THE ÆON BEAST

Phil Roberts About 6,300 words
22 Stafford Street, First Publishing Rights
Footscray (V) 3011 © Copyright 2024
AUSTRALIA. Phil Roberts



THE ÆON BEAST
by
PHIL ROBERTS



By early July 2024, it had been pouring rain in the BeauLarkin to Willamby area of the Victorian countryside for two weeks nonstop. However, by the tenth of July, the rain had been stopped for five days now. So the Reynard triplets --Foxy, Roxy, and Moxie -- felt safe out test-driving their new Ford F 150 Raptor on Williamstown Road, the closest thing that the area had to a highway. In their mid-fifties and spinsters, the triplets were almost as round as their 160 centimetres height with Dolly Parton-style curly white hair and enormous cleavage. They lived together and had pooled their life savings to buy their first-ever new car. All three had licences to drive, and Foxy and Roxy were both excellent drivers. Moxie, as her name suggested, was a bit of a speed demon, so her sisters only let her drive if they were extremely late for a work-related appointment.
With Foxy driving, they were doing a reasonable seventy-five kilometres an hour across the Macadam surface of the pine tree-lined Williamstown Road that late afternoon.
"Stop driving like an old lady," taunted Moxie: "This thing can do two hundred Kays per hour, according to the saleswoman at Morton's Ford in BeauLarkin."
"That's something that we'll have to take her word for," said Foxy: "Because we ain't going faster than seventy-five while I'm driving."
"Then pull over and let me take over driving."
"No!" said Foxy and Roxy as one.
"Besides," said Roxy; "After she said it could do up to two hundred Kays an hour, I heard her say under her breath, 'With normal-size people inside'."
"That sarky bitch!"
"Hey, she was just being honest," said Foxy: "Let's face it, we're each about a hundred and sixty centimetres tall, and at least a hundred and seventy centimetres around the midriff."
"How dare you?" demanded Moxie, despite the fact that Moxie, being the shortest of the triplets at a hundred and fifty-nine centimetres, was also a hundred and seventy-three centimetres around the midriff.
"Let's face it, none of us are shaped like models," pointed out Roxy.
"Unless they suddenly want three middle-aged women who look like short fat versions of Dolly Parton," said Foxy: "If Dolly couldn't sing."
"How dare you! I can sing!"
"The caterwauling that you do in the shower does not count as singing," corrected Roxy.
"Certainly not!" said Foxy.
"How dare you both?"
They were still arguing, when the 'hippy', as they thought he was, stepped out from behind a tree, straight onto the road in front of them. At a reasonable speed, Foxy was able to safely swerve the car around the strange-looking creature, without any thought of stopping to give him a lift.
"Was that a hippy, or a yowie?" teased Roxy: "Take a look Moxie."
"If you can turn around that is?"
Sick of her two sisters teasing her about her weight, Moxie tried to turn around in the back seat, only to have to grab at a painful crick in her neck.
"Couldn't see," she said, determined not to cry out in pain and give away that she had not been able to turn around due to her size.

On the Macadam behind the departing car, the Æon Beast raised a fist in anger at the three women. Nearly two metres tall, the creature looked more like a dirty Cousin Itt from the Addams Family than a man, with long, stringy dark brown hair hanging down all the way to its feet. Despite the sweet smell of pine and gum trees in the air, the beast behaved as though it had something foul under its nose.
Giving off an almost bear-like growl after the departing Ford, the Æon Beast, suddenly vanished.
Seconds later it reappeared. But now it was not alone It had with it two other creatures; Night Feeders, or Dino-Birds: the Feeder had basic kangaroo shape; except that their short front legs had lethal-looking fifteen-centimetre-long claws and they had rows of long, shark-like teeth, in a bird-like beak. They also had yellow-brown scales, and yellowy, snake-slit eyes. [See my stories: 'The Night Feeders', and 'The Beldame'.]
Pointing after the departed Ford F-150 Raptor and said: "Destroy!"
Immediately the two Night Feeders took off down the centre of the Macadam road. Within twenty seconds they reached a hundred kilometres an hour. Within thirty seconds they were roaring along at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, twice the speed of the retreating Ford.

"Come on, plant your foot, sis," demanded Moxie: "Or we'll never get home."
"We're less than forty Kays from home," pointed out Roxy: "Barely half an hour away."
"If I were driving it'd be more like ten minutes away," boasted Moxie.
"That's why we nominated me to drive," said Foxy.
"So that we could actually get home," said Roxy; unaware that none of them would ever get home again.
"Hey, what's that coming up behind us?" asked Foxy, seeing a thin cloud of dust in the rearview mirror.
"Must be the Yowie," teased Roxy: "Can Yowies travel faster than seventy-five Kays an hour."
"Since they're mythical, they can probably travel at any speed they want," teased back Foxy.
"Don't be dumb!" she leant forward to peer into the rearview mirror before announcing: "Looks vaguely like two emus."
"Emus definitely cannot travel faster than seventy-five kilometres an hour," insisted Roxy. She tried to turn around in her seat but had the same problem as Moxie, her size made turning almost impossible.
"Then they must be ostriches" teased Moxie, as the Night Feeders slowly closed upon the car and their bird-like shape became undeniable.
"Even ostriches..." began Roxy. Then staring at the creatures through the mirror she said: "They do look like oversized birds. Maybe you had better plant your foot a little."
"There's no way that any bird could travel fast enough to catch us," said Foxy. Then, after risking a quick peak in the rearview mirror, she decided to plant her foot after all.
Soon the Ford was zooming along at a hundred kilometres an hour. Yet still, the Night Feeders roared ever closer to them.
"Faster! Go faster!" shouted a panicked Moxie, usually the bravest, or at least most foolhardy of the triplets.
After a second's consideration, Foxy roared the car up to a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, then a hundred and forty, and finally a hundred and fifty.
"Now we'll leave whatever they are in our dust," said Foxy confidently.
"Like Hell!" said Moxie, who despite their great speed had taken off her seat belt so that she could finally look out through the rear window: "Whatever they are, they're still gaining on us."
"No bird can travel at over a hundred and fifty Kays an hour," insisted Foxy.
Then the two Night Feeders let out their monstrous shriek, like Frank Belknap Long's Hounds of Tindalos, and the three sisters realised that whatever was chasing them, it could not be any kind of birds that currently inhabited the planet Earth.
"It's the Hounds of Hell chasing us!" cried Roxy, the most religious of the three sisters. In fact, the only one to regularly attend church on Sundays.
"Hounds of Hell or not," said Foxy: "Let's see them catch us at two hundred Kays an hour!"
However, the Ford F 150 Raptor had barely reached two hundred kilometres an hour, when there was a loud metallic crunching sound.
"It's ripped the rear door off!" shrieked Moxie.
Dropping the door onto the Macadam behind it, almost skittling the second Night Feeder, the first creature leapt into the baggage section of the Ford.
"It's inside the car!" shrieked Moxie.
The Night Feeder reached forward to grab the fat blonde, making her scream even louder, as it tried to pull her out of the rear of the moving vehicle. However, her enormous size and weight prevented the creature from moving her. So, instead, it started chomping upon her head where she was seated.
"Our Father, who art in Heaven..." began Roxy, hands clasped together.
"Shut up praying, and help Moxie!" shouted Foxy, unable to let go of the steering wheel to help her sister.
When Roxy ignored her and kept saying the Lord's Prayer, Foxy tried another strategy; she slammed on the brakes.
At two hundred kilometres an hour, the car swerved and swirled, doing its best to spin out of control. However, Foxy was an excellent driver and managed to keep control of the vehicle.
Hearing the Night Feeder screech in alarm as it slammed forward into the rear of the front seat, Foxy accelerated as rapidly as possible again. As she had hoped, the Night Feeder fell out of the rear of the car and broke its neck on the Macadam road.
What Foxy didn't know was that Moxie had also broken her neck against the back of the front seats and was lying dead, halfway on the back seat, and partly upon the floor of the Ford.
The second Night Feeder narrowly avoided crashing as the first creature's corpse bounced down the road toward it.
As the car reached two hundred kilometres an hour again, the second creature leapt into the rear of the vehicle with a crash. More careful than the first Night Feeder, the second climbed into the rear seat, before leaning forward to start attacking the back of Foxy's head.
"Help me, Roxy!" shrieked Foxy.
However, Roxy was too caught up in her prayers to even hear her sister's pleas. Let alone respond to them.
"Help me!" shrieked Foxy again.
Then with a sharp twist of its head, the Night Feeder effortlessly snapped Foxy's neck ... sending the car spiralling out of control, rolling over sideways again and again until it shattered against a row of pine trees.
Foxy was thrown headfirst out through the windscreen, despite seeming too fat to make it through. She landed with a crunch, breaking her back and her neck. Only to be then run over by the out-of-control vehicle.
The second Night Feeder was also killed in the crash, and thrown out through the windscreen landing hard against one of the sweet-smelling pine trees, which cracked under its weight. but did not break.
The Æon Beast suddenly appeared out of nowhere and looked around at the devastation.
The beast made a growling sound to indicate its pleasure, despite the deaths of the two Night Feeders, and then the beast disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

Over at the Yellow House in Rochester Road, Merridale, they were seated in the yellow-painted dining room awaiting one of Deidre Morton's magnificent meals and were in a heated discussion.
"I'm just saying that the nine-to-five routine makes no sense at all," insisted Tommy Turner, a short fat blond retiree: "Working five days a week to have only a two-day weekend is slavery; it's morally wrong."
"Then what do you suggest?" asked Natasha Lipzing.
At seventy years of age, the tall thin grey-haired old lady had spent the second half of her life at the boarding house.
"A more sensible idea would be a two-day working week; followed by a five-day weekend."
"I'm sure most workers would agree with you," said Freddy Kingston, a tall stocky retiree: "But the bosses might object."
"Why?" demanded Tommy.
"For one thing they'd have to pay the workers a hundred dollars an hour for them to survive working only two days a week," pointed out Colin Klein.
A tall redheaded man, Colin had worked for thirty years as a top London crime reporter before moving to Merridale and taking up employment with the Glen Hartwell Police Force. He was also engaged to Terri.
"And we'd never get that in the police department," pointed out Terri Scott, a tall, beautiful thirty-something ash blonde, the top cop in the BeauLarkin to Willamby area.
"No," agreed Sheila Bennett. At thirty-five she was the second-top cop in the area; a Goth chick with orange-and-black-striped hair: "The Victorian public service doesn't like paying its workers at all ... Let alone a hundred bucks an hour."
"Besides," said Derek Armstrong, a black American by birth, who worked as a paramedic and was Sheila's boyfriend: "In jobs like ours, it's not just about the pay. It's about helping people. And you can't do that just two days a week. It can be gruesome at times, but I like being able to help the survivors, show them a friendly face, give them painkillers, if necessary pick them up out of the mud, and get them to hospital for treatment."
"The same with us," said Sheila: "When some maniac or monster is roaming the Glen, we can't just knock off after two days and leave the people unprotected for the next five." [See my stories: "The Brumbies", "Dark Angels", and "The Lily White Boy".]
"Then you put in for five days overtime," insisted Tommy.
"If the public service doesn't like paying us now," said Terri; "They're not gonna pay us a hundred bucks an hour for two days a week, plus overtime rates for five more days."
"Ah, you need to get a stronger union!"
"Admittedly the Victorian Public Service Union is pretty feeble," said Sheila: "But I don't believe a stronger union is the answer."
"All right everybody settle down now, tea's ready," said Deidre Morton, a short dump sixty-something brunette with remarkable culinary skills.
She placed an enormous roast turkey on the centre of the table.
"Wow, is that a turkey or a dino-bird?" asked Sheila.
"A turkey and it took me eight hours to cook it, so eat up."
"No wonder it's so lovely and warm inside," said Sheila before getting stuck into an enormous dinner.
After dinner Terri and Colin went up to bed, followed soon after by Deidre, Freddy, and Natasha.
Sheila, Derek, and Tommy moved to the lounge room to watch 'The World's Stupidest Stuntman Down Under', before also retiring to bed.

It was six o'clock in the morning when Deidre Morton woke them again, hammering on the bedroom door.
"Mrs. M., have you gone bonkers?" asked Sheila, looking at her alarm clock:"It's only 6:00 AM."
"There's been a crash on Williamstown Road. Sounds like the Reynard sisters have all been killed."
"Shit, I'd better get dressed too," said Derek, realising too late that Deidre could hear him.
"That's a good idea, Derek," called Deidre Morton, before going to wake up Terri and Colin.

Forty-five minutes later Terri's police-blue Lexus pulled up near the pine grove where the Reynard sisters' Ford F 150 Raptor had crashed. An ambulance stood nearby, waiting for the fire department to cut out the remains of Moxie Reynard. Foxy and Roxy had already been transported with great difficulty to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
Going across to the Coroner, Elvis Green (so named due to his worship of the late King of Rock and Roll), Terri asked: "So what's the verdict, King? Is it a straight high-speed crash?"
"I thought so at first ... till I noticed that," said Elvis.
He pointed to where one of the Night Feeders lay beside the road.
"A dino-bird!" cried Terri, bringing Sheila, Colin and Derek away from the waiting ambulance.
"Where?" asked Sheila.
"Over there," said Elvis pointing.
"We managed to get that thing out of the wreckage," said Hermione Meldon, the local fire chief: "But we're struggling to get poor Moxie out ... Do you know how hard it is to get a mashed two hundred kilogramme woman out of any vehicle?"
"We know you're doing your best, Herm..." said Terri, stopping as her mobile phone rang. She spoke on the phone for a couple of minutes, then said: "That was Yancy Cartwright over at Leroy ... He says he's being menaced by a two-metre tall Yowie." [See my story: 'The Yowies'.]
"Something tells me it's going to be one of those days," said Colin as they started back toward Terri's Lexus.
As they reached the car, Cheryl Pritchard, a tall muscular paramedic and Derek's boss, said: "There's another of those dino-birds a kilometre or so further down the road."
"Yep, definitely one of those days," said Sheila as they climbed into the Lexus.

By the time that they pulled up at Yancy Cartwright's station the Æon Beast had lost interest in the farmer and was heading toward the rear of his station.
"There it is," said Yancy, pointing after the retreating creature.
Straining to see the Æon Beast, Sheila said: "For all I can see, it could be just an extra dirty hippy dip."
"Hippy dips are young female hippies," corrected Colin Klein: "Teenage girls aren't often over two metres tall, as that figure seems to be.''
"What about the Wahine?" demanded Sheila: "She was young-ish, and over two metres tall." [See my story: 'The Wahine'.]
"She was also supernatural," said Terri, forgetting that Yancy Cartwright was listening: "Putting paid to your theory that it's just a harmless hippy chick."
"Well, there's one way to find out," said Colin. Cupping his hands over mouth, he shouted: "Stop! Police!"
The Æon Beast stopped and looked back at them for a second, then turned around and started running toward a grove of blue gum trees.
"Well, that's not suspicious at all," said Sheila as they raced back toward the Lexus to start after the creature.
By the time they reached the grove of blue gums, however, there was no sign of the creature.
"Where the Hell could it have gone?" asked Terri of no one in particular.
By way of answer came a hellish screeching from above and behind the blue gums.
"What the...?" asked Colin as overhead a vaguely bat-winged creature soared into sight.
"The Verdillac's back!" cried Sheila. [See my story: ' Across the Plains Comes the Verdillac'.]
"We killed the Verdillac," reminded Colin, as Sheila turned the car and started back toward the farmhouse.
"We also killed the dino-birds, twice, but they're here for a third time, pointed out Sheila.
Then as the screeching terror came closer, they could see what it really was: "A pterodactyl!" cried Sheila.
"Pterosaur!" said Colin: "Pterodactyl is layman's slang."
"Thank you for correcting me, as we're all about to die!"
"You were right, honey," said Terri: "It's definitely one of those days!"
"I don't think we can outpace it!" said Sheila: "I think we'd better leave the car and hide among the gum trees!"
"Agreed," said Colin.
The three police officers abandoned the Lexus and raced back to the blue gum grove. Fortunately, the trees grew close enough together so that the pterosaur would have difficulty reaching them.
"I think we're safe now!" said Terri.
Seconds later, the winged reptile zoomed down and grabbed the police-blue Lexus in its talons.
"My Lexus!" cried Terri.
The pterosaur whooshed up into the firmament, then released the car.
"My Lexus!" repeated Terri.
Seconds later, the car returned to earth with a hellish crash, shattering the windows and sending the doors, roof, and tyres flying off in all directions. Even the engine block went flying, fortunately not toward the three cowering police officers.
"You bastard!" shouted Terri, shaking a fist at the retreating reptile, before Colin could cover her mouth with one of his hands.
"I think it's going away," whispered Sheila:
And indeed the creature flew off toward where the Æon Beast awaited. As the creature landed the Æon Beast vanished, taking the pterosaur back to its own time.
Racing out into the open, despite Colin's efforts to restrain her, Terri ran across to the shattered Lexus crying: "My car, how am I going to explain this to the insurance company?"
"With a pterosaur on the loose around Glen Hartwell, you're going to have to ring the assistant commissioner in Russell Street for help anyway," pointed out Colin.
"I suppose so," said Terri with a sigh.
Taking her mobile phone out of her shirt pocket, she rang through to Melbourne and told the assistant commissioner what had happened. From time to time she cringed as he shouted at her. Finally, she disconnected and said:
"He's agreed to get in touch with the R.A.A.F. to send down a military chopper to take down the flying reptile, and also to buy me a new Lexus. But he is right about one thing ... With seven million people in Victoria, and only eleven to twelve thousand people in the BeauLarkin to Willamby area; how come we're the only area that gets supernatural occurrences."
"My guess is that there's a rift in the space-time continuum nearby, like in Torchwood," said Sheila.
As they started walking back toward the farmhouse, Colin said: "If anyone else had suggested that, Sheils, I'd be amazed."

The next morning, soon after breakfast, they were seated at the huge black wood desk at the Mitchell Street Police Station in Glen Hartwel, when they heard the sound of rotors approaching.
"That sounds like our girls now," said Sheila.
Standing, the three cops went outside to wait on the slightly overgrown lawn to watch as an R.A.A.F. A25 Sikorsky S-70 Blackhawk helicopter approached the station.
After landing in the street, out stepped its female pilot, fifty-something Jennifer Eckles, an attractive brunette with pixie-cut hair, and her twenty-something daughter, Barbara.
"Barbara, Jennifer," said Sheila, giving them each a hug.
"The R-Double-A-F still won't trust us near an SR-72?" asked Sheila.
"Nope, our bosses were having none of that!" said Barbara: "They still haven't forgiven you for destroying an SR-71 last year.'
"What's the big duh?" asked Sheila: "They were phasing them out for the new SR-72s anyway. We just sped things up a little bit."
"I'm not sure they see it like that," said Jennifer with a laugh.
"They're just hard to please," teased Colin.
"Okay, all board, and let's go pterodactyl hunting," said Jennifer.
"Pterosaur!" corrected Colin, Terri, and Sheila.
"All right, let's go pterosaur hunting," amended Jennifer as they all climbed into the S-70 Blackhawk helicopter.
As they lifted off, Terri asked: "I don't suppose the Assistnt Cmmisioner sid anything abo when I would get my newest Lexus?"
"Frankly he didn't look like he was in a good mood to ask," said Jennfer.
"Althoug,he did say something about it being a good conditioned used car this time," teased Barbara.
"What?" asked Terri.
"Thats right," teased Jennifer: "No more than five to eight yeas old."
"What?" demanded Terri. then, see mother and daughter laughing: "Oh, I see, so this is ho the airforce treats the co on the beat."
Which only brought more laughter from Jennifer and Barbara.
"It's not as though it was my fault, either Lexus got destroyed."
"That's right," agreed Sheila: "I wrecked the first one, and the pterosaur wrecked the second one."
"Thank you for reminding me about the first one, Sheils!"
"It wasn't really my fault though...

Third segment: gigantic land-based Whale-like creatures.

THE END
© Copyright 2024 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia