Short Stories By Me

Misunderstood Beasts on a Mountain in a Gazebo

Being the one family member with no astonishing ability proved quite difficult to deal with. When everyone else are off flaunting their pyrokinesis, telepathy, mutations, wits and super strength, I'm sat here, rotting away in self pity and doubt.

They'd always try to include me in their everlasting fame and glory, but I had always stuck out. Among the strange physical features and abilities of the rest of my family, I was average. Painfully so.

Of course, I blended with the rest of society. None of them had supernatural abilities of any sort. But my mother, father, brothers and sister are all extraordinary.

When my parents had first made their debut in this small town, they had been outcast. That changed rather quickly, though, when the local authorities saw opportunity. The residents of the town all but settled their riots once the promise of protection and peace came to play. Few were still disgruntled at my families existence, and to those few, me being the odd one out was a comfort.

I gathered my things and began my morning hike up the Rocky Mountain. The government had assigned me the role of scout, to keep my family happy. They'd rather not have the family who's protecting their arses have low morality. Smart people.

Once I had reached the top of the mountain, I sat and observed. It wasn't a particularly tall mountain, nor had it been a particularly dangerous hike in all of the years I've spent climbing the damn thing. So it didn't come as much of a surprise when I discovered no threat— again.

A low rumble interrupted my pondering. Storm clouds were rolling in at an alarmingly quick rate, so much so that it began seeming unnatural. As per procedure, I removed the flare gun from its holster and grabbed the coloured capsules.

Blue. I slotted the capsule into the gun with the ease of practice. Blue quite simply meant 'storm' or 'heavy rainfall'. Damn, when I accepted this job, I didn't expect to be the towns fucking weather forecaster.

I shot the flare at a forty-five degree angle into the sky. The gun resounded with a boom at the same time as the second clap of thunder.

I looked back to the rapidly approaching storm clouds, somehow moving quicker than before. This was definitely not just a measly force of nature, there had to be some kind of magic involved. And at this point I was willing to drop all of my coins on it being the doing of one of the mythical beasts of the forest.

The thought caused a chuckle from me. Beast. It was quite nearly humorous to me. The critters and creatures that lived in the forest were hardly dangerous, as long as you know how to act around them. This town, to put it simply, did not.

Whilst the animals of this day and age did tend to have magnificent and dangerous powers, they were still animals. They didn't have such stupid things as 'evil intent', they act on instinct. It's hardly the animals fault if the human sets off its instincts.

The clouds were very nearly upon me at this point. Setting down and rummaging through my hiking pack, I finally found my raincoat. Just  as the mixture of hail and rain began it's decent, too. Guess whatever higher power that may or may not exist decided to give me some luck today.

After donning the navy coloured rain coat, zipping up the copper zip and popping all the buttons in place, I secured my hiking pack and sauntered off to the old overgrown and moss covered gazebo. It had a stone floor and steps, white metal benches and a small table at the centre that was also made of the same material. The rest of the structure was made of wood, with the exception of a stone plate sitting on top of the wood for catching the drips of water.

I shuffled into a nice little nook, intending to fall asleep and either wait out the storm or wait for one of my family members to come get me. Whilst I've hiked this mountain more than any of the other townsfolk, I wasn't stupid enough to try to get back down in the middle of a supernatural storm.