Planet Chimera by Brian Nyaude

around, ignoring everyone else, I
sat down by a rocking chair, on the furthest side, placing the
rifle by my side. The lady, whose fiancé had been maimed by the
foul chimera, approached with a look of terror on her face,
offering me some tea and a plate of biscuits. Shaking my head, I
brushed her away, refusing her offer with a few hand gestures. She
turned around, walking away to sit by the side of an older lady, a
bit of tears on her face. She wiped them off with a grey
handkerchief, avoiding my gaze, as a few kids approached her. The
mayor tinkered with the wooden logs using a metal rod, glancing at
me for a second, and proceeded to sit down, next to an older lady,
wearing a white scarf, who seemed to be his wife.
    “Start talking already,” I yelled, placing
my right hand by the arm rest, tapping my right leg frequently. “I
grow tiresome of these charades.”
    “Alright, Rave, I will tell you everything,”
the mayor said, his wife resting her head on his shoulder, a look
of sadness on her face. “It all started fifteen years, with the
appearance of a stranger, a man who we all grew up to fear. He
first appeared out of nowhere, saying that his ship had crashed
onto our planet, and we offered him food and shelter. He was
wounded, incision scars on his arms and legs, and only wore a
tattered red shirt and black pants. A week after his appearance, a
few of the townspeople, specifically adolescents, began to
disappear without a trace, to never be seen again. We panicked,
searching the woods for them, but our search was in vain. And the
disappearances kept increasing, the age range changing, and before
we knew it, half of the people in our small town had vanished. We
all began to dread, thinking they had been claimed by some unknown
invincible foe, but no one ever suspected the stranger dwelling
amongst us to be the one responsible. We kept going about our daily
business, searching for the missing people on our days off, until
one night—one very strange night. It was the first night a cloaked
chimera appeared in our midst; it had been tortured, mutilated, and
experimented on, and had a lot of mechanical gears on its back. The
creature assaulted an older gentleman, who was on his way home, in
the dreary night, beating half to death before it took off with
him. A young man saw this disturbing scene, reported it to the
local police, and led them towards the direction of the creature’s
whereabouts. What I tell you, Rave, is no lie, but it is the
untainted truth of the darkness that haunts this small town of
ours.”
    “So, what did you find, when you tracked the
creature down?” I asked, shifting my weight around, as my curiosity
was peaked. “What was it?”
    “It was the stranger, the man who we had all
grown to love, cutting off the flesh from one of his victims, a
legion of his creatures behind him. He spotted us, and hollered at
us to approach him, his face relaxed and emotionless. I gasped at
the sight of blood on his hands, and I almost fainted when I looked
down, recognizing the man he had killed. It was our previous
constable, a dear friend of mine. He told us that he was building a
powerful army, a chimera army to be exact, and that he wanted us to
assist him with his goal, or we would all meet the same fate. At
first, we tried to resist, but his forces were too powerful—and
every attempt we made to take back our town all failed. So,
eventually, we gave in to his demands, doing everything he told us
to do, our hearts waiving with guilt and shame. Thousands of
victims were shot out of space, a few of them dying from the crash,
and we helped him capture the survivors for his horrific
experiments. It was madness, I tell you, pure horrific madness. For
the last fifteen years, we have kept this secret to ourselves,
unable to contact for help from other regions of the planet, and
things have only gotten worse.”
    “I see,” I hummed, picking up my rifle,
pressing my right fingers against the long, smooth