Jazz Monster Collector in: Man Behind the Curtain (Season 1 Episode 16)

Jazz, Monster Collector in:

  Man Behind the Curtain

  season one, episode sixteen

  RyFT Brand

  Copyright 2015

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to

  persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  JAZZ, Monster Collector

  Season One: Earth’s Lament

  RyFT Brand

  Episode-16

  Man Behind the Curtain

  I sat struggling to keep myself awake as the gentle, rhythmic swaying of the hover train kept luring me toward sleep. The inane rhetoric of the pleasure-core music piped through the cars wasn’t helping me keep my chin off my chest. It’d been a while since I used public transportation. I would have given in except I was afraid of missing our stop. Besides, I’d just spent the past five days doing little else other than sleeping.

  Pleasure-core was about the only music played anywhere on Mirth. Most of it was produced by the Wizards Council sanctioned composers and anything played though the pubic media corridors had to first be approved by the council. The sound was something like elevator music meets new age meets bubblegum pop, only blander and with even less intriguing lyrics. It was, all of it, designed for the single purpose of putting the listener into a state of witless contentment and there was a dab of magic embedded in the tunes to help nudge the listener toward said desired result. Me, I was immune to it. Not because of any special ability or protection, I’d just seen way too much bad in my life to feel content.

  I was, however, completely under its powerful conjuring of boringness.

  DJ, my trusty sidekick, was sitting beside me. She had her one hundred percent wooly beast scarf drawn up over her mouth and nose, partly to conceal her features as we were both wanted criminals, and partly to block the stench from the wrinkled old skell demon sitting beside her who seemed unabashed at sharing his terrible gastric emissions with everyone on the train. Normally I’d have chucked his withered and rancid ass straight into the gutter, but, like I said, we were wanted. We needed to keep a very low profile, at last for now.

  DJ sat silently staring into space. She’d barely spoken to me since my attack on the wood elves who’d been holding her captive. I knew she felt I’d gone too far by wiping out their entire nation, but I did what I felt was right, no matter how messy right became. That was, after all, what I did. I was Jazz, ruthless and cunning destroyer of monsters and all things Mirthen. I did the things no one else could do, were willing to do, and that needed doing.

  Didn’t I?

  Doubt, uncertainty, regret, these were not normal emotions for me. Neither was being introspective, but ever since my bad judgment call on Mickey the Sasquatch, I’d spent a lot of time searching my feeling of regretful uncertainty about my doubtfulness.

  Things were easier when I thought I was dying. All that unrestrained revenge and reckless bravado had me feeling very powerful. Now, with about a hundred warrants out for my arrest forcing me to sneak around in disguise on public transportation, I felt about as powerless as I’d felt during my time as a slave in the mallow pits. And yeah, I’d taken out a lot of bad monsters and one very bad person, but at what cost? I’d spent most of this second life of mine focused on bringing down the forces behind the inter-dimensional takeover of my planet. Now, seeing the mindless smiles on the brain-wiped citizens of Nitsburg, I kind of envied them. Maybe this fight was over for me. Hell, I’d given it a really good run, and had some kicks along the way. But I was tired, spent, drained, and, as loathe as I was to think it, feeling defeated. Defeated enough to seek the council of the one being I most detested, least trusted, and most feared on the conjoined planets, my ‘father.’

  The hover train slowed. The change of cadence pulled me out of my thoughtful trance. I was surprised to see that, except for two female cud demons in maid attire, we were the last passengers on the once crowded car.

  “This is us,” I said and stood. DJ adjusted the scarf that covered her lower face. She took her rucksack from the floor, slipped her arms through the shoulder straps, and followed me down the aisle. When the transplaced door dissolved from existence we stepped out onto the wide pedestrian walkway. My long, layered skirt trailed along the magically created surface. My soft soled leather boots felt great after having worn my heavy battle boots for so long. I slid the sunglasses over my eyes, the only part of my face the head shawl left exposed. When I was sixteen, a family of gypsies adopted me so that the blessings granted their family centuries earlier would apply to me. They performed this act of kindness to protect me from the demigod lord of a horrid nether dimension, a lord my father had bartered a deal for my soul with. Funny thing was I ended up developing a deep bond with the gypsies, far deeper than the bond I felt for my own blood family. Not surprising considering the bizarre and heart wrenching circumstances of my real family—dysfunction doesn’t even begin to describe how poorly we executed anything close to a sound family life.

  That’s how I met my Uncle Izzo, not to be confused with Uncle of Uncle’s Garage. Uncle Izzo was the patriarch of my Gypsy family, and the man who I think of when I think the word, Dad. He’s the man who gave me my street cycle, my shotgun, my leather flight cap, and his life in order to protect me. I’d worked hard to make his sacrifice worth something, and now I wasn’t so sure he’d done the right thing.

  So when I wasn’t dressed in my plated and padded leather battle gear, I dressed like a gypsy, the clothes of my people. Interestingly Gypsies were one of the only Earth cultures to survive the ID war—Gypsies were used to invasions and wandering and keeping out of sight. We were still reviled and ridiculed but we’re used to that too.

  Most of the walkways in Nitsburg moved, goodness forbid the lazy, idol, and entitled masses actually having to walk on their own. But we were in a small neighborhood called Gladstone. It was simple and plain and had few of the magical amendments and accommodations that the rest of the city sported. It had been designed to emulate the streets and buildings of the old city, back when it was called Pittsburg and wasn’t populated with the monsters of a foreign dimension. The people here dressed and lived sort of like the time period before the Earth had been invaded, but, as Mirth’s humans didn’t even remember the pre-Mirthen world; it was a mash up of periods and places—like a renaissance fair with knights, kings, and astronauts. It was pretend but it was nice. For a time it had been a popular neighborhood. Each subsequent generation though had less and less interest in pretending, and, over time, Gladstone became more and more of a ghost town making it the perfect neighborhood to permanently retire my father in.

  My stomach felt like it was sinking. I’d eaten plenty over the five days I spent recouping in the hidden chambers beneath Uncle’s garage, chambers left over from the long abandoned resistance movement. But it wasn’t all the food weighing my belly down; it was a moist, palpable, sickening dread. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and for good reason. Up until six days ago no one, not even DJ, knew that this being existed. Now I was taking her to him. I must have gone mad. But there was some sense in it, for one, if the enforcer corps managed to capture me, I’d very likely be dealt a life sentence in the mallow pits. Someone would have to look after him, make sure that no one ever found him, or discovered what he knew, or, even more horrible to contemplate, killed him. And there was no one better suited to that task, no one I trusted more than DJ. I just wasn’t so sure that she trusted me anymore.

  I did a double take when a timber troll passed us on the walkway. I stared as he walked by, obviously pretending to ignore my b
rash gaze, and I wondered what the heck a monster was doing in Gladstone. Then I spotted DJ staring at me. I turned and continued on my way, pretending to ignore her critical glare.

  Few were the people that still dwelled in this living remnant to the Earth of old, my home. But we did pass some people, a few even still dressed like they were living in America in the early part of the twenty-first century. There were no stores in Gladstone, all the shopping was done in the market district, but the houses here, mostly brick-faced townhouses, stone row homes, and the occasional wooden cape cod, looked like many of the neighborhoods I’d visited before the invasion. But even this was a lie; there were no bricks, no stones, and no wood in Gladstone. All of these buildings had been magically created by mallow powered devices. It was all of it, in fact all of Mirth, a lie. So instead of comfort