Undead Dilemma
Chapter 1: Best Laid Plans Go Astray

Hi, my name is William Isaac Tayler. Please for the sake of my sanity though call me Wit. I suppose I should start at the beginning before the world crashed down around my ears. My family has been in the Monster Protection business since like way back to one of my old, old ancestors. That is right, you heard me. Monster Protection. Our job is to make sure that if something goes horribly wrong we fix it and make sure that the humans don’t replace out about our world. Basically most monsters are good same as humans. You do however have those few that feel they are entitled to do whatever they want. That is where we come in. It is a job that is passed down in the family. My pops was training me. Until this gang of monsters, we happened to be cleaning up after found our home. My mom had sent me to get the sauce to go with dinner. (She was always forgetting something) From the evidence I could see they found us and proceeded to discuss their problem with our meddling. I won’t go into details, it has only been a couple years since I lost them and I just can’t go there okay.

Any who, my pops had taught me quite a bit of the trade considering he started in on me when I turned four, so since I am now seventeen I have had a good thirteen years of practicing my trade. Since I am on my own and it is the only thing I know, I will carry on the family tradition. Yea so that is my condensed basic history, anything else you need to know about me you will have to learn along the way. Umm, feature wise I am a good solid six foot, kind of on the lanky side but with some definite muscle action going on. I have brown hair, sea green eyes. Totally into all sorts of games so I am never without my favorite gamer tees. Basic teenage jeans and tennies and to finish it all off the dark brown leather jacket my pops gave me when he took me on my first clean up mission. K, ability wise I am pretty special if I do say so. So back in the family eons some woo-woo crap was Bestowed upon certain human families. It gives us extra strength, agility, vision and smarts. Totally wicked right. These gifts, whatever, were only given to those families who one, didn’t freak out over the thought of monsters and such. Two didn’t want to hunt down and destroy said monsters. Guess my family was one of those. Alright bio over and now we get into the grit of how my world ended and changed forever.

The first thing that you need to learn about monsters is that they like less populated areas for their hunting and hide outs. I know popular folk tales say differently but who you are going to trust? Like I said I have been cleaning up their messes and protecting the secret for years. So with that in mind, after my parents were gone I packed up and moved to somewhere else. I moved around for a while that first year without them but I think I have finally settled on what I will consider my turf. I have picked the backwoods state of Arkansas as my base. Turns out it is not quite as hicksville as you hear. It is however a lush area ripe for monster picking. I had enough in savings to get myself a little three bed room house out in the woods.

I have it stocked to the gills with all my protection junk. I have one bedroom stocked up with my state of the art computer/surveillance/gamer system. I can monitor the news around my area, stalk a monster that is getting out of hand and in my down time rock out to whatever game has snagged my attention. In fact, if all stays boring I plan on starting the new Dark Souls 3 that just came out. I am so looking forward to some binge gaming there. Since I don’t ever have company my living room is decked out in all my weapons. I have your standard stakes, throwing stars, daggers, guns and ammo. Then I also have the forgetful powder for humans that have seen too much. Water that has been consecrated in the holiest places to secure and wipe the scene of the monster transgressions.

This morning I planned to check out this hoopla at a cemetery close to my house. I set up my base in the northwestern part of Arkansas. I can roam around all the way down to Fort Smith, across to Tulsa Oklahoma and up to Branson Missouri. That is my circuit. I like to web stalk and drive around my turf to keep a finger on the pulse of each place. This shindig at the cemetery was a hard to replace invite to a select few of people hidden deep in some party website. If it is hard to replace the invite I can guarantee it is monster related. It is set for ten o’clock in some old family cemetery out near Cincinatti. Remote equals something hinky. So I plan to be there about thirty after it starts, catch them in the act of whatever they have planned. Now don’t laugh at my ride, it is one of those Ford electric things. It has it’s uses. One it is pretty quiet so I can drive up almost completely on the action, two since most monster activities happen out in what is most people call the boondocks I don’t have to worry about running out of gas, nowhere near a gas station. I can kind of see the middle of nowhere appeal. I happen to love the woods. I like being out with the trees and animals.

For this mission I did recon earlier in the day to get a good feel for the layout and where I needed to be when the fun began. It wasn’t too big of a cemetery. It is located about a mile back on this little dirt road. Surrounded by a good grouping of trees so I could probably snag me a good perch up there to watch the festivities. I would say there were probably only thirty or so odd graves, laid out in a circular type pattern with this alter type statue in the center. It had three access points leading into the graveyard, only on foot though, definitely no car access. I figured I would come the eastern side so that no errant rays of moonshine could give away my position. Since I found out that this transgressing group is a hodge-podge of the monster world I will need to be decked out for as many of them that I can.

My recon and intel leads me to believe that this group has acquired a witch to do protection spells for whatever nefarious activities their minds can come up with. They have also collected a siren to call in their intended prey, a ghost to quiet down said unlucky souls and of course no monster group is complete without the all-time favs of vamps and were-creatures. I however was not able to come up with the name or monster species that is leading this pack of monsters astray. So I will need to be extra careful to protect myself on this mission. Since this is the first time however, that I have heard of this group gathering to do harm, I will give them the chance to repent these evil deeds and go back to the shadows that are our protection. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think all of them will agree and I can’t truthfully say I wouldn’t be happy to kick some major evil monster butt.

In my territory you will either follow the rules and co-exist somewhat harmoniously or your butt is gone. I of course don’t mean in a relocation sort of way. Since my parents were killed by a gang of monsters I tend to lean a little more towards the monster hunter side then I do the monster protection. I know my pops would probably box my ears for it but it is my life and I have already seen too much evil on both sides to let it just run free. I will give second chances but there will never be a third. Ah, I digress from my tale. See how zealous I can get sometimes.

I waited until thirty minutes past ten, to make sure all participants had arrived and I wouldn’t be taken by surprise from some late comer. I silently crept through the trees and shadows, taking extra care to keep to the shadowy parts as much as possible. About twenty feet out from the tree that I had picked out earlier in the day, I could just make out the light of a fire. Once I had made it to the tree I shimmied myself up to the middle where I had plenty of cover but still a great deal of visibility. I could make out the witch, siren, two were-cats, two vamps and the robed unknown leader. They rocked slowly back and forth around the slab type altar chanting so low that I couldn’t make out the words. In between the altar and the monsters, I could just make out three shadowy forms on the ground unmoving in the flickering firelight and shadows. Looked to be two adults and one kid. One thing you should know in this moment is that yes the big bad monsters will kill humans. Like I said they think they are entitled to do whatever they want. If, however you are in my territory and kill innocents, you have lost your second chance at redemption.