Birth of a Monster Read online



  This book is a work of fiction. All names and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Lawlis

  All rights reserved.

  Birth of a Monster (volume five of the series The Republic of Selegania).

  Stock photo © mythja

  (Adjustments to photo made by Daniel Lawlis)

 

  Birth of a Monster

  Chapter 1

  Tats was on a routine run at the moment, pulling about a hundred pounds of Smokeless Green in the back of a wagon labeled “Flower Delivery Services” towards Crabs’ house. Crabs was now unequivocally number three in the gang, being right underneath Tats.

  Tats saw Crabs’ mansion draw closer and closer as his team of horses dragged the wagon merrily down the street of this plush neighborhood. As he approached the gate, he didn’t see any of the usual underlings Crabs had out there. To a certain extent, that was a relief. He felt their menacing scowls were far more likely to alert any passersby to the possibility of this house being used for questionable activities than to do something productive, such as scare off would-be troublemakers.

  Nonetheless, he felt it a bit odd that they were gone.

  Little pricks are probably shirking, he told himself, expecting at any moment to see them sauntering around the house smoking on a cigar only to then put some spark in their step once they saw Tats and come running towards the gate like a pack of guard dogs.

  He saw nothing, and the gate wasn’t locked, which he discovered with just a slight push.

  There’s no way I’m turning around now.

  It was about an hour trip to his closest mansion from here, and he wasn’t about to head back there with the same merchandise he had brought and not a single falon to show for it.

  “Screw it!” he said out loud.

  He pulled the gate all the way open, got back into the driver seat, gave the horses a good “Heaah!” and then began to roll inside the premises.

  The grounds were uncannily quiet, but he angrily disregarded the oddity and marched towards the door, ready to give Crabs an earful.

  “BAM! BAM! BAM!!” Tats pounded on the door with a clenched fist.

  Clank.

  Tats heard the gate shut behind him.

  He turned.

  “POLICE!!!!”

  Two burly men slammed into him so hard from opposite sides that his insides just about came out his mouth, and while his mind was still trying to come to grips with what was happening, he felt the painful pinch of steel against his wrists.

  “Got a special flower delivery, ya young punk?!” one of the cops said, laughing, and then delivered a vicious uppercut to his stomach. Tats winced but neither puked nor had the wind knocked out of him. Faithful execution of Mr. Brass’s boxing exercises had made his abs little distinguishable from an oak plank.

  Then, more cops swarmed out of various hiding spots along the perimeter, as well as from the inside of the house.

  The door opened, and one by one, Tats saw the scowl-faced troupe bound and gagged, a look of fury and regret painted over the visible portions of their face. Last out was Crabs, also bound and gagged, and with shame written all over him.

  “You two know each other?” asked one of the cops, laughing raucously before delivering another punch to Tats, this one right to the face. Tats moved his face with the blow, deflecting a lot of the punch’s power, and commuting what would have been a closed eye for a week to just a banal black eye.

  “Frisk him!” yelled the cop.

  Moments later, the cop extracted what he believed to be a dagger, but was really a compressed sword a la Pitkins.

  The cops then dragged Tats, hands firmly cuffed behind his back, to the wagon.

  “What kind of flowers you deliverin’, hmmm?!” said one of the cops.

  Tats noticed the other cops look a bit startled when one of their number pulled out a large dagger and hacked open the contents of one of the bags.

  He withdrew his blade and smelled—but did not snort—the contents. An evil grin swept across his face.

  “Boys, this is the bust we’ve all been waiting for!”

  “Take these rats to the station. They’re all under arrest for multiple violations of SISA!!”

  Chapter 2

  Righty had resolved to spend the day at his wife and newborn’s side, but sensing the fidgetiness in her robust husband, Janie insisted he go outside and stretch his legs.

  Whilst doing so, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and stop by Comfort Hospital, where he astonished the secretaries at the front desk by making an anonymous donation of $1,000,000 falons. One secretary nearly insisted that such a magnanimous donation be rewarded, at least, by a personal thank-you from the hospital’s owner, or perhaps even by a plaque of some kind, but Righty insisted on anonymity as he exited the hospital with benevolent firmness.

  From there, he went and purchased a fine coach and an excellent team of horses to accompany it and then returned to the doctor’s home.

  When he arrived, he was surprised to find Janie sitting on the bed, rather than lying on it.

  “I feel better; I think we can go home now,” Janie said smiling.

  Righty was tempted to take her up on that offer immediately, but he insisted they wait until the doctor arrived that evening and gave his opinion as to whether the journey would be safe.

  The doctor inspected Janie and then looked at the new coach Mr. Simmers had bought, and then told them that while it would probably be best for her to stay another night she would probably be able to make the trip home safely.

  Bright and early the next morning, Righty tucked Janie and Heather into the coach and then left a brief note with the maid thanking the doctor for his kind services.

  Righty then mounted the coach and was about to take off when he saw the following note:

  There was an unusually large donation at the hospital yesterday, and descriptions of the donor bore an uncanny resemblance to my most-welcome guest.

  Many thanks for your generosity.

  Your friend,

  Dr. Ridemern

  Righty smiled, cracked the whip, and set off towards Ringsetter.

  Chapter 3

  Righty felt like a tortoise lumbering along in that coach, in spite of the fact it was moving at a respectable clip by any reasonable standard. When they arrived home, he was relieved Janie and the baby were fast asleep, as this meant he wouldn’t have to invent any lies to get out of the house for a moment.

  He carried Janie and the baby into the house one by one, placing his wife on their still very humble bed inside their still very humble home, and setting Heather into a comfortable crib.

  He then set off towards the garden in the woods, and as soon as he was safely out of earshot of the house—for his winged friends had no small amount of discretion—his feathery pals began to congratulate him wholeheartedly on the new addition to the family.

  Righty accepted a healthy amount of cheers and accolades, but the astute creatures soon realized Mr. Simmers had left the pleasurable comfort of his abode for more than just a late-night chat with them, so they respectfully grew silent and prepared to listen.

  “First, we exterminate this garden. I don’t want so much as a loose grain of Smokeless Green to be visible here by tomorrow morning.” Without further comment, Righty took out a machete and began hacking away at the plants with all the ferocity of a man seeking to clear a path through the jungle while a wild beast pursued him from behind.

  Harold, not needing to be told what to do—he had developed a knack for anticipating Righty’s instructions—picked up the felled stalks and set off into the night sky, carrying them miles away
into the forest and then dropping them. The konulans, though weak individually, gave a thorough demonstration of the power of cooperation, grabbing onto the cut stalks in tandem, sometimes with as many as four or five grabbing onto the same one, before leaving terra firma behind and setting off in Harold’s general direction to discard the once-cherished plants into the sullen bowels of the forest like the shredded correspondence from a lover who has moved on to greener pastures.

  Righty then set to work with a shovel and began digging the roots up on by one and setting them into small piles, and Harold joined in, inserting his talons into the ground, gripping the roots, and then yanking them out.

  With the help of his small army, Righty reduced what would have been a three-day project for a lone man into a grueling three hours.

  When it was finished, he sat down, sweat streaming, rather than dripping, from his brow, and welcomed the small konulans as they fought for a seat on his lap or nearby. He petted their rascally little heads and told them how indispensable they were. He gave a nod and a smile to Harold, a less-emotional creature, who showed by his returned gaze that he also felt thoroughly appreciated.

  But Harold, like Righty, was all business.

  “You said ‘first.’ What else did you have on your mind?” Harold inquired.

  “I need five of the bravest birds for a special mission.”

  So excited were the little devils that they began chirping and licking at Righty’s face hysterically, forgetting, it would seem, that they were fully conversant in Righty’s language.

  “We need to keep an eye on our friend Tats.”

  The konulans didn’t exactly seem dejected, but their reaction revealed a different job had been on their minds—perhaps that of watching the newborn—but nonetheless Righty quickly had his volunteers.

  “Great. Now, there’s a small gap in the bedroom window shade in case you want to go look at the baby for a while.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he and Harold sat alone. Harold looked at him quizzically, obviating the need for a question.

  “Truth be told, it should have started a long time ago. But now it’s imperative. Tats is a man who knows a lot, and he is my key to Sivingdel. He needs to be both protected and . . . .”

  Righty paused uneasily.

  “Supervised?” Harold proffered.

  “Yes. I believe that’s precisely the word,” Righty said, with a serious look on his face. “The stakes are higher now, Harold. Anyone or anything that threatens my organization ultimately threatens me, and anything that threatens me threatens Heather,” Righty added, with a chill in his words.

  Chapter 4

  As Tats and his fellow malefactors sat in the back of the police wagon, their still tightly bound gags removing all conversation but that of exchanges of trepidatious and quizzical stares, he felt his life was truly over. He had been nabbed from time to time as a youngster for petty offenses and had a few close brushes as an adult. But this was different. This was the big time. This was twenty to forty years in the slammer minimum, and who knew whether the large stashes he had tucked away at his various mansions would result in separate charges and convictions and perhaps make him eligible for the death penalty?

  He was no lawyer, but he suspected the death penalty was only on the table for a SISA offense committed after a conviction. As he pondered the prospect of decades behind bars in Kasani knows what kind of squalid conditions, he found himself thinking perhaps the scaffold would be a merciful fate after all.

  He reflected briefly on how the trap had been laid—and whether Crabs or others were complicit—but this took a back seat to his meditation on his dreary future.

  “Get these punks outta here!”

  So deep in his thoughts he had been, that he hadn’t even noticed the whiff of fresh air purifying the dreary wagon until he heard this authoritarian bark from a policeman standing outside of it with the door cracked slightly open.

  The cops inside the wagon began hauling their catch out towards the fresh air that they would only briefly enjoy before being marched into the police station.

  As Tats watched Crabs and his underlings step out of the wagon with doom written on their faces, he felt he was perhaps experiencing what a captive of war might who, taken from his homeland, exits the vehicle of his sequestration into a foreign environment at the mercy of his captors.

  “Hurry it up, ya young hoodlum!!” barked the cop behind him, giving him a stiff poke with a club to accentuate the point, thus ending Tats’ reverie.

  Once inside the police station, there appeared to be little difficulty recognizing the underlings. A stern-faced officer rattled off each of their aliases and real names with a promptitude that demonstrated the frequency of their visits.

  Crabs proved to be a more elusive fish, and while the officer was sure he had seen him before, he had to ask for his name. Once he had it, his secretary went looking through a pile of boxes and brought forward a file.

  “Here you are sir,” she said.

  “This had better be yours!” the officer told Crabs, with menace in his eyes.

  He opened it up and looked at the sketch.

  “Yep, that’s you. You’ve had a bit of a vacation, haven’t you, Mr. Crabs? But you weren’t on the straight and narrow, just covering your tracks a little better than you used to. But not better enough. Not by a long shot! Get him outta here!”

  Crabs was led off out of the room.

  Tats alone stood before the cops.

  “And you? I don’t think I recognize you!” the processing officer barked.

  “They call me Tats, sir,” he said.

  “Do they now?” the officer said with a sneer. “How original!” he added, his eyes venturing towards the mostly concealed tattoo on the side of his neck.

  “And what did your mother name you—that is, if you have a mother?!” he asked, with a bit of a snicker.

  “David Havensford, sir,” he responded calmly, though seething with rage inwardly.

  “Well, well, well,” the officer responded with a look of triumph on his face. “You’re related to Rebecca Havensford, now, aren’t you?”

  Tats nodded.

  “Is she the beast that bore you?”

  “She’s my sister, sir.”

  “Well, she’s been on quite a vacation ever since she strangled the life out of a former police chief’s son!” he exclaimed.

  Tats didn’t feel now would be the best time to point out that the son of that police chief had tried to screw for free at a whore house or that his police chief dad had later been sent to prison upon conviction for multiple corruption charges.

  “Take him away!” the officer ordered.

  Tats was led down a dimly lit hallway and placed into a single cell with solid walls going all the way up to the ceiling that offered no view of the hallway or any surrounding cells.

  The door slammed shut, and he heard a lock click with a loud thud that suggested it could imprison the hounds of hell. A small sliver of light made its way in from a small aperture at the back of the cell that he assumed must be coming from outside.

  Silent, bitter tears of impotent rage marched down Tats’ face that night as he lay in nearly pitch black darkness.

  Chapter 5

  “Get up!”

  Tats awoke from a melancholy sleep.

  The processing officer stood before him.

  “On your feet, you!” he said, grabbing Tats by the wrist and then prodding him out of the cell with his club. Once out, another officer put a pair of shackles on Tats’ wrist.

  “This way,” one of the officers barked.

  Tats was led back down the same hallway he had traversed the prior day, reentered the same processing area, and from there was taken upstairs. They went up several flights of stairs, passing many uniformed officers in the process but no prisoners.

  On what seemed like the sixth floor—Tats was still a bit too much in a state of shock to be cer
tain—the stairs ended, and so did their climb. They then began marching down a hallway whose office doors bore important titles such as “Captain Willis” and “Lieutenant Redsen.”

  But down the hallway they continued without so much as a pause at any of these offices. Then, Tats noticed a placard at the very end of the hallway becoming just barely legible: “Chief Lloyd Benson.”

  Tats gulped, as he braced himself for what was surely to be a torrent of threats as to what would become of him if he did not admit to everything once and for all.

  The door opened, giving way to an opulent office.