The song of the storm reached an orchestral crescendo, then suddenly ceased as the moon broke through the clouds—casting bright, cool light on the valley below. A curtain of rain parted, revealing the misty landscape like the beginning of a play at a grand, natural theater. The “stage” was an open glade the size of two football fields, and the miniature mesa my small cave cut into served as a perfect sandstone mezzanine. By the time I equipped my binoculars and crawled into a prone position, the eye of the storm had passed over the forest for a half mile around. A quiet calm replaced the previous roar of the wind and rain.

  The hammering of my anxious heart, and the pulsing blood in my skull was the only audible sound. My body was experiencing a continuous, low level panic attack that would not go away until I drank alcohol. Even so, once I raised the binoculars to my eyes, everything but the mythical scene before me was completely forgotten.

  The world seemed frozen in time; even the bizarre beings in the field below me were absolutely still. At first I thought they might be statues or mannequins that someone had dragged out here for some stupid reason.

  Nope. I’ve seen one of those people before… That creepy guy on the trail was real?

  At least thirteen small humanoids were gathered there. All were wearing matching ponchos and hoods made from woven leaves. The dark skinned men stood equidistant from each other in a circular formation, facing towards the center.

  Most held long poles, and some of them were armed with curved, kukri-style blades. The weapons would have been like a machete to a normal person, but resembled shortswords in the hands of these men. Something about them terrified me. I scooted backwards several feet deeper into the cave to prevent myself from being seen. I scraped my arm on a bottle cap that some littering loser left up there, but I managed to keep silent and did not yell from the pain.

  “Fuuuuck…” I cursed to myself; not because of my arm, but because of the thing in the center of the circle that I had finally gotten a good, steady look at. I mistook it for a sandstone boulder at first.

  The jungle pygmies had encircled a gigantic, sand-colored wolf. The thing was as long as a fucking Chevy Suburban, and almost twice as tall. The tiny stature of the people that surrounded it only magnified the wolf’s apparent size.

  Time seemed to resume once more as the wolf began to stalk back and forth as the little men and massive beast regarded one another. That sight alone would have become a recurring theme in my nightmares, but then the jaguars arrived.

  Five black jaguars, which are definitely NOT indigenous to this area filtered out from the trees and filled in some of the gaps between the men.

  What the fuck?

  After that, mounted riders took up position behind the jaguars. They were seated on the backs of …coyotes?

  I shit you not! The men were riding on fucking coyotes for sure. I’ve seen so many coyotes in my life that I would never mistake one, but these were unusually large, and there was something wrong with them. “Ripped” is the only way I could describe it. The animals looked like they were one cycle of steroids away from a heart attack.

  The hunters began to creep closer to the wolf, and it was then that I noticed there were even more men up in the trees surrounding the clearing! They pointed their long poles at the wolf while holding the opposite end to their mouths.

  Those poles must be blowguns… I thought.

  I directed my binoculars back at the wolf. The colossal canine was not in very good shape at all. From the way it moved, the beast looked exhausted and hurt. Several darts with crimson downy feathers on their tails protruded from the wolf's side and back. It appeared to be wearing a kind of harness or vest, and something resembling a necklace with a pouch hanging from it dangled from the animals neck.

  Was the fucking thing wearing clothes? It was hard to see.

  Then, the wolf STOOD UP ON ITS HIND LEGS, and pulled some of the darts out with its front paws and teeth. Believing this to be an opportunity, the frog-like hunters advanced on the wolf. Three from the front, and several from behind.

  In an instant, the wolf dropped back to all fours and spun 180 degrees, bringing its jaws down on the closest member of the coyote cavalry closing in behind it. In a single bite, it sheared both the man and animal it was riding clean in half. As it turned, the wolfs tail simultaneously struck the blade wielding trio leaping to stab it in the back. I heard bones crack as the tail blow sent each one of them flying out of the clearing like a home run hit.

  The hunters in the trees responded by peppering the wolf with a volley of darts from their blowguns. The animal winced in pain, turned its massive head towards the sky, and howled. As it did, they sky erupted as multiple forks of lightning miraculously descended on the clearing all at once, hitting each one of the strange tribal warriors at the same time.

  The snipers were blasted from the trees, and crumpled in a charred heap on the ground as they burned with a strange golden fire. The swordsmen, cavalry, and jaguars just exploded. It reminded me of the time I left a whole chicken in the microwave for too long. Their abdomens popped and their organs shot out, creating a ten foot trail of gore in whatever direction they faced when the bolts hit them. The wolf sat down on its haunches, but did not lower its head. The animal now occupied the center of a gruesome mandala of blood and gore as it placidly stared at the moon.

  It was pretty bright out here… Too bright, even for a full moon night. I pointed my binoculars straight up at the moon. At least it must have been the moon, but the moon was only the pupil inside of a terrifying eye that stared down at the wolf from space. The iris of the eye seemed to flow between every color all at once, and had the ethereal qualities of an aurora. It was very hard to tell where the eye ended and the hallucinations that filled my peripheral vision began. It would have been beautiful, if the emotion that I could feel behind the eye was not clearly one of judgment and extreme wrath. Every star in the sky transformed into the pupil of an angry, accusing eye as well.

  I’m fucking losing it. They’re going to 5150 my ass after this for sure… again.

  I immediately scrambled to the back wall of the cave and trained my binoculars on the wolf instead.

  “I’ve gone insane. There is no way any of this bullshit can be real.” I whispered to myself.

  I spoke too way soon. The night was briefly transformed into day as a small meteorite fell from the heavens, impacting the ground some distance away from the wolf. It sent a tremor through my cave which shook small pieces of stone free from the ceiling. Before the dust had even settled, my ears were raped by a psychotic voice:

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  “YOUUUUU!!! HOW DARE YOU!? YOUR ENTIRE LINE WILL BLEED FOR THIS! I’LL KILL YOU I’LL KILL YOU I’LL KILL YOU! I’M. GOING. TO. KILLL. YOUU! KAEEEEE KAAAAA TOUUUU ZEHHNNNNN!!”

  On the lip of the small crater stood what appeared to be a fifteen-year old girl, (or a very girly boy) wearing robes of white. They had fucking angel wings sprouting from their back, which quickly turned to ash and blew away as the being screamed in pain! The lamentation was so loud that I became deaf for the next handful of minutes as the newcomer and the wolf began their duel.

  The “angel” flung itself at the wolf. A longsword wreathed in fire materialized in its hand as it aimed to behead the beast, but the wolf broke the sword between its fangs and pushed the screaming thing away before the massive creature TRANSFORMED INTO A MAN!

  He had a wild mane of half white, half sand colored hair, light skin, and a long wispy goatee that extended all the way to his chest. He looked old, but his physique was like a Greek god. His robes were decorated in geometric patterns of green, gold, orange, and black—tailored in a fashion that looked vaguely Chinese.

  I could distinguish little more, as the combatants moved much too fast for my binoculars to track. I lowered them and observed the clearing as a whole. The lightning was continuous now, and covered the valley in a strobe like effect that illuminated the battlefield like flash photography at a boxing match. I still couldn’t hear anything besides tinnitus, and the scene unfolded before me like a psychedelic silent movie.

  For five whole minutes, a fantastic battle that I could barely see took place in the clearing and the air above me. The ground was getting torn up, and the crater the “angel” created upon its arrival became smoothed over amid the destruction. Sand and pebbles continued to rain down on me, and I worried that the roof of my shelter might collapse.

  I could feel the exchanges, and saw beams and flashes of different colored lights all around. When the two blur’s met, it felt like a pair of semi trucks were colliding head on at full speed.

  When it seemed as if the battle would drift away from the clearing, the wolf man would grab the angel and pitch its small body back towards the center of the ring of trees. At first the wolf who became a man seemed to have a clear upper hand, but I could tell that he was slowing down. The angel continued to scream like a lunatic, pretty much the entire time. I covered my ears with my hands.

  After a final flurry of hits that felt like an avalanche, the wolf-man was floating fifty feet off of the ground, gripping the angel by the throat. I could smell ozone in the air as static electricity made my hair begin to stand on end. Then, a massive lance of golden lightning pierced the angel from heels to crown, and it fell to the Earth in a smoking heap.

  The old man lowered gently to the earth, and was cautiously approaching the body of the angel when he doubled over and puked on the ground. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and seemed to begin mustering energy for a final blow on the childish freak, when yet another scary motherfucker arrived on the scene!

  It was a normal sized person, clad in all black. Their face was covered by something resembling a ski mask. Very ninja-like. They were riding on a fucking sword as if it were a hoverboard from Back to the Future, and flew straight towards the flank of the old man with a long spear in hand.

  The old man looked like shit; his robes were torn, and streaks of blood could be seen everywhere on his exposed skin. The sword-surfing spearman was about to plunge his weapon into the old wolf-man’s back, when a fucking samurai with bird wings appeared out of thin air—deflecting the attack and severing the spearhead from its shaft.

  The mysterious assailant made no second attempt on the wolf-man’s life, and swiftly flew away once his weapon was sundered.

  It looked as if the winged samurai would give chase, but the old man must have said something, and he stopped—turning his attention to the unconscious angel instead.

  The samurai fought with two long daggers, and was about to slay the angel when the old man spoke a second time and stopped him once again. They argued for a few moments, but then the samurai reluctantly handed one of his daggers to the old man. Then, the samurai pulled the charred body of the angel to its feet, held its arms firmly behind their back, and placed his remaining knife at the strange beings throat.

  I was sure the angel woke up after that, because I was just starting to get my hearing back when it started screeching obscenities again. The old man casually drove the large knife into its heart, and the valley was mercifully silent once more.

  The sky cleared almost instantly, and the full moon shone brightly on the whole forest. The eye around the moon was gone, and for the first time tonight, the light that shone from it felt normal and mundane. Thankfully, nothing else strange fell from outer space. It did smell like smoke though.

  Was there a campfire nearby?

  After the “angel” died, a red glowing rune of some kind appeared above the old mans head before slowly fading away. Upon seeing the rune, wolf-man looked relieved, while the samurai was somewhat disturbed by the sight.

  More words were exchanged, and the samurai hoisted the small corpse up by the ankles. The old man produced an odd metal container with a flash of white light, then slit the bodies throat and began to drain its blood into the curious vessel. The corpse dissolved into white ash long before the container became full. The old man puked on the ground again, sighed, and covered the pot of blood with a matching metal lid. With another flash of light, the object disappeared, and the two well-acquainted monsters were finally alone.

  Then they began to argue; not loud enough to damage my ears again, but my hearing was finally returning, and I was starting to discern something that sounded like English.

  There was another flash of light, and the body of a large bird appeared on the ground between the two of them.

  Is that an owl?

  The old man froze for a few moments when he saw the body, and then the two began to argue again. Unfortunately, my ringing ears were only able to catch the very end of the conversation.

  “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you…” said the old wolf that became a man.

  Then he raised a palm towards the samurai and said:

  “BANISHMENT!”

  “Wait! No! Raella is here and-!!“ said the samurai, before he disappeared with a sucking sound, followed by a pop.

  Alone for the first time since I had started watching him, the old man’s shoulders slumped and he threw up again. He transformed back into an enormous wolf and laid down on his side, panting heavily. I found that my own breathing was much the same. His robes didn’t rip when he increased in size or anything—they just sort of disappeared like the blood jar and samurai did.

  Fucking. weird.

  I was in a state of shock, but with the battle over I gathered my wits enough to remember I had that bottle of Japanese whiskey on me. The desire to remain perfectly still and silent warred with my need to have a drink.

  My wiser side would tell me to wait until the terrifying, angel blood draining, kung-fu werewolf either left the area, or died. But my wiser side was nowhere near here. That guy didn’t even leave the house with me this evening. Right now, I felt the same way that wolf looked: totally fucked up.

  I took a fistful of my hair in both hands and was shaking my head back and forth as I agonized over this decision when I heard a voice coming from inside my own head.

  It was not my wiser side. It was something else.

  “Have you got any tobacco?” said the voice.

  I looked around the cave. Nobody was there.

  Were auditory hallucinations starting now, too? I’ve never really had those before.

  I reached for my backpack where the whiskey was stored and began to unzip it.

  “Human in the cave, do you have any tobacco?”

  The voice came louder this time. I could hear it echoing in the stillness of the valley. It was not inside my head. I looked back towards the clearing and could see that the wolf was sitting up now. IT WAS LOOKING RIGHT AT ME!

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh fucking shit I’m sooooo dead.

  “Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you. Please come down here and speak with me.”