By Ed Staskus

   Looking down at the Great Lakes Goo Goo Godzilla wondered what they were and where he was. He had flown past a whopping big one and could see four more, each one smaller than the one before. The two he was over were like kidneys facing each other and the one ahead reminded him of home. It was shaped like Japan. He swooped lower to get a better look.

   When he saw the 500-foot-tall cooling towers of the Perry Nuclear Generating Station, his eyes got wide, and he dove straight for them. One of them was billowing steam, but the other one looked quiet. He knew exactly what they were. He didn’t like their looks. The Godzilla’s had a love hate hookup with fission.

   Oliver knew what they were, too. He lived nearby. He didn’t pay them much mind, though. As long as the lights worked he was happy.

   Goo Goo couldn’t fly, not exactly, but he could launch himself like a rocket with his atomic breath. Once he was up and away, he was able to glide the jet stream for hours, adjusting his course with bursts of red-hot. His grandfather had taught him.

   “It was fifty years ago when I was battling Hedorah that I first flew,” Godzilla said. “I was beating him into mashed potatoes with my tail but then he morphed into a flying saucer and escaped. I was helpless but wouldn’t give up. I ran as fast as I could, but he just got farther and farther away. At the last minute I got a brainstorm and took off using my atomic breath. I caught him, wrestled him down to the ground, and knocked him for a loop.  When I was done, I blasted off again and went home.”

   “Can you teach me?” Goo Goo asked.

   “I will, but don’t tell your grandmother,” Godzilla whispered. “She thinks flying is dangerous.”

   “What about Mothra and Rodan?” Goo Goo said. “They will always have the upper hand if you don’t go airborne. There’s King Ghidorra, too, he never stops giving you fits.”

   “I know, I know,” Godzilla said, the memory getting on his nerves. “Let’s just keep the flying to ourselves, OK?”

   “OK pops.”

   When Oliver heard the emergency siren coming from the direction of Lake Erie, he ran to the TV and turned it on. He suspected Goo Goo Godzilla was roaming around and feared the worst. Sure enough, it was the boy mountain circling the power plant on the lakeshore. He ran upstairs where his mother was brushing her teeth.

   “Mom, can I borrow your cellphone?”

   “Of course,” she said, spitting out Colgate and a mouthful of water. “What is that sound out there?”

   Oliver ran downstairs without answering and called school. He begged off his first-grade class. The lesson that day was going to be about the difference between living and non-living things. He didn’t have any trouble with that kind of mental grasp of things.

   “Do the best you can,” the vice-principal said. “We are all counting on you. Oh, and tell your mother we won’t need a note this time.”

   Oliver was the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. Even though he was only six years old he had a sixth sense about monsters. He knew when they were under his bed. He knew when they were in the basement. He knew when they were lurking in the woods.

   “Emma, can you skip school today?” he asked his older sister.

   “You bet I can!”

   “It might get dangerous.”

    I’m right behind you,” she said.

    They tossed monster hunting gear in their backpacks, strapped them on, and jumped on their pedal power go karts. Oliver’s was built for business while Emma’s was raked for style. They pedaled alongside Lane Rd, through front yards and backyards, through crop fields and nurseries, past Lane Grove and Birchfield Meadows, and at North Ridge Rd. stopped at the Dairy Queen for ice cream. Pressed for time, they had to lick down their cones on the go, zipping under Rt. 20 to Lake Erie, where they took a right and raced to the nuclear plant.

   They followed the shoreline past the bluffs. Goo Goo was stomping around the cooling towers, unleashing bursts of fury. They saw him plain as day. Police cars were everywhere, but what could they do? Goo Goo’s skin was a kind of battle armor that bullets and bombs bounced off of.

   When the police chief saw Oliver coming, he waved for him to hurry.

   “What’s your plan of attack?” he asked.

   “All Godzilla’s have two brains, one in their head and one down their back where the tail starts,” Oliver said. “I’m going to climb up his tail and go after his second brain.”

   “That sounds good. We’ll swing around to the front of him and try to distract him.”

   Oliver and Emma scrambled behind Goo Goo, who was snorting at the policemen. Oliver stopped at the tip of his tail and started climbing up. When he reached the spot where Goo Goo’s second brain was, Emma tossed a small ballpeen hammer up to him. Oliver peeled back the scales that covered the brain and started banging out a message with the hammer in Morse code.

   All monsters know Morse code, although they never tell anybody who isn’t a monster. Since most of them don’t know how to talk, only roar growl and holler, the code was their way of talking to each other. The Godzilla’s had their own secret language, but they knew Morse code, as well.

   “Stop messing with those reactors.” Oliver tapped. “That’s an order. Scram!”

   Goo Goo stopped dead in his tracks. He whirled in all directions, almost sending Oliver flying, looking for the buttinsky trying to be the boss of him. Where was he? Was it an invisible monster? That could be real trouble. Maybe he had better fly back to Japan and tell his grandfather about this. He would know what to do.

   Before leaving he bellowed and tail-thumped a police car. Oliver had already scrambled off Goo Goo. He and Emma dashed a safe distance away while the junior lizard dinosaur lifted up into the sky with a mighty roar. Before they knew it, he was gone.

   The police chief thanked Oliver and clapped him on the back, almost sending him sprawling. “You saved the day. Whatever you did took care of that stinkweed. We owe you a debt of gratitude.”

   “C’mon bud, we better beat it back home, otherwise we’ll be late for dinner,” Emma said.

   “All right,” Oliver said, and they slid into their go karts and in a split second left the power plant behind them.

   By that time Goo Goo was far to the west, gliding over Sandusky, where he spied a Laser Wash car wash. He had flown almost ten thousand miles and hadn’t taken a bath in days. He was sure lasers would clean him up like nobody’s business. But when he landed, he discovered there were no lasers, just water. It was a scam! He was vexed and stamped his feet. When he noticed an American Pride car wash across the street, he liked what he saw. He lay down at the entrance of it, exhaled getting skinny like a snake, tucked in this legs and arms and let the roller conveyor pull him. The water was cold, so he heated it up with a short blast of hot fire. When he came out the other end he felt like a new man and zoomed away.

   Oliver and Emma didn’t stop for anything on their way home and walked in through the back patio door just as their mother was setting the table. Their father was playing his new old-school Legend electric piano in the living room.

   “Ollie, Emmie, dinner’s almost ready,” their mother said looking at them over her shoulder. The kitchen was warm and smelled wonderful. “Make sure you wash up, you’re both dirty as can be. Where have you been and what have you been doing?”

Ed Staskus posts feature stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

   The Minerva Monster should have stayed in Minerva, Ohio, but he didn’t. When he didn’t, he got tangled up with Oliver the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. That was his second fateful step. His last step was dismissing Oliver as just another six-year-old. He should have punted and kept an eye out.

   The monster’s name was Minnie and since he was always on the prowl for grub, and since he never had cash or a credit card, he was known as Minnie the Moocher even though he was willing to play his saxophone for his supper.

   The first time Oliver saw the creature in the forest behind his house he was practicing scales. He was wearing a blue bandana wrapped around his head and dark sunglasses. He was as naked as the day he was born.

   When Minnie was done practicing, he burst into “Take the A Train.” He played the Dave Brubeck Quartet version. He played it for his own satisfaction.

   “Hurry, get on, now it’s coming, listen to those rails a-thrumming, all aboard, get on the A train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill.”

   When he was finished and Oliver started clapping, Minnie almost jumped out of his furriness. He thought he was alone. He couldn’t see around the oak tree behind which Oliver was standing. When he roared Oliver didn’t jump out of his skin.

   Minnie had been an outdoorsman for a long time, but the first time anybody ever caught sight of him was in Minerva more than forty years earlier. Herbert Cayton had dug a garbage pit behind his house. Everything went into it, including food scraps. When Minnie went rummaging in it the farm dogs went berserk, barking up a storm. Herbie and his mother Evelyn went to the pit to investigate. They got the surprise of their life.

   “It just stood there. It didn’t move, but I almost broke my neck running back down the hill,” Evelyn said.

   “What do you want?” Minnie bellowed at Oliver, who came out from behind the tree. When he saw who it was, Minnie almost laughed. It was a pipsqueak of a boy. He stood up on his hind legs making himself bigger and roared again even louder. He was roaring at the wrong boy.

   When Dave White ran into the creature behind his Paris Township home near Minerva, and Minnie roared at him, he couldn’t lock himself in his house fast enough.

   “It’s a blood chilling sound,” he said. “A curdling sound. It will scare the hell out of you.”

   Oliver had been roared at by three-hundred-foot-tall monsters. A hairy ten-footer who scavenged garbage dumps wasn’t going to faze him. He strolled back home whistling the A Train song.

   Back in Minerva when Deputy Sheriff Jim Shannon investigated a complaint about Minnie, he thought the simple explanation had to be food.

   “Those folks heard something at the kitchen window, kind of clawing and pawing. I don’t think the creature, whatever the hell it was, was trying to get in as much as it was saying, ‘Hey, feed me!’”

   The lawman hit it on the nose. Minnie the Moocher was always on the make for a ten-course meal. He could eat anything anywhere anytime.

   Every time somebody spotted Minnie the papers radio TV made a big stink about it. Newspapermen and photographers started showing up in Minerva. They were followed by curiosity seekers and hunters. The orange vested hunters came armed with Bowie knives, handguns, shotguns, and rifles. Most of them had cases of beer in coolers in their pick-up trucks. When they started taking potshots at him was when he decided to move on. He was sick and tired of being the bad guy. He hit the open road. 

   “It was moving pretty good on two legs, pumping its arms like a track star. I got back in the car, rolled up the windows and locked the door,” said Herbert Burke, parked on the side of a country road.

   When Minnie got to Lake County, he thought he had stumbled into paradise. There were farmers markets galore to steal food from and plenty of forest land to hide in. He broke into the Mentor, Painesville, and Willoughby markets. Before long the cops got plenty concerned about it. 911 was ringing off the hook.

   The Lake County Visitors Bureau got concerned about it, too. Minnie had been spotted at campgrounds gleaning. He had been spotted at beaches scavenging and working on his tan, even though he was hairy as could be. He had been spotted in gardens foraging. Travelers and tourists were avoiding Lake County like the plague. The bureau knocked on Oliver’s door.

   “i saw him a few weeks ago,” Oliver told them. “He plays a mean saxophone. He wasn’t friendly, but he wasn’t unfriendly either.”

   “He’s scaring the tourists to death. Something has to be done,” they said.

   Oliver and Emma put on their thinking caps. Even though Minnie wasn’t messing with people, people saw him as a menace. Even though he was Charlie Parker-like on the sax, nobody was coming to his shows. Every time he showed himself everybody ran the other way.

   “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Emma said.

    ‘What does that mean?” Oliver asked.

   “I don’t know but grownups say it all the time, and since they’re in charge, it must mean something. Anyway, I think it means we have to find him a girlfriend who will become his wife, who will cook three square meals a day for him, and who will keep him at home.”

   “You might be on to something,” Oliver said.

   “Where have you been,” Emma asked. She had long thought she was the brains behind Oliver’s monster hunting. He did the hunting, and she did the thinking.

   “What does that mean?”

   “Oh, never mind,” she said.

   They borrowed their mom’s laptop and found a dating service for Bigfeet. It was hard to tell who might be right for Minnie. All the Bigfeet girls looked the same, all of them hairy and about eight feet tall. When they found Bonnie the Bigfoot, who lived in the woods between Sudbury, Ontario, and the Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Provincial Park, both of them perked up.

   “Bingo,” Emma said.

   “How do we get him there?”

   “Maybe Uncle Ed will drive him there. He’s from Sudbury.”

   “Good idea,” Oliver said.

   “What?” Uncle Ed said when they asked him. “You want me to drive a Bigfoot to Sudbury? Are you sure Sudbury wants him?”

   “Not Sudbury exactly, more like the middle of nowhere,” Emma said.

   “That sounds even worse,” Ed said.

   In the end he and Aunt Vanessa agreed to do it. They could drop him off, stop at Lake Nipissing, stop in Toronto, and be back by Monday morning.

   “How are we going to get him to go?” Ed asked.

   “Leave that to us,” Oliver said.

   Emma went to work. She made a scrambled egg breakfast. She made ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch. She made a pot roast for dinner. She made a strawberry and rhubarb pie for dessert. When Uber Eats delivered the food, Minnie ate all of it all at once. When he was done and picking his teeth, Oliver explained that he could have the same food every day. All he had to do was go to Canada and get married. Minnie had never heard of Canada or marriage, but he let loose a whopping burp. He soon agreed to go.

   “Yeti or not, here I come,” he said.

   Ed and Vanessa picked him up the next day in their SUV, lowered the back seats so he could stretch out, and left for the border. They drove with all the windows open because Minnie smelled so bad.

   “When was the last time you took a shower?”

    “Never.”

   “Do you have a passport?”

   “No.”

   Vanessa threw a blanket over him when they got to Buffalo. When they got to Sudbury, they turned right. They took Route 84 north and dropped Minnie off near a lake with no name. Bonnie was waiting and ran out to them, throwing her arms around Minnie.

   “Aw shucks,” he bumbled and stumbled, and they disappeared into the woods holding hands.

   Ed and Vanessa spent a few days swimming in Lake Nipissing, a few days sightseeing in Toronto, and after they got home to Lakewood, Ohio where they lived, they dropped their car off at the Meticulous Car Wash & Detailing Center.

   “What was in this car?” the cleaning man asked putting a clothespin on his nose.

   “You know how all pictures of Bigfoot are always blurry?”

   “Sure.”

   “That’s what we had in the car. A blur.”

Ed Staskus posts feature stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

   The summer vacation Oliver, his big sister Emma, and their mom and dad went on had too many ideas to it. Oliver and Emma wanted to go somewhere where they could run around outside. Their mom wanted to go somewhere where she wouldn’t have to do much of anything. Their dad wanted to go to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. He was an electrical engineer by trade, but he was a car nut, too.

   Henry Ford was the man who made cars go, who made them for everybody, and who made himself one of the richest men in the world. That’s all he ever wanted to do and it’s what he did. But he got too rich for his own good.

   He was born on a farm but wasn’t interested in farming. He became a machinist. When his family needed somebody to fix their pigheaded steam engine, he was their man. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy,” he said. He got so good at it, he got hired as a serviceman. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 when he was 40 years old and introduced the first Model T in 1908. They were easy to drive and simple to repair. 

   Ten years later more than half of all the cars in the United States were Model T’s. All of them were black. “Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants so long as it is black,” he said when his car guys suggested colors.

   By that time, he was becoming a mean old man with a chip on his shoulder. Everything was black and white. It was his way or the highway.

   When he was young he said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” The older he got the more he put learning behind him and let his mind go stale bread. He hated trade unions, black folks, and Jews. He didn’t trust banks or his fellow man.

   The first place their mom and dad took Oliver and Emma was Kelleys Island. They left their car behind on shore and took the Jet Express. They went to a beach, played putt-putt, and toured the Island Wine Company. Their mom tasted some white wines.

   “When I was a teenager, we used to come here to drink,” they overheard her say to their dad.

   “Why did mom have to come here to drink?” Oliver asked Emma. “Grandma always has plenty of water and juice at home.”

   Emma rolled her eyes. She was two-and-a-half-years older than Oliver, but he got all the glory for fighting monsters, and she had to settle for teaching him the facts of life. She had to admit, though, it was Oliver who took care of business because he never let facts get in the way.

   The next day their mom went to the Kalahari Spa while they went to Cedar Point with their dad. It was hot, in the 90s, and steamy, like their backyard in August. They went on dozens of rides, walked hundreds of miles, and were exhausted by the time they got back to their motel. They were sweaty and dirty. Their mom was at the pool looking good. She was relaxed and rejuvenated.

   “I got a pedicure and a manicure. I got a honey scrub and a full body salt stone massage. I got a facial treatment, too” she added, looking her family over. “The three of you look like you got lost in a swamp. I order you to take a shower and let’s go out to eat.”

   The next day they walked down the Lake Erie shoreline, and when it got dark built a fire and roasted Max Mallows. A million stars twinkled in the night sky. It was quiet as could be. They didn’t hear the tires or engine of a single car until they got back to their car.

   When they got to Dearborn, they started early the next morning and roamed Greenfield Village. They saw the real bike shop where the Wright brothers worked. They saw the real Menlo Park where Thomas Edison worked. They saw the real house Henry Ford grew up in. They went on the Ford Rouge Factory Tour. They took in the Ford Giant Screen Experience.

   “I’m getting Ford on the brain,” Emma said. “Can’t we do something else?”

   “Not yet, bunny,” her dad said. “There’s the Ford Museum of American Innovation coming up next.” 

   “How big is this place?”

   “250 acres.”

   “Oh my gosh!” Emma exclaimed, even though she had no idea how big an acre was.

   Oliver and Emma didn’t like museums. They would rather be doing something else rather than looking at things somebody else had done a long time ago. But they loved their dad and knew he wanted to go to the museum, so they didn’t complain.

   The museum was more than cars, although there were lots of cars, new, old, and older. There was the Roper, the first American-made car. There were muscle cars. There were electric cars that everybody would be driving soon. There were old machines from the farming, railroad, and flying ballgames. There was the Ford airplane Richard Byrd flew to become the first man to barnstorm over the South Pole.

   There were Model T rides. They were a rough tough ride. There were touch screen displays. They were slick and smooth. What Oliver and Emma wanted to see the most, however, was the Wienermobile. It was near the end of the day. They hurried to find it. When they asked where it was, the museum guard said the room was off-limits.

   “Why is it off-limits?” Oliver asked.

   “It’s because of the two Henry Ford ghosts who won’t leave that room,” the guard said. “The old ghost hates Jews. He thinks Adolf Hitler was a hero. The young ghost doesn’t hate anybody, except maybe the old ghost and Adolf Hitler. They have been going at it tooth and nail lately. They get loud and scare our guests. One day we found the Wienermobile a mess, the bumpers and doors torn off, the windows busted, and graffiti spray-painted all over it.”

    “Why don’t you tell them to leave?”

   “We’ve had exorcists, ghostbusters, and witch doctors try, but they say the hold this place has on Henry Ford, both Henry Fords, is just too strong.”

   “I could get rid of them in no time. It would be child’s play.”  

   The guard looked skeptical looking down at Oliver. He had to admit he was a child but suspected he was playing. “Run along now,” the guard said.

   “My brother is the monster hunter where we live,” Emma said.

   “Where’s that?” 

   “Perry, Ohio. He saved our power plant from Goo Goo Godzilla.”

   “My little boy told me all about that,” the guard said. “He looks up to you.”

   “I helped,” Emma said. The guard patted her on the head. Emma looked grumpy.

   Before they knew it, they were whisked into the director’s office. Oliver outlined his plan and said he just needed three or four guards for five minutes to help, to make sure the Henry Fords both knew he meant business.

   They marched into the Wienermobile room. Oliver started insulting Adolf Hitler in a loud voice, calling him a tinhorn crumb bum of a dictator. It didn’t take long for the old Henry Ford to show up, followed by the young Henry Ford. The old ghost started complaining and casting spells. The guards, Oliver, and Emma made a circle around the two Henry Fords, holding hands. The old Henry Ford scowled. The young Henry Ford scowled. Oliver looked up at them.

   “Do you remember when the two of you said, ‘If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.’ Until the two of you put your heads together and agree on one point of view, you’re both going to have to leave. Now move along.”

   “Why should we?” both Henry Ford’s said.

   “If you’re going to be that way, I’m going to have to get down to business,” Oliver said.

   He squeezed the hands holding his. He concentrated. His eyes glowed. He said something nobody could understand. He stopped his breathing. His forehead got shiny with sweat. “Go, go, go!” he cried out.

   “All of a sudden, you could feel the electrical energy moving,” the guard said. “It was so intense all the hair on the back of my neck stood up. When the little guy said, go, go, go, we all got a zapped feeling in our guts. Both Fords shot straight up and through the ceiling. We ran to the window and saw them zooming away. They haven’t been back since.”

   The Wienermobile room reopened the next day

   “It was like smoke chasing its own tail,” Emma said.

   “Dad, can you drive us to DQ for a cone?” Oliver asked in the parking lot.

   “You bet bud,” and they sped away in their black Jeep Cherokee.

Ed Staskus posts feature stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

   “Dad, if Godzilla is King of the Monsters, does that mean nothing can beat him?” Oliver asked his father.

   “That’s right.”

   “Is the virus a monster?”

   “Some people would say so.”

   “Then how come nobody has asked Godzilla to beat down the virus? It’s been more than a year.”

   They were on the back patio on a fair mid-March Saturday afternoon. It was breezy and unseasonably warm in Perry, Ohio. Oliver’s father was grilling burgers and his mother was in the kitchen preparing wide-cut French fries and coleslaw. His older sister Emma was pulling a chocolate upside down cake out of the oven.

   “You just pour in the pecans, coconut, brown sugar, and presto-o change-o,” she said. “It’s fuss-free.”

   Oliver’s father was an electrical engineer. In his spare time, he was restoring a 1968 Chevy Camaro. It had pony car style and a muscle engine. He knew how to repair almost everything inside and outside the house. He knew his way around and didn’t like being backed into a corner by a six-year-old, whether he was his son and the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County, or not. Besides, he was half Lithuanian and half Transylvanian and knew something about monsters.

   “That’s a good question bud,” he said. “I might not know the answer, but maybe it’s because he can’t get a handle on the virus since it’s invisible. All the monsters he ever defeated, Mothra, Ghidorah, and Destoroyah, were all right in front of his eyes. He could get a grip on them.”

   Destoroyah was one of Godzilla’s most powerful rivals ever. In the end he didn’t stand a chance, though. When push came to shove, he got shoved aside.

   “You’re right, dad,” Oliver said. “Remember Garbara, that cat-faced wart-covered giant crocodile man? He showed him where to go in no time flat.”

   “Scientists with chemistry sets like yours are the ones beating the virus,” his dad said. “They have the tools to see the invisible.”

   The ground beef was done, and the fries were hot and crisp. Oliver ate with only some notice paid to his burger. He was thinking. Emma’s cake was delicious, and his mom made it even better when she added a scoop of ice cream. He forgot what he was thinking about while downing it, but later in his room he remembered. If he could somehow make the virus seeable Godzilla would be able to stamp it out in a second.

   He rummaged around in his closet until he found his Extreme Kids Chemistry Kit and National Geographic student microscope. All he needed now was a virus to examine. Where could he find one, he wondered? They were everywhere, which was why everybody had been wearing masks for so long, but he had never actually seen one.

   He smeared a glob of honey on a glass slide when his mother went to the grocery store. He trailed behind her with the slide in his hand, waving it in the air now and then when nobody was watching. He was sure he’d catch a bug.

   In his bedroom, the door closed, and the shades drawn, he slid the slide into the stage clips. He turned the illuminator on and looked down through the eyepiece tube. He didn’t see anything. Oliver turned on all the lights in his bedroom and threw the shades open. He still didn’t see anything. He needed more light. He ran out to find his sister.

   “Can you get your flashlight and come with me?” he asked.

   “Sure,” Emma said.

   Oliver looked in the eyepiece again while Emma fixed the beam of her flashlight on the slide. “Keep it steady,” he said. Emma squinted and concentrated.

   “Hey, get that light out of my eyes,” a squeaky voice floated up to them.

   “I didn’t know viruses could talk,” Emma said, surprised.

   “Of course, we can talk, young lady, whenever we have something to say,” the virus said.

   It was blobby, blue black and red, spiky tubers radiating from the outside edges of it. The blob wiggled, never staying still. Emma moved the flashlight slightly to the side. The blob stopped wiggling.

   “OK, since you can talk, why are you being so mean and hurting everybody?” Oliver asked.

   “What do you mean? I haven’t hurt anybody.”

   “Yes, you have. Millions and millions of people have gotten sick because of you and lots of them have died. School was cancelled and we are wearing masks all the time.”

   “There are lots of us, gazillions, all over the place,” the virus blob said. “Some of us inside you help guard your body against dangerous infections, and others of us help plants. Maybe you’re mistaking me for another virus.”

   “I don’t think so,” Oliver said. “You are a coronavirus 19, aren’t you?”

   “Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything? I just float around minding my own business until I can get into something and replicate myself.”

   “What does that mean?” Oliver asked.

   “Make a copy of myself.”

   “Why do you have to sneak inside of us to do that?”

   “We do it all the time. We don’t have the machinery to make copies of ourselves, so we have to get into you and trick your cells into becoming virus-making machines for us.”

   “I don’t like the sound of that,” Emma said.

   “We were here first,” the virus blob said. “If it wasn’t for us, you probably wouldn’t even be here.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “We came from the primordial genetic pool. Modern cells are, well, modern. We started out in a pre-cellular world as self-replicating units. Over time some of us changed, becoming more organized and more complex. Eventually, enzymes for the synthesis of membranes and cell walls evolved, resulting in the formation of cells, which is what you are made of. We existed before bacteria, archaea, or eukaryotes.”

   Oliver and Emma had no idea what the virus blob was talking about. Emma decided to sweat the truth out of him. She turned her flashlight on the slide again, as close as she could. Maybe he would confess in the heat of the moment.

   “Hey, are you trying to kill me?” the virus blob complained. “Too much heat could be the end of me.”

   “I don’t know archaea from rat finks,” Emma said. “But I know you’ve been bad. Are you going to stop making us sick, or not?”

   “I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to,” the virus blob admitted. “I only do one thing and that’s try to make copies of myself. I don’t go out of my way to do anything else. Whatever else happens is out of my control. I’m sorry if I’m making people sick. I don’t mean to but that’s life.”

   “OK, we believe you,” Oliver said. Emma moved the flashlight away. The virus blob breathed a sigh of relief.

   “That was a close shave,” he realized.

   “Who are you, anyway?” he asked.

   “He’s the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County,” Emma said. “And I’m his right-hand man.”

   “We thought you were a monster,” Oliver said. ”But now we see you are one, sort of, but aren’t really one, which is lucky for you. Godzilla is King of the Monsters. He doesn’t like it when anybody tries to muscle in on him.”

   “Who’s Godzilla?”

   “Better you don’t ever find out,” Oliver warned. “He doesn’t live with his tail between his legs. He could take care of you with one sneeze of his atomic breath.”

   “Tell him to come and get me,” the virus sneered, even though he didn’t like the sound of atomic breath. Pulling himself out of the sticky honey holding him to the slide, he floated away. Oliver and Emma never saw where he went.

   “King of the Monsters my foot!” the virus blob sniffed as he drifted under the door, across the the living room, and through a tiny seam in the weather sealing around the front door. “We’ll see about that if he ever knocks on my door. He better wear a mask and have his vaccine shots before he messes with me.”

Ed Staskus posts feature stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

   When Emma looked at her brother Oliver, she saw a towheaded boy about four feet tall and not even fifty pounds. He wore his hair short, ran up and down the stairs, was a slow eater, could be shy but always spoke up, and was learning how to play the piano, although he wasn’t nearly as good as she was. He was an all-American boy, half German and half Lithuanian, like her. He was also the Unofficial Monster Hunter of Lake County. How did a first grader become that? She was in third grade, taller, bigger, and smarter. She had mastered division and multiplication. Oliver was just learning how to read and write, for goodness’ sake

   Sometimes she thought she should be the monster hunter, not her brother’s right-hand man. She was even more unofficial than him. She wasn’t sure she liked that, although she had to live with it.

   She had to admit, though, that Oliver had nerves of steel, while she still got spooked by some of the monsters he went head-to-head with. He had taken care of Goo Goo Godzilla in less than five minutes when he was threatening the nuclear power plant in North Perry, not far from where they lived. He did it as easily as brushing a bug away.

   He got started in kindergarten chasing shadows, noises in the night, and wrestling with nightmares. Phantoms learned to beware of his reach, though. He flattened them like pancakes and tossed them out of the house like frisbees. He made his reputation the summer before first grade. There was a troll in the woods behind their house. Not behaving himself was the last mistake he made in Lake County.

   Trolls came to the USA from Scandinavia in the 18^th century on sailing ships. They can be big or small, ugly and slow-witted or sneaky charming, harmless or menacing, fast-talking liars or almost like the folks next door. They live apart from others, even other trolls, preferring their own company. They are ungodly, kidnapping cats and dogs. When crossed they can be dangerous. They are afraid of lightning and church bells. Sunlight turns them to stone.

   When the neighbor’s terrier disappeared, Oliver knew he had to step up. He saw the dog every day, fed him doggie treats, and treated him like a friend. A good neighbor is somebody who can play the bagpipes but doesn’t. The troll wasn’t being a good neighbor. Oliver didn’t like it when anything messed with his friends.

   He set his clock for an hour before dawn. It was cloudy and dark when he woke up. He threw his old camera and some bungee cords in his backpack and snuck out of the house, but not before Emma spotted him, threw on sweatpants and a pullover, and joined him. Their parents were still asleep, his father softly snoring.

   Oliver’s father had bought an old Polaroid and a dozen boxes of film for peanuts at a flea market in Grand River. He already had a fancy Minolta digital camera, so he gave the Polaroid to Oliver, who took pictures of spiders and praying mantises with it.

   “Are you going to try to get Chester back from that awful troll?”

   “Yes.”

   “What are you going to do?” Emma asked ready for action, but with no idea how her brother was going to deal with the varmint. She had never seen a real troll before. She had only ever seen the garden variety kind.

   “We are going to find him and keep him from crawling under a rock until the sun comes up. We can use the camera’s flashbulb to herd him. If we can get him to step into sunlight he’ll turn to stone, and we can save Chester.”

   “I brought my flashlight and pocketknife,” Emma said.

   “Good,” Oliver said, nodding grimly.

   They walked into the forest, Emma leading the way with her flashlight. They saw the troll’s campfire and smelled him at the same time. He smelled like an old rat. He was a pint-sized Tusseladd troll with three heads and three noses as long as carrots. He had a round stomach and short stubby arms and legs. He was boiling water to make porridge. Chester was tied up next to the fire. It looked like the troll meant to eat him with his porridge.

   “We’re in luck,” Oliver said. “That kind of troll is usually gigantic. I think we can handle this runt.”

   When they stepped out of the dark into the light of the campfire the troll jumped up and his three mouths started jibber-jabberring. Chester whined and kicked his legs. Oliver held up his hands, palms out and made a peace sign. He pointed to his stomach and said he and his sister had come a long way and were hungry.

   The troll calmed down and started dreaming scheming right away. Maybe he could grab and cook these two children, too. He would have more grub than he knew what to do with. He showed Oliver and Emma where to sit and went back to his pot. When the water started boiling, he started making his porridge.

   “Are you a betting man?” Oliver asked him.

   “Of course,” the troll said.

   “I bet I can eat more porridge than you.”

   The troll laughed a mean-spirited laugh like he was the living soul of a funeral. That was fool’s gold. Nobody could eat more porridge than a troll. 

   “If you can eat more porridge than me then I won’t eat you,” the troll said.

   “I’m on for that,” Oliver said.

   I don’t know about this, Emma thought. She started thinking of all the things that could go wrong. There were too many to count.

   They tended the fire while the troll went to get more water to make even more porridge. Once it was ready, they both ate as much as they could. What the troll didn’t know was that Oliver had shoved his backpack under his shirt and was filling it with the porridge, without the troll noticing. When the troll was full and couldn’t eat anymore, looking like he was on the losing end of the bet, Oliver suggested he cut a hole in his stomach so he could have as much as he wanted. He did and stuffed handfuls of porridge inside of himself. By the time he got to the bottom of the pot he was so heavy with the pasty goo he fell over groaning.

   Oliver and Emma rushed him, bound him up with their bungee cords, and dragged him by his feet to a small clearing. His three heads bounced on the ground all the way there. The sun was already up and when its light washed over the troll he turned to stone instantly. They stood him up and took Polaroid snapshots of him. Chester was barking up a storm, so they ran back to the campfire, untied him, threw dirt on the fire and went home.

   The troll who turned to stone became a landmark. 

   “If you want to go to the valley, take a left at the troll. If you want to go to the pond, take a right,” everybody said.

   When show and tell day was announced at school, Oliver took his Polaroid pictures. Emma took the muffins she baked all by herself. They would have been a hit any other day, but on that day the spotlight belonged to Oliver. He had matched wits with a troll, ridding the neighborhood of a vile nuisance, and lived to tell the tale. From that day on he was known as the Monster Hunter.

   On the Perry Local School District bus going home Emma pulled two muffins nobody had been interested in out of her book bag. She offered one to Oliver. They sat side by side eating them.

   “These are delicious,” Oliver said.

   “Better than the porridge?”

   “Better than anything that rotten troll could ever have made,” Oliver said.

   When they got home, Chester dashed up to them, working up an appetite. They gave him a muffin and he forgot all about them. They walked into the house.

   “How was school?” their mother asked.

   “I learned that nobody knows what a Polaroid camera is,” Oliver said.

Ed Staskus posts on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Made in Cleveland  http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”