I woke up in the middle of the night to hear my door creek. My unwanted bunkmate, Melvin Morale, was leaving my room again. He was a total dork, and the only reason he was at my place was because my parents agreed to look after him while his folks were on vacation. He had gotten up every night so far, just as I was falling asleep, and I hadn’t cared before. But tonight was different.
I stepped into the hallway just in time to see him slip through the front door. He was walking towards his house on the sidewalk, twitching and looking over his shoulder, making it extremely obvious that he didn’t want to be followed.
And so, I followed him.
You see, earlier today, the stunted sprout of a kid had somehow thrown a baseball faster than a major league pitcher, and jumped over a six-foot fence in one jump to retrieve it. When my friend Marty and I asked him how he was able to do it, he acted as though he had no idea what we were talking about.
Behind his braces and massive head gear, Melvin’s face was contorted into what most closely resembled determination. His knees buckled as he walked, and his footed pajamas stuck to the sidewalk. I was hopping through the neghbour’s yards, checking between the houses that he was still within sight.
The hedges seemed to get thicker as I went, and I began to struggle to keep up. I lifted myself over a chicken-wire fence but lost my grip and fell. A hot mist fell over my face as I pulled the dirt out of my eyes. I looked up into the panting jaws of an angry Doberman. He began to growl. I shuddered as the guard dog’s teeth crashed together with each loud bark.
Then, he whimpered and began licking my face.
“Will?” I heard Marty’s voice from the back door. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
His pet, Rex, was now hopping around me with excitement, raining drool from his droopy jowls all over my face, cementing the dust to my skin.
“It’s Melvin,” I said, “he snuck out of my house and left for his. I think he’s been doing it all week, too.”
Marty pulled my slipper from Rex’s mouth as I stood. “Well then, let’s go see what he’s up to!”
When we got to the street, Melvin was nowhere in sight. We raced to his house, and saw him in his garage. He was wearing one of his school mascot costumes, which seemed to be lined with some sort of reflective foil.
“What do you think that does?” Marty was pointing to a row of strange electronic devices. Melvin walked up to them and turned a few dials.
“It looks like we’ll find out soon enough.” We watched as Melvin walked up and down the stairs to his basement, coming up with more bizarre pieces of technology each time. Before long, the scene through the window looked more like a futuristic laboratory than a garage.
Melvin, on the other hand, looked just like he always did. He stumbled clumsily around the space, struggling with the heavier pieces of equipment in his over-sized costume, and sifting through a chaotic looking table covered with notes, paper, and blueprints. Though we didn’t know what it was, he had pieced together what looked like a single machine, with cords running from every outlet, making it look like a giant bug caught in a web.
In the corner was a cage full of rabbits. “I wonder what those are for,” I said to Marty. Nothing he could have said would have prepared me for what happened next. Melvin reached into the cage, and selected a rabbit to place in the centre of the machine. He then took two beakers from a stack, and poured their mysterious contents into a glass container next to the door. He typed something into a nearby laptop, and then placed his “Marlborough Muskrats” radiation helmet on his head. The liquid in the container drained slowly, until when the last drop rolled into the machine, Melvin pulled a lever. The display counted down from ten, until suddenly, a bolt of electricity blasted through the garage, lighting up the walls of the surrounding houses. Marty’s eyes adjusted faster than mine, and he said,
“Melvin is making monsters!”
I could now see it too – the rabbit had grown to six feet tall, and had fierce eyes and monstrous teeth. It was having difficulty standing, however, and soon fell to the floor, twitching.
“Is it … dead?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Marty said, in sheer disbelief.
Not wasting time, Melvin dragged the seizing creature out of the machine and began diligently resetting everything. He was nearly ready to pull the lever when the sound of squealing tires turned his head. Marty and I watched from our hiding place as Blake Ours, the school’s star quarterback and all-around jerk, stepped out of his truck in the Morales’ driveway.
“That’s probably the most ordinary sight we’ll see all night,” Marty said. Besides being a bully, it was well known that Blake had a criminal record for break-and-enter. There were a few unsolved thefts in town, and most of the students suspected that Blake was involved.
“ He probably heard that Melvin’s parents are out of town,” I said. I heard the garage door open. “We need to go help Melvin.”
“No way,” Marty said, pointing at the countdown. Melvin had already started his machine. “I’m not going anywhere near that thing.” We watched in horror as Blake stepped towards Melvin.
… 10
Melvin stepped back, picking up his stack of beakers.
… 9
Blake opened the door of the machine,
… 8
And grabbed the rabbit, shaking it menacingly
… 7
As he bent over Melvin’s humble frame
… 6
Melvin stuttered,
… 5
Trying to explain what was about to happen
… 4
Blake pushed Melvin against the machine,
… 3
Beakers shattered and spilled around them
… 2
The dead monster-rabbit twitches,
… 1
Kicking the door into Blake and Melvin, who fall into the machine.
0
A flash and a deafening crack pealed through the air, leaving a crater beside the house where the garage once stood. Marty had to scream in my ear since the bolt had dimmed my hearing.
“What is that?!”
A brown, furry and clawed hand clung to the edge of the hole. It wasn’t plush, like the costume should have been. I saw its fingers tense as the hand gripped the earth, another whole arm sprouting out and landing on the edge.
“I don’t know,” I replied with a shaky voice. The arm was covered in short fur, but looked very human; it was rippling with strength. A clawed foot that looked more like a paw landed on the edge, and the three limbs pulled the entire body out of the hole.
It was Melvin Morale.
He was more like the Muskrats’ mascot than anything, caped in purple with a mask. But he was unlike anything I had ever seen. The muscular chest of the beast heaved up and down. His claws dug into the ground and he rolled upri`ght. A panting, enraged, and confused animal stood on his feet, looking more like a powerful man everywhere except his face, and roared. His Mighty legs flexed as he spun and ran off into the night, chased by a streak of purple cape, rippling behind him as he ran out of sight.
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