Jazz, Monster Collector in: Down with the Clowns (Season 1, Episode 15) Read online

Jazz, Monster Collector in:

  Down with the Clowns

  season one, episode fifteen

  RyFT Brand

  Copyright 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to

  persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  JAZZ, Monster Collector

  Season One: Earth’s Lament

  RyFT Brand

  Episode-15

  Down with the Clowns

  One hour until backlash.

  I was on my street cycle, my modified Harley Davidson Sportster, racing across an open expanse of crumbing concrete and straight to the monster infested closeness of Clowntown, one of my least favorite places on all of Mirth, and, next to the Eastern wilds, one of the most dangerous. DJ was on behind me, her small body tucked inside her tight fitting yellow jumpsuit with the red racing stripes. Her round face lay hidden behind the tinted face shield of her matching full face helmet. She tightened her grip around my waist as I gave the throttle another twist and the bike lurched forward with added speed.

  Normally I wore a helmet too, the one my Uncle Izzo gave me when he gave me the bike. But this time, not even sure why, I’d left my leather flight cap and goggles on.

  The beam from my headlamp fell on the edge of the concrete pad that once belonged a busy freight train yard. I grabbed the front brake and dropped the bike into a hard right turn, shooting sparks from the foot peg as it dragged the surface. I straightened us out, punched the throttle, and the front end leapt up. I rode the wheelie for a hundred meters just to get my blood pumping then shoved the wheel down, up-shifted, and added more speed as we crossed the unmapped line that marked Clowntown. My heart raced and a smile spread across my face. As long as I could remember, I was happiest on a fast moving, two-wheeled machine. This was a good ending to a hard life.

  Clowntown was a haven to every kind of horrible evil apparition Mirth had ever given birth, or worse, to. Speed was our ally here. I wasn’t interested in tussling with every terrible something that this monster ghetto had to offer. I was, however, very interested in a certain group of monsters and I had a pretty good idea where to find them.

  Before leaving Uncle’s Garage, DJ made me a super smoothie, a kind of energy drink, my own recipe. The smoothie and the nap I’d caught had gotten me awake and refreshed, but had done nothing to sooth my bumps, breaks, and bruises and even less to ease the ache in my belly. The magical stone I’d swallowed kept giving me trouble, early warning tremors of the death it was about to grant me, I supposed, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The ride on the bike, that was getting me pumped.

  Before leaving I’d released Ship, my sentient flycraft, from his death duty to me. He seemed kind of lost, like he had no idea what to do with himself, maybe even hurt. But my life was over and he’d paid his debt. He was free now, something he’d have to get used to. Of course his soul was still trapped inside that goofy little flycraft, so not a perfect ending, but funny, to me anyway.

  We zipped between two pillars that once supported the Fort Duquesne Bridge and passed a brick wall that tilted so badly I had no idea how it hadn’t toppled over. It had a bright red, blue, and yellow happy face painted on it. One of the smiling faces the Clowns mark their territory with.

  I let my focus soften and called up my shadow sight, an ability, thanks to a childhood accident that also left me colorblind, to see in all but total darkness. If we were going to survive this trip, I’d have to keep all my senses keen.

  Clowntown exists on the rotting corpse of what had long ago been called Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. When the invading forces, unofficially known as the Inter-Dimensional, or ID, War, took control of the planet, one of the first things they did was begin building their magically constructed, utopian cities. Then they invited all the surviving humans to enter as free citizens and guaranteed them wealth and whatever life they desired. The only cost to enter utopia was to willingly succumb to a total memory manipulation and they came in droves. The people of Earth had given up who they had been to become who they wanted to be. Turns out what most humans want to be is idle, lazy, and stupid. And so the war was rewritten as an inter-dimensional hostile takeover; in this case the victors rewrote history by rewiring the losers’ brains.

  The mass exodus for the Mirthen cities left the old Earthen cities abandoned. Most of them crumbled into dust, or were razed and rebuilt in the popular contemporary style; I’d call it modern utopian. The only deferred species, i.e. monsters, allowed access to the cities were servants or those of good ‘Mirthen’ stock, meaning they’d been broken, had their brains altered, or had enough self-control to play by the rules, rules designed to create the illusion of human paradise. Pittsburgh, what was left of it, just sat rotting. Eventually the worst of the monsters, the untamable, uncontrollable, unappealing to the human eye, or just plain nasty, began to migrate in.

  That included the Clowns.

  Goblins and bvorks, a kind of bore headed minotaur, had been created to be warrior species. Death and violence were all they were capable of. So, except for the very old, goblins and bvorks were definitely not of good Mirthen stock. However they had been an important part of the invading force. After the three whole days it took for the ‘Hostile Takeover’ to succeed (Earth had no means of defense against magical attacks, especially the nigh invulnerable dragons) most of the goblin/bvork armies were marched back though the dimensional portals (the ID bridge had not yet been constructed). Some stayed on as garrisons to assist the wizard’s council and soon to be disbanded dragon senate. A few others stayed because they saw an opportunity for battle, brutality, and plunder. Over time the feral goblins and bvorks that survived formed into gangs, and eventually into one big gang, a gang that took to painting their faces and calling themselves Clowns, but there was nothing funny about these guys. They hated all life and everything they did was some expression of distain or mockery.

  “Jazz,” DJ shouted to me over the roar of the engine and she pointed to the right.

  “I see it,” I said spotting the big brickside peeling itself off of a building and raising its long arms high overhead. Fortunately the moons hung full in a cloudless sky. Back in the pre-ID war days, these things had been called, barksides, because their bark-like skin made them all but invisible amongst trees. Here, on Mirth, they had to adapt, so, over time, and with a little magical nudge to evolution, they became bricksides.

  “It’s charging!” DJ shouted.

  “Just sit tight,” I said being careful not to push my still sore throat. I squeezed the rear brake lever, locking up the wheel. We went into a controlled sideways slide. When we were in line with the two story tall monolith, I nailed the throttle and rode right at the beast as it hammered two huge fists of bricks down on us.

  DJ screamed and, as her hands had left my waist, probably covered her face shield. I downshifted and turned the throttle against its stop. We shot ahead. The brickside’s fists smashed the street to rubble just behind the tail of the bike. We shot between its pillar-like legs and away at top speed. In my mirrors I watched it make a feeble attempt at pursuit, but I was so much faster.

  Like I’d said, I had things to do and limited time to do them in.

  Along our way we dodged a kraken nymph, set a tumbleworm on fire, and stopped to sort out a creeping wall that had slithered across the road—fortunately DJ had brought her Robotusen personal mini-missile launcher. I made the loop that added a few blocks to our ride just to avoid the house of a wraith I’d tussled with a few weeks back, and brought the bike to a stop under a three legged
water tower. The big, rusted hulk above us still stood despite a missing fourth leg. One of the remaining legs was crumpled pretty severely, looked like a truck, or something even stronger, had hit it. The tower had two other distinct features, one, it had a huge Clown happy face painted on it, and two, it was the only thing with a mallow powered light shining in all of Clowntown. The big lighted gang sign had to mark their headquarters.

  “Okay DJ, off.”

  She hesitated. “Here, are you sure?”

  “Sure enough.”

  DJ slid off, clicked on her mega lumens spotlight ring, and shone it around the crumbling buildings, the long abandoned cars, and the unpaid parking meters. I noticed that she kept a hand on the personal mini-missile launcher still strapped to the street cycle.

  “Don’t worry,” I said setting the bike on its kickstand. I slid off the leather flightcap and hung it on the handlebars. “This is Clown HQ.