PART 1: LOST BOY

He wasn’t following the little boy through Sparta’s Mall of Michigan. He didn’t want to believe it. And yet, he’d walked past the Tomes R’ Us bookstore without so much as a sideways glance. Likewise for the Captain Video game stores. He hadn’t even checked out any of the women. Not even in passing. The only thing his eyes had focused on, from behind the wall of his dark sunglasses, was the little boy with the helicopter hat and the over sized Angelus t-shirt.

What was he doing...?

The realization fell over him like a long, dark shadow. Not only did he not know why he was at the mall, he had no recollection of how he got there either. He didn’t remember waking up this morning, what he had for breakfast, whether or not he’d worked out…it was all a haze. He ran a hand over the cauterized puncture marks on his neck.

Please, God. Please…no…this wasn’t…this couldn’t be…the hunger…?

No…that wasn’t it. Somehow, he felt as if he hadn’t come here unwilling. It was almost the opposite. It was as if he’d submitted his will so fully to whatever it was that beckoned him here, to this place…to this spot…that his motions and actions had been so automatic as to become nearly unconscious. He could only liken it to certain times in the gym…or on the mat…instances where his sense of purpose became so strong that it seemed to consume him. In those moments, his body seemed to be driven along in its actions on a wave of sheer will.

He sensed something similar at work here. Similar...but for that, in this instance, whatever force it was whose direction he’d tacitly submitted to…was to his will as the ocean was to a drop of water. He had been caught up in the currents of a purpose greater than himself and swept along in its powerful, irresistible tide…to this time, this place and this moment.

But…why? The child, he noticed, had stopped several feet in front of him. He could tell, from the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, that the child was about to begin sobbing.

Put it on. A voice told him. Put it on…and see.

He pulled out the mask. He held it in his hands and looked into its empty visor. On either side of him, shoppers bustled by him. Lost in the wonders of Mall of Michigan, they didn’t seem to pay mind to the strange tableau of a man staring down at a superhero mask in his hands and then slowly, deliberately pulling it over his face.

One moment he was looking at the child, now crying freely. The child was looking to him now, his wide, teary eyes looking up to him plaintively.

"M-m-mister...my dad...I can't find him...I can't find...my dad...!"

Like streaks of lightning, the visions came. KnightMask threw his hands up in a futile, reflexive attempt to block them. Brutal images of the strewn, mangled bodies lying about in a crimson lake…dismembered body parts…and in the midst of the carnage…the beast stood, gorged on the human blood which dribbled down from his fangs…staining the white satin of his shirt. His red eyes gleamed with the joy of a unholy, sadistic lust. His nails were long and sharp, like the talons of a beast. And yet, most perverse of all…was the pristine, utterly human beauty of his face. The face was a sneering, defiant insult to its Maker. It was the mockery of a rebel bent on wearing the banner of the king he'd betrayed even as he waged war throughout his kingdom. The face of a monster who lacked the decency to twist his features into a demonic mask appropriate to his nature.

Then the visions were gone, and he was back in the mall. The child was standing before him now.

"Did you hear me mister? I lost my dad!"

He noticed for the first time the elongated canines, the pallor of the skin. The ever so slight point to the boy's ears.

"Mister...?"

Slowly, KnightMask nodded. Kneeling down, he offered the child his hand. The little boy eagerly took it. Together, they walked past the waterfall...towards the plexiglass walls of the mall's entrance. Outside, the blue sky of the afternoon had darkened into evening purple.

Soon, the night would fall.

Home turf advantage to "Dad."

PART 2: DADDY


"Mister, that's him! That's my dad!" the kid had exclaimed. At the time, KnightMask didn't know what he was talking about. He couldn't hear anything. He just continued to drive.

Eventually, he was able to pick it out. A distant, rhythmic beating. "Mister, daddy found us! He found us Mister! Stop the car, Mister...he's coming! He found us!"

The child's beaming expression became confused when KnightMask continued to drive on.

"Why...why aren't you stopping Mister...? Dontcha believe me...? That's daddy!"

The beating sound...actually, more like a flapping...had become closer and more distinct. It seemed to be coming from behind KnightMask's Trans Am. Behind it...and above it. He turned up the radio to blot it out. Golden Earring's 'Twilight Zone' had just entered its extended instrumental section.

Along the road, the teeming office buildings, bars and night clubs of Sparta gave way to store fronts and gas stations...to rustic homes...to farmlands...and finally to vast, open and empty fields.

The sun dwindled and died.

Dirt replaced asphalt.

A forest of twisting, leafless trees rose up around them.

The flapping became louder and closer. 'Twilight Zone' neared its climactic guitar solo and its final chorus.

Something hit the roof of his car. His driver's side door was ripped off like it was made of paper. A grip like a steel vice seized his throat and hurled him from the vehicle. He collided headfirst into a tree branch. The impact drove his consciousness out from him.

The last thing he head was the child's high, exuberant voice exclaiming, "Daddy! Daddy its you!"

PART 3: END OF THE ROAD

The kid didn't notice him approaching...and he didn't look up as he passed him by. He was wearing headphones plugged into a handheld game console. Beyond him, the field rolled up into a slight hill. From atop it, he saw the overturned cop cars. Limp, unmoving bodies of police officers were strewn about the field. And in the center of it all...was "Daddy," in the same bloodstained white satin shirt. He held the chin of a struggling police officer in his hand in a manner recalling a wine taster admiring his glass. Everything about him had the look of a man totally at leisure.

"Let me tell you a secret, Mr. Sheriff," 'Daddy' held the police officer so close to his face that they were nearly touching. "They say evil is nothing more than a bending and twisting of what is good. They say that evil has no essence of its own. And yet...I have lived a thousand years... and I have never seen angels, or faeries, or Plato's Forms. Certainly, I never saw this invisible God. I have seen mighty Mongol hordes cut down screaming villagers. Hun barbarians sack Rome...but never have I seen the likes of a Beowulf or an Arthur. Evil is not a perversion of the good. What you mortals refer to as evil...is simply reality cleared of the fog of myth and folklore. Ah! You mortals and your myths...how I do tire of them! And every age...the same ones, again and again..."

The sheriff looked beyond the monster that held him. Irked that his victim seemed to have been distracted from his speech, 'Daddy' cast a glance over his shoulder, to see KnightMask, silhouetted against the moon, his visor gleaming under its rays. In his hand he held a double-ended wooden stake.

"Wonderful," 'Daddy' hissed, as he licked his lips. "I do so enjoy playing with my prey."

Jumping the hill in one leap, his nails extended into talons, striking with such fluidity and quickness that KnightMask barely raised his forearm to take the slash instead of his chest. No sooner had wound opened than he'd struck with that serpentine speed again, tearing the flesh from his prey's rib.

The next cut opened a gash on the prey's shoulder; then a nick across his chest. He lashed out again, his claws grazing KnightMask's stomach.

And then the monster missed.

It didn't bother him at first. Sometimes the flies evade the swatting hand. After a moment of being unable to connect with his target, it became a little irksome. And then, in between his misses, he found himself being struck by his prey's fists--the impact of which he hardly felt--and cut by his twirling, double-ended stake. That...he did feel.

Little by little, the monster found himself wading ever further out into waters deep and unfamiliar.

He had experienced much over his lifetime. He'd achieved fluency in countless languages, read the lost works of Lucretius, debated Euclid...heard Homer recite the Iliad and Odyssey firsthand. He'd watched nations emerge and watched them crumble away.

Most of all, he'd been worshiped as a god.

He never learned, in all of his years, what to do when someone figured out his timing. He never learned how to vary his attacks...or how to set them up. His mind had not cultivated the resolve necessary to first weather, then beat back an opponent that was getting his better. Century after century preying on victims too overwhelmed with fear and awe to defend themselves had only served to entrench poor combat habits. He never imagined it would be necessary; does one need training to stamp out ants...? A god didn't need to know how to fight.

Until now, that is.

The monster cut loose with a flurry of slashes, storming forward as he clawed. All had to do was land one good hit. One good hit and he could tear out the mortals entrails and feast on the impertinent fool's blood. He cut, swiped, teared...and finally realized that he was striking out at empty air. He wheeled around to see his masked adversary several feet behind him. The moonlight glinted off the golden framing of his red visor and something else...a chain that hung from his necklace...was it...a cross?

A flick of the masked man's wrist and the double-ended stake was whirling through the air, directly at his chest. His confidence began to return to him. With ease, he plucked the projectile out of the air.

"You little fool...you just threw away your weapon...and with it--" he was about to say, "Your chances" when KnightMask spanned the distance between them with a flying scissor take-down. In the XWF ring, he utilized the move to bring his opponents to the canvas. Now, he wielded the technique with its original, ancient and brutal intentions. The intentions of the knight and samurai who long ago had utilized it on the battlefield.

His front and back legs caught the monster's legs between them. They cut simultaneously, in opposite directions.

"M-m-my legs! You...you savage! You've broken my legs!" the monster screamed as he writhed on the ground. KnightMask retrieved the stake and lifted it above his head. He heard behind him the click of a revolver.

"You saved my life, man...but I can't just let you impale someone right in front of me..." the sheriff stammered from behind KnightMask. "He's helpless, man. He's beaten. We're gonna take him in...we'll read him his rights. You saved my life...don't make me--"

KnightMask brought the stake down, driving it into the monster's heart with all the strength he could muster. He was already walking away when "Daddy" began his final death convulsions. He hoped that there would be a moment of clarity in the monster's dying breaths...and with it, perhaps salvation. But he wasn't going to stick around to find out. The other possibility...was something he didn't have the stomach to see.

He didn't want to watch an age-old monster in his death throes descend into Eternal Fire. Heck, his head was still spinning from that tree he'd been thrown against like a human fastball. All he wanted to right now was go back to his room at Slam Master's gym...and collapse onto his bed.

"B-b-black knight...," he heard the ageless voice address him. KnightMask stopped midway up the hill. Ageless, but broken. Full of fear.

"Black knight...may I...presume upon your chivalry...a..f-f-favor?"

He put his hands on his hips and took in a sigh. The cup had passed to him. He turned around. His legs ached with each step as he came down to kneel beside the dying man. Suddenly, the face which had seemed obscene in its beauty, looked horribly mutilated. The ivory fangs...the unwrinkled, smooth skin...suddenly became cruel disfigurements. The red fire which burned inside the man's eyes was flickering out.

"A-a-another wrestler...told me....long ago...that...the best way to order a man's soul was after the manner they would order their ideal Republic...but...that such perfection...it...could only be found...in the stars..."

KnightMask held the dying man's head up, so that he might look upon the constellations. He whispered to KnightMask for a little while. Eventually, his coughs became more frequent than his words, which grew softer and slower. The fire went out in his eyes.

Something about what he'd said struck a cord with KnightMask. Plato...had been a wrestler. A wrestler who speculated that the ideal society was a celestial one. It..it couldn't be, could it...? Did he actually say that he'd..."told" him...?

At once, KnightMask felt very, very young. His thirty two years on Earth seemed to him a speck of sand in a beach that stretched on and on.

"Stop! You're under arrest!" the sheriff called after him. KnightMask walked up the hill. "I said halt! I will...I..."

When he reached the top of the hill, the sheriff called after him, "Hey! You...you know where I could scare up some garlic cloves...?" KnightMask shrugged his shoulders.

EPILOGUE:

Little Azzo had thrown himself into his training.

Wrestling was his first sport and he certainly had a lot learn. It was a big adjustment, going from a life full of action figures, video games and no friends your age...into the grind of perhaps the most difficult of all the sports.

Getting a grasp of move mechanics and leverage was proving no easy task. Even harder to come by, was the understanding that even when you did everything technically correct, you still had to fight with all your strength and all your soul to make it work. The notion of having to fight for something was alien to Azzo.

Coordination, balance...timing...all of those were almost comically lacking.

If not for his natural strength and speed, the coaches at Slam Master's might have decided it was a hopeless endeavor. Those offset his faults just enough to give them a sense that perhaps, with enough work, the little boy might eventually be molded into a wrestler.

That...and something else. There was a doggedness in the way he approached practice. There seemed to be no question of quitting in the little boy's brain. It was a sense of resolve that was uncommon, almost unheard of in a child of his age.

KnightMask did not teach the children's classes at Slam Master's gym, but he seemed to always be present when Azzo was training. He watched the boy closely and seemed to almost dote on him. Whenever the masked grappler was present, the coaches noticed, Azzo seemed to find new reserves of will-power to fuel his efforts.

They assumed that the little boy must really look up to the XWF wrestler. And that wasn't entirely wrong. In fact, Azzo did look up to KnightMask. And he was coming to like him more and more.

But that still didn't change his mind about their bargain.

KnightMask had killed his Daddy. And he'd promised Azzo...that if he let KnightMask teach him, he would train Azzo to be someone tough enough to avenge his Daddy.

Strong enough to fight Mr. KnightMask. Fight him and kill him. For Daddy.

KnightMask hoped...and prayed...every night...that the sport of wrestling...that had transformed so many lives...that had turned juvenile delinquents and criminals into honorable and upright champions...could do the same for a little boy with no father...and so much hunger.