Page 2 of Love vs The Ooze Monster!
Holy Moses!
Patrick took a wary step backward. “Hey, I think you’d better get out of here…” He began, only to break off with a jolt. The guy collapsed to the floor, flailing around, as his whole body convulsed.
Other patrons were beginning to notice the problem. Voices rose in alarm. Some boozette began hysterically sobbing. That’s when Patrick noticed that the issue was bigger than just the drunken asshole on the floor. Now,morecustomers were turning orange. Everyone he’d served multiple glasses of moonshine was afflicted. They wereallinflating. Orange goo began to ooze from their ears and eyes and mouths.
Patrick frantically reached for the Louisville slugger he kept behind the bar.
The patrons who weren’t thrashing around and turning orange, were rushing for the door. Unfortunately, it was still bolted from the inside to prevent anyone from skipping out on their tabs. Some of the customers understood the issue and tried to work the lock, but more and more people were crushing in behind them. In the stampede, the door couldn’t be yanked open.
Screaming reached a fevered pitch. The lousy band stopped playing. Tables crashed. Chairs were shoved aside. Glasses broke in the mad scramble.
And on the floor, the drunken jackass rose back up.
Only it wasn’thimanymore. Now, it was a monster.
The other orange creatures made their way towards him. Towardsit. They latched onto it and were absorbed straight into its growing form. Increasing its power and swelling its size. Making it invincible.
Patrick stood there, frozen, the baseball bat forgotten in his hand. Oddly enough, the very last thought he had in his stunned and fracturing mind was about Miss Mabel Harrison.
Unlike most every other bootlegger in town, Boyd Cassiday’s organization was real insistent about getting payment up front. Boyd’s homely little bookkeeper made sure of it.
Before he’d hired her, Boyd could always be reasoned with, when it came to debts. Boyd had won medals in the war and he sure as hell racked up a body count in Volstead, but he was a reasonable businessman. Mabel Harrison was just an adding machine, with no pity at all for a poor speakeasy owner trying to turn a profit. She’d cut off Patrick’s line of credit and Boyd allowed it. For some damn reason, that heartless schoolmarm had Boyd wrapped around her finger.Sheran the show and she counted every penny.
If only she’d been more trusting, Patrick would’ve ordered bigger shipments from Boyd on installment plans, knowing he wouldn’t ever pay it off. And if he’d had more of Boyd’s high-quality gin, he never would have needed that orange moonshine shit from some damn amateur. And if he hadn’t gotten that orange moonshine shit from some damn amateur, he wouldn’t be about to die.
As slimy tentacles whipped towards him, Patrick braced himself for the end.
And blamed that stuck-up bitch Mabel Harrison forallof this.
Chapter One
Know Your Onions: (1920s slang) Possessing extensive knowledge of any single subject;
Not necessarily related to onions.
When it came to bookkeeping, Miss Mabel Harrison really knew her onions.
To look at her, you’d probably guess as much. It was part of the reason why Boyd had hired her in the first place. Mabel exuded mathematical confidence.
Around them, society was transforming. Becoming faster. Filled with flash. Mabel wasn’t fast or flashy. She was past thirty, tall and neat, with the bookish air of someone who’d studied right through every party at school. If you were a guy on the make, your eyes might skim right past her. She was arespectablewoman.
The kind of woman who usually stayed away from the likes of Boyd Cassiday.
Mabel wore round glasses, high on her small nose, and her thin body was enveloped in a sexless sack of a black dress. Her dark hair was cut in a short bob, but she’d neglected to add the finger curls most modern women wore these days. Instead, her shiny tresses were haphazardly swept behind her ears, like she’d gotten partway through styling them and then lost interest. She’d covered the halfhearted attempt with a hat.
A black hat. With a black veil and black flowers.
Mabel had worn mourning colors since she’d come to work for him, six months before. Her beloved stepfather had died, according to her. Her devotion to the man was laudable. Few young women in Volstead would go into full mourning regalia for someone not of their blood. It showed Mabel was a loyal and sensitive girl.
It also showed she had zero fashion sense.
That black hat was an abomination. The elaborate silk flowers on the brim looked like a bouquet of the damned. The thick black veil resembled something a very unstylish beekeeper might wear. Of all the hats in the world, Boyd wasn’t sure why she’d selectedthatone.
Not that her clothes mattered, when it came to her job. Boyd was a gambler at heart, but he was practical about business. Supply and demand was his religion. Capitalism was his country. The bottom line was his bottom line.
And hideous hat or not, Miss Mabel Harrison was good for his bottom line.
In the six months and four days that she’d been working for his bootlegging enterprise, Mabel had done an outstanding job. With pencils stuck behind her ear and her wide hazel eyes missing little, she’d streamlined all his money laundering issues in record time. Boyd had been impressed.
