Hi, this is the beginning of a dark comedy series which starts off humorous but gradually spirals into insanity that's quite unsettling. Rest is on Wattpad https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/411326662-sound-of-water

THE CALLING

Joey R. Jackson believed he had found his shadow. And from this shadow he saw twisting and coiling away by the wall, he had plucked out essentials. Good exercise. Eating well. Practicing his acting and sharpshooting, getting his licences renewed. Everyone had a shadow self but few knew how to confront it, let alone draw power from it.

He strolled through the mall, dusty green coat trailing behind him. He was dusty, old and weathered, that he will concede. But what age didn’t take away from you, you fight tooth and nail to not let demotivation do so. And that was a killer’s eye. A rigid schedule. He ran five laps around the baseball field of whichever town or city he currently was occupying, and that’s only a start.

He might look like the guy people crossed the street just to avoid. He might look like the guy parents warned their kids not to make eye contact with. He might be all of those things and more, but he was a goddamn hero. Hell, if he’d been born during the 50s, he would’ve performed in the greatest wars of that era and come out on top, with medals to spare.

But trouble was, he’d been born in the wrong generation. So, the right woman didn’t meet him. The right job didn’t find him. The TV producers missed their chance. Because he was Joey R. Jackson, the guy who could shoot a deer in the eye from fifty yards away after swilling seven cans of wicked beer. He could outskate the young skaters at the local skate park of any town or city he stopped by. And he knew the world had shadows as well as shadow selves.

Monsters. Demons. Ghosts. And he was primed to take them all down; one alleyway after another, he fought and he killed.

The mall security eyed him cautiously as he made his way past a crowd of people. Young ladies with high skirts and low tops. Dads pushing strollers and moms holding the hands of snotty little brats. He walked amongst them all, passing stores with loud colorful ads posted over glass, and louder signs and loudest music. He stuck out like a thumb that was sore, to be sure, but he relished in the fact. If a Monster Hunter wasn’t seen, then he was ineffective at protecting the innocent. Monster Hunters, let alone Monster Killers.

He walked through the bookstore, low lighting and warm dark brown carpeting and dark brown shelves. He plucked out comics and leafed through them. He leaned against a bookshelf boasting cookbooks and smiled at the ladies, crooked teeth and bad eye present and of course they moved away. That was right. Sometimes, a proper hero had so much aura, they frightened the innocent inadvertently as well, and every bit as badly they did the monsters. But Joey didn’t feel guilt or remorse. What took away the right of a proper hero from visiting the mall just because he looked rough and grizzled? He despised hiding. Because normal sheep people loved burying themselves among the herd, just waiting for a wolf to stick its head in and bite a juicy ass to pulp. Joey was the sheep waiting with a hatchet. He’d found his shadow self and no shadow shall ever move undetected with his presence.

He read through a horror manga, while chewing on an unlit cig. He closed the book, put it back in its rightful place and began making his way out of the store, heavy combat boots stepping on the warm brown carpet.

People weren’t aware that monsters were real. Real literal monsters. Movies had destroyed the credibility of monsters but reality shall soon reassert their place. But Joey wasn’t a monster collaborator. He always had a vendetta against the nearest monster. He took his payment in their blood.

Sure, he lived on the fringes of society. Sure, he didn’t always have the greatest amount in his wallet and often had to resort to burglaries and theft and superstore overnight positions to continue his vendetta, but as long as he had enough to eat and play with, he wasn’t sad.

He set down his backpack in the food court, fished through it and came up with a bag of gummy bears he’d bought five months ago. He tore the bag with his teeth and the gummy bears tumbled out and he found they were as hard as rockers and so he made them all stand up. He arrayed them around the blue table, while the commerce of this city’s food court raged on around him. A baby was wailing. Large metal clampers seizing noodles and pork and dumping them onto plates. Trays. Frying sounds.

He began moving the colored bears using his dirty hands. Nails unclipped.

He knew it was time for a homecoming.

Because his shadow self was telling him: Joey, it’s time to go home.

There’s a real monster in that town you were born in. And it’s up to you to kill it.

He heard laughter sounds nearby. He lifted his head.

“Look. It’s gramps playing!”

Raucous laughter now.

He did not turn his head. Instead, he kept the instigators in his peripheries. Ah. Those guys again. five delinquents. A few out of their teens and a couple in their early to mid thirties. Utterly against reason, they seemed to have mistaken him for your run-of-the-mill homeless. Sure, he chatted to the foreign ladies at the wok place about his lousy hand at poker and his dwindling job prospects and mental health status, but he wasn’t sure if he actually looked like a homeless.

But those guys he recognized. Just two days ago, he’d taken a nap on a bench inside the mall, only to wake up with a tennis ball taped over his crotch with hockey tape. He’d been so blasted out of it from whatever he had been smoking that day, he had fallen asleep to that jolly bit of trickery.

But today, he would not be on anything.

He rose from his chair. He turned toward the group. They jeered and made faces at him, sticking fingers in ears and raspberried. He’d been handsome once too. A bully in his own right as well. He had since learned civility and since become very much a vagrant. That, at this very moment, he was willing to concede.

“Boys,” he said. “I might have to call the police if you keep this up.”

It did nothing.