The Musician

A mysterious musician comes to a small village in the North to save the townspeople from a dangerous beast, using an equally dangerous ability

From the north end of the empty and still, small village of Logstown came the low clap of boots. As they grew louder, the shadow of a stranger stretched down the thoroughfare of the logging community. A moment later, this stranger crossed under the welcome post of the village, officially entering Logstown’s territory. He was a peculiar sight to see.
     The stranger wore a bare of ragged denim pants that overlapped his traveler’s boots. Hanging from one belt loop was a weathered canteen that sloshed with the heavily metallic water of the region. From another hung a pistol holster, though the weapon inside was a stubby rapid fire. Over the dark flesh of the stranger’s body, he wore, underneath a deer-leather jacket, a shirt that none had seen in this region in generations: a tattered short-sleeved cotton thing with a legend across the chest reading CRUNCHY-O’S and portraying a faded bowl of oat cereal. Across this odd clothing was a leather sash holding dozens of small, tear-drop things that glittered in the setting sunlight. Strapped to his back were a rifle and an oldwood guitar that had, no doubt, seen better days.
     Atop the stranger’s head was a straw hat with the edges of the brim rough and coming apart. His jaw was scruffy with salt and pepper whiskers. Over the eyes of the man was a cloth of striped blue and silver that could be identified all over the region as only one thing: a napkin from the hall of the cruel former ruler, Yensid. The stranger was blind.
     This strange, blind man stopped in his tracks in the center of Logstown’s main road and shifted his weight on either foot as he twisted his six-string to his front and held it before him. With his right hand, he took one of the tear-drop shapes from its sash and put it against the top string of his ancient instrument. He opened his mouth, breathed in the Logstown air, heavy with the smell of sawdust, and spoke softly.
     “If anyone can hear me,” he said, his voice a gentle, beautiful thing. “I’d cover my ears if I were you.”
     No one, however, did hear this stranger’s sweet voice. All of the residents of the small village had, hours before, fled in a screaming stampede to any building they could. Now, they hid in basements and cellars from the Thing that fed at the south end of the road.
     The stranger, his warning still clinging on the still air, began to pluck gently at his guitar with the tear-drop. The sound was melodic and increasingly sweet. As he plucked harder, playing louder, the song began to become cringing in its perfect beauty. Soon, with it filling the entire village, it became unbearable to any human ear, save the musician. Had any of Logstown’s residents heard it they would be screaming, their ears bleeding, and going deaf.
     From the south of the road there came a blaring roar that shook the windows in some of the village’s buildings and shattered even more. The sound, despite hurting his ears, made the stranger- the Musician- curl his dark lips into a smirk.
     “Don’t like that, do you, darlin’?” he said and strummed his song of pure bliss even louder.
     There came another roar, even louder, along with heavy, earth quaking stomps as the feeding Thing came to seek out its tormentor.
     “Come on, sweet thing,” the Musician grinned, spreading his legs wider, balancing his stance against the increasing shake of the ground as the Thing stalked closer.
     Then, the Thing entered the territory of Logstown. Had the Musician been able to see it, his fingers would, no doubt have stumbled on his strings.
     It was a towering, scaled beast whose shadow darkened the road from end to end. Its tail tick-tocked, back and forth, creating great gales of wind that nearly knocked the Musician off his feet. Three-talon claws ran the length of the Thing’s slithering form and many of them dug into the hard surface of the road. The eyes set into its serpentine head were a black darker than night and knew nothing but malice and hate. Its open maw was filled with razor teeth, uncountable in quantity, and stunk of the putrid flesh it had been feasting on from the bodies the villagers had left as a sacrifice. The Thing’s long, thin tongue lapped out wildly and on its own accord, seeking out the smell of the Musician, much like a snake.
     The Musician, however, saw none of this and stood his place, plucking absolute beauty from his six-string. Though his smile had been replaced with determination’s frown, his voice was filled with pure glee.
     “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a duel, don’t it?” He nearly laughed.
     In response the Thing roared another head-splitting scream, this time along with a stream of green fire that baked the ground. It was a warning flame that came within only a foot of the Musician. The roar promised that the next burst would be death.
     “It’s on, then.”
With these words, the Musician flung his guitar to his back, replacing it, with a single motion, with his rifle, and he fired one, two, three shots at the Thing, piercing its char-colored scales and producing spurts of indigo blood.
     The Thing bellowed in annoyance rather than pain and fired another burst of green fire at the Musician, though the man jolted out of its path before it could even singe his odd shirt. He pumped the rifle again and again, shooting the Thing with astounding accuracy, each shot penetrating the target’s hard body.
     “C’mon, darling!” the Musician laughed as he fired the last of his rifle’s ammunition into the back of the Thing and dropping the useless weapon to the ground.
     The Thing twisted around and breathed its flames in a ring on the road, setting fire to a hitching post and to the local saloon. It whipped its tail at the Musician and roared in furious anger as the blind man nimbly leaped over, as though it were no more than a scaled jumping-rope.
     “Almost got me, gal!” The Musician shouted as he plucked the stubby rapid fire from the holster on his pants. He flicked off the safety and began to fire short bursts at the Thing, with a RAT-A-TAT-TAT.
     The Thing once more bellowed with a belch of fire and this time, the Musician misjudged the direction and stepped right into it. The burn of the green flames was beyond belief as it began to disintegrate his pants and jacket. His first concern, however, was the guitar. He held it high above his head, out of the fire’s unnaturally fast burn, and, dropping to the ground, screaming as the flesh on his legs began to boil, slid the ancient instrument down the road as far as he could. Only then, once the six-string was safe, did he roll along the ground, putting out the flames that engulfed him.
     “You regular ole mare!” The Musician laughed through the excruciating pain that remained after the flames were extinguished. He stood and raised his rapid fire in a trembling hand. “Y’almost got me on that one!” He held down the trigger of his short gun and it went wild with a TATATATATATATATATATATATA!
     The bullets went flying into the air, striking higher and higher on the Thing until one, the final one in the rapid fire’s clip, went through one of the beast’s blacker-than-night eyes and struck its raging brain, ending it’s thousand century tirade in one swift moment.
     Knowing the Thing was dead the instant the fatal bullet hit, the Musician threw the stubby rapid fire and screamed in agony. He only allowed himself that one moment of weakness, however, and, even before the writhing Thing hit the ground, lifeless, he was staggering towards his guitar.
     He picked up the oldwood six-string and stood there, trembling, as he took another tear-drop from his sash, and began to pluck very softly.
     This time, as he played his pure song, there was one other person to listen. A man who had ventured the risk of exiting the cellar of Logstown’s butcher shop, crept from the alley and looked in awe at the giant Thing’s corpse and the single, horribly burned, dark man who was standing and, miraculously, playing a guitar. When the first few chords of the song hit the man’s ears, his eyes rolled into his head and, as his ears split and spurted blood, he fell to the ground.
     The last thing the man saw before he passed out from the blood loss was the man -the Musician- walking away, strumming his six-string as the wretched burns on his dark skin began to fade and disappear.