[Original Novel] Pariah of the Little People, Part 13

^{source
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12}

Catechumen 2 was another shooter, but you could force enemies to convert by blasting them with energy beams from a magical sword whereupon “Hallelujah” is sung by an unseen angelic choir and the enemy kneels in prayer. Perhaps born out of frustration with certain nitpickers who cannot easily be talked into converting?

Captain Bible was similar, you played as a superhero sent to liberate a city “enslaved by Satanic lies” which turn out to be expressions of skepticism. You download the necessary verse to rebut the “cyber lies” from “scripture stations”, then confront various characters like a false Christ named “Lamb Master”, a drug dealer and so on as the boss battles.

None of them were any fun. Shoddily made to deliver a particular message with quality as the secondary concern, a theme I’d noticed in absolutely all of their media so far. But we’re supposed to grin, gush about how much better it is than secular media and ask for seconds. Not today! Not while I’m with somebody I don’t have to act around.

“None of this stuff’s any good.” He looked baffled and asked what I didn’t like about it. I found I couldn’t articulate the difference without having him play some secular computer games or something, then realized this stuff was all he’d ever known. To him, it’s as good as it gets. I must seem like a snob. So I put a sock in it and said we should watch some DVDs instead.

Despite myself, I cringed when I saw the covers. I don’t know what I expected. “Colby the Christian Computer”, a musical about a robot evangelist. “Psalty the Singing Songbook”, “Bible Man versus the Shadow of Doubt”, “God’s Not Dead”, “Do You Believe”, “Rappin’ Rabbit’s Christian Habits On Ice”, “Davey and Goliath”, “The Creation Adventure Team” which looked to be an imitation nature science show starring a bearded guy alongside various anthropomorphic dinosaur puppets, and the same “Evolution vs. God” video I’d been sent home with.

“You know, I have Doom 4 at home” I offered. “You fight demons! It’s very Christian, and an awesome game. I could bring that over next time.” He waved his finger at me. “We don’t call worldly things awesome in this house. Only God is awesome.” I shrugged. When in Rome.

We settled on watching a documentary about a boy who had a near death experience and claimed to have seen God, Heaven and angels. It rang a bell in my brain as I recalled the boy admitting in an interview he’d been coached by his parents to make it all up for the press. I got my phone out and brought up the article to show Tyler.

“Well, I’m sure sometimes people do make up stories to get famous and make money. But they can’t ALL be fake, and if even just one of them is true, it still proves Heaven is a real place you go when you die.” The problems with that reasoning troubled me, but Tyler’s the last person I wanted to upset, so I sat quietly through the rest.

Afterward he asked if I’d like to watch a “Doctor Dino” lecture. I declined, trying not to betray how much the prospect of sitting through another 90 minutes of that sort of thing horrified me, and suggested we instead play outside. Good call as it turned out. The woods behind the house were even more embarrassingly lush than the ones Dad drove us through on the way in.

I nearly didn’t notice the cat on the way out. Very old, raggedy fur and lanky proportions. “Oh, you found Mister MacGufferson!” Tyler exclaimed, kneeling to pet the cute, if weary looking animal. “He’s barely a pet in the regular sense, just kinda wanders wherever he likes and sometimes comes here to be fed and loved on. I guess I have a soft spot for animals because he always gets what he wants from me.”

With permission, I joined in the petting. It warmed my heart how Tyler doted on the crotchety old cat. “We adopted him from the shelter, he was a stray before that. Dad kept asking if I wouldn’t rather have a kitten. But everybody wants kittens, they never have trouble finding a home. It’s the elderly ones that need help.”

I could’ve hugged him right then, but spied his Dad watching us from the upstairs window and thought better of it. I gave Mister MacGufferson one last chin scratch for the road, then followed Tyler into the dense forest. We’d not made it a hundred feet before he cried out “STOP!!” I froze in place, heart pounding. “What is it? A hole? Snake? Trip wire?”

He walked slowly up to me and focused his eyes on something. I followed his gaze and, once my own eyes focused on it, I discovered a little spider cowering on its web just two feet from my face. Its body covered in the most beautiful, intricate markings. “That’s Henrietta. She just got done building that web, don’t you dare go and destroy it already. She’s a dainty little miss, so treat her like one.”

I carefully sidestepped the web. He directed me to a well worn path he’d made specifically to avoid destroying spiders’ webs. “They’re God’s creatures too. Lots of people don’t think of ‘em that way because they’re so small nobody ever sees how pretty they are up close. They eat, they breathe, they have their own little lives just like us.

It’s easy when you’re so big to just mindlessly destroy their homes or even their lives without so much as realizing it. What if some big powerful monster wrecked your home and stepped on your Mom and Dad? You’d want a creature like that to be gentle with you since you’re smaller and weaker, right? So that’s how we should be. To cats, even to little bugs.”

He blew gently on Henrietta. Must’ve done so before, she behaved as if that was the all clear signal and timidly resumed building her web. I made a point thereafter to pay close attention to the path before me and more than once it paid off as I avoided stepping on snails, a few millipedes and a banana slug.

Along the way, Tyler informed me of the scientific name for each of the species we saw. I didn’t know he was so knowledgeable about animals. “I’ve got the whole set of Zoo Books back home, we could look at those after we’re done out here.” I told him I wouldn’t mind it. Might be the only thing in the house that wasn’t Bible flavored.

Felt something like a jungle expedition. Vines draped from the forest canopy, thick vegetation obscuring the forest floor. We caught a brief glimpse of a deer and several rabbits at various points.

“He really owns all this land huh? Your Dad I mean.” Tyler nodded. “We’re called upon to be good stewards of nature. It’s why he’s worked so hard on inventing cleaner transport technologies. His inventions are going to change the world some day.”

I really, really wanted to keep my trap shut. How I wanted to. I fought it as best I could, but like always it clawed its way up out of my belly, then bashed against the back of my teeth until I let it out. “I’m pretty sure your Dad is scamming money from people.” Tyler continued walking as if I said nothing until he finished processing the statement, then stopped cold.

“What do you mean?” There was a guarded tone to his voice I knew meant I should pick my next words very carefully. “The way he describes how the motorcycle works is impossible. It could drive for a couple miles but then it’d run out of battery. The way he says it works would violate the laws of physics.

All I can figure is that he takes them for a short drive to convince them it works, gets them to invest money, then once enough of them figure out his game, he moves you and your Mom to a new state where they don’t know him. That’s why he keeps changing your names. It’s an obvious scam.”

Tyler’s face contorted in slow motion. I could tell I’d hurt him, but not how badly until he spoke. He didn’t blow up at me. Even worse, it was that fragile but steady manner of speech reserved for the times when you’re inches away from hauling off and hitting somebody.

“You’ve made some mistake. This is my Dad you’re talking about. He would never lie to anybody, least of all to me. You say it’s obvious to you that it can’t work, but it isn’t obvious to him, and he’s the smartest guy I know. Who’s more likely to be right, a grownup or a kid?

Personally I think it’s more likely you’re just too confident about your own judgement. Like you’re always right about everything and never make mistakes. I can see how it would look like a scam to you, but that’s simply not what it is. It can’t be.”

I bent over backwards to apologize and insisted I meant no disrespect to his dad or to him. It seemed to fall on deaf ears at first but the more I prostrated myself, the more he softened, until the damage was more or less repaired.

“You really have to stop being so sure you’ve got it all figured out” he urged, what I chose to interpret as well meaning advice. “That’s part of why the other kids pick on you, yanno. I don’t mind it so much but it can really be difficult to tolerate sometimes.”

I wounded me to hear that from him of all people. But if Tyler thinks so, maybe there’s something to it. I was quiet for some time and must’ve seemed troubled as eventually Tyler said he didn’t mean to come off as harsh, and really did like me.

“You focus on the little details. You’re sweet to all the tiny creatures, and it really meant something to me when you salvaged my barrette. You’re the only person in my life besides Jesus who’s on my side. So I’m gonna be on yours too.”

I thought about the day we’d met. About the time he showed me where to hide so I could get all my tears out without being seen. He really had been on my side from day one. The only kid in that school who ever felt like a real person to me, rather than a bipedal cruelty dispenser.

“Oh I’m on your side all right. I’m always gonna be. It’s a conspiracy now, you realize.” He cocked his head at me, so I elaborated. “When at least two people are in on something, it’s a conspiracy. Now we make our secret plans. We’ll need a shared cipher so we can send secret messages. Oh! Codenames! We’ll definitely need codenames, that’s the first thing.”

So we brainstormed our codenames, writing down the ones that made us laugh hardest. In the end, he chose “Retribution Salamander.” I wound up with “Exploding Eagle Justice.” Which I suppose is the particular brand of justice commonly administered by explosive birds of prey.

For an hour and change we just ran around playing spy, making gun shapes with our hands and shouting shooty noises at each other from behind various trees. It was a trick to do this while avoiding spiderwebs, which is how he finally got me. “No, no force fields. You already used that. Don’t say I missed you either, I got you that time, you’re dead as it gets.”

Little did he know that death is the most fun part of the game. That’s where the dramatic speech of the dying villain comes in! “Perhaps you’ve won the day Retribution Salamander” I wheezed. “But what sort of world will men like you create in my absence? A world where salamanders dole out brutal uncompromising retribution while eagles, their explosives forever disarmed, are powerless to achieve justice!?”

Then I keeled over and made all sorts of exaggerated dying gasps, gurgles and moans. He complained that I was ruining the game by turning it silly, but I kept gasping, gurgling and flailing about on the ground until he laughed. If they laugh, you got away with it.

“Hey, wanna play Tough Guys?” I’d never heard of it and said so. Tyler produced a small bottle of hot sauce from his pocket. “I learned this at youth group. We take turns drinking from it. More and more each time. First one to tear up loses.” I asked why that meant you’d lost. “Duh. You can’t be a tough guy if you cry.”

I soberly reflected on that idea for a moment before indulging him. Every time I drank, he egged me on in a gravelly Batman style voice. “You wanna be a tough guy huh?? You’re just a weak little sissy if hot sauce is all it takes to make you cry! Why, I wrassle me up a gator, punch its eggs out and eat ‘em raw every morning! Then I fight a bunch of flesh ripping weasels! Then I juggle those exact same weasels with my pecs! Are you man enough? WELL ARE YOU!?”

I laughed, sputtering up some of the hot sauce. “It doesn’t count unless you keep it down, drink again.” I plead my case but was overruled, so I took another swig. He won in the end, but I put that down to experience. Plus I’ve never handled spicy foods terribly well, and near the end I absentmindedly itched my eye...not realizing my finger had some hot sauce on it. I really don’t recommend that.

Once we ran out of games to play, we just set to wandering, talking about life. I found out he’d broken his nose exactly how I assumed and told him I wished I’d been there to take the punch instead.

I also found out his Mom’s pregnant like mine, so we’re both gonna be big brothers. I felt exhilarated, but confused and worried. The same feeling you get when you can’t tell whether you’re in danger.

I’d only known Tyler a week. Was it really safe to open up...completely? I dreaded it. The last person I’d made myself fully vulnerable to on purpose was Jennifer. When she left, I decided I’d been wrong, that it really is just me against monster world. That sealed it. “No more risks from now on” I’d vowed. It’s just life trying to trick me into letting my guard down again.

Yet, I felt safe too. Exhilarated, confused and worried, but safe. Hopeful, just cautiously so. That’s alright isn’t it? The same doubts Jennifer provoked in me now resurfaced. That perhaps I’d gotten it wrong all my life. That perhaps there are good people in the world, perhaps I’m not really alone.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Yet, I had to try again. What else is there? It’s like Tyler said. A lone candle, drifting by itself through the darkness, is too easily extinguished. I must’ve been quiet for a conspicuously long time, as Tyler asked me if something was wrong.

Decision time. I’d have to answer him, and could hardly lie. He was never the sort of person I felt I needed to lie to. And if we were really gonna be friends, I didn’t want to start that habit with him. But to completely bare myself would be to trust that he is what he seems. That I won’t be hurt again, that the world is not so sharply divided between myself and the ogres.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 14!}