Support Your Local Monster Hunter

by Dennis Liggio

  "You too, brother?" I said. "You're going to tell me how you're going to cut me out of your life?"

  Mikkel hesitated, but then haltingly read what he had written down. "Brother, I know that times have been tough for you lately. Our whole lives, we've often had our luck against us. But I have always been there for you as your Big Brother. And I say this, as your Big Brother, that your recent activity has worried me. You seem more reckless and dangerous than you ever have been before."

  "I haven't!" I said. "It just went wrong... badly! Nothing has changed! I'm still me!"

  "Would you let him finish?" said Carly, her expression sour.

  "I worry for your safety," said Mikkel, still reading. "I want you to stop being reckless and bring more care into your actions." His eyes seem to follow more words on the page, but he didn't say anything else.

  "Go ahead, finish all of it," said Carly.

  Mikkel threw up one of his hands. "Are you sure that's necessary?" he said uncomfortably. "I mean, I know you're all hardcore into this, but isn't it a bit much? The whole point was to be here for him and confront him with it. I really don't like this part. It's too far."

  "You need to say it," said Carly. "It's the only way he'll take this seriously. You know this."

  "I'm right here, y'know," I said.

  Mikkel let out a heavy sigh and picked up his piece of paper again. His voice read the words like a petulant student, not with seriousness. "Szandor, if you persist in this behavior, I will have to cut all ties with you. I will no longer be your brother."

  I had only a second of shock at this deep betrayal. I leapt out of my chair, my hand in an accusing point. "Fuck you! You don't get to do that. After all we've been through, you're just going to disown me for shit you do yourself? Fuck off, Mikkel. Fuck you and your shitty ultimatum. And you," I turned my accusing finger toward Carly. "Fuck you for setting this up! I don't give a damn about you and your kangaroo court! You've been looking for a way to separate me from my brother for years! You've been itching for this opportunity, and now you look goddamn self satisfied that it has finally come!"

  "Actually, it was my idea," said Yasmin.

  I turned to her. "You?" I spit the word from my lips like blood from a wounded man.

  "Szandor, it's been too much," she said. "Your life is one big danger factory. You're living out some ridiculous male fantasy where you fight some monsters. You make reckless decisions and get yourself into dangerous situations because you think you're helping protect people from these fantasy monsters. It's not good for you. You probably need professional help, but at least you need to get yourself out of the line of danger."

  "What? Are you serious?" I turned to Mikkel. "Did you know about this shit?"

  "I had no idea -" started Mikkel, but Yasmin cut him off.

  She stood up and put her arm between myself and Mikkel. "No, talk to me! Don't deflect off onto other people! Szandor, you're dangerous, to yourself, to others. You could be doing so much better! I arranged all this because you're important. I wanted to help you, to heal you because I love you!"

  And that was it. She dropped the L-bomb.

  "Here? Here?" I said in anger. "This is when you say that? In the middle of destroying me? You sit here, fucking invalidating everything that I am, tearing me away from my friends, saying you're going to reject and isolate me, and you tell me you're doing that because you love me? Who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck even does that? Fuck you!"

  "Szandor, I -" started Yasmin.

  "No, fuck you! Fuck all of you!" I said. "I've heard enough, I've seen enough. That's it, I'm out of here, you can all fuck off for all I care!" I turned toward the door.

  "Brother, wait!" said Mikkel, standing up as well.

  I tried to pull back any wetness that was about to come to my eyes as I turned to him. Boys don't cry, y'know. My words were heavy, hurting to even utter, my voice strained. "I believe you just told me that name doesn't apply to me anymore."

  I didn't wait for a response. I turned and was out the door, slamming it behind me.

  Where do you go when everyone in your life has betrayed you? I'm asking, because I didn't know where to go. I knew I wasn't going home, but I didn't know where I was going. I still held the bottle of wine, so I decided I was going to keep drinking it until a cop gave me shit over it for some public intoxication offense. Since this was the lower east side of town, I didn't think I'd be seeing a cop soon, so I walked the streets taking a swig of wine whenever I felt like it.

  I was angry, so angry. I wanted to hit someone, to knock something over. If a pack of zombies suddenly decided to jump me, nothing would have made me happier than having a chance to fight and bludgeon them to death. I thought of the frat boys who had fought us outside of Twin Eagles months back. I would live for that fight now; the whole pack of them couldn't stand a chance against me now. I was currently invincible in my anger.

  Fuck Mikkel! Some Big Brother! Who was he to judge me? Mikkel who never had trouble dating, Mikkel who found everything easy, Mikkel who had actually known his dad, Mikkel who had found the love of his life! He finally resolves everything with the girl of his dreams and suddenly I'm the one who's wrong and is cut out of his life? Who was he to judge me?

  Fuck Carly! I've never been good enough, never a good enough brother to Mikkel for her. She's always been all high and mighty, so educated, so smart. She's always looked down on me. Maybe if I also had some rich parents to put me through college, then I'd be the one sitting on a throne of moral superiority judging someone. But who was she? She had gone to grad school, gone to France, come home, and now she just lived at my brother's apartment. What was she doing with her life? At least I did something, I killed monsters! Who was she to judge me?

  Fuck Yasmin! We hadn't dated long, but it was enough! How could she do this? How could she organize everyone to do this? And then when questioned about it, she said it came out of love! How could she love me if she chose to do this to me? How could she love me if she thought what I did was a delusion, if she didn't actually like who I was? Who was she to judge me?

  Fuck... Lem? Honestly, I never heard what he said and he seemed to be confused about being there. I didn't know how I felt about Lem. He could have a pass for today. But the others... fuck the others.

  Didn't they know I was trying? Didn't they know just how hard I was fucking trying to be a better person? I spent weeks in a hospital and even longer in bed after Jabberwock Jack fucked me up. I had seen Diego ripped to shreds in front of me as I tried to pull him from the mouth of that beast, his blood splashing on me as I failed and he died. I had seen how dangerous our work was firsthand. Didn't they think I knew the danger? Didn't they see how much I was trying to be better about stuff, how I was trying to change? I had made some stupid decisions, I know! Even when I was trying to be better, I still made mistakes. Like every other fucking human being! But I was trying! Goddammit, I was trying!

  But that wasn't good enough for them. It wasn't enough. They needed to draw a line in the sand. Couldn't they just help me? Couldn't they work with me without turning it into an ambush, a war? How could they resort to turning their backs so easily? How could they act like all my best efforts didn't even fucking exist? How could they sit there and say how what I tried wasn't enough, to basically indict me in some imagined crime because I just wasn't good enough?

  I was raging as I found myself walking east toward the river. I don't know why. The wine was making my movements feel more fluid. Had I not been so angry, it might have made me happy, but instead it just smeared the hot, red emotions in my head, the neon lights of Chinatown and Riverside blurring as I passed them. I lit a few cigarettes and smoked them quickly, but any satisfaction I typically got from them was lost. It was an empty solace, but perhaps nothing could fill the ever widening hole inside me.

  Somehow I found myself near the Houghton Bridge, its massive form spanning over the river and stretching to Huskerville on the other side. Something about the bridge
called to me. I climbed the stairs for the passenger walkway on the south side of the bridge. It seemed like a good walk and I decided immediately that I was fucking done with the city. I stumbled up the stairs, glad that there were not many people using the passenger walkway at night.

  It was about then that I had a depressing thought. I had left. They had played the intervention card, and I had walked out on it. By walking out, I had refused their offer of intervention. If I understood it correctly by the damn cable TV shows I sat through while Yasmin watched them, that was it. They were cutting me off. Having received the ultimatum, I rejected it. They weren't my friends anymore. It wasn't just a threat anymore. It was real and it was done.

  I had been incredibly angry at the threat, but feeling the reality of it set in was sobering and sad. I disagreed so much with what they were doing and almost hated them for it, but they were my friends. Were my friends, I reminded myself now. They had turned their backs on me, pausing only to cut my heart out first. Did I have anyone left? Who hadn't been at the intervention? Dickie, but I had cursed him off over the phone, so who knew if he was cutting me off? Paulie and Meat weren't there, but maybe them refusing to answer my calls was a sign that they had already made their choice. Who else did I really have in my life? Was now when I regretted having let some of my old friendships lapse?

  Fuck, I was really alone now. Just me against the whole goddamn world which had never done me any favors. There was a blockbuster emo album in all this, but I lacked even the friends to record it.

  I walked across the bridge, my anger rapidly giving way to self hate, self pity, and sadness. I came to a pause at the center of the bridge, looking south at the lake. This was The Spot.

  In a morbidly true fact, almost every major city has a suicide bridge or suicide place. When the stress and pressures of life become too much, suicide rises to the minds of some. And in every city, some place just seems appealing to them, be it for aesthetics, symbolism, or just ease in ending it all. Often it's a bridge because all it requires is a moment of determination, a quick jump, and a long fall into cold water. New York has the Brooklyn Bridge, San Francisco the Golden Gate, and many cities have equivalents. You question life from this point, and a small minority choose a very final answer for this question and take the plunge.

  I was at The Spot. The middle of the Houghton Bridge, which was New Avalon's suicide bridge. This is the place where destinies were embraced or snuffed out. This is where depression had lead so many souls to their end. With this thought in mind I had new appreciation of the view. This was a crossroads of life, with one of the roads being a dead end.

  I'll end the false tension. I didn't jump. I'm just not that person. Not on my best nor worst day would I do that. But in that horrible space, alone, lost, and somewhat drunk, I understood what they all felt. I understood what drives a person into a pit where return looks impossible, to a place where the light of day is just a fading rumor, to where a smile is just a fable whispered into the darkness. I shook my head to disperse all those thoughts.

  Instead of me, the bottle of wine made the plunge off the edge, thrown as hard as I could. It was too dark to see where it struck the waves, but it made me feel better to see it go. If I wasn't killing myself here, I was instead killing off a life I had lived. Let Stupid Szandor die here, the bottle the proxy for that part of me. For better or for worse, a new life was beginning for me. I just had to figure out how to make it better before it kept getting worse.

  I turned my head. Toward where I had come from was the city of New Avalon. Tonight, I didn't want to be there. Off on the other side of the river, I noticed a light - a spotlight and neon. It was coming from the part of Huskerville called the Husks. Normally a combination of shitty residential, abandoned neighborhoods, and decaying warehouses, tonight there was strong enough light that I wondered what was happening there. In between the sound of cars passing me on the bridge, I seemed to almost hear music from that direction.

  I didn't know what was there, but somehow, it stuck in my mind. Something was drawing me there. And I was going to go. Why? Why not? I had no better task, nothing else to do, no better star to guide me than cheap neon and far off sound. So I started walking across the bridge, following a light, possibly a hope.

  Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying

  The lights I pursued were not spiritual, not hopeful, not even sanctioned by the City of New Avalon Utilities. It was instead an unlicensed market - almost more of a bazaar or flea market, full of people and noise.

  Until I came upon it, I had completely forgotten that someone had mentioned that the Husks Night Market existed. After the arson in the Spring, much of the Chinatown community at least temporarily moved out to cheaper housing in the south end of the Husks and the north end of the Ville. But they had lost not only homes, but also storefronts. They weren't going to lose months of business, so almost spontaneously a Night Market sprang up in an unused part of the Husks, an almost nightly bazaar very similar to what you might see in places like Taiwan. But it remained purely Asian for only a short time. Its transient and unregulated nature attracted other elements, and the Night Market became also flea market and black market for anything you might want to buy, sell, or trade. It also became neutral ground for many of the criminal organizations, seeing it as more worthwhile as something to use than fight over. As I learned later, the unspoken rule of the Night Market was that nothing went down at the market itself. It didn't matter how illegal what you were selling was or what questionable things you did to get it there, in the Night Market you look the other way.

  Taking up the length of a city block or two, the Night Market always sprung up in a wide street nobody used between a bunch of broken down warehouses, their logos faded or torn long ago. Hanging lanterns signaled "official" the start and end of the Market, but many stalls and vendors still spilled out the sides. The stalls were plywood and drapes, uncoordinated as red and orange garish stalls sat next to makeshift white. All of them held makeshift signs proclaiming their business or simply their wares. There were a variety of smells, as food was one of the most common things sold. Lights and neon demanded attention, directing you to carts and stalls and run by portable generators, their sputtering sound erupting from behind the line of vendors. There was almost always music, either the buskers playing for money or through portable radios, but the sound of people, the noise of the generators, and the hiss of cooking dominated the air.

  Not all the sellers were using cheap plywood stalls or movable carts. In some cases, it was just a blanket laid down on the ground, the seller cross legged behind it. These very makeshift stores often had the most interesting things. You found such things as herbs and incense, dildos and novelty sex objects, illegal firearms, bootleg DVDs, computer parts, ninja weapons, scrap metal, and even stranger items. I stopped to gawk at one blanket that had old items I could only describe as antiques - a skull, a crystal ball, a really old fancy knife. I guessed it was somehow occult or new age, but I didn't look long, making room for a well dressed man who seemed very excited about their selection.

  After feeling lonely, the Night Market was the place where I wanted to be. There were people, there were lights, there was food! It was like going to Midtown for the bars, but not having to pay for expensive drinks, not having to hear shitty club music, and not having to watch drunk girls break their high heels. Of course, the Night Market was more dangerous, more sleazy, less glamorous, and cash-only, but I liked it. I didn't have a lot of cash, but I knew I was going spend what I had to savor a few things. I got fried shrimp on a skewer, a few pierogi, and funnel cake, so my money was well-spent. While I took my first bites, I found myself watching a busker going crazy on a fiddle, intensely focused on his music to the exclusion of all else, the crowd letting out hoots and throwing money into his open case on the ground. Once he finished his song, he was drenched in sweat and only then noticed the collection of people that had grown around him. In that brief pause between the songs, the crowd already s
tarted to diminish, but that silence didn't last - moments later he plunged into a new song, his fiddle erupting in a new frenzy. It was even stranger when I walked a few minutes farther in the Night Market to find the fiddling drowned out by distorted J-pop erupting from behind a takoyaki stand. The Night Market changed often and rapidly, not kept to one language or nationality.

  I finally found a spot that wasn't so crowded. Perched on a space of empty wall, I ate my food off the wooden skewers and the little paper trays. The tiny napkin they gave me wasn't enough, forcing me to clean my hands on my pants, decorating them with grease and powdered sugar. I was then sated, at least physically. The buzz from the wine was leaving me, sobering me as I enjoyed food. I wanted to relax, but I also wanted stimulation - I wanted to see and to know, so I spent some time people watching. This might be where I talk about how these were my people, the disenchanted and the disenfranchised, finding their own place with others like them away from everyone else. But that's neither fair not true. The vendors were trying to make a buck, and finding the best way they could do it. They had tried following the rules, and either it didn't work out or they didn't like it. So now they were here, outside the rules, selling what they could based on their own skills, buying and trading their ways up to whatever they needed. Everyone else was just enjoying themselves off the back of that.

  Nobody was unhappy like you saw in Midtown. Oh, there were the tough guys, the bad elements, the people with darting, sour expressions, but they weren't the bulk of the crowd. Many of the sellers were happy to be doing business, the customers pleased with what they were doing, and everyone else milling around like they were in a shitty carnival - but they all knew it was a shitty carnival, so they enjoyed it. I had to admit it was a better perspective than I had.

  When the night got later, the market thickened with people. Watching the crowd, I could see faces less often than dress and body language, so I focused on that in my people watching. It's amazing how many things in body language we internalize, so we don't even think about it. If I tried hard, I could think up stories of who the people were, what they were thinking, and probably I'd be close to the truth. But even without that, you notice things about people. The signals in their movements, their smiles, their head toss, their walks. I got a feel for who thought they were badass, who was on a date, who hated being in crowds, who had too much to drink, and who was the pickpocket. It's easy to see all this in a crowd because you have so many others to contrast against and how they interact with each other. And you can see them come and go from the group.