Monsters

Introductions

Daniel would not wake up. Amy tried everything that she could think of, short of setting him on fire. Flickering light switches, yelling, hitting a wooden spoon on a metal frying pan, and pouring water on him didn't even disturb him from his slumber. Eventually she gave up and hauled the unconscious form into the kitchen and by a chair. As soon as the smell from the expertly cooked turkey invaded his senses, Daniel sat up and looked around wildly.

"Is that turkey I smell?" He bellowed. Amy buried her face in her hands.

"So, that was all it took." She mumbled to herself. Daniel climbed into the an empty seat at the table, and Amy sat at the head.

"Now that that's over, I would like to give a thorough explanation of why I have invited you all here." Amy declared. She had practiced over and over what she was going to say, but now that she was standing in front of them, she was at loss for words. Why is it that things always sound better in your head? For example, when you are telling your friend about a book or movie, it always sounds so lame and cheesy. Then you start laughing awkwardly, because you don't want your friend to judge you. This is how Amy felt, so she took a deep breath and sat back down.

"Actually, why don't we introduce ourselves first. I am Amelia Anderson. I believe some of you might know my parents, who were unfortunately killing in a fire a year ago. They ran a secret communications network for "nonhumans", people like you and me. I salvaged their contacts from the fire, that's how I found you all." Amy took a deep breath, it was now or never. "My parents were tracking a group of beings who are planning to expose people like us to the world of humans. I have been watching this group closely and in the past 3 months, they have become increasingly active. I have a firm belief that the are going to make a move soon. This can not happen. The human world will never accept us. They will fear us and eventually kill us. This group of radical nonhumans thinks that we can help the humans in ways that they can't help themselves. If you want to help me stop them, stay. But if you don't, leave and please do not tell a soul about us."

All eyes were turned towards Amelia Anderson, and nobody moved an inch.

"So we are all in?" Amy asked rhetorically. A few heads nodded in silent agreement.

The tall, pale man rose from his seat, "My name is Marcus Blake and I am 315 years old. I am from Europe but moved to America i-"

Daniel took a moment to stop inhaling food to shout with fierce excitement, "Wait! Are you a vampire!?"

A look of agitation passed over Marcus's face, "Yes, I am a vampire. I would have explained that, had you not interrupted me. Anywa-"

"Do you get all crispy and die if you go in the sun?" Daniel injected again.

"No, that is a myth."

"Are you allergic to garlic?"

"No, I actually enjoy garlic immensely."

"Can you see yourself in mirrors?"

"Yes."

"Do you cast a shadow?"

"Yes."

"Do you spark-"

"Do not even finished that sentence if you value your life!" He loomed over Daniel with anger in his eyes.

"Nothing can kill me, okay!" Marcus nearly yelled. Daniel nodded nonchalantly, like they had been discussing the weather. Marcus Blake had lost his cool, something that had not happened since the second world war. A flashback of a missing wing, shouting soldiers and the deep blue ocean followed. He quietly retreated to his seat trembling slightly. It was at that point that Amy almost gave up and decided that they could never cooperate with each other, and then Mara stood. When I say stood, I mean she didn't even scoot the chair back, she stood up right in the middle of her chair. Her legs passed straight through the wood she had just been sitting on, and as you could imagine, that was enough to draw anyone's attention away from the prior conflict.

She spoke quietly and slowly, " My name is Mara O'Malley. I am from Alaska." Then she sat back down, without sinking through to the floor. Although confused, and quite frankly, a little disturbed, Drake rose from his seat also.

"I am Drake Malachovsky." The hairs on the back of Amy's neck stood up, she noticed Mara had her hand in the air, like a child at school. Amy cared for her friend very much, but she had the infallible tendency to ask rude and intrusive questions. Drake nodded towards Mara and she spoke,

"Are you Asian?" Amy wanted to throw something at her. Mara was a completely innocent to the concept of racism. 

Drake only chuckled, "Yeah, only half though."

Mara considered this momentarily before speaking again, "What's the other half?" This time Amy verbally hissed her name, a tactic that she had seen Mara's parents use to let her know she was being rude. Mara simply ignored her.

"African." Drake replied with smile.

Mara had yet another question, "If you are half Asian and half African, why is your last name Russian?" Amy was taken aback, because she never would have noticed that, but then again, she never would have questioned people about their heritage in the first place. She tried saying Mara's name a little louder this time, to no avail.

Drake looked uneasy, "Um, I was adopted. By Russians. Hence the long and horribly complicated last name." He tried to laugh it off but he looked extraordinarily uncomfortable. Amy saw the next question coming from a mile away, she stood quickly and looked at Daniel,

"How about we move on? The food will get cold." Mara did not even look in her direction.

"How did your parents die?" Mara had an uncharacteristically intense look in her eyes.

"They were murdered." Drake looked down, almost in an ashamed way. Before Amy even had a chance to process the answer Mara blurted another question

"By who?" This time Drake took a moment to answer, but by that time Amy had already swooped over to where Mara was sitting.

Amy grabbed Mara's shoulder and she spun around to face her, "Mara! You need to stop."

Mara shrugged her off and repeated her question when Drake didn't answer, "Who?"

Drake seemed to shrink inside himself, "I don't know. The killer was never caught."

Mara looked suspiciously at Drake before leaning back in her chair, "Okay." Drake sat down and looked down at the table. Mara continued to stare scrutinizingly at Drake. Amy was frozen in place by the feeling of tension in the room. Marcus looked smug, he thought the whole ordeal was quite amusing.

"Well that was awkward." Daniel broke the tension and finally stopped stuffing himself with everything in sight. "Hi, I'm  Daniel and I can turn into a frickin' awesome lion-thing." Then he resumed his gluttony.The rest of the meal was eaten in silence, excluding Daniel's uncivilized chewing. 

Amy decided that it wouldn't be such a bad idea if she revealed her parent's contact book. "The Directory" as they called it, was a nearly complete list of all known nonumans and mythical creatures. It had information, maps, family trees, and contact information. Her father's family had been adding to it for over six centuries. The book was almost lost in the fire that killed her parents and charred their house. The Directory was the key to everything, and the only thing that she still had that remained intact from the fire, except for Sarah, which Amy almost wished that would have gone down with the house. Her parents poured everything they had into maintaining and updating the Directory, with all the advances in technology they had to add more ways for communication: cell phone numbers, email addresses, social media and the fact that phone books were becoming very uncommon. The Directory is how she had found the four vastly different people sitting at the table in front of her. They were all known to be against exposing the mythical world to humans. Daniel and his family would be feared and hunted to extinction; Marcus did not dislike humans, but he certainly did not want them to know what he was; Mara was a family friend along with her parents, who were widely known as anti-exposure activists; Drake's adopted family were humans, but they were aware of his abilities and knew the word got out about his and his people's existence they would be killed like his parents were; Amy, she knew what people would do if they were revealed to them, they would kill them, just like they did with her parents.

"If everybody is done eating, I'd like to show you all something."