The Elder

Date: 5/26/2020

The theater was dark. The crowd, a mix of teenagers, older gentlemen, and dames with their noses in the air. The credits began rolling: a warning for graphic content. Scenes as brutal as imaginable begin to play and one young teen runs out, attempting to keep from throwing up as the vomit runs down her hands from the failed attempt to keep it all down. One teen notices something… fishy about the gentleman behind her. The worn journal he is reading, to her, appears blanket. But to him, contain the secrets, legends, and rituals of his kind. Much like sorcery, it can only be read by those who's names have been inscribed in the book. The dark ink, penned with dedication flows easily from yellow aged page to page. The teen watches, waiting, and snatches the journal when the opportunity arises. With deft hands, she slides it in to her backpack and continues to watch the macabre acts flickering before her. This time, the sharp edge of a knife hacks right through a man's head, dissecting him at the jaw as it flicks to the next scene. Unfazed, her face remains passive as she watches another individual have their the tender flesh of their face be torn away. All the while, in her peripheral, the man is looking frantically for his journal. Terrible secrets that betray his kind have been lost to him. But when he notices something, he takes his chance. The backpack, unattended for a brief moment, disappears with him out the door. The movie's hidden agenda was doing exactly what they wanted. The weak were weeded out and the strong remained. From that moment forward, those children were to never be found again. Instead, they were transported to a camp to begin their training. Their new way of life. The movie … based on true events of the life they have been submerged into. The men of their kind age through their 40's. The women, in their teen years. Until their 5th century, they would remain as children. To onlookers, they would appear to have father daughter relationships. They were escorted to a room and told that they would be personally transported home by their staff. Stickers were passed out, a precaution at best, to block each individual's cell service for the remainder of their stay until boarding. With great discontent but little fuss, the young girls peeled them away and stuck them to their phones. They could not tell anyway of their first class treatment by the film company. They would begin boarding shortly, never to be heard from by their friends and family again. The gentleman from the theater, now in the backseat of an old limousine, sat with his new delicate flower. Fond of the thief from earlier, he had taken on the one who had tried to lift his journal. Even still, he felt disgusted knowing the human in him was still there and sitting with his fledgling, a pretty young thing, gave him an appearance he did not want to proudly display as the rest of his kind does so freely. He scorned all attempts she made to comfort him. He was centuries old while she was mere decades. As the sun pierced through the tint of the windows, one of the other gentlemen screamed as his face blazed red beneath the harsh rays. Quickly, the forlorned man tossed his own jacket over the individuals face as his delicate pale complexion began to return. With a grateful smile, he thanked the other man. It took decades for their kind to build a tolerance to the sun and the disheartened gentleman knew all too the well the struggles of adapting. With nimble fingers, his young flower lightly scratched at the back of his neck to calm his nerves. This time, he let it happen. --- Down in the murky basement of rusted pipes and moldy brick walls, the kids waited again. They were now in a concentration camp for their transformation. Those who made it through would stay their elder. Those who did not, would be forever deformed by the rituals displayed earlier. A young man, barely an adult, began to panic. It was easy to see he was connecting the dots as he stood up and stuttered, "t-th-there's a tick. There's a tick. Let me out. I'm leaving!" Surely, a small creature with little resemblance to a rat, perched itself on the heavily rusted pipes in the corner of the ceiling. The young man was swiftly taken out. He did not pass. He would later be found with the rejected, living in everyone's shadows. His face: split into three. His dark amber eyes remained with his light mocha complexion but his nose was gone. Instead, he had two mouths. The middle mouth, where his nose had been previously, sported a paling sickly hue. The bottom, perhaps his original, now had his mouth where his chin had been. The rejects, horrible Frankenstein-ian creations, were now his family. The gentleman, free of his young flower for a few moments now walked before the townhall for an evening stroll. The young reject from earlier appeared before him and handed him a well aged leather folder with a pleading look. He wanted help. Not only for himself, but for his people. As a new member, he was not going to sit and take the oppression. But the change could only be done by an elder. An elder like one of the ones he had sat with in the room. But the only face he remembered was the one stopped before him, skeptically holding the folder before him. Without hesitation, he led the elder down the dimly lit hallway to a small auditorium where his people awaited their judgment. And as the elder looked upon their malformed faces, their bodies like misassembled children's toys, he knew that they too deserve to live as any other. With a fire pit before him, the only comfort they seemed to have, he tossed the folder in as the flames grew and wordlessly undid the tyranny they faced. Some rejoiced gleefully while others wept, expelling the sorrows they no longer had to drown in. Silently, the man stepped back into the night, content with the little good he did knowing the only ones who could destroy legally binding documents of his kind were council elders like himself. But only half the council were publicly known and he took great comfort in being an unknown. No one but those few misfits would know the truth of who had changed their lives because he knew that their kind was the most loyal of all. As he stopped, the night sky began to light up as loud bangs filled his ears. Fireworks. Bombs. Spelled out across the sky multiple times ALL KIDS TO HIDEOUTS. A warning. He dashed to his accomplice, fearing the worst. He knew this was not a good sign. Confused kids scattered and as he approached his only, the worry written across her face, he draped his arm around her shoulder and whispered, "get everyone to their personal hideouts." Someone had broken a rule. Someone had messed this up for everyone. But someone else was breaking an even greater rule to get those warnings out. All children were fair game now to be turned. And the councilman was not going to watch a bunch of innocents be hunted for sport. Especially not his newest confidant.