Professor Dana Wilde sat in his small apartment, trying to talk himself out of what he knew would be one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
“You’ll regret it… nothing good can come of this.” He argued with himself.
“But isn’t knowing so much better than not knowing? The uncertainty will drive you mad.” He responded.
“Perhaps… but is it worse to be mad with curiosity or saddened with certainty?” He had been going around in circles for almost an hour.
“That’s it… I’m looking!” He picked up his phone, unlocked it, and held his breath as he clocked on the link and read.
“The Truth in Our Myths… a new book by first-time author Dana Wilde is a humorous yet insultingly poor insult to the intelligence of any reader unlucky enough to pick it up.”
He stared at his phone in shock… the words written there were awful… hurtful and… untrue! Turning on his phone again he dialed his friend Grant. He was the closest thing Dana had to a literary agent and had helped him through the process of getting his book published in the first place.
“You read it, didn’t you?” Grant’s dry voice came from the other end of the line.
“Don’t take it bad…”
“Can we sue for a bad review? This guy is obviously not qualified to even talk about the stuff in my book.”
“You can’t sue for a bad review, Dana… it’s all opinion.”
“No wait…” Dana brought up the review again. “’ Mrs Wilde attempts to deny credit for creating many of the fanciful creatures she speaks about. Not even giving such greats as Bram Stoker credit for his invention of the vampire.’ Vampires were written about as early as 1047AD in Russia, even the term vampire was used in 1725 some hundred and seventy-two years before Stoker’s book. From any objective stance this… so-called critic should not be allowed to call my research into question! Not to mention he must not have looked at that lovely picture you put up on my author’s page if he thinks I’m a woman.”
“Dana… Dana… these days you are lucky if the trolls even actually read your book before trashing it. The fact he references actual things in it means he read it… that means he bought a copy. That is all that matters here.” Grant sighed, sounding tired through the phone. “Look… one of those local papers in the yellow news racks on the street had some nice things to say. Go grab a copy and read that one. It will make you feel much better about things. For now… I’m still at work man, let me call you back later.”
Dana looked at the phone several seconds after hearing the line disconnect. He knew in his heart Grant was right… what some guy halfway around the world thought about what he wrote didn’t matter. Someone out there would like the book… and that was who it was written for. Leaving his apartment he headed back down to the street level. Vaguely he remembered one of those yellow news boxes just a couple blocks over. He could grab a copy and maybe a coffee before heading back for the night.
As he walked, though, his hand kept shaking… a nagging feeling in the back of his mind just wouldn’t let him move on. He pulled his phone back out, returning to the scathing review left for him. Each line felt like a dagger in his heart, drawing forth a gasp of pain as he read. The critic didn’t just attack his work but seemed to go after his very existence… asking what kind of institution would even let someone like him earn a PhD.
“LOOK OUT!” Dana heard someone scream as a loud horn sounded. He looked up from his phone to see a menacing-looking panel truck bearing down on him in the street. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as every detail shone out in vivid clarity to his eyes. The panicked look of the driver, the passenger side mirror barely hanging on to the door… all the way to the How’s My Driving bumper sticker heading straight for his face.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
He felt his body violently thrown through the air, his eyes closing as he waited for the end that inevitably coming. He crashed back down to the pavement, pain shooting up his back as the truck sped by… complete with a friendly hand gesture from the driver. Dana looked up from where he was sitting on the sidewalk, a pale blonde woman standing over him with a smirk on her face.
“Look up from your phone once in a while, moron!” She was dressed in tight bike leathers a red tank top and a chain-covered leather jacket on top. “There won’t always be someone to yank you’re sorry ass out of trouble! Oh… hey! I’m reading the same book!” She pointed to where his bag had spilled its contents out next to where he sprawled, heart still pounding from being so close to his demise. He nodded, slowly, not really hearing her until he realized she was pointing at his author’s copy of his book.
* * *
The blonde woman bent over, picking up his copy of the book from the street before returning to offer him a hand to his feet. She handed him the large, blue-covered volume, slapping at his pants a few times to dust him off.
“Love all those myths and shit. Though the chick who wrote this one seems to think they’re all real.” With a grin, she looked Dana over, apparently not seeing any gaping wounds was enough to meet her standards for okay so she patted him on the shoulder. “Just be more careful next time, okay?”
As she turned to continue on her way Dana finally spoke up.
“Dana… is… the author is a man, actually… not a … a chick.”
The woman stopped before she could step off the curb and be on her way. She turned, a shine in her hazel eyes that seemed to only get bigger when she smiled. She turned back to him, her dangly earrings sounding like chimes as they bounced from under her hair.
“Really? And you know this how?”
“Well that’s the thing, you see…” Dana grinned, getting his feet back under him now that the crisis had passed. “I’m him. I wrote the Truth in Our Myths.”
“No… way…” She smiled, bursting out into laughter. “You… are Dana Wilde? You are just the lady… Erm… person I am looking for. Heard a rumor you lived around this area and thought to take a look.”
“You were looking… for me?” Suddenly Dana couldn’t think… he didn’t remember the bad review, the truck… he couldn’t even be sure he recalled writing the book in his hand. “Well… you found me. How can I help you, Ms…?”
“Meira… Meira Olaran. How ‘bout you buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it?”
Flashing that smile once again and Dana found himself wondering if anyone had ever said no to her in her entire life… well, he wasn’t about to be the first. They walked together the short block to the small cafe Dana had been heading to in the first place. They sat at a small table in the back, their steaming cup of bean nectar just waiting for them.
“So Dana Wilde…” Her crimson lips curled into a broad grin as she took a long draw off the steaming brew. “I work with Spiritwood University… a prestigious all-girls school that happens to be in the market for a new teacher of Humanities… and I think you might just be uniquely qualified for the position.”
“Humanities aren’t exactly my subject of expertise. Although my research into myth and legends through the eras have some overlap it is more considered religion or even history. Why would you think I would be a good fit… let alone at an all-girls campus?”
“Well, that’s part of the interesting part. I’ve been given full authority to offer the job to one Dana Wilde, PhD. You being a man just screams the very kind of chaos I think our school could use a little of. A lot of happenings there while modern are still very locked in the past and this will serve certain higher-ups well to teach them to do their research better… or at least not to assume so much.”
She took a long pause, sipping her drink again smiling with that infectious look of knowing something no one else in the room does. “The other thing that brought me to you is the subject of your book. Trying to draw more concrete answers of the creature of myth through history rather than just dismiss them as the ramblings of more primitive people.”
“I just can’t fathom some of the similarities in legends. Cultures thousands of miles apart telling of a similar creature with a similar description with no contact between them? The concept of multiple discovery can explain certain broader tropes like vampires but there are too many examples to discount these tales as mere coincidence. If these creatures did exist… or even still do somewhere… then what of what we know about them is real and what is not?”
Dana watched her reaction, normally when he started talking about his fascination with cryptids and monsters people around him started checking out mentally. Even his own mother from an early age dismissed the things he said as imagination or flights of fancy. The woman in front of him was far from checked out, though. Her eyes shone as she listened, almost as if she was hanging on every word he said.
“That passion is just what I was hoping to find, Mr. Wilde. You see when I say you will be teaching humanities I don’t mean just arts and literature… I mean you will teach all about humanity to a bunch of girls who don’t know much about humankind.” With a twinkle in her eye, she swept her hair back behind her ear, revealing the top crest of her ear extending up to a fine point. Dana’s eyes widened a moment as he leaned forward to look closer. He could tell that this was no prosthetic… even the best cosplay elf ears couldn’t mimic real, flesh and blood.
No… her ears were one hundred percent genuine. “How would you like to go somewhere you can prove some of your theories?”