Monster Hunt

I handed him the scroll and walked away into the woods. "I've taught you everything I know," I said, "Let's see you put it to use." As I walked, I unclasped my armor, letting the metal drop into the soft earth with a dull thud. Helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, greaves, I wouldn't need any of them anymore.

I heard Bernard unfurl the scroll. A minute later I heard his voice in the darkness. "I understand Master James and, for you service to the kingdom, I promise to make it a swift and painless death. I am just saddened that the guild makes retirement a priority instead of allowing us to hunt whatever monster it is that has been kidnapping children from the village." I heard the crunch of dead leaves behind me, but continued to walk unconcerned toward the woods. I knew that Bernard would follow the scroll's instructions to the letter and give me the allotted 3 minutes to make my peace before he came to kill me. Unlike me at his age, Bernard was a good kid. When I was in his position, I put half a dozen poisoned arrows into my master's back before he even reached the tree line.

Still, nothing could stop the terror in the back of my mind at what was about to happen next. There's no going back after you've done all the things that I've done, and I've accepted this is just the way things are. Proper society just wasn't a place for a monster hunter. And when you've done as much killing as I have there always comes a time when you become more monster than man. I should've come clean a couple months ago when I first noticed the fangs starting to grow in. Luckily, the guild caught me before I beheaded the orphan who stole my coin pouch last week. Unless he or she is killed in battle, at some point the guild requires a monster hunter be "retired" by their apprentice. Luckily for me, Bernard was an exceptional apprentice, some would say a guild prodigy. And that was what truly terrified me.

When I got to the tree line I drew my sword and planted it into the ground. It was a symbolic gesture, after all, monsters don't use man's steel. My 3 minutes of preparation would begin. At that point, I sprinted into the woods weaving through trees and over rocks. Even though I was essentially being sentenced to death, there was no point in making it easy.

After a minute, I slowed my pace. Even in the dark I could tell that the trees in this part of the forest were much younger than the rest of the forest. Thinner and shorter. It was the part of the forest where my master had limped into after I shot his back full of arrows. I knew that some poisoned arrows wouldn't be enough to kill him, so I set the forest ablaze, letting the flames chase him down.

It didn't take long before I could smell it, the stench of decay. It's a smell I'd become accustomed to after decades of monster hunting. Honestly, if I wasn't sniffing for it, I might not have noticed. I followed the until I was sure I was breathing in more decay than air. Finally, I found what I was looking for. A glimmering nail pounded into a tree. I got tripped slightly as my feet got tangled up in the mess at the base of the tree. After regaining my balance, I found another nail. And another nail. Finally I got to the small clearing with nails pounded into all the trees circling the clearing. In the center, the small burial mound of stones and dirt of my former master. With my hands, I dug up the mound, my finger nails cracking on the rocks and the sticks cutting into my skin. It took me a couple of minutes, but I finally got to what I was looking for - my former master. There was nothing left in the hole but his bones and sword, but that was all I needed.

"Master James, I know you're out here," I heard Bernard's voice in the darkness and he was close. He was an exceptional tracker after all, once tracking a pack of werewolves in the night through woods just like these. "I know that you're unarmed and unprotected. There's no way you can win in these conditions. Now come out and face your death."

I smiled as I heard the crunch of boots on leaves as I took what I needed from the grave. Bernard had given away his position too soon, treating this as if it were a dual, as if I was just going to be some creature which crawled quietly to its death. I turned quickly, swinging with the sword as I did. My blade found only air as I spun to find Bernard still at the edge of the clearing his sword still in its scabbard.

"So you came all this way to get a sword you hid? I thought you had come out here to die with dignity." His voice was filled with disappointment. Slowly, he moved into the clearing and drew the short sword from his side. I had to smile at that. Understanding that he only had a small clearing before he got into the trees, this was not the place for a longer weapon, especially that halberd he loved so much strapped to his back.

I shook my head at his words. "First of all, I'm not terrified to die. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm terrified that you won't be able to kill me. And you've only confirmed my fears by coming into the clearing to dual me as if I were still human. You should've shot me from cover of darkness with that crossbow you seemed to have left behind." I spun the sword in my hand and then threw it back into the hole. "Secondly, I came for this." I tossed the teeth of my former master at Bernard's feet. "I needed to show you this. That my former master was only a month into his transformation when I ordered to kill him."

Bernard scooped up the teeth, slowly and with his eyes still on me and his sword still in his hand. Quickly, he took a look at the teeth. Then another, longer gaze. The third look held his gaze in horror. "These are fangs," he said, shakily. Then he looked at me, and I smiled.

"Did you smell it as you approached? I bet you didn't, the smell of death. In our line of work, it just becomes something we're so accustomed to that it doesn't even faze us. Did you think that I pounded those nails just to mark my way here? What if I told you that just a couple of days ago, each of those nails was pounded into two tiny hands , and from those two hands hung a child I'd feasted upon."

My apprentice dropped the fangs, and his sword. "You're the monster! You've been taking the children."

I smiled, wider than humanly possible, conscious of my fangs now shinning in the moonlight. "The Hunger has me, Bernard. It's up to you to stop me, to kill me. But I'm terrified that you won't be able to do it. That the guild has trained you on only how THEY want you to hunt, and not how you NEED to hunt. You really shouldn't have gotten so close." With those words I leaped, clearing the distance between the two of almost instantaneously, and sunk my fangs into his neck. His flesh filled my mouth and his warm blood sprayed onto my face. He was dead in a minute. I knew then that there was nothing that could stop me. And in the puddle that accumulated at my feet, I saw the reflection that scared me the most.



I'm back in it! I didn't write anything all November, though I started on a couple of things (never getting around to finishing any of it). Hopefully this means I'm getting back into the habit of writing, but we'll see. Once again, I got my inspiration from Reddit "You have fought monsters for years, and your apprentice is standing beside you. You realise what has happened with horror. You give them your last assignment as a monster hunter and have become the first monster they will hunt". I'm hoping I made this dark, though, I am out of practice so I'm guessing you probably saw that ending before we got there. Also, I seemed to have developed some sort of attention problem because I even felt like I may have rushed to get to the ending, as if I was getting bored of my own story and just wanted to wrap it up already. That might be a problem. Meh, or maybe I'm just out of practice.

Dread

It's Halloween! Instead of another terrible ghost story, I decided to write some real life scary stories (plus, I couldn't get my last story finished in time). But then I remembered that to tell scary stories, you need to go out and get into scary situations and I ... don't do ... anything. Then I was going to write about something I have a fear of (you know, without getting too personal, or deep) and my experiences with it. Then, as I was writing about roller coasters (it sounded cooler than needles), I realized most of my fear comes in the form of dread, fearing what is to come once I get on the ride, and not actually during the ride (and all of those stories were starting to sound the same, and boring). Actually, once the ride starts, I'm pretty okay. So, I scrapped some of those roller coaster stories and added in a couple more stories that start with dread and end with "meh" and packaged it all together here for the final installment of this stupid Halloween special.


Needles
I finally got a flu shot last month (or was it earlier this month?). My job has offered free flu shots since I've started working there 5 years ago. Basically, I dread needles so much that I've refused free flu shots, which is insane because I try to take advantage of every other free thing in my life. I've gotten shots before, I've given blood before, but none of that has done anything to quell my fear of a tiny piece of metal entering my skin for a split second, applying the slightest pinch to my arm, if I feel it at all. And the worst part is that I'm not even sure if needles are made of metal because I've refused to look at them everytime. Fuck needles.

"Alien"
No better moment, in my life, symbolizes that feeling of dread you get when you know someone is going to die in a horror movie than the time I was watching "Alien." When I was around 12 or 13 years old, I got really into horror movies for a couple of months. My family would go to Blockbuster about once a week and I would pick out a different horror movie. During this phase, I managed to watch a couple of Friday the 13th movies, one or two of the Halloween movies, and a bunch of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (a favorite series of mine). Then, my dad suggested "Alien." I'd seen both of the "Predator" movies so I thought, why not. At this time as well, I was walking home from school and I was basically home alone for a couple hours. So, one afternoon as I'm home alone, I popped in the cassette and started watching. Well, right after the alien bursts from the guy's chest, it runs off and the crew goes to look for it in this pitch black spaceship. So I'm watching the movie, knowing someone is going to die, that the alien is going to jump out of the dark and kill another crew member. Well, the moment is tense for a minute, two minutes, three minutes. Then a cat jumps out. Then another minute passes. And then another minute. And nothing is happening, the crew is still searching the ship and no one is dead yet. Then another tense moment. And another. Then my house phone rings and I jump. I hang up on the telemarketer and at that point I've just said "Fuck it" and I popped out the movie. To this day, I've yet to go back and watch the rest of that movie.

Eejanaika

 As I said at the beginning, I really am terrified of roller coasters. Somehow though, this did not stop me from riding the three roller coasters at Fuji-Q Highland. Probably because I have the self-confidence of a 12 year old ("just get on the ride, Alan, people are watching"). But that's an issue I'll deal with insert date of death here. Eejanaika is definitely one of those rides I would never ride on my own - a cart-less roller coaster. I'm standing in line, scared as well as surprised that I wasn't physically shaking. You know, regular dread. As we are in line, though, we pass this plaque on the wall

So my dread level just jumped. Not only do I hate roller coasters, but, at the time, I've still never been on one that does a single flip and now I'm about to get on one that holds the current world record. But there's still plenty of line left and by the time we get to the front, my dread has dropped back down to "Well, I'm already here, might as well just get on the ride." We get strapped into our seats and it's weird sitting alone in just a chair. I guess there's something just a little comforting when you're in a cart and someone is next to you, about to share this horrible experience with you. But I'm in the seat and waiting for this to be over with when the floor drops from under me. Some backstory: I've always been tall. I'm not bragging, just a fact. Unless it's a bar stool, I've always been able to touch the ground while sitting. Since Elementary school, that far back. So, being able to now dangle my feet is very, very unnerving. And my dread has jumped back up so far that my brain is now racing, "What the hell are you doing, Alan? You don't like roller coasters. This is the stupidest thing you've ever done." Then the ride started and we begin that ascent 90% of roller coasters have - except we're doing it BACKWARDS. As we go up, I can start to hear people screaming, but I can't tell we've started to drop yet because I can't see what's going on in the front. My only view is the ground as my chair has now unlocked from the bar and the only direction I can look is straight down. All I can do now is wait and wait for the eventual drop. After that, the ride was fun. I enjoyed the flips and turns. Oh, and it also turns out that the harness does give some wiggle room because during one of the flips, my ass left the seat for a bit and when I came back down, I landed with my nuts scrunched up against that part of the seat that comes up and separates your left leg from your right. And, if you were curious, you can probably find a seat-view video on Youtube, but here's a video I took from the ground

"Uncle's Taxi Ride" Behind the Scenes

Years ago, on a night like tonight, I'm sitting on my bed staring at a white page with black, Times New Roman 12 point font on my laptop screen. I've spent the past 2 weeks writing "Uncle's Taxi Ride" for a contest, and the past 2 hours just staring at the screen. I've already re-read it several times (even aloud), corrected the spelling and grammar errors, and even written out the contest entry email (which was basically just, "My name is Alan, here's my entry"). All I need to do is click that "Send" button. Yet I haven't been able to do that for 2 hours. I just keep staring at it. Because this is it. This is MY work that that I'm submitting to be judged by people I've never met. It isn't sharing my stories that scare me, I've done plenty of that for class and I've gotten a little more comfortable with it by writing them all here. I think what I dread the most is not receiving acknowledgement for my work. As much as it shouldn't matter, as much as I say it doesn't matter, it really does matter. That's probably why I never hesitated to turn in class work, because at least the grade would be some sort of recognition of my work, good or bad. But in a contest, they could just throw my work on the side and I'd never hear from them again. And I guess that's what I dreaded the most. The worst part, I go through the same thing every time. I'm working on getting over it, or at least toning it down so I can get it submitted in an hour (I got better things to do than stare at a screen, that's a lie, I really don't)

This Pole Wasn't Meant to Catch Fish

           It was nearly dawn when I finally felt a tug on my line. My father never brought home a single fish when he used this particular fishing pole, and now that he was gone I decided to break the curse. I reeled in my line as fast as I could, fighting to bring the fish closer and closer to shore. At any moment I was certain my pole was going to snap or my line was going to break and the curse on the pole would continue.

            Then I saw the shadow in the water. It was definitely bigger than anything else I’d ever caught, bigger than anything I thought I could hook from shore. Finally, something broke the surface of the water. Even in the dark, it was impossible to mistake the object for anything else than what it was – a human hand. Instantly, I dropped my pole and ran into the surf, fighting through the waves. My hands disappeared into the dark waters as I tried to grab onto an arm, a leg, anything my fingers could wrap around. Eventually, I managed to haul my catch to shore.

It was a man. A full-grown, adult man. I looked around the beach, trying to find any sign of where he might’ve come from, or anyone who might be looking for him. Instead I found only darkness and silence.

            “Excuse me, but is this your hook?” I turned to see the man now on his feet, a small piece of metal glimmering in his hand. Before I could respond he pulled the hook out in one motion and dropped it into the sand. Seeing the look of shock on my face, the man just smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s not the first time this has happened.” In that moment he turned and I could see the dozens, if not hundreds of tiny scars pockmarked throughout his body: his arms, his back, his chest, his face were all covered in them.

            “So, have you caught anything else tonight?” He asked, casually as if we were discussing the weather.

            I took a deep breath before I replied. “Nope. My dad used to say that this pole wasn’t meant for catching fish. I guess he was right,” I added with a laugh. After all, if he wasn’t going to make a big deal about being hooked and dragged half-dead from the ocean, why should I?

            The man laughed, an uncomfortable wet, gurgling noise. “Yeah, he did say that a lot,” he said as he pointed to several different scars on his body. “We’d met a couple of times before, but I could never get him to pull me to shore.” He turned to me, his smile now literally spread from ear to ear as rows of pointed teeth filled his cavernous mouth. “‘This pole wasn’t meant for catching fish’ he used to say. But did your father ever tell you what to do with the things that do bite? Did he ever tell you about the things that shouldn’t be taken from the ocean?” As dawn broke and the first light of day shone on the two of us alone on the beach, the man crumbled to sand and blew away in the wind, leaving behind only the sound of his laughter.

            I wish I could say that was the last time I saw the man, but that would be a lie. I see him everywhere, a face in the crowd or a shadow in the dark. I still don’t know who he is or what he wants. I only know that he is always smiling his pointed-tooth smile, his flesh scarred by the hooks of fishers smarter than me, men and women who knew that some poles aren’t meant to catch fish, and that some things are meant to be thrown back.

 This was my entry into this year's newspaper Halloween story contest. And I was a finalist! Top ten isn't bad. If you happened to pick up a newspaper today, you might have seen it (though probably not, who reads the Today section). If not, well, you missed seeing my small moment of fame and glory

And yes, I know they misspelled the title of my story, but I'm kinda hoping they don't correct it. It's a little humbling to know that even though I made it into the paper, something can still bring me down. It's especially humbling because, honestly, for about the past two weeks since I submitted the story, I've been thinking about how I'm definitely going to win this time and about what I'm going to say when they interview me about my inspiration for the story and my writing background and etc, etc. Just to give you a sample of all that hidden (or not so hidden) narcissism, here's where I got the inspiration for the story: I remember reading a prompt on reddit awhile back asking that you look around your house for old things and write a fictional story about it. The thing that I thought of was these old fishing poles in my garage. 

I'm not actually sure if this is either one of my dad's fishing poles or one of my grandpa's fishing poles. Either way, as you can see from the build up of dirt, it hasn't been used in a long time. The other inspiration for this story came from a van I see every once in a while with the words, "Fisher of Men" written on the side of it. It's probably some church vehicle, but the words made me think that, as people fish for fish (that sounds stupid), maybe there's something out there that fishes for us. So, putting these two ideas together, I came up with the third story for this Halloween special. Hopefully tomorrow's story will be scarier. Don't get your hopes up.

The Legend of Smokey Joe

No one trains overnight at Hercules Boxing Gym. At night, the gym belongs to Smokey Joe. You’re all too young to remember, but this place wasn’t always a gym. Almost two decades ago, it was a biker bar called Smokey Joe’s. Beer and whiskey behind the bar. Bikers, in their leather vests and chains and sweat, filled the room. And not just any bikers, but the biggest and burliest of bikers. The trouble started when the landlord decided not to renew the lease to make room for new tenants who were willing to pay more. Well, the bar owner was not happy about that and vowed that Smokey Joe would have its revenge as he was dragged out of the building.

After that, the Hercules Boxing Gym moved into the building. The new owners decided it would keep some part of the old bar alive using what was left behind by the bikers. No one knows if it was out of nostalgia or if they were just trying to save money of supplies. They used the chains to hang the punching bags from the ceiling. They emptied the bar and restocked it with protein shakes and energy drinks. They even kept the “Smokey Joe’s” neon sign in the window, though unlit and unplugged.

For the next couple of months, everything was going fine for Hercules Boxing Gym. The gym was popular with amateurs, new professional fighters, and even those who just wanted to exercise. That all changed one night when a group of boxers decided to train overnight for a big fight coming up later in the month. Well, that night after training, they set up some cots and went to sleep. In the night, a presence filled the gym, crowding it as if an entire mob of people had just appeared inside. Looking around though, there was no one else in the gym except the men who had come to train. Then, the chains holding the bags began to rattle, though no wind blew into the gym. Everything behind the bar was tossed across the room as if an angry horde had gotten to the bottles and glasses. The neon sign lit up bright in the window, though no one was sure who had plugged it in or if anyone had plugged it in.

Finally, the sound of fists hitting meat filled the gym. Flesh striking flesh, pounding, pounding, and pounding. A sound each of the boxers was all too familiar with. They awoke the next morning to find one of their own had been beaten and battered and in need of a doctor.

Knowing the story of Smokey Joe, one of the boxers decided they should throw out everything that the owners had salvaged from the biker bar and hope that would also drive away the ghost. So, the boxers unhooked all the chains from the roof and put the punching bags on the floor. They dismantled the bar, countertop and all, piece by piece, tossing every board and nail they pulled. As they were moving the neon sign, however, it slipped and shattered on the floor.

They tried to sweep it up as best as they could, all those little bits scattered all over the floor. They must have missed a shard, perhaps just the smallest particle of glass, because, that night, the ghost of Smokey Joe returned. This time, it didn’t just beat down one boxer, but all of them that were staying in the gym after the sun had set. The gym manager found all seven men bloody and bruised the next morning and declared there would be no more overnight training until that missing piece of the neon sign was found. They say boxers still spend time everyday searching for that one piece so they can finally put Smokey Joe to rest. To this day, no one has ever found that small fragment of glass and the ghost of Smokey Joe still haunts the gym.

I wrote this story for another contest, a contest which, oddly enough, the theme was Ghost Stories. Thinking more about this story, I'm pretty sure I wrote this backwards. I distinctly remember wanting the story to end on one of those "And to this day, the place is still haunted by blah, blah blah." I think another requirement to the story was that it needed to include a neon sign, which I wanted to make an important part of the story. So I got the sign to break, but then I needed a reason for the place to have a neon sign, and a reason it would break. Then I needed to come up with a backstory for the original place to have this neon sign. I think the main issue I had with writing this story was that it feels... too far away, if that makes sense. The immediacy of the story isn't there, like it's distanced from the reader. I think that's actually why I like writing in first-person a lot more, it puts the reader closer to the story. I think that I could've changed it by making the narrator one of the boxers or something. Well, this ends Day 2 of my Halloween stories.

Pale Light

            The night was dark and only got darker as Mark looked at the stretch of road ahead. With the street lights out, Mark could only think of one cause. “Copper thieves,” he said to himself as he switched from his car’s regular headlights to high beams. He wasn’t expecting to see any oncoming traffic coming through the valley at almost three in the morning. In fact, he wasn’t expecting to see anything at all as he drove home.

Then he noticed the light in the middle of the road. It wasn’t a shiny gleam, but a faint, steady glow, like a dying ember. Uncertain, Mark turned the high beams off and drove slowly toward the light as fear crept in the back of his thoughts. As he got closer, the light got bigger, but oddly, not any brighter.

            It wasn't long before Mark saw the source of the radiance - a young woman. She stood facing away from him in the center of the glow, clearly emitting the light like an aura. It wasn’t a particularly bright shine either, but rather a dull, pale glow much like the color Mark expected to see on the skin of a corpse, or Death’s steed.

            The woman was barefoot in a white dress that fell to her ankles. Long, silvery hair fell down to her waist. Mark’s foot pressed lightly on the brake pedal as his mind put the pieces together. It was the Lady in White.

            Mark took a deep breath. Then another. He'd heard stories, friend of a friend heard it from their friend from an uncle who had seen the Lady in White. She only appeared late at night to lone travelers. A beautiful woman, lost, just looking for a ride home. In the stories, when the traveler stops, the woman gets a ride home, a home which mysteriously disappears in the driver's rear-view mirror as they drive away. When the traveler doesn't stop, however, the woman still appears in the car and leaves the driver with a much less desirable fate. Mark knew what he needed to do. Don’t drive past her. Just give her a ride wherever she wants to go.

            Unless it wasn’t the Lady in White, raced a rogue thought. Unless it’s the Menstrazzo. Mark’s heart raced even faster as his foot moved from the brake pedal to the gas pedal. His mother used to tell him the stories of the Menstrazzo, an eyeless man with long hair and a long, white robe who shines in the night. He only appears at night and in the dark, never facing his victims. “Don’t ever stop for the Menstrazzo,” she would say, “or he’ll snatch you up and take you away.” His grandmother brought over the stories of the Menstrazzo from the old country when she and his grandfather immigrated to the United States and eventually settled in Hawaii. But the Menstrazzo shouldn’t have followed them as well.

            Stop or go. Go or stop. Mark’s foot jumped from one pedal to the other and back again, forgetting that the car was still rolling forward. Thirty feet now. Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Mark let out a shout and stomped on the brake pedal as he yanked the steering wheel to the side. The car went into a spin, but he managed to keep it under control until it was facing the opposite direction. Before the car even had a chance to come to a stop, Mark’s foot jumped to the gas pedal and he sped back up the street. He pulled off the road, kicking up dirt and gravel. Shaking, he put the car in park and shut off the engine. Slowly, slowly, Mark turned just enough to still see the faint glowing light exactly where he left it. Whoever it is, it only appears at night. He pulled his phone from his pocket. 2:48 am. Mark risked another glance back and saw the light, still in the same spot. Just four hours until sunrise. He leaned his chair back and tried his best to calm his racing heartbeat. It was going to be a long night.

I'm not sure how long ago I actually wrote this, but I know that I wrote it for a Halloween, scary-story contest. I made a couple changes to it recently, but I know it still wouldn't have beaten that year's winner. First off, just to get the apologies out of the way, I probably got the myth wrong about the Lady in White, though I'm pretty sure that is a real thing here (hooray for taking liberties with other stories!). As for the story of "the Menstrazzo," I made that up. Basically, I just needed a story that was similar to the one that I made up. Most of the inspiration for this story actually came from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." It was kind of a long read, but one of the ideas that I stole from the novel is that the stories people tell, the things they believe, it follows them wherever they go. In the story, Gods (actual, physical manifestations), are brought to America by people from their home country through stories they tell. And with Hawaii as such a melting-pot of cultures, I thought it would be interesting if a story from another place was very similar to a story we already have here (which, if you've read as much mythology as I have, you know that this is actually a thing). Anyways, hope you enjoyed Day 1 of my Halloween stories. They don't get any better.