Jack Scott: Monster Hunter

I'm Jack Scott. I hunt monsters. The kind that usually lurk under your bed. This is the kind that scare, that frighten, mostly. They live under your bed at night and in your closet during the day. They come out at night, when you are sleeping, mostly, and sometimes they tickle you, or grab one of your toes. If you listen very carefully, you can hear them snickering in the dark, when they crawl across the walls, to the ceiling, where they can better hear your breathing, and look down at you, and just wish they were human like you. They travel in pairs, mostly, to keep each other company, or in great monster herds of seven or more. The herds make more noise, so you can usually hear them, if you listen carefully.

Did I tell you that I am under the craters of the moon, in the caverns where they live and their eggs hatch, in the lava caves, which are heated by the nearly extinct volcanoes? The monsters don't come to the monster hunters, so you have to go to them. That is the rule with monsters, mostly. I don't kill them. Some hunters are the killing type, with their blast-o-matics, which sound like static and the roar of a rocket engine when they go off. I bag them and set them free. See, I have my own rocket ship, a X11 Silver bullet, and I built it myself. Well, I got the plans from the back of a science fiction magazine I bought at a newsstand. You send away for the plans, when you have saved up enough money. I saved up my money and when I had enough I put the coins in an envelope and sent them to the X11 company in New Los Angeles, with the order form filled out for their most inexpensive type, the X11, but it is just as good as the XJ56, or the Golden Supreme.

I built the rocket in my garage, one summer many years ago, when I had the time and I felt like it was a patriotic thing to do. These monsters will scare if you don't bag them and set them free. When I catch one, I tie it up in a bag and I take it to another solar system and I find a planet that looks like the monster will be happy staying on. I open the bag and then I set it free. They all run away snarling and snickering, and with an awkward kind of run, and they always cast one last look backwards, as if to burn into their brain your image, so they can recognize you if they see you again. Then they are gone.

See, I wrestle with them when I catch them, and they are usually of the slimy variety. They usually have bad breath, and you can usually smell their dirty feet because they have so many toes and they can't keep them all clean, and they don't wear any shoes. Well, their eggs hatch in the lava caverns of the moon, usually. The volcanoes keep them warm, and monsters usually are near their monster eggs to watch them and make sure nothing will happen to them.

When a monster decides that it wants to scare, it finds some way to get to the Earth, and usually they do this by riding a passing comet, or an asteroid, or they find some way to get inside a lunar volcano when it erupts, and they make their way to the Earth. They land on the Earth, mostly at night, and crawl along, monster fashion, until they find a house. Then they crawl in beneath the door, or through the chimney, or into a basement drain, or even behind you when you come in from school and forget to close the door behind you. That's how they usually get in.

So, I'm following a herd right now. I see their tracks in the ash, and I have my bag, and I am determined to get one. The monster juveniles usually travel together like this, to keep each other company, and because they like to hear each other laugh and snicker when they play pranks on each other and do the other things that monsters like to do. When they get older they travel in smaller herds, but usually not by themselves.

My X11 is parked next to Copernicus crater. You can see Copernicus if you go out at night and look at the moon and it is full or at least 2/3 full. The great crater rays are debris from the volcanoes and the material that came out of the crater when it was formed. I think that most of the monsters are of the Copernican type, but some of them are from Tycho, or from Longomontanus. The ones from Thebit are of the real slimy variety. But, you would have to have a map of the moon, or this won't make a lot of sense. You have to know where the monsters live, if you are a monster hunter. No one ever told me. I just found out by exploring, mostly, and by talking to other monster hunters, and by spending many days in the caverns of Stofler, and I can tell you for sure that there aren't many monsters in Stofler, so you can just cross that crater off your map. That was a big waste of time, running around with my bag in Stofler cavern number three, and coming up empty handed, and having to put up with the laughter of the other monster hunters, when they saw that I was monsterless, and tired, and sore, and even had the idea that there were any monsters, to begin with, in the caverns of Stofler. Boy, was that a big waste of time.

I'm thinking right now, that if I bag a couple more, I might find one that I could sell to a zoo, or I might find one that I could sell to a circus. Sometimes you get one that you can train yourself, and they are always more responsive to the person that captures them. You get them to hop through hoops, or sing songs, or do monster dances. Monsters like to dance, and no one knows why. They like to jump up and down, and wave their arms, and when music plays they sometimes start doing this on their own. As I said, no one knows why they do this.

Well, if I sell a monster or two, or I train one myself, then I could trade my X11 rocket for a Golden Supreme. But the X11 is just as good as the Golden Supreme. So what if the Golden Supreme is a little faster, or a little more comfortable, or you have a little more room for the monsters that you have bagged? But maybe I could trade up for a Golden Supreme, if I sell one to a zoo.

Did I tell you that I once gave up monster hunting? I got a real job, and for a year I got a job digging holes in the ground. They would never tell us why they were digging the holes, or what the holes were for, or even how to dig the holes. They just told us to dig. We were always asking questions about digging the holes, but they never had any answers, and just told us to keep digging. Well, all I could think about was monsters, and hunting monsters, and my X11, and putting them into the bags, and how slimy they were, and when you set them free, on another planet, how they looked back at you before they disappeared. So I ran away to hunt monsters again.

I found my X11, which they were using to transport junk and trash from an overpopulated city to one that was less populated. Why they were doing this I do not know. But I found it, and I know it was mine because I wrote on one of the inside walls, "This X11 was assembled by Jack Scott, April 15, 2031, and it is the best X11 that was ever built." That was funny because it had never flown, when I wrote that.

I then went to the rocket yard, where all the rockets are launched, and ordered some X11 rocket fuel, and had it loaded with supplies. You just tell the crews there, in the rocket yard, that you want supplies, and fuel, and they take care of the rest. Then, you find a money man, and you make arrangements with the money man to pay the rocket yard. You borrow some money, and you promise them on your honor that you will pay them back, and you tell them that you are young and strong and you make up a story about how you are going monster hunting and that you will give them 50 percent of whatever you will make, which is the going rate with the money men, because some of the monster hunters never come back, or don't catch any monsters. But usually, if you are young and strong, you catch a lot of monsters. Then you blast off to the moon. You just wait until the moon is hanging low in the sky, and is just a sliver, and the planet Venus or Jupiter is nearby, and you just know that the time is right to launch your X11 to the moon, to go monster hunting.