The Barkening

(This was for a challenge to create a shark hybrid, and write a short story about that was worthy of a SyFy channel original movie. The instruction was to go 'bat shit insane' with it. So I did, and I went over the 500 word limit in my enthusiasm. I ended up cutting a lot of it for the challenge, but I felt that I needed to post the original. So, this is it.)

Todd lay awake, staring up at the roof of the tent, watching the interplay of moonbeams and clouds on the fabric in an effort to distract himself from his growing sense of dread. He listened to the sounds of sleep that came from the other three boys in the tent, but even that didn't help. Stepping cat-like over bodies that shifted in the uncertain light, he made his way over to the tent door. The unzipping was shockingly loud in the silent night, so he wasn't surprised when he heard someone stir from sleep behind him.

"...whazzat?" one of his friends muttered sleepily. Todd couldn't tell who it was.

"It's Todd. I'm... I'm going to the bathroom. Go back to sleep."

"Oh. Okay." Whoever it was seemed to settle back down, but when Todd turned around to zip the tent back up, Daryl stood by the entrance, rubbing his eyes.

"What?" Todd asked.

Daryl smiled sheepishly. "I kinda got to go too. Didn't realize until you said."

Todd frowned. "I actually don't have to go. I just said it so you'd go back to sleep."

"Oh." Daryl bit his lip, but then grinned at him. "Well, I still need to go. So let's go."

Todd had forgotten his flashlight, but Daryl had remembered his, so that was all right. They were a fifteen minute walk from the bathroom facility in the campground. Todd could only manage five of those minutes in silence.

"So, what did you think of that story?" he asked.

"What, Michael's?" Daryl laughed. "That was so funny!"

"So..." Todd hesitated, then quietly asked, "You don't think it was true?"

"What? No! Why, did you think it was true?" Daryl grinned.

Todd felt silly. "A little, yeah," he admitted. "Don't make fun of me, okay?"

"Okay, but dude. Seriously. You thought there's a bat-shark on this campground that flies around eating people? Like for real? And that people actually call a bark? That's so dumb! Monsters are supposed to be scary, but that's, like, the least scary thing possible!"

Todd punched his shoulder. "Hey! You said you wouldn't make fun of me!" He turned, and stalked away into the darkness.

Daryl called after him, "Hey! Todd! I'm sorry, man! Come back!"

But Todd was gone. Daryl shrugged and left, figuring Todd could find his way back.

But he never did.

The next day, they found a scrap of Todd's pajamas by a tree. They were stained with blood. Daryl was inconsolable, and vowed that one day, he would find the bark that did this to his friend.

Twenty years later, he fulfilled that promise. He became a sexy vigilante bark hunter, and, after a fierce battle with the bark, which turned out to not just be a single bark but a whole colony of barks, with a bark queen at the center that controlled the hive mind, he found out that Todd, who was actually his secret half-brother, had actually been turned into a bark by a notorious witch that lived in the caverns deep below the bark compounds, so Daryl killed her too. And then fell in love with her sexy daughter, who had somehow escaped her mother for unclear reasons.

And they all live happily ever after. Except for Todd, who we never see again and whose only role is to set up the backstory that takes up half the movie for no real reason other than to provide the main character with a 'motivation'.

And then the sequel happens, and Daryl and his now ex-wife have to team up again to take down, you guessed it, Todd, who wasn't actually dead, or a bark, the whole time, and was in fact behind everything, despite only being something like eight when he first disappeared! And the whole thing was, in fact, a series of deliberate traps to lure Daryl to the catacombs under Paris, because he's supposed to save the whole world as dictated by an ancient Aztec prophecy... that's only a couple hundred years old because it's actually a fake! Because the whole thing was really a plot by a secret cult agency bent on destroying the world!

"Well," Daryl says, dressed all in black leather, shouldering a really big gun with a cocky smirk, slipping a pair of sunglasses over his nose even though it's the middle of the night, "No rest for the wicked."

The Barkening, Part 2: The Darkening

(A Syfy channel original movie)