Huns
Or, The Monsters Riding Down Main Street
A quick note before we begin the story. “Huns” is the first of many modern fairy tales or fantastic stories that started out as bedtime entertainment for my youngest son. As I committed them to paper and polished the rough edges, most of them took on a more mature tone, hence the “Fairy Tales for Grownups” label. That said, it’s a bit of a misnomer, since compared my other writing, I believe the majority of the stories are appropriate for all ages. A few of them have been published in other places, but this one is brand new, and one of my personal favorites.
The Huns raided the small town at dusk.
Such a thing had happened many times in the course of history, but what made this incident unusual was that the Huns had been extinct for over a thousand years. This did not prove to be an obstacle for them, however, and the town in their path was completely unprepared for an attack. It had no walls or battlements, no towers, sentries, or moats.
It had a gas station and a diner. The people there worried about unkempt lawns bringing down property values and the cost of milk. They had no plan for ruthless marauders on horseback with gnarled faces and rusty swords, so they did what any reasonable people would do— they hid and kept quiet while the invaders wrecked the town and took what they wanted.
The whole episode was over as fast as it began. The Huns appeared like a bolt of lightning from the horizon and returned to it just as quickly. The townspeople cautiously reemerged from their hiding places and stared at each other in confusion.
“What did they take?” someone asked.
Everyone did a quick survey and came back with the same stunned answer. “Blankets. They took all our blankets.”
A puzzled young boy tugged on his grandmother’s sleeve, but the old woman just laughed. “They’re trying to take our sense of security,” she said. Then she pulled the boy closer and gave him a reassuring hug.
The police were called. Newspapers and TV stations were contacted. Someone even put in a call to the governor. No one believed the reports, despite the obvious damage to the town. Nobody was coming to their rescue, and the Huns returned the following night.
This time they loaded their burlap sacks with every book in town. The little boy, who lost an especially beloved edition of fairy tales in the raid, asked his grandmother why they would take his stories. After all, the Huns did not strike him as the reading type. “They’re trying to make us stupid,” she told him. The boy frowned, but she sent him back to bed with a story she made up on her own.
On the third night, the Huns came for their food. Screaming and hollering, they raided kitchens and pantries while the terrified townspeople hid in their basements. The boy peeked through a window and saw a Hun dragging a refrigerator down the street with a lasso. His grandmother shook her head. “They’re trying to make us weak and easy to push around,” she said, reaching into her pocket and handing the boy a cookie she had hidden away.
The panicked townspeople were fed up. Well, not literally— they had no food. But you get the gist. If no one else would help them, they would have to band together and help themselves. A town meeting was called, and strategies were discussed. Some people were all for picking up and moving the town somewhere else, but a different idea was agreed upon. They would attempt to bribe the Huns to leave them alone.
At dusk, every person in town left their money and valuables in a pile at the city limits. The Huns did not take the bait. Instead of claiming the money, they spread it unevenly around the town. Riches were left on some doorsteps, while others remained bare. The little boy could not see any pattern in their dispersal, but his grandmother was impressed. “Clever,” she said. “They’re making it look like some of us have been helping them all along. They’re trying to turn us against each other.”
The Huns were not unsuccessful. Neighbors accused each other of subterfuge. Fistfights broke out on Main Street, followed by a lot of name-calling. A few people hit their breaking point and left town. The others hunkered down and waited for the Huns to return. They came back that night for their fifth and strangest raid. They took every toaster in town. Not even the boy’s grandmother had an explanation for that one.
The sixth attack claimed all the town’s pens and pencils, notebooks and computers, phones and tablets. This loss hit everyone harder than the toasters. Some of the people went numb and nearly catatonic. The boy’s grandmother shook her head. “They’re trying to take our voices,” she said. The boy was upset over the loss of his sketch pad, so she sang to him until he fell asleep.
The seventh night was by far the worst. By now, the townspeople were too dazed to put up any kind of a fight, and Huns easily took the one item that mattered most for each person— a leather jacket, an autographed baseball, a gold watch, a little girl’s dancing shoes. The boy and his grandmother lost the same thing— a framed portrait of the boy’s long-lost mother. Like much of the town, the boy was inconsolable, but his grandmother was more resolute. She wiped away the boy’s tears. “Do you remember what she looked like?” she asked. “Do you remember what she sounded like when she laughed?”
The boy hesitated for a moment as memories flooded his mind, and gradually nodded. His grandmother smiled. “Then they can’t really take her away, can they?”
The boy considered this and agreed, but he was still troubled. “What will they try to take next?” he asked.
“Whatever we let them,” she said.
She sat down in the rocking chair by the window and gestured for the boy to join her. He crawled into her arms and nestled against her. “How do we stop them from coming back?” he asked.
“We don’t,” she said. The boy shot her an uneasy look, and she gently wiped a strand of hair from his face. “The Huns will always come from one direction or another,” she told him. “The best we can do is hold on tight to what matters most.”
The boy wrapped his arms around the old woman’s neck and the two of them held each other and gazed out at the night’s horizon, full of uncertainty and twinkling stars, defiantly awaiting whatever calamity would come next.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Pulp. I can’t explain why, but the idea of a band of Huns riding straight out of the fourth century and into a modern Midwest small town has been with me for a long time. I even wrote an entire scrapped novel centered around the premise, along with a picture book and numerous short story versions, but I think it works best as a fairy tale. I won’t close the door on revisiting it in the future though. Maybe I’ll take another crack at a novel, or, if I ever get hired to join the Doctor Who writers’ room, some version of this will be my first pitch. Does anyone out there work for the BBC?
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