The Working Man's Blues Pt II | Cleveland, OH

by R. Soon, Cleveland, OH, USA

The little boy kicked a big, dry stick at the menacing green dome, shining with a peculiarly dull gloss and bearing warlike squared patterns. “Come outta there!” he yelled at it, angry that the fearsome beast would appear out of nowhere, then taunt him instead of attacking like a monster is supposed to. Nay, so far from ferocious talons and ghoulishly large and sharp teeth, this despicable offspring of evil wore merely an armored portcullis beneath the roof of its daunting fortress, and remained still, terrifyingly still.

Not that the little boy didn’t know his own name, but he knew that no name given him by mere mortals would suffice. Instead, he realized of himself, while out protecting his glorious homeland from the beasts of the wilderness, that he was the Guardian of the Dawnbreakers’ Legacy, a mighty name for a mighty defender. And thus, he was no little boy at all, but a fearless warrior redoubting his broken band of clansmen.

Yet this immense, unmoving foe unnerved him thoroughly.

Ever since he could remember, he had been doing battle with all manner of uncanny hellspawn. Every new encounter he made, he would fight bravely, and once victorious (for he was always victorious), he would ask his elder tribesman mentor of the type of demon that he had just vanquished: “Dad, what was that??” And the wise elder would consider the description yielded him, and maybe consult one of the precious few books he kept in a storeroom hidden far beneath Shaker Square, and then tell him, “Saif, that was a meerkat.” Or a white lab rat, or a ferret, or a squirrel-dog hybrid, or a skunk (a beast that fed on the souls of the unwary, did ye but know), or a miniature baboon, or a glowing designer cat, or one of so many other wicked opponents.

'Where did they come from, and why did they attack with such fury?' the Guardian asked the man of great knowledge. He had asked many times, soon knowing the gist of the answer by heart, but he loved hearing the story of the Tower of Case Western Reserve, a den of evil and madness that blighted the land. His father began the same way every time, “You see, Saif, years ago there was a great university not far from here, a place people came to from all over the world….” And the Guardian would sit rapt as the tale was told, and one or two enticing new details revealed about the Case Riots, and the discovery of the experiments carried out in Case’s vile dungeons, and how the huge and ghastly creatures that escaped spread out quickly and terrorized the hapless.

Not that there were all that many of the hapless out there for them to terrorize. “Saif, the wildlife aren’t the only things to be careful of out there,” the elder told him once, not long ago--

Had the soulless green thing moved? The Guardian was drawn back to the present; he had been letting his thoughts drift as he kept his eyes intently on the silent hulk. But no, he decided, it was surely still preparing a disastrous attack for him to overcome. He continued to concentrate on the patterned beast.

Just once, and recently, had his father declined to tell of the fall of Case Western Reserve University. The look in the wise man’s eyes had transfixed him, and he remembered his words too clearly…for the story told instead was very different, and his tone of voice very different.

“Son, there are people out there, bad people. They want to take you away, like they took away your cousin Farshad. Do you ever wonder why we only leave the Square when it’s late? Do you remember when we went to Thistledown, and we didn’t meet anyone till we got inside?” The Guardian nodded mutely each time. “There was nobody to meet, Saif. Those bad people took some of them, and the rest ran away so that they wouldn’t be taken, too. Those people are much worse than even the big bad skunk, you see…we’re trying to escape them too. We’re trying not to be caught by those bad men.”

His father’s expression was scarily intent. Saif had managed a voice, albeit a tiny, shaky one. “But Dad, why don’t we get out of here if there’s bad people?” And the elder revealed to him a great revelation, that the bad people had taken away a member of his clan, long ago. The man was the father of the father of the sage one, and ergo an ancestor to the Guardian. “Saif…your great grandfather’s name is Barry. And the name of the bad people who took him like they took Farshad, they’re called Halliworks. We’re still here because we’re going to rescue Barry, and we must show Halliworks that they aren’t welcome on our land and in our city.” And the great man fell quiet, and then just as quietly shooed the Guardian away.

The words shook the little boy, as little of it as he even really understood. For a couple of days afterward, he didn’t leave the bunker at all. But duty called, and he eventually took again to patrolling Shaker Square for freakish assailants to defeat…although he began to keep an eye on the streets out around the square, too, out beyond the camouflage line.

And the latest devil’s seed to appear, clad in a maddeningly textured armor, filled him with loathing in its nonplussing outward slumber.

“Oh!” a voice behind the Guardian exclaimed. It was his father, the wise leader of their small band of remaining family. “Well, Saif, seems like you caught a box tortoise! I haven’t seen one in years…and it’s huge!” He laughed while striding forward, picked up the beast with both hands, and peered at the drawn gate at its fortress-like front.

And the Guardian filed this newest adversary away in his mind.