanded, trying to sound brave, but my voice shook like the barn’s creaky floorboards.

The monster chuckled, and it was a terrible sound like bones cracking. I winced. “Do not fret, little one,” the monster said. “Your mother is right here.”

“Let her go or I’ll—”

I froze as the monster pointed with one of his six arms to a sulking figure against the wall. This other creature’s skin was the same blue as Mama’s shirt had been that morning, and its droopy eyes looked at me with the same disappointed expression Mama gave me when I disobeyed her.

“I told you not to go in the barn,” the creature said.

My eyes began to tear. “Mama…?”

I was too late. She’d already been turned. I stared in horror at her slimy blue skin and the saggy monster wrinkles around her eyes. My mama wasn’t human anymore. And my daddy…

The creature holding me snickered again, his laugh disturbingly similar to how I remember my daddy’s hearty chuckle to be. “It’s alright, boy,” the creature said. “We’ll be a family again soon enough.”

He pulled the aerosol can of repellent from my hands and handed me to my monster Mama.

“You do the honors, my dear,” my daddy said with his scratchy monster voice.

The creature who was my mama cradled me in all six of her arms and then laid a tiny kiss on my forehead. I didn’t fight her as she held me against her slimy blue chest, but the moment the kiss landed on my skin, I began to writhe. My skin felt like it was melting, and my eyes burned. I squeezed them shut as four monster arms grew from my sides. I felt a tail sprout from my lower back, and my skin leached the color from my brown shirt and the brown of the barn’s wooden support beams.

When my transformation was done, I opened my eyes. I looked at my monster parents, but now they seemed perfectly normal to me. I was a monster, too, now. “Daddy,” I said through happy monster tears.

“My boy,” he said and cradled my chin with one of his hands.

My monster eyes were perfect in the dark, and I could see Mama grinning at me. We were a family again. “When the sun goes down,” she said, “we’ll be able to go outside and catch some dinner.”

In my mouth I could feel my tongue was long for catching and my teeth sharp for chewing. I licked my monster lips with my monster tongue, and my stomach grumbled.