Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Seven: In Which Monsters Attack
 
    Once upon a time, in a kingdom full of caves, there was a man.  And one day, he met something he had never seen before.
 
“Monsters!  They’re here!” he shouted, running into the plaza.  He looked like a mess.  His clothes were torn up and he had a gash on his shoulder.  “They’re coming!”

 
    The market crowd buzzed.
 
    “What?”
 
    “Monsters?”
 
    “Preposterous!”
 
    “It’s true!” the man shouted.  “I saw ‘em with my very own eyes!  They were furry, golden, and had long, sharp fangs!  They also had tails, and- and walked on four feet!  I was comin’ home from outside of the kingdom and I saw three of ‘em, maybe four!  They just roared at me and attacked me!”
 
    “Yeah, right.”
 
    “Crazy talk.”
 
    “No such thing.”
 
    The crowd dismissed the man.  And life went on.
 
    Hours later, some greenhouse farmers on the outskirts of the kingdom came in the greenhouses, to be greeted with the sight of something lurking behind the flower bushes.  When one of them looked closer, that something leaped at him.
 
    The other farmers quickly rushed around their town and alerted everyone about this mysterious creature.  The news spread quickly.  This incident was quickly linked with the mention of the monster from before and soon there became a bunch of scattered reports of monsters attacking people, looking similar to what the man in the plaza had described.  There were reports of other monsters too, of gigantic, hairy beings, but these were more rare.
 
    These new ‘monsters’ had created a major fear among the citizens of that kingdom when people actually started dying.  In that cave kingdom, there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide, and everyone was easy prey when they were outside.  People started going out of the kingdom and moving to other places, where it was safer.  Soon, there was barely anyone left.
 
    Once upon a time, there was a little boy who did not quite understand what was going on around him.  Why were his parents suddenly telling him not to play outside?  Why was everyone so scared?  Why was the news littered with bad news all the time?  He didn’t know.  But it annoyed him that he was constantly kept in his bedroom all the time.  So he decided to sneak out.  After all, what could happen?
 
    It was dark out there in the night, with no light or lamps.  It was quiet, too.  No sound other than the boy’s loud footsteps echoing everywhere.
 
    Until he heard something else.
 
He heard the monsters come before he saw them.  The careful footsteps of a predator stalking prey.  He slowly turned around, and met face to face with a creature.  A creature unlike anything he saw before.
 
    But he didn’t stay and gawk at it.  He ran.
 
    He ran, in the direction away from his home, opposite from where the village center was, not that the boy knew.  The boy had a lot of energy in him, as most little kids did, and he ran without stopping for a long distance through alleyways and past the kingdom itself, running in abandoned, uncharted land.  The monsters were still hot on his heels.
 
Then the young boy reached to a dead end.  The boundary of the cave network.  There was no escape.  He could see the monsters coming at him.  He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes-
 
...then fell through the wall to the boundary of time and space and nothingness.
 
He landed with a thunk on the cold floor.  The boy opened his eyes wearily.  What had happened?  He leaned against the wall, then…
 
“Hey kid, what are you doing here?  You are in an official business buliding, you know?” someone said.  The boy looked up and was met with the stare of an imposing man with a uniform and folder in his hand.  He scrambled back in fear.
 
“Kid, where are you supposed to be?  I’ll have to call your parents,” the man said, but the boy wasn’t listening.  He was staring behind him, at the smooth, clean wall he had just popped out of.