Predator and Prey

Editorial Note: this was written for

Scoot

‘s prompt: write about the Eldritch Mole.

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It was dark in the city, a bit too dark even for the Owl Bandit’s liking. His pickings hadn’t been good that night. He’d hit up two parties and a subway car, but he’d been chased out of the latter by the timely intervention of one of the city’s ever-vigilant caped protectors. The Owl Bandit had fled so fast he hadn’t even registered which one it was.

Now he sat on top of a building, alone, staring down at the jumbled pile of credit cards, cash, and assorted jewelry bits he’d collected. There didn’t look to be a really valuable piece in the bunch. “What am I doing with my life?” he mused sadly.

He’d wanted to do better. That was the point of the speeches, right? Every monologue he tried to give, he railed against the evils of Society, the World, the System, and how Only He, the Owl Bandit, could Solve It All with his Amazing Plan. The plan, the Owl Bandit had to admit to himself, wasn’t looking so good just now.

Also, he wasn’t feeling so good these days himself. He didn’t really have any superpowers, just the owl uniform and some gadgets he’d stolen over the years. He wasn’t getting any younger either. Every night when he came home and took off the wings now, he found his arms and upper back aching from the strain. He’d had more than a few near-misses lately. Sooner or later he’d get in a fight he couldn’t escape from, and then what?

He packed up his loot and was about to fly home when he heard a sudden odd sound in the distance, a weird, wild squeaking that echoed all around him. “What in the world?” the Owl Bandit said. He tried to sense the sound’s direction, and then, on his left and a block away, an old warehouse suddenly crumpled up and collapsed.

His survival instincts screamed at him to run, and usually he listened. But this night, something he couldn’t explain drew him closer. The squeaking sound grew louder, deepening. As he approached the ruin, he saw scattered figures on the ground, fallen on their faces. They were wearing odd robes, but he never had the chance to find out what that meant as the warehouse ruin suddenly collapsed in dust and from it emerged a gigantic star-nosed mole, its tentacled nose sniffing at the air, its clawed paws tearing at the ground.

“Holy-” the Owl Bandit screamed. Out of sheer panic he unleashed the first thing that came to mind; two flare rockets he kept in the wings for emergencies. One rocket went wild and exploded in air, sending up a shower of red sparks but otherwise doing no real damage. The other, however, hit dead-on, right smack in the middle of the eldritch mole’s unholy star-nosed snout.

It let out a shriek of pain beyond reason that would give the Owl Bandit nightmares for weeks. Then the monster reeled back and plunged into the earth, sinking into the darkness from which it came. Within seconds it had gone. All that remained was a wrecked building, a dozen or so dazed and upset cultists, and the Owl Bandit, who was extremely surprised to find out that he had just won a battle. He’d never done that.

“Huh,” he said. Then, after a long moment in which he tried to calm his racing heartbeat, “Huh.”

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