Authors: J.T. Savage
Scott answers,
“Moon beast?”
The lady just scrowls harder. Scott, feeling uneasy, would rather be anywhere other than that spot at that moment in time. The hunter takes over and Scott bows down again to leap and flies toward the lady again. Mouth, now open, ready to submerge those teeth into the being in front of him like a flying torpedo with jaws preparing to blow up its target. The entity vanishes completely as Scott rolls through, somersaulting to the ground with a sudden stop from a flaky barked elm that knocks the loosely formed bark impressions that fell brutally to the ground and shatter and split. Little brown termites come out of the holes and scurry to run under the bark back into a safe cover away from any impending danger. Scott shakes the wood chips off, rolling the muscles of his body all the way down his tail in a quick flurry and looks around to see where the woman went. There
’s no sign of her anywhere as he turns and whispers in a very unsure, “Hello?” Now Scott hears again, “What’s your purpose here?”
Identifying the sound from coming above the tree, Scott looks up. Above into the tree he sees the woman, sitting on a branch, looking down, calmer, repeating,
“Why are you here?”
Scott replies,
“Why am I here? To live.”
“
Go back to where you came from you monstrosity. You don’t belong here. Go now and take your friends, those other evil wolves and get out of here.”
Scott shakes his canine head left and right. His ears slope down just a touch.
“I can’t.” he says as he lowers his head.
“
Why all of a sudden did you decide to stay?”
Scott appears confused by the question.
“How do you mean?”
“
We seen you guys come down in a ghost form, sort of like us, but you always returned. Now, all of a sudden, you stay. Why? And not only did you stay, you became of human plain. Not only can they see now, you walk in there realm. How do you walk in their realm?”
“
You see us when we are in hologram form on earth?”
“
Oh yea. Everywhere we see that. And we see other things too. But the old ones say, every three hundred years, you cause havoc on the earth. And when you guys die, you become our problem where you carry on in our realm and cause horrendous acts upon us. So a long time ago, when humanity began, there were the Firsts. And the Firsts created this coalition to protect the earth from the invaders in our realm of existence. And theirs too, “ as she points to the house down below the bluff. “Theirs is connected too for we were once human and that’s why we are the guardians of the earth and humanity. I am one of many and many are me.”
At that time the lady jumps down from the tree and lands in front of Scott and looks straight down at him and says,
“Look, if you kill one human being, just one, in this plain of existence, you will suffer. For with any action, there is a reaction and we will react. Know this if you stay on earth.”
Scott looks at her and says,
“Yes, I understand.”
The lady perks up and smiles a broad smile, reaches into her front jean jacket pocket, pulls out a cigarette, sticks it in her mouth, reaches back into the pocket, pulls out a lighter, lights a cigarette and leans back against the tree taking a big pull of the cigarette, inhaling deep and blowing out smoke rings in front of her mouth as she exhales with a stern blow shaped pattern, thrusting out with every ring to then slowly dissolve and break the rings of the circles that shoot out her mouth.
“Now that we have that understood, I would be very intrigued to know why you are suddenly appearing and staying on this planet. You said that it happens every three hundred years?”
“Well, my theory is, every three hundred years, a new life cycle begins. To have a new life cycle, the old one must die. That is our laws. That is how it happens.”
“
So what you are trying to say is that some of these life cycles are basically trying to cheat death?”
“
Well, that is kind of my theory. But to understand the technology takes years and years.” Scott answered. “Our brain functions are very short and limited at the beginning. Just like here you have to be taught, but you teach yourself. You’re totally independent until you slowly learn the ways of communication on our species being so different and not needing to know. After we learn how to manipulate the life force within us to control our surroundings and one another, we fall out of interest and learn of humanity and its struggles, which we have none. So humans drama inflicts us like a virus. Your emotions and how you are proud of your achievements and struggles, we get fascinated with this and we study harder and we mock it and we become it. Then we learn to, as a group, manipulate the light at full force to become it. And beam down and experience it until eventually its engrained into us.”
The spirit draws a little closer to the wolf.
“Yea, well if you love us so much then why do you destroy everything that you hold precious?”
“
I don’t know of any other ones except for our base. We might see them shoot down, but we cant really tell what it is. And the only time we see that is when we are actually shooting ourselves. I tried to find and investigate the first couple times I jetted down, but I never had luck at finding anyone. And you can’t really waste your precious time looking for somebody if you’re down here on a mission for your base. How many bases there are, I’m not sure. Ours is L6, so there’s at least more than five. They’re all separated. Who knows?”
“
My best friend on L6 is Rob and he manipulated some cells and done some DNA work and created some wolves just last week. He was more of the technical guy. I just sat around and watched a lot of reruns on my monitors that we hacked into your satellites and wave lengths since we started created them actually. You’re world is so young. We been there a long time. I don’t know. We went down in bomb shelters a long time ago and never could come back out. The whole planet destroyed within itself and swallowed us whole. For some odd reason, I don’t know. Its been lost for a long time. All we can ever do is just root around what fragments they left behind. You think they would make better journals. I mean the language is so sophisticated, but I don’t know. All we know is that they had a few things left behind and maybe whatever swallowed us in to begin with, after we entered the bomb shelters, we got sunk in deeper swallowed, knowing that the only way to escape was through the weaves of light that it collects to feed to us and takes the organisms that kill us to nourish it in a way. But Rob changed things. He figures things out.”
“
Ok, ok I get it. You’re mad at your planet. It swallowed you up and spit you out down here, making you our problem. But your friends back there have already killed one person. And you were very close to what I guard most. These are my bluffs .”
At that time, a deer runs quickly by them, jetting alongside the bluff. The birds fly out of the trees and the crickets stop chirping altogether. More shadows come out of the darkness of the wooded canopy and proceed toward them. The first face Scott sees is an Indian with war paint on, a Mohawk and eagle feathers coming off like braids from the back of his skull. A bow in one hand and a type of buffalo leather pants and moccasins. The other is a pirate with old pistols on the side of each hip, dark striped pants, high boots that come up to his knees, a dark blue velvety coat and a white fluffy shirt. He has a sword on his left hip that swings and clatters against his gun holster each time he draws near. He has a giant shadow behind him that seems to follow his every step.
Scotts eyes slowly rise above the pirates hat. An old dark black shape colony type hat pirates wore in all the old time movies. He looked authentic enough. Scotts eyes go even farther up to finally see a shadow.
“
Holy shit! It’s a hairy ape man that looks just like Chewbacka. If these guys come up to me and ask me to use the force, I’m gonna shit a brick. No, not a brick. A whole damn lighthouse. I mean how cool is this.”
The other is a goth girl with a plaid skirt, leather coat and white buttoned down uniform shirt, like the catholic school girls wear. Her black hair is sloppily pinned up in the back, Japanese style with two sticks poking out like antennas in the back of her head, crisscrossing and one long strand swaying over her right eyelid that clumsily bounces and sways from left to right as she comes drawing nearer.
And last of all, to her right, is a salt and peppery haired man, with glasses and a white jacket like they wear in a laboratory.
“
What an odd pair this is.” Scott says out loud.
The ghost next to the tree slowly rises up into the tree tops once more and gives Scott a side looking half grin, gives a little chuckle and says,
“When I first saw these guys, they were leading an army of the guardians of earth so I would watch my P’s and Q’s shaggy dog.”
Scott stops wagging his tail when he hears this little tidbit of information. The Indian looks straight down at the dog and just stares then looks up at the lady in the blue jean jacket, who is now stomping out her cigarette and says,
“You ok, Tab?”
Tab looks down at the wolf now and says,
“Oh yea. But I don’t like him being so close to the ranch. This one is like a little pussy cat compared to the others. They’re up in the old mineshafts. He says he’s some kind of refugee. I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe we should have goth Barbie over there take a look.
The woman in the leather skirt and leather jacket looks at her and sarcastically says,
“Har dee har , bitch,” as she proceeds to sway back and forth intentionally over exaggerated sexy sway towards the wolf. She bends down and arches her back even more in a sexy pose. She stares at Tab and gives a wicked smile and winks at Tab then returns to the dog. She puts her hand on the dogs and pets it and replies, “Yes you is a good dog. Yes you is. Yes you is.”
All the other ones start to scowl at the young girl as she playfully pats Scott on the head. Then like she just stuck a fork in a light socket her body tightens and her arms twitch the pain run down to her shoulder blades with strange convulsions. As the muscles tighten and restrict then release like branches coming off a lightning bolt during a thunderstorm in an erratic patterns through the sky. You can almost see it go all the way down through her thigh, kneecap and calf to her toes into the ground like something from the dog completely passed totally through goth girl.
She let go quickly and shakes her arm and yells,
“Wooooooo! What a rush. I’m not gonna be able to train that one.”
As her feet stomp up and down on the leafy dirt canopy, all the others chuckle. The pirate says,
“Aye. Lets just dispose of this flea bitten varmint for me lassy is waiting back home fer me, the best treasure in all the seven seas.” He quickly pulls the sword out of the sheaf making a “ching” sound as it releases from the metal restraint. He thrusts it high into the air .
The lady in the jean jacket says,
“Wait. Maybe he can tell us more about the werewolves. Even maybe how to stop them from coming down completely. Then we can all enjoy the fruits of our labor.”
The pirate grunts and puts his sword back into his sheaf.
“She right, “ the Indian says as he looks up towards the Bigfoot. “He’s like you mountain king.”
The ape man slowly shakes his head up and down, keeping a good eye on the wolf. He steps forward and says in a deep, deep voice,
“Why are you here?”
Scott thinks his voice was a hypnotic, relaxing, soothing voice that made him scared but yet paralyzed in place, not able to run even if he could. The combination of the dark mountain mans stare.
“Is he hypnotizing me or what?” Scott wonders. Then as fast as the feeling appeared, it vanishes, like a weight lifting off his shoulder and spinal cord into the air making him lighter and normal.
The big mountain man says,
“I am the first. I can give you the answers, but you mustn’t break earth law. You must from this point and time give yourself to the cause of the guard and be a protector of humanity and all the living organisms upon this planet against the black matters and the moon entities like us that come down and cause havoc upon your plain and this plain of reality for somehow our realms have been intertwined and woven together stacked one upon another, like layers of skin that hold altogether to protect the body from germ warfare and uphold the laws of humanity. Agree or die.”
The giant of a man fingers tighten to make a fist the size of a football. He draws his arm back ready to thrust forward with a punch if the wolf disagrees.
Scott, still not able to move, agrees.
“
Yea, sure, whatever you want.” Scott replies. “Calm down.”
The lady in the blue jean jacket says,
“Even if it means killing one of your own like your friend Rob or any of the other wolves?”
“
Well, I do kinda owe Rob a little bit. I mean he did get me here.”
“
What exactly was his purpose?”, the lady asks. “He brings down a militia of werewolves to run rampid in the woods? That don’t seem like he’s giving humanity a nice warm hug, does it?”