Sidekick Status: Pending

Monster Attack!

Durden's local news station always loved a good monster attack, so they were pleased when Lexicon’s normally passive job was outsourced. Lexicon, known to her family as Joan, had the uncanny ability to talk to anything. Trees for example didn't care much about their history on average. Forks hated being used as knives while spoons found it humorous. Monsters, particularly Durden's giant Gila Monster, just like being listened to.

Every month for years this creature Lexicon lovingly referred to as “Tyler” would roam the streets waiting for her, and every month she would sit down in front of him in the middle of the street and jokingly say,

 “Time again already?”

“ Yes Joan,” the creature would reply and lie down beside her.

For hours they would sit and he would tell her the great loneliness of life as a solitary animal. The ground shaking screeches came to her as concerns and wishes, and if she were lucky, free verse poetry. Yet now, as Tyler roamed and searched for Lexicon, no voice was to be heard.

“Can you understand me?”  Gallant called. 

The only answer was a tail swung dangerously close to his head. Tyler's eyes were wild but distant, scanning his surroundings frantically. The screeching continued drowning out Gallant’s pleas. “She's away on family matters, Tyler. It was an emergency!” The great beast brought his arm down on one of the many parked cars crumpling it like an empty soda can. He heard a man scream and the line of reporters backed up into  the safety of the crowd. “Gallant!” he could hear them cry. He sighed, knowing this had to end soon.

Taking steady steps forward, his eyes tracked the giant tail as it rocketed toward him on his right. Although he braced himself, his vision went black as it collided with the entire side of his body. In one swift motion he used the tail’s momentum to hold on before abruptly meeting the brick siding of his local bank. He gasped, but clung tighter. Scale by scale, he fought with the bucking tail until he reached the creatures back. In his work appointed fanny-pack were two syringes. Both contained a sedative specially made by Tyler's owner, and were once given to the Sheriff of Durden as a means to lower her prison sentence. “I'm giving you two,” the sheriff had told Gallant, “because I know you'll lose one.”

  Gallant righted himself on the gila monster’s back and picked out the first syringe. While Tyler was still confused he took the opportunity to gently slip the needle under one of his scales. “Psh,” he boasted. “Who needs two syringes now?” He had not, however, hit skin, because as he did Tyler lurched, screaming louder than before and slamming himself against the side of the bank. Gallant watched quietly as the sedative dropped to the concrete below.

“Dangit”

Gallant decided to not be as gentle with the second one, and jabbed it under Tyler's scales. Straddling the monster tightly, he pushed down the plunger just before being flung off. He landed hard on a bike rack, causing the residing bikes to cascade onto the sidewalk alongside him. Tyler turned a wild eye to Gallant and raised a giant clawed hand over him, ready to crush the stranger. The sedative worked quickly however, and Gallant watched as the light slowly left Tyler's eyes. The monster swayed for a moment. After what felt like a lifetime of watching him fight off unconsciousness, he landed with a thunderous boom that shook the pavement.

The news story was of course sensationalized, spinning a tale of a heroic battle with a rabid Beast. Gallant, after ensuring that the appropriate authorities had Tyler under control, had been approached by Durden's beloved newscaster Celia Barton. “Shew!” she exclaimed breathlessly, brushing dust off her suit jacket. “There's certainly a reason your name is Gallant!” She patted him on the shoulder and pointed her mic toward the cameraman. Gallant chuckled and scratched gently at his hair. “I guess so.” 

“So tell me, this all started over Lexicon, right?” “How do you mean?”  Her bright eyes searched his, urging him to comply. “Well, she's gone, and the monster is in an uproar!”  He looked to the camera, then the cameraman, then to Celia. “It’s certainly a shame that her absence has disturbed Ty- the monster on such a destructive level. One thing's for sure though; this may be the catastrophe that we needed to put his-  it's owner behind bars again” Oh god, he thought. Did I really just say that?

“Did he really just say that?” Cameron said to himself. He sat on the carpet in his little living room, studying the news program on his mother’s dusty tv. It was rare for Cameron to see heroes covered on the news, but he had been watching enough of it lately to be able to tell that something was off with Gallant. Gallant, a lesser-known hero in the southern division of the Universal Guardians, wasn’t typically the “star” of any big news stories. He would have the occasional press conference over the evil deeds of Vandermark Industries, typical honeyed words to soothe the fears of the public, but the bigger news stations really only liked the destructive stuff. Cameron wondered if Gallant was just unused to fighting monsters.

“You watching the news?” His mother’s voice came from the kitchen. “My show’s about to come on.” Brandy threw herself onto the stained faux leather couch and looked suspiciously at the young man on the floor. “These PJs got another hole in them. Think you can fix em?” Cameron looked dissapointedly at his mother's maroon sweatpants. “That's a cigarette burn. It won't look right if I just sew it up. I'll have to patch it or something.” She raised an eyebrow. “Just don't go cutting up any of my good dish rags for it, and I thought I told you to change the channel?” Gallant’s voice trailed quietly across the living room, like a fearful visitor in a house he had not been invited to. “Well? Are we going to watch TV or what?”

Her suspicion rose and her temper shortened as she watched him stare blankly into the TV, watching some no-name hero with a country accent talk about a monster two states away. “Since when are you interested in the news? Your mother told you to change the channel.” Cameron took pause, coming back to his reality and shaking off fanciful ideas like heroism and having his own tv. “Sorry, Mom. Channel 23, right?” “ No Cameron, Love Triangle’s on tonight. 45.”

Cameron had grown quite a backbone in his years at high school. He learned to crop his hair and think on his feet for rap lyrics and bitter comebacks. He'd fight anyone, he'd say, though he only had to once before. He had lost, being as slim and uncoordinated as he was, but his friends still defend that he was honorable the whole time. His home, however, was no place for backbone. That was left at the door with his shoes.

After watching one episode of Love triangle, he feigned exhaustion and excused himself to his room. While he always made an effort to be neat, the size of his room and his mom's rule against giving away anything that could be sold made cleaning a futile task. He sat down on his bed with an uncomfortably straight back and attempted to sigh away the day's stress. He tried and failed to stop his eyes from scanning the cluttered and dusty room. 

He had one tiny window and no closet. His dresser, which sat slumped over, half-destroyed, struggled to hold even half his wardrobe. The rest of it sat piled, as neat as a pile could be, in one corner of the room. He could hear the frantic and irregular buzzing of a fly just behind the tapestry pinned over his window, trying desperately to flee into the light of day and the fresh air that comes with physical freedom. Eventually his eyes rested where they always did, just past the bottom of his nightstand. He gingerly dropped to his knees, careful not to make any sound, and retrieved from under the nightstand a single piece of paper, folded twice. The edges were soft and discolored, and unfolded without much effort or noise.

It read:

Gallant - Abraham Bashir

146 W G, Durden TN

I-77 S Akron / I-71 / I-90 W

Exit 40 I-81 S / US-23 S

Exit 23 TN-91 S

The paper was useless at this point. He had already studied it enough that he could recite the directions backwards. Still, there was something comforting about having his plan on paper, as if its creased lines and smudged pencil marks made it all real. He studied the wobbly lines of each letter, misshapen between the pressure of a dull lead pencil on a water-warped nightstand. Eventually, he gently folded it back and placed it once more and its hiding place. It was two weeks until he was through with classes. His mother, while she didn't know it yet, would be receiving his diploma in the mail. Only, it would be six months early and with the recipient nowhere to be found.