(This is the first entry in an ongoing serial)
Part 1
When did it start? That’s a good question. I am not sure anyone really knows…the only thing I do know is that nothing will ever be the same again.
I was six when I first began seeing them. My parents thought that they were just my imaginary friends. When I said that John was an elf, they had no idea that I was talking about my best friend John Hunter who lived next door. His whole family was elves as a matter of fact, but mom and dad just smiled and tweaked my nose when I talked about them.“In other news, a large man like creature was found dead in the London Underground. Officials said that it was just an escaped gorilla from the local zoo, although it could not be verified. Government officials said the case was under investigation.”
By the time I was 12, I had learned how to block what I was seeing, or at least I started to keep what I was seeing to myself.
“Officials said today that the body found floating in the Hudson was a small blue whale and was not some sort of winged “dragon” as many sites on the Internet have been claiming.”
When I reached high school I was completely ignoring what I was seeing…even when it was difficult to deny them. I continued to keep my secret, even from those that I could see, like my girlfriend who was some sort of Nymph, but hell…come on, my girlfriend was a Nymph, I wasn’t going to screw that up.
“More reports about sightings of strange creatures. The government is continuing to deny these sightings saying they are “nothing more then wild animals or individuals mistaken about what they have seen”.”
After I graduated from High School things calmed down for a while. There were fewer and fewer new reports of these “sightings”…as if they were hiding or concealing themselves better. I, however, continued to see them, but I still told no one. They were everywhere; my English Professor was a Centaur, the Dean of Admissions was some sort of winged Demon and as far as I could tell, I was the only one who could see them.
Over the next 5 years, things quieted down quite a bit. There were no sightings, no mysterious bodies found and even I began to see them as normal, although I had learned how to force myself without much effort to see these beings as humans rather than as the strange and bizarre entities, and then something happened. I remember the date: August 12, 2004. A large crowd had gathered in Washington, DC over three days. The news was reporting that they were there to protest the upcoming State of the Union address by President Williams, but that was not the case at all.
At exactly noon, a quiet came over the crowd and this gathering of men, women and children suddenly transformed into a collection of creatures of all types; beings from Mythology, from literature in some cases and from xenobiology. There were Centaurs, like my English Professor, fairies drifting through the air, huge dragons floating above the pond outside the Washington Monument. There were trolls, hobbits, dwarves, satyrs, elves and many others that were harder to identify. Why they had decided to reveal themselves was unknown…maybe they were tired of hiding or maybe they just wanted to be themselves but whatever the reason, the result was worldwide panic.
Similar crowds had gathered outside the main Government office in close to 70 countries and they had revealed themselves at exactly the same time...and that terrified people. I mean, they had been living among us for years, decades even apparently in peaceful coexistence, but when they showed themselves, many people could not handle it. Many humans called for their immediate quarantine, as if they carried some disease that a human might catch and transform into one of them. Others said they should be hunted down, rounded up and placed on reservations…or worse. Only a few said they should be allowed to live among us as they had been for thousands of years…and their voices were too few and too quiet.
And then something else happened, something that changed everything for me. People started coming forward saying that they could see these “Mythiks”, as everyone had begun calling them, for what they truly were. They could see through their “human façade”. I started to feel a little better about what had been happening to me since I had been a child, I did not feel so alone and isolated, but that feeling was short-lived.
A few months after the Mythiks revealed themselves, three organizations suddenly came onto the scene; one publicly supporting the Mythiks (OMR – The Organization for Mythik Rights) - , the second opposing them (HFA – Humans First Alliance) and the third, although it’s public face preached equality and fairness, many felt it had a much darker agenda, the BMA (The Bureau of Mythik Affairs).
I was 29 when they first came to me. I was living outside Chicago with my girlfriend, Chloe and working at a small advertising firm. They always wore the same thing; black suits, white shirts and black ties, driving black Government Issue cars and sporting black sunglasses so that you couldn’t see their eyes. It was almost comical the way they always walked in tandem up to my front door. I saw them coming up the walkway and I opened the door before they even knocked, only the screen door between me and them…as if the flimsy metal door would have deterred them for even a moment.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Are you Mr. Morris, Mr. Steven Morris?” the taller one asked while his partner looked up and down the sidewalk.
“Can I ask who you are?”
“Sir, are you Steven Morris?” he asked again, his voice steady and emotionless.
It seemed odd to me that they were even asking me. They obviously knew who I was, where I lived and probably everything else about me, including many things I would probably have preferred they did not know.
“Yes,” I said warily.
The shorter one looked left and then right again, and then he spoke for the first time.
“Can we talk inside, sir?” he asked.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted was to have them inside my house.
“Can I see some ID first?” I asked.
At the same exact moment they both pulled out their wallets and showed me their badges by pressed them up against the screen, bulging the thing metal mesh. They were gold stars with three large raised letters in the center. BMA.
