The Foreigner of Fawn — Chapter 01: The Unwelcoming
The year is twenty-three, and men now walked across the sea in a large baroque ship. Pushed by the waters far away from the New World, S.S. Abadessa, a three-mast ship, the first of its kind, docked her mass on troubled land. From within her womb, a man of peace steps forward, leaving his burdens and tonnage behind him. Emanuel Antonio is a man from the New World. He has a secret he does not want to share with anyone. He bowed his head down to the poorly bricked streets before him with his tall, gallant stance and uneven shaved face.
“Mia, Bellalina… Elis,” he stumbled to say. The town of Fawn was dark and vile. Its peasants showed no welcome to visitors. “This town is as grim as the sea that led me.”
Between the houses of bricks and stones, where narrow pathways curved, a figure emerged from the shadows to greet Sir Antonio.
“My Master!” said the strange figure, as if anxious. “An honor it is for you to enter…!” The strange figure was small, round, and wore an old straw rug as a hooded robe. “I say it is a splendid honor, especially for your kind.” He whispered the last word.
Emmanuel looked down at the figure moments before he was about to depart. He was angry and puzzled. “I knowest not, nor do I need to know all the words you speak.”
“Ahh~aha! For he who stands before me does not know? This man of men thinks he is of that kind? Or this man of kinds thinks he is of men?” The figure said.
“You know nothing of me, vermin!” Emanuel replied. He shouted loud enough for passersby not to hear them in the narrow alleyway.
“Kern is my name, but Vermin is thy name I shall receive!”
In a jolt of anger, Emanuel grabbed Kern, and dipped into the shadowy alleyway, and threw the figure against the dark, brick wall. Emanuel bolted in a gallant voice: “Heed my words: Leave me alone! Death follows me!!!”
Emanuel pushed Kern between the uneven brick roads, down into mud and horse stool.
Kern, now covered in filth, eyes blinded by the smell, slowly stood up, and walked back into the dark alleyway. Before he disappeared, he bade his farewell. “Yes… my Master.”
The town of Fawn was a dark place, filled with houses of wood not stone, and the sky smudged by a factory of sorts.
In the center of the town was the office of the Sheriff, a tall, slender man, the tallest man Emanuel had ever seen. Fawn’s Sheriff despised newcomers, or just anyone he did not know in general. “Hey, you, foreigner!” He shouted. “What brings you to my town?”
Emanuel, his clothes damp from the vigorous sea, tired from his voyage, shook his head. “A new life, sir…”
“A new… what?” The Sheriff drank his ale. “No one comes to my town seeking anything, especially life.”
Emanuel was unphased by the unwelcoming. “Then…I will be on my way.” He turned his back with his sights set on an old pub.
The Sheriff took one quick half-step closer to Emanuel’s left, though it looked like a leap to a regular-sized man and hunched over Emanuel’s shoulder. Like the legs of a spider, the sheriff’s fingers crawled up Emanuel’s back resting them beside the man’s neck.
“I saw you… foreigner of the sea…” he whispered in Emanuel Antonio’s ear, breathing his ale and paste into his face, “…roaming through my alleyways, speaking to the rats. Tell me, have you seen any beasts?”
As night drew nearer to the town of Fawn, Emanuel’s chest began to leap. “Beast, Sheriff? I only knew of the one before me.”
“Overbold, aren’t you, foreigner? But not too wise.” The Sheriff stood upright with his hand on Emanuel’s shoulders. The ground shook as if a stampeded of horses raced towards them.
It was Emanuel’s heart.
The murky sky grew darker, and Emanuel, now enraged, started to feel heaviness within his arms.
“Yes, foreigner. Fear me like the wonderer you are! You look like trouble… trouble for me… trouble for Fawn! Go back to where you came from…. Vermin!” The Sheriff pulled back defensively, while still towering over the angered Emanuel.
“’Vermin’ you say, Sheriff?” Emanuel heard the echoing laughter of Vermin Kern in his consciousness. “You have no idea the ‘trouble’ I have borne witness to, nor the nightmares I hope to overcome, and the pain I wish to lay past!”
The night was tensely dark when the clouds drew in from the east to cover the Moonstone’s light.
“Save your story for the drunks! I need to keep an eye on you tonight!” The Sheriff said. He revealed a set of handcuffs with his right hand, while his left arm surrounded Emanuel’s neck.
Emanuel, his eyes gleaming red like a wood fire, turned his body and flipped the Sheriff, causing both to lose their balance on the ground bricked stone.
As he fell, the Sheriff cocked his right leg back to regain his balance but failed.
Emanuel - his breathing was fast and heavy, like a locomotive at full speed; his body swollen as if to explode in seconds - knelt over the Sherriff, pinning him to the ground. Emanuel’s eyes, once red, were now blue from to the Moonstone's light shining above like a furnace at its highest temperature.
“I am warning you, Sheriff of Fawn. DO NOT TAKE ME TO A PLACE WHERE MY NIGHTMARES RETURN!” Emanuel’s voice seemed to change as if another spoke.
“A live one, are you not, foreigner! I will show you how to act in my town!” The Sheriff regained his strength and rose from the ground. He shot his arms up to choke Emanuel, who struggled to free himself from Sherriff’s grip. The Sheriff, however, punched Emanuel to the ground. He began to place handcuffs on him.
Unleashing a newfound energy, Emanuel trembled like a boiling pot. The pebbles beneath his feet vibrated as he spoke again in his regular voice. “I… am not… the beast you seek but —” in the same breath, a different voice - one more resonant – began to surface,
” I WILL BE THE BEAST YOU -”
“Sheriff! Come quickly; it is the beast!” a loud man shouted. The sheriff jumped up and ran off with his men.
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