Whist, Robert - Accountant
#1 of A World of Monsters
Robert Whist, a middle-aged accountant, is suddenly landed in the world of Pokemon. He likes quiet reading, tea, and jumps at loud noises. Unfortunately for him, he is also rather fond of living, which tends to make things difficult when the whole world is out to kill him. A world of gods, magic, heroes, crooks, treasure and, especially, Monsters.
I
Things were not going well for Robert Whist. In the dark forest clearing, the 35-year-old slowly turned and counted the glowing eyes leering at him from the shadows. He divided by two, and realized that the number of maws growling in hunger suddenly made him hate arithmetic. The black forms of the creatures slid into one another like a mist of eldritch flesh, and their cries - urgent, loud, and more alien than any animal born of Earth or bred in Hell - carried on the rising wind like the echo of a nightmare most horrible.
But Robert was brave. This is, at least, how the other accountants at work described him when he ate a four-day-old egg salad sandwich from the employee refrigerator. Robert told himself that this would probably end very much like that experience: gruesomely, and with a need for toilet paper. At every noise the creatures made, whether distressing snarl or gnash of teeth or crack of twigs, he courageously threw up his hands and gibbered like a fear-stricken mouse. A leaf blew across his leg and he squeaked. With herculean will, Robert refrained from relieving himself in his suit, and backed away slowly. The eyes advanced.
The Author, however, is getting ahead of himself, and before the plot goes completely out of his control and whirlwinds into what is sure to be an exciting scene of perilous danger and narrow escape, he asks the reader to momentarily take a step back, no, not that far, and to flip back a couple pages to where the true story begins, which is inside Robert's flat, waking up to the ring of his alarm clock, and eating his morning breakfast: hot coffee with a side of jam and toast.
The Author sees that some of you are visibly upset, and wishes to assure the reader that all of these details are extremely important in understanding the complex character of Robert Whist, including, but not limited to, what toothpaste he brushed his teeth with, what color socks he put on that day, how long the commute to work was, the weather - especially, the weather - and the precise amount of change he gave the homeless man outside of his office (hint: none at all). All of these details, and more, are imperative to the structure of the story, and must be experienced, in order, without delay, and with full confidence that they will be vital in the chapters to come, as we slowly but surely approach the exciting scene described in the opening paragraphs, which should take no less than twenty or so thousand words and a couple of illuminating, suspenseful, action-packed flashbacks concerning Robert as a small child, his Aunt Rhoda, and an Italian spinster, before the reader is sufficiently briefed enough to enjoy the scene in its fullest.
As the Author gathers himself to his most erect and prominent height and splays his hands over his work magnanimously, he knows that the reader will understand his tactics as the controlled literary mechanisms of a master storyteller, because no matter of what distinction, readers are smart, understanding, and above all, patie-hurk!
The Author is jerked physically from his desk by hands bandaged from numerous paper cuts, veteran metacarpals that have survived the harrows of turning hundreds, if not thousands of pages, and currently belonging to several muscular readers who have simply had enough with this nonsense. The readers, with muscles toned from the intense volume of literature which they have absorbed in near-hermit-like study, their brawn boasting with the combined strength of all the works of Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Shakespeare, Milton, Aristotle, Homer, Sophocles, and many more, beat the Author to within an inch of his contrived and poorly plot-structured life. After a time, they leave to pursue Chaucer, and teach him the true meaning of profundity. The Author, his literary schemes ruffled, his ships dashed, jokes criticized, idioms scoffed, and bones a bit tenderer than before, returns shakily to his desk. As he massages his writer's hand, he sniffs forlornly, remarking on what would have been a really interesting scene in which Robert spilled coffee on his tie and would rush to the restroom to secure some paper towels, and which will undoubtedly go unadmired. Choking back tears, and an overwhelming tendency to ruin a good narrative, he returns to the story at hand...
A sudden noise dislodged Robert's balance, however, as the Author re-adjusted his papers, and he landed sprawled on the ground next to a large rock. Instinctively, he curled into a fetal position. After a moment though, common sense took over and Robert pressed himself against the convenient boulder, for its bulk was easily the size of a small house. The creatures had surprisingly not taken advantage of his tumble to attack, and merely watched him from the shadows, their eyes clustered together like a great wall of malevolent fireflies. Their presence formed a perfect semi-circle around him, and in the screaming, petrified state of Robert's mind, he could not help noticing that they did not appear to want to break this geometric perfection. Their eyes, the only visible part that Robert could see through the darkness, darted, swayed, and sidled left and right, but never seemed to get any closer than the invisible ten meter berth they had given him. A few were howling pitifully. Their gaze bore into him, and Robert felt as though they were accusing him of something, but they did not approach. Against his better instincts, he allowed a bit of hope to surface amongst the fatalistic thoughts sinking in his head. Robert looked at the rock. He'd climb it, he told himself. He'd get up to the very top and then he'd be safe.
At least rocks didn't try to eat you.
Robert tried not to think about what he would do if the creatures could climb though, and instead focused on gathering his strength. With the resolve and determination of a man about to be eaten, Robert thrust out his hand and gripped a piece of the rock, preparing to vault over it like the trained mountaineer he most certainly was not. He heaved. His feet left the earth. The chunk in his grasp suddenly snapped away as easy as if it had been shale, and his feet fell back to the ground heavily. Instantly, his menial nature took over, and Robert was already apologizing before he could restrain himself.
"My bad," he said. The effect was startling.
The forest sucked in its breath in a hush that vacuumed the sound away like a black hole. Robert, who had a sixth sense when it came to detecting danger from all the years he spent as a scrawny young lad being pelt by erasers, felt the back of his skull itching as though on fire. He turned around, the chunk still in his grip. A hundred pairs of eyes watched him in shocked silence. The evil chattering had disappeared. Gleaming jaws hung aghast. Even the wind had gone quiet, as though the Author had run out of things which could, in fact, be aghast and was making stuff up. Slowly, as one, as though they themselves were in some sort of nightmare, the creatures turned their gaze to the piece of rock in Robert's small, guilty hand.
"It broke," said Robert to the creatures, rather stupidly.
They stared at him. Though the species gap was immense, the look held meaning to Robert. He had gotten it from his boss only once before, when he'd accidentally rounded up instead of down on a company tax file. The difference was only one tenth of a percent, but that was a big deal when numbers were hanging around the ten thousand and hundred thousand dollar phyles. When the report came back a few days later, his boss went bug-eyed and gave him the same deer-in-the-headlights look these creatures were giving him now.
'Do you realize what you've just done?' they seemed to say.
Robert had only three seconds to contemplate. Then the world ended.
The ground shook. A tremor buckled the earth like a sine wave. Sounds rushed back into the forest from all sides and collided mid-air with the force of a thunderclap. The creatures were howling in panic, dashing left, right, in circles, behind trees. Roots snapped from the ground like tent cables in a hurricane. Leaves were evacuating their trees in colonies. The clouds, feeling it best to watch from a safer distance, parted, drifting away briskly, and a wash of moonlight flooded the forest. Robert could see the creatures fully now, no longer mere bodies of shadow, but no less horrifying. Moths as big as cars flapped madly into the sky. Dog-like monsters that looked as though their bones preferred being on the outside rather than in, whined and whimpered like scared puppies. A whinnying chimera of a giraffe and a horse cantered past, and Robert almost fainted when he saw its spherical tail flicker by, for the appendage had great eyes and a hideous, toothy grin as wide as a ruler and seemed to smile at him with a terrifying sentience. Robert ran. He got only a few feet before another roll of earth bowled him over. The ground was as turbulent as vibrating Jell-O, and Robert could not help but scream. Stone that had been buried for centuries suddenly felt the need to see some action and eagerly erupted into the fray. Pebbles danced the Macarena. Soft ground sank into a depression, unable to cope with the stress of surface life anymore. Strata shoved each other aside as great tectonics budged for room. A spider web of cracks shot from the massive, house-sized boulder where Robert had been standing, and a roar like the arrival of a rockslide groaned through the forest.
Robert's eyes vibrated in their sockets; there was suddenly three times the amount of forest surrounding him, and out from it came a charging beast. It was the size of a bear, had sharp teeth, and was headed straight for him, and that was enough information for Robert to begin panicking. He screamed louder, which was very impressive considering the decibels his current screaming was reaching, as he felt its jaws latch onto his shirt's collar and drag him bodily into the forest. Robert pointlessly tried to wriggle free and slip out of his clothes, but his arm was stuck in its sleeve. He pinwheeled his other arm madly, like a one-oar canoe. The creature trotted briskly with him in its mouth, unencumbered by his protests.
An ear-splitting Crunch! tore through the woods. As the world shook, and Robert was dragged into the black forest, he got one last look at the boulder he'd been cowering behind, and saw with disbelief that the house-sized rock was lifting up into the sky. A column of stone followed behind, bellowing forth like a volcanic eruption. A horror rose like bile in the mind of Robert Whist, as the stone boulder he had huddled against contorted in agony, twisting itself into what was unmistakably in the haunting light of the moon the face of some hideous monster, its mouth, for indeed there was now a mouth, opening in a roar of anger that swept the forest. It rose, snakelike, from the depths of the earth, twisting, coiling, climbing towards an ink-black sky like some hellish tower of Babylon. Its eyes were coals. Its tail a giant's spade.
Robert gibbered incoherently, then passed out. The beast dragging him took no notice, and continued on through the night, and away from the monster wreaking havoc behind them.