Spoiled by the Monster Family

Everyone else in the horror game was screaming, running for their lives.

I was nine months old. I was crawling around on the floor, looking for my pacifier.

When the monster opened the door, I crawled over and hugged her leg. Mma mma

She picked me up with two fingers, like something she was about to throw out. "This round's food is so small?"

But she didn't throw me out. She handed me to her son instead.

Later, when the monster dad came home with blood on his face, I climbed into his lap and wiped it off with my little hands.

The day the last player died, the whole family lifted me up over their heads.

When the game tried to send me home, my monster brother bit my finger open and let the wrongness in.

INFECTED, the system said. Cannot return.

So now there's one extra thing living in the horror game. A little monster the whole family spoils rotten.

The new players all show up looking for the rules.

I just show up looking for my bottle.

Chapter 1

The thing on the cold floor in front of the iron door was nine months old.

The horror game didn't take children. Eighteen and up. No exceptions, no cases on record.

Her name was Ivy. She couldn't walk. She couldn't talk. At the moment she was deeply invested in her own thumb.

Around her stood eight adults. Five men, three women, every one of them staring at the baby like she was a bomb.

"Okay. What." The girl with the high ponytail broke first. "The game takes babies now?"

"It doesn't." The man in the plaid shirt pushed his glasses up. "Eighteen minimum. There's never been a"

"Then where'd she come from?"

The heavyset man rubbed his arms. "NPC? They drop a baby NPC on us? What kind of sick"

The panels cut him off. Eight of them at once, flickering up half-transparent in the air.

[ WELCOME TO THE HORROR GAME ]

[ CURRENT INSTANCE: SWEET FAMILY ]

[ DIFFICULTY: HELL ]

[ SURVIVORS: 9 ]

[ OBJECTIVE: Survive 48 hours inside Sweet Family. ]

The ponytail girl counted. Eight of them, plus the baby.

"Nine," she said slowly. "She's a player."

Nine players.

One of them couldn't walk.

One of them couldn't talk.

One of them was nine months old.

Nobody said anything.

Ivy, holder of the ninth and smallest life in the room, took her thumb out of her mouth, studied it, and put it back.

The man in the leather jacket crouched to get a look at her face. "She's really just a baby. Couple months old. How's she supposed to play? She can barely crawl."

"Maybe that's the trap." The plaid shirt again. "Give us a baby, we waste time keeping her alive, and then"

"And then what?" The ponytail girl's voice had an edge now. "We all go soft, play house, and let the monsters pick us off? Hell-tier instance, genius. Nobody here is babysitting anybody."

She wasn't wrong.

Eight adults looked at the baby. Not one of them stepped closer.

"She won't last ten minutes." The leather jacket stood and brushed off his knees. "Read the prompt. Sweet Family. Family-theme horror means the monster's a set. Mom, dad, kids. A baby, in a house like this?" He didn't finish the sentence. He just laughed, short and ugly.

Nobody argued.

Ivy kept sucking her thumb. Drooled down her own wrist.

Then the iron door creaked open.

A woman stood behind it.

Floral dress. White apron. Hair in a loose bun. A soft, warm smile, the kind you'd put on for relatives you actually liked. Early thirties. Gentle eyes. Almost pretty.

All eight players stepped back at once.

Because the apron was stained.

Dark red. Not splashed on. Soaked in. The deep, set-in kind you get from wiping something over and over until the cloth stops letting it go.

"Oh! Guests." She clapped her hands. "Come in, come in. It's cold out there."

Warm. Bright. Like she was welcoming family off a long trip.

Nobody moved.

She didn't mind. She just stood there in the doorway, smiling, and the smile never moved. Not one muscle in it.

That was when Ivy went.

She'd flipped onto her stomach at some point, and now she was crawling, rear end up, knees useless, hauling herself forward on her arms.

"Hey!" The ponytail girl lunged on reflex. "Don't"

Ivy was already at the woman's feet.

She tipped her round face up, all the way up, at the thing looking down at her.

The woman looked down. The smile held. Her eyes thinned.

Ivy reached up and wrapped both arms around her leg.

"Mma mma"

Mangled. Tongue too small to shape it. Every adult in that room understood it anyway.

The room went still.

The plaid shirt's face drained white. "Holy shit."

The ponytail girl's hand flew to her mouth.

The leather jacket was already set to bolt.

The woman looked down at the little ball of flesh clamped to her leg. Three full seconds. She said nothing.

Then, in the same warm voice she'd used to call them inside:

"This round's food is so small?"

Food.

She'd said food.

Ivy didn't understand a word of it. She rubbed her cheek against the woman's shin and yawned. Small. Satisfied. Warm.

Chapter 2

The woman bent down, pinched the back of Ivy's neck between two fingers, and lifted her like a kitten.

Ivy dangled there, arms and legs hanging, eyes still glazed, completely unaware that she was currently being appraised as groceries.

The woman held her up close and looked her over.

Up close, her eyes were wrong. Not human pupils. Long, thin, vertical slits, black, sunk deep in the sockets. A cat's. Or a snake's.

"Too small," the woman muttered. "Not even enough for one pot."

The leather jacket flinched back a step on reflex. Then his eyes cut to the others: plaid shirt shaking, the heavyset man sweating through his forehead, the ponytail girl chewing her lip and saying nothing.

Nobody moved.

The woman lowered Ivy a little. Ivy immediately grabbed for her face, smacked a fat palm against her cheek, and giggled.

The woman stared at her.

Her nose wrinkled. She still didn't throw her away.

"Fine," she said, to no one. "Inside first."

She turned, baby in one hand, and hauled the door open with the other.

Eight people stood there, caught between one death and another.

"Do we go in?" The heavyset man's voice shook.

"You'd rather wait out here and die?" The leather jacket's jaw was tight. "The instance is inside. Out here's probably worse."

The plaid shirt shoved his glasses up, reaching for logic like a handrail. "We watch. The baby's still breathing. Luck, or she tripped some mechanic. We follow her. We see what she does."

"See what she does?" The ponytail girl cut in. "She's a few months old. What's she going to do, drool on them?"

The plaid shirt had nothing.

They went in anyway.

The door shut behind them without a sound.

Inside was warmer than it had any right to be. Yellow lamplight. Cream wallpaper. A dining table under a floral cloth. A TV stand lined with picture frames. An orange cat dozing on the arm of the couch.

Every eye in the room went to the couch.

There was a layer of something spread across it.

Not cushions.

Organs.

Heaped together, some still steaming, the couch under them soaked through to a dark, clotted red. Half a finger was wedged in the seam, its nail painted soft pink.

The orange cat yawned, licked a paw, and picked its way across the organs without hurrying, then hopped down and wandered off.

The ponytail girl clapped both hands over her mouth and swallowed the scream whole.

The woman carried Ivy to the couch and started to set her down.

She stopped halfway.

She looked at the heap of organs. Then at the clean white baby in her hand. Her brow creased.

"Dirty," she said.

She turned for the kitchen. Passing a closed door, she called through it.

"Thorne. Come take her."

Something hit the floor inside the room. Then footsteps.

A boy appeared in the doorway.

Chapter 3

The boy looked fifteen, maybe sixteen. Tall. Loose white hoodie, black sweatpants, hair long enough to fall across one eyebrow.

Clean features. The kind of face that would've turned heads on a street somewhere. Anywhere but here.

Except his eyes were gray.

Not gray irises. The whole eye, gray, like fog had rolled in behind them. Like a dead fish. No shine at all.

"Mom." His voice came out low and flat.

The woman shoved Ivy into his arms. "Hold her."

The boy looked down at the lump of flesh against his chest.

Ivy looked back up at him.

Eyes met.

Nothing moved in the gray.

Ivy stared at him for two seconds, hiccuped, then burrowed into his chest, wriggled around until she found a comfortable spot, and closed her eyes.

The boy said nothing.

The woman was already gone into the kitchen. Her voice drifted back. "Just hold her. Don't kill her. I've got soup on."

The boy looked down again.

She was actually asleep.

Breathing soft, her chest barely moving, mouth slightly open, a thin string of drool at one corner.

He stood there holding her. His gray eyes rolled toward the heap of organs on the couch, moved off it, and landed in the corner, where the adults were watching him. All of them. And the baby in his arms. With a look he didn't have a word for.

He dropped his gaze, turned with Ivy still against him, and went back to his room.

The door shut.

A monster had just carried a baby off to bed. In the corner, not one of the adults was breathing.

"She she fell asleep?" The heavyset man's voice shook. "In that thing's arms? Asleep?"

"What is that thing?" The ponytail girl kept it low. "The son? Another monster, right? The eyes"

"NPC too." The plaid shirt pushed his glasses up. "Whole family's monsters. And the baby just tripped some mechanic by accident."

"What mechanic gets her carried off to bed by a monster?" The leather jacket's laugh had no warmth in it. "You heard the woman. Right now it's keep. Grow her up, then cook."

The ponytail girl went pale. "So she's food too. Just too small yet."

"What else?" He flicked a glance at her. "You think a monster actually wants a daughter?"

Nobody answered.

But they all knew he had a point.

The baby was alive on a timer. When the monsters decided she was big enough for the pot, she'd end up no different from the pile on the couch.

"So we" The heavyset man swallowed. "We just leave her?"

The leather jacket didn't answer. He'd already turned to start mapping the layout of the house.

The ponytail girl hesitated. Then she followed the others.

Leave her.

In a place like this, the only thing you could look after was yourself.

Ivy was having a dream.

In it she was cradled in something warm, and someone was patting her back, humming a song with no real tune. The sound was low and blurred, like wind from very far away.

She rolled over, pushed her face into the warmth, and wiped drool across somebody's sleeve.

Then she woke up.

She opened her eyes to a face, up close and huge.

Gray eyes, staring at her.

Ivy blinked.

The boy blinked back.

Ivy grinned, showing two tiny teeth just breaking through.

The boy watched her, expression flat.

Ivy reached for his face, small hand grabbing at empty air.

He leaned back. Didn't get far. Her hand was so small, the target so small, she had no idea where she was even aiming. She ended up smacking him square on the nose.

The boy said nothing.

Ivy cackled.

The door pushed open a crack, and the woman in the floral dress leaned her head in. "Thorne. Food's ready. Come out."

She caught the scene on the bed: the boy on his side, the baby sprawled on his chest, washing his shirt with drool.

The woman paused.

"How is she awake?"

The boy didn't answer.

She came over and bent to look at Ivy. Ivy recognized her and immediately put her arms up to be held. "Mma mma"

The woman's mouth twitched. "I'm not your mother."

But she reached out anyway and lifted Ivy off the boy.

Ivy hung in the air, arms and legs kicking, babbling.

The woman held her up to eye level. "You've got a lot to say. What's your name? Say it again."

"Mma"

The woman went quiet.

Chapter 4

The slit pupils flickered. Whatever she was thinking, it didn't show.

After a moment she set Ivy down into the crook of her arm. A little gentler than before.

"All right. Dinner." She jerked her chin at the boy. "Up. Stop lying around."

Thorne got off the bed and followed her out.

In the living room, the others were already gathered around the dining table.

The table was loaded. Roast chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a big bowl of soup still steaming. The smell filled the whole house.

Nobody had picked up a fork.

The players sat rigid in their chairs, staring at the bowls in front of them, not moving.

Because the soup was red.

Not tomato red. Blood red. Things floated on the surface, pale and unnameable, meat and not-meat.

The woman carried Ivy over, dropped into the seat at the head of the table, and beamed. "Eat, eat. Why are you all just sitting there? Don't be shy. Make yourselves at home."

The players traded looks.

The plaid shirt steeled himself, speared a single green bean, put it in his mouth, chewed. Fine. Just a green bean. He let out a breath and swallowed.

The others started to eat then. Nobody touched the soup.

The woman didn't seem to care. She ladled herself a bowl and drank it slow.

Ivy sat on her lap, looked around for a while, then started pawing at the things on the table. Couldn't reach. Pawed at air instead.

The woman glanced down. She dipped the tip of a spoon in the soup and held it to Ivy's mouth.

Ivy stuck out her little tongue and licked.

No taste.

She licked again. Still nothing.

The woman took the spoon back and drank the mouthful herself.

Ivy stared at the bowl a long moment, then bent her head and started gnawing on her own hand.

Thorne sat across from the woman, eating with his head down, not a word.

But his eyes never once left the players. Not for a second.

After dinner, the woman sat in the living room a while with Ivy.

The others had scattered around the house. Some pretended to look around. Some crouched in corners, muttering.

They didn't dare get too close to the woman. Didn't dare get too far, either. Afraid of tripping some rule that killed you on the spot.

None of it interested Ivy.

She was tucked into the woman's arms, and she yawned, warm and easy, her eyelids starting to lose the fight.

The woman looked down at her. "What's your name?" she said, out of nowhere.

Ivy heard the sound through the fog, opened her eyes, met the slit pupils.

"Eee" she answered.

The woman said nothing.

"Eee-yah"

"All right, all right. Sleep." The woman gathered her in closer and patted her back, light.

The arms around her were warm.

Warmer than the bed at the orphanage.

The bed there was always hard, the blanket thin. In winter she used to wake up cold. The workers were busy; nobody had time for her. When she cried, no one came.

After a while she'd mostly stopped crying. Crying didn't do anything.

But these arms were warm.

She burrowed in, pushed her face into the woman's dress, and was asleep in seconds.

In the corner, the ponytail girl kept her voice down. "Did you see that? The way she patted her just now. She was gentle."

"I saw." The plaid shirt frowned. "Could be a trap. Put on the tenderness so we drop our guard."

"But" The ponytail girl hesitated. "She really is a baby. A few months old. Even if this is a game, it's just"

"It's just what?" The leather jacket came over, kept it low. "You bleeding heart. Let me tell you something. There are no innocents in this game. That baby is a player. Same as us. She got lucky, she's not dead yet. Doesn't mean she makes it to the end. You want to look after her, you do it. Leave us out of it."

The ponytail girl stopped talking.

But her eyes kept drifting back to the little lump in the woman's arms.

Fast asleep.

No idea where she was. No idea what the things around her were.

Ivy woke to a noise.

She opened her eyes and found herself on the couch, a blanket over her.

The organs were gone. Clean cushions in their place.

The living room was dark. One small nightlight burning.

The sound was coming from the dining area.

Ivy rolled over and worked her head up to look.

Someone was standing at the table.

The woman in the floral dress. Her back to Ivy, cutting something, slow and steady.

The knife came down on the board in an even rhythm. Tok. Tok. Tok.

Someone else stood beside her. The boy in the white hoodie, in the shadows, dead still, gray eyes fixed on something.

Ivy followed his gaze.

The other side of the room.

The players were pressed into the corner. One with a hand over their mouth. Someone's face gone white. All of them staring at the table.

Ivy didn't know what they were looking at.

She only knew the tok, tok sound was nice. Like the orphanage aunties chopping vegetables when she was small.

Listening to it, she got sleepy again.

But before she could close her eyes, she saw the next thing.

Chapter 5

The door opened.

A man walked in.

Tall, heavy-built, in dark work clothes, a black bag in one hand.

Something weighed the bag down. It dragged a long streak along the floor behind him.

The woman didn't turn around. "You're back."

"Mm." He grunted, and dropped the bag on the floor.

The mouth of it fell open. Something showed inside.

A hand.

Still attached to an arm, cut clean through at the shoulder, the skin bloodless white, a silver ring on one finger.

Someone in the corner made a choked sound and clamped both hands over their mouth.

The man crossed to the table, took the knife from the woman, and started working on whatever was in the bag.

Ivy blinked at the hand for a long time.

It looked familiar, somehow. Like one of the grown-ups from the table. But why was it in a bag? She didn't understand. She only knew one of them wasn't in the corner with the others anymore.

She didn't think about it long, because she'd noticed the thing on the man's face.

It was red.

It ran from his forehead down to his chin, smeared across half of it. Ivy didn't know it was blood. She only knew the man's face was dirty.

She knew this kind of dirty.

At the orphanage, one of the aunties used to feed her, and every time, the auntie's face would end up with rice on it. Ivy would reach up and wipe it off for her, and the auntie would laugh and tell her she was a good girl.

Now the man's face was dirty.

Ivy squirmed, tipped herself off the couch, landed rear-first. Thump.

Didn't hurt. She was used to it.

Then she started crawling that way.

Slow. The couch to the table was very, very far, for her.

She didn't care. She just wanted to wipe his face.

The adults saw her.

"What's she doing?" the ponytail girl breathed.

"No idea. Crawling over to die?"

"Should we stop her?"

"Are you insane? You go stop her."

Ivy didn't notice any of it.

She crawled with her whole mind set on it, and by the time she reached the table, the man had just set the knife down and turned around.

He looked down. Saw the lump of flesh at his feet.

Ivy tipped her face up and smiled at him.

The man froze.

His eyes were gray too, grayer than the boy's, like river stones worn smooth and lightless, not a spark in them.

But for a second, something moved through them. Confusion.

Then Ivy reached up, caught his pant leg, and started to climb.

It was hard going. His legs were too long. Her little hands and feet couldn't get any purchase. Two pulls up, slide back down. Two more, slide again.

She didn't quit. She strained at it, babbling.

The woman watched from the side. Didn't move.

The boy came out of the shadows too and stood there, watching.

The man looked down at the little thing fighting its way up his leg. For a few seconds, he said nothing.

Then he bent down and scooped her up