Ilura

When it was time to die, the monster looked up at the blue sky above, lay down on a bed of leaves and closed its large gray eyes. It died there, dreaming, and the woods took it back. The flesh eaten by the worms, its body taken by the ground and when all the flesh had been eaten away, the birds made nests in its bones. It was, after all, part of the forest, and that was how it came to be part of it ever after.

Monster #17

It was bored of living in the wilderness, and decided to go to town. As it approached, it heard music, that stirred it. It was a violinist playing, and sat down to listen. The musician saw the monster sitting before it, and shivered, but knew if he didn't keep on playing his tune, it would eat him. So he played, as long as he could. Late Beethoven, and early Mozart. It dared not pull a Rachmaninov, or anything vaguely modern. The monster seemed pleased, and would even occasionally chortle. It beat its leg to the music. As the violinist finished the last piece he knew, he turned to the monster. "Eat me now!" he said. But the monster looked at him oddly, and went back into the wilderness without a word, humming the tune from the last piece the violinist had played.

The man who saw

Not everybody believed Jim when he published the photos. They were murky, but they did show part of a furry beast called Quag, that had long been a legend. The media, tired of war stories and environmental calamities, was all over it. Soon came the talk shows and the interviews, and the pictures were endlessly scrutinised and blown up on the web. It was those people that did not belive who dredged up his past; about how he shoplifted a candy bar at a local store, his degree that came from an online university, his alcoholicism. The photos were soon greeted with skepticism, even as more and more folks tried to bait him and show him as a conniving, dishonest individual out to profit. Before long, the dirt surrounding him got too much. The university where he was teaching at let him go, and the media went back to hounding television celebrities. Jim went back to the bottle, and never became much of anything ever again.

The giant sunflower

The weather had been growing colder, and the next winter was going to be the worst. "We have to rally together," said the sunflowers. "But what can we do?"
One sunflower stepped forward and said, "If we are all equally weak, we'll all die together. Our only hope is to gather all our resources and strength into one. Then it might survive the cold and at least one of us can live to see the spring."
"But who shall it be?" asked the other sunflowers.
"I think it shall be me," the sunflower who spoke up declared.
The sunflowers discussed amongst themselves, and decided to do as they had been told. Soon, the one sunflower had grown into a glorious specimen. Strong and tall, it stood heads and shoulders over the other sunflowers, which were now mostly weakened and stunted.
"I shall survive the winter," it said boldly. Soon the cold came, and the field was devastated, but the lone sunflower managed to last through the cold. At least until a deer passed by and took a bite and snapped the sunflower off its stem. And thus ended the sunflowers.

The string

It wanted blood. Most of the time it was black as night, which helped when it moved around. It slinked into corners, dripped down passages, or when it needed to fly away in the night air. It plotted the death of its victims. Tripping old folks down staircases, unknotting itself at critical times, or just garroting the sleeping. It killed and destroyed, relishing the moment when it could drip in blood.

The Ironboy

Lots of people thought the Ironboy would want to be human, but they were wrong. He was content to remain the way he was. After all, in his metallic form, he dived into the Marianas trench and touched the bottom, flew into space and landed on Mars, travelled to both poles and had many, many more adventures. Even though he rusted away and never grew beyond, he was content, and he just sat in the park until he corroded away, waiting to see the end of humanity.