Hubert Lister photographs monsters. It’s not the most revered of jobs, I admit, but it’s an honest day’s work — no shame in that. His old university colleagues have moved upward and onward: to corporate management, wives, mortgages, self-run businesses, and babies-on-board. Hubert, on the other hand, travels the countryside snapping shots of two-headed Boorsmees and Slithering Snips (among other disgusting creatures). He sometimes pines for a different life, a path which would find him with a splendid place in West Hampstead, with a darling wife (named Catherine, he imagines), and with a career that isn’t quite as repulsive as photographing the mating habits of the reclusive Kongracious Firks (of which the sights and sounds replay regularly in his more disturbing of nightmares). Hubert Lister doesn’t appoint too much time in his schedule to drifting dreams, however. Every town in every country in every world needs janitors and secretaries and street sweepers and monster photographers. Hubert is simply fulfilling his role in society… as unpleasant as it may sometimes be.
On this particular Wednesday afternoon (or is it Saturday? He often confuses the two), his ringing mobile woke him from a deep rest. He’d been out late the night before, you see, celebrating the upcoming marriage of his best mate’s cousin – a celebration that included a raucous tour of nearly every pub in the district. Hubert enjoyed life when he could, perhaps engaging in it a bit too roughly at times (if he was honest with himself about it), but one never knows when a gruff Moisp might turn about and show just how little it enjoys having its picture taken by chomping off a body part or several. The mobile gave a few rings before Hubert was able to blindly slap his hand in the right spot on his nightstand to grab it. He brought the phone under the mess of blankets with him and after a hoarse greeting, he listened in silence for a moment and hung up.
“Brilliant.”
An Egrup herd had been spotted roaming the hills of Chesham, which placed them in Hubert’s territory (albeit, on the outskirts). He’d been hoping to have the day off, as he was a bit out of sorts (see preceding paragraph, in which is mentioned his boisterous evening out), but today was not his lucky day. As he slowly propped himself up and began to slide into a pair of wrinkled jeans from the floor of his room, he hoped his luck might improve itself before his photography hunt. Egrup, as you most likely know, are rather unpleasant creatures to spend time around in herd-form. By themselves, well, they can be right cute (in a 3-horned, drooling, monstrous sort of way), but in a pack they only bring out the worst in each other. They fight for the affection of the opposite sex, they urinate on each other as a sign of discontent (which is the basis for their famously repugnant aroma), they toss each other about (smashing up, quite nicely, whatever environment they graze through), and they consistently scream at one another to create a horrible cacophony at painful decibel levels. In many ways, actually, they quite resemble Hubert’s night prior. This very same thought struck Hubert, himself, as he locked the door of his 7th floor flat and headed for the lift with a chuckle.
It was all but freezing outside today, and as Hubert exited his car at his final destination in Chesham, he tugged his coat a little tighter. With a glance up to the sign on the back of the local pub, he took note of his location and made his way on foot from there. Hubert had a habit of parking in front of, next to, or behind the local spirits-serving establishment when out on a job, as it is really the friendliest of destinations after a day of taking commissioned photographs of revolting and dangerous animals.
Tracking down a herd of wandering Egrup is monumentally simple for two reasons: 1. the path of destruction and grazing is fairly evident, and 2. the blooming stench and noise can be traced from up to a mile away. Hubert caught up with the group just before the rain settled overhead, which then gave the beasts (and, admittedly, Hubert himself) a much-needed shower. Hunkered under a tree, Hubert prepped his camera for the fine English weather and then sneaked off through some dense shrubbery to find an ideal pictorial vantage point. He filled his camera with shots of the usual debauchery, including a spectacular shot of a rather hefty creature who had been tossed up into a short tree that now bowed at the weight (moments after the shot, the tree snapped into literal halves, which made for the best image of the day). After several hours Hubert noted his watch display, figured he’d best turn back before night fell, and backed himself out of the bushes and on down the gravel path he’d arrived by.
It was dark as Hubert made his way through the neighbourhood a few blocks from his car, but a low ‘coo’ followed by a child’s laughter caught his attention. He paused his venture back, taken over by the curiosity which set him on this career path to begin with, and took a few steps to peer over a vine-covered fence. His head passed just over top, where he found a 6-year-old girl standing on the back steps of her house. In her hand was a loaf of bread from which she was clumsily tearing off bits and tossing them out into the darkness of her backyard. Hubert noticed a spark of excitement in her eyes. Children have a glint of joy, you know, that is positively unmistakable — if you take a moment to look for it. The girl was searching for something, something she’d caught a glimpse of and wanted to see again. After a few minutes of patience, that little girl had her reward. A small Reifra cautiously peeked its head out from behind a row of bushes peppered with blue hydrangea. Hubert’s eyes grew wide; he hadn’t seen a Reifra since his university days, and never one so young!
For those of you less familiar with the Reifra species (one can’t blame you), they are a rare find, indeed. Limited in numbers, and warily shy of anything larger than themselves (which is why most sightings are by children), a Reifra often spends the majority of its life with a single mate deep in the forest and explores civilisation only in the safe cover of night. For every hideous monster we know of in existence, Reifra are one of the cutest (second only, in the opinion of many, to Toodlas — little balls of fur which adorably chirp, chirp, chirp as they spend their days bounding about and playing).
Hubert quietly turned his camera on without averting his gaze, but the LCD display failed to illuminate the underside of his chin as he expected it to. He looked down and flipped the power switch again. A dead battery! Hubert, in his rush to leave for a pint, had left his camera on during the entire walk home (monster photographers can’t afford to leave their cameras’ Inactivity Standby feature on). With a silent curse, Hubert began to search his bag for another battery when the child’s laughter again caught his attention. He glanced up in time to see the Reifra eating directly out of the girl’s little hand, gently picking bread crumbs off of her fingers with its beak and tickling her arms with its whiskers in the process. Hubert smiled. The girl finally noticed her audience peering over the fence, and giggled to the photographer, “It’s so tickly!” Hubert only nodded, not wanting to startle the animal. His smile grew. Have you ever had one of those particularly grand moments which somehow stretch a minute into an hour? Hubert Lister, that little girl, and a curious Reifra shared one of those very moments today. After a few minutes without the rest of the world’s existence, the little girl’s father called at her from inside the house (unaware of his daughter’s location, it sounded like), and the Reifra was gone in an instant — no doubt racing through the trees above, swinging from branch to branch, and away from perceived danger. The girl groaned disapprovingly at her dad for scaring away the “funny animal” as she made her way into the house, and Hubert continued on down the road to his waiting car, bypassing the pub.
“Brilliant.”
Hubert Lister may not have the most desirable position in life… but that point of view, in this author’s humble opinion, is sometimes debatable.
by Mark Mushakian, 2016