LANTANA – I have drawn the ire of a powerful wizard, and I have fled to Florida.
Apparently, my former magic teacher took umbrage with the chargeback on my tuition payment, and has deployed his mercenary goons to attack me in revenge for the unpaid balance, as well as for the one star review that I left him, in which I accurately described him as “a stupid old hippie who smells bad.” I fully stand by all of my writing, and that includes my reviews, no matter the consequences.
Last Monday, I awoke to the sounds of a tow truck hooking up to my trusty Durango, which was parked in the very best spot, marked by golden lines right outside my motel room. While I was able to easily dispatch the portly driver, I knew that he had been sent for me by my former teacher. I found myself in a bit of a quandry. Do I stay and face down the mighty mage who was capable of commanding an army of goons that operated arcane devices capable of ensaring my vehicle? Or do I flee, knowing that my allies are few, and his are legion?
I decided to flee to safety.
They say South Florida is nice this time of year, so I headed to Lantana, where a great newspaper once employed a handsome young karate journalist, and was the only reliable news source on the planet, for a time. I won’t name names, but every supermarket in the country once carried my headlines about people who swore they saw Elvis, the long dead King of Rock and Roll, or the time they romanced Bigfoot, or the machinations of the vile Grey aliens, not to mention a certain West Virginian child with large eyes, sharp teeth, and his signature leathery wings. Let’s just call him The Boy, because he figures prominently in my journey in Florida.
Finding the most cost efficient lodging in the area, I settled in to yet another motel, the stale odor almost comforting to smell after days on the road. I figured I would swing by the old office, maybe reminisce a little, and then look up a friend over in the Everglades, who says that he had a story for me about a fat guy with a cane who swallowed a snake, which then escaped out the backdoor virtually unharmed. With that bombshell story on my mind, I left my motel with my head in the clouds, energized by the stomping grounds of my youth.
Stepping out into the rising sun, I was immediately accosted by a strange, emaciated child with a humanoid shape and the features of a flying rodent. Was this him? After so many articles, after the merchandise and the musical, was I actually meeting the Boy in the flesh?
He didn’t seem friendly, and it seemed odd that he would be out in the brightening daylight, so I took a step back, and saw another Boy, but this one gray and vicious, like something that wouldn’t admit that it was dead. He lunged for me, and I overrode my roundhouse instincts and ran, not sure exactly what was going on.
The Florida sun felt great, and I just kept running, loping along and putting so much distance between myself and the batlike creatures, that I felt comfortable slowing to a light jog. After a time, I found a maritime academy sitting where the great papers of my youth were once printed. I stopped by the road, busier now, and looked out toward the ocean, finding shapes in the churning cumulus that dotted the blue skies. One cloud showed a black dot that got bigger as I watched, eventually showing a winged child, who headed right for me.
After the aggression shown by the two creatures at the motel, I was ready for trouble. Putting weight on my back foot and taking off my jacket, I prepared to unleash fists and feet of fury if the little guy decided to attack. Was this the work of the wizard? Could his tentacles reach even into the Sunshine State?
The Boy didn’t attack, and he looked healthy, unlike the walking corpses from earlier in the morning. I nodded, and he returned the gesture. Tucking his wings, he started walking down the road, and I fell in alongside him. Anywhere else, we would have turned heads, but Floridians didn’t so much as glance at us as we walked the empty sidewalk along the busy highway.
“Were those your friends, back at the motel?” I finally mustered the nerve to speak, not even certain that he could respond, let alone understand.
“No. Not anymore.” His voice was small, but smooth and strong and certain. “They lived with me until the paper moved, and then we all went North, and that’s when they went bad.”
As a journalist, the excitement was almost overwhelming. Here I was, with the scoop of a lifetime, an exclusive interview with the face of one of the most iconic papers ever published. I let him talk, nodding and walking and asking questions where I could, but he was willing to tell me everything there was to tell.
There wasn’t much, honestly. His fate has always been intertwined with the newspaper that moved north, and then online. He moved with it until it stopped printing, so that’s when he returned to Florida. Shortly afterward, his compatriots got sick, and it looked like they died, but they came back as a grotesque mockery of what they once were. He told me how they got into silly and boring adventures, that they wanted to make a movie about some knockoff of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, but I have no idea what that is, so I didn’t ask for any more info. He said that everyone remembers what he was, but they don’t know how to find him, and when they do, they find the putrid zombies instead.
I asked him if he thought he had a future, and he said he didn’t know, but if he did, it wouldn’t be in the city. He belongs to a middle America that has shrunk to almost nothing, the changing face of the country no longer fertile ground for the weirdness that he epitomizes. Satire, he says, is what’s replaced him, and there’s no space for real truth, only propagandistic lies and low effort software assisted drivel.
When shown www.therealityregister.com, his big eyes got brighter, and he hid his teeth with a small, sad smile. “I’m glad someone’s kept the light on,” he said, and climbed up on the ledge overlooking a highway, looking out into the world.
“At least somebody cares about writing full articles, published twice daily with the spirit of a bygone era, and the zeal of a future worth living in. I only wish that I could be there too.”
That was a pretty weird thing to say, so I just walked away.
Mohammed Sinclair
