Storytime: What Not to Say to Goblins (Part 2)

This is the second post in the What Not to Say to Goblins 4-part series.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, ​Part 4

What Not to Say to Goblins
Chapter 1: ​"Televisions that Talk"

She screamed as she fell, her senses reeling and body slowly turning over and over like a sideways top or an eagle doing barrel rolls through the sky. Except there was no sky, only the continuous upward rush of squawking birds and fish and, sometimes, submarines as a flat screen of blue bloomed every closer below her. Distantly, she could hear someone crying and then someone laughing and then someone screaming. She looked to her right and saw it was herself falling next to...herself. And then, everything went blue. Somewhere a nightingale sand only it wasn't a nightingale but a marlin. In that infinite blue world, she heard her name.

"Hello?" she called, "Who are you?"

She heard her name again.

"Is someone there?"

Then she saw the playhouse swimming upwards, always gaining speed and soon the door became a hole that became a mouth filled with teeth that lunged forward and swallowed her whole.

"Kali!" said a gruff voice.

The girl jumped and twisted out of the bed, fighting tooth and nail with the sheets. Kali expected to see her grandfather standing there laughing and frowning the way old folk do.

But there was no one.

"Kali! Came-'den went!" said the voice again laughing. It sounded like shale pebbles falling down a cliff.

"It's Cameden. I mean Camden," she replied turning around in circles. "Who's there?"

"Well, that's no fair. I didn't say 'knock knock'!" On the shelf, the statuette sat with its legs dangling over the edge and a bemused expression on its face. Kali stared, her voice died in her throat, and what escaped was a strangled sound of befuddlement and fright. "What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" It grinned a sharp-toothed grin and held up something pink and wriggling. Kali screamed. Then she ran. She didn't stop her helter-skelter flight until she ran into her grandfather. Small arms constricted the old man like pale snakes.

"What's wrong, Kali?" he asked. Believing her tongue to be missing, she only mumbled and sputtered incoherent words in reply. "Slow down," he commanded.

"IhadaweirddreamandIwokeupwhenthehouseatemebutwhenIwokeuptherewasanunglythingonmyshelfandittalkedandstolemytongueandnotit'sgoingtoeatme!"

"But if it stole your tongue how are you able to talk?" He raised a grizzled eyebrow and smiled.

She was positively flabbergasted. "But it DID steal my tongue! I SAW it! It was wet and pink and wriggling and...and I couldn't talk!"

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming? Or..." The old man looked thoughtful, then, suddenly, he grabbed her shoulders. "It wasn't a goblin was it! Kali, tell me right now! Was it a goblin?"

"No. It was that stupid statue!" She crossed her arms and pouted exquisitely.

"Oh. Yes. It does that sometimes." He turned around and resumed creating his masterpiece of culinary delight: a tunafish sandwich. "Talk to it." Finished, he carried the plate and "masterpiece" to a couch in another room. In a few moments, he knew, the television would turn itself on and slowly flip through every channel. Only after it had carefully inspected each one would it settle on the closed-circuit system of cameras in the City.

Kali didn't think she would extract anymore information from her grandfather today; whenever he sat in front of the television watching the stations scroll by, he was unapproachable, unmovable, and unable to hear her protests.

Flip.

"--people stranded for weeks outside the City--"

Flip.

"--another child taken from her home--"

Flip.

"--the storm has actually reversed direction--"

Flip.

"--miraculously no one was injured--"

Flip.

"--it slices through plaster, cement, wood, anything--"

Flip.

"--the pride has isolated a calf. The chase is on--"

Flip.

"--they once believed her monsterous offspring lived in the cellar--"

Flip.

An overview of the City. Buildings of steel and glass glittered like fish in a sea Streets and alleys twisted and turned into a literal labyrinth of walls, windows, and doors. Hundreds of people in suits the colour of ash travelled in instinctively constructed lines that wove and intersected each other such that the movement of so many bodies was a dizzying foray of efficiency. Black cars scuttled from one side of town to the other like giant beetles. Everyone looked bored. Everyone carried a briefcase. Somewhere a goblin tripped a woman so she twisted her ankle. Another goblin left a nasty letter from a hardworking employee in his boss's inbox. Yet another, unseen by all who passed, was happily, rhthymically thrusting a screwdriver into the side of a copier. It jammed and oozed black ink all over the floor. The City was moving just as it had for over a thousand years: Many people wandered in, but none came out. Even the children who, unjaded by age and coffee and cigarettes, knew that all mazes had an exit right in front of their noses. Unfortunately, they never stayed children long enough to leave.

In a blink, the camera cut to a goblin the size of a large dog, which by goblin standards was considered tall, possibly even "towering giant". Its face, for goblins have no gender, was a mess of scars and patches of new, raw skin and primative piercings. In short, not even its mother would love and it would frighten a wealthy CEO into voluntarily giving every last cent of the company away to his employees. It prowled around the table where a dozen children were seated. The children were dirty, grubby, scared. Encrusted bowls of some oozing, bubbling liquid remained untouched in front of them.

"Eat!" the goblin barked. "Eat you little sacks of flesh!" It cracked a whip. Anxious, the children managed to slop down the stuff. When the bowls are empty, another goblin refilled them. "Eat!"

As they continued to stomach the food, their skin began to harden and turn grey. Many children were crying in horror.

"Enough!" The big goblin grinned and stalked away. Later, the changing young ones were chained and ushered back to their cells like cattle.

In the line, the children whispered warning to the smaller ones in their ranks. "Look out for Madtooth," one said. "Bit my shoulder last week it did."

"What for?" asked the smallest one, who was probably a boy.

"Told it to shove that bowl of snot up its ass, I did." The smallest looked at the older one in admiration and wonder. "Won't make that mistake again," the elder one, a girl once, said so quietly only the guard heard.

All of them knew that inevitably, they too would become goblins. AS long as they were trapped there that was.

Off in some distant hallway, Madtooth watched the television screens connected to a system of cameras in the City's hospital. It stared intently as a woman gave birth. It was a healthy baby girl. Madtooth ensured that infants were born perfect and whole. Defective goblins were of no use to it. So, on the rare occassion a human was born defective, the infant was instantly taken from the mother, declared dead, and unceremoniously dropped naked and screaming down a chute that ended in the hospital kitchen. Goblins loved long pork stew, but Madtooth's poisoners loved it more.

Flip.

Kali's grandfather paused midsnore when the television went dark. He rolled over and soon resumed his steady snort-and-wheeze breathing as young women with tentacle toes worshipped him in his dreams.

Kali heard the pause and shivered in her hiding place under a chair. From there she discerned the Thing-on-the-Shelf, as she liked to call it, pacing to and fro across her bed. Its potato-shaped feet left tiny footprints of ash on her sheets, and every once in a while it would sit down and pull out a budding root from between its downs with its sharp teeth. Suddenly, it looked up and left Kali's field of vision. "Stop glittering you stupid git of a disco ball! It's your fault I'm was still asleep!" The whine of frustration the statue then emitted was comparable to screaming metal. Kali crept cautiously from her hiding place and peered around the door frame. Hopping on one potatoey foot, the little statue was alternating between hammering on the globe with a knobby fist and clutching its throbbing toes. All the while it cursed in a low, dirty language.

​When it caught sight of Kali's copper hair and wide, doe eyes, it managed a grin while attempting to stand on its swelling foot. The result was a frightening grimace.

She scrunched her face as she gathered up her courage. The statue only giggled.

"Swallowed a lemon did we?" Kali opened her mouth to protest, but to her amazement a wedge of lemon tumbled out instead of words. As she stared at the bit of fruit, the globe glittered and glowed. The statue only looked at it in utter contempt. Then, without another word, he, for it was definitely male, hefted the glob into his large hands and raised it over his head.

"No!" Kali, having forgotten herself, rushed over and snatched the glass out of the statue's hands. "You can't break it! I won't let you," she said, raising her chin in defiance.

"I wasn't going to break it per se..." the statue replied anxiously, "I was just going to accidentally drop it. I'm so very clumsy you know." He wriggled his glaringly dexterous fingers.

"What do you want anyway...?" Kali, already tired of the vexing statue's games, set the blue globe back on the shelf albeit considerably closer to the monocle this time.

"Why I, the very first--and possibly very last--Erodite, the Dissolver, the highly respected Chancellor of Windelmarr--" The statue heard a quiet ringing and whipped around to see the monocle trembling and glowing. "All right, I'm not the Chancellor of Windelmarr. That was my fake uncle. My point is that I, Silus, have been forcibly awakened to warn you."

"But granpa said we're safe here. He said nothing could ever touch us," she retorted, becoming more frightened by the moment.

"Safe! Safe! Ha! Who do you think took your parents away? Who caused you to be alone and unloved? Who caused your grandfather to lose his bloody mind? Who do you quiver in fear from at night when no one is there to save you!" Silus kept advancing with a terrible grin on his face and deep in the pits where his eyes should be, something glittered.

"Stop it! Just stop it! Leave me alone!"

Kali picked up Silus without thinking and threw him in the closet. She locked the door and shoved her toy chest against it as a barricade.

​​Silus, meanwhile, leaned against the far wall and rubbed his beaky, and possibly broken, if not severely bruised, nose. "Oh, well, are we brilliant!" he said shrilly, "Just throw the only possible thing that could help you in the closet! Aren't we just so very kind!" Sliding down to the floor, he sighed. In only a blink he could escape this cloying, dark space, but Silus did not intend to be so carelessly thrown into a wall more than once. He spied a loose thread dangling from a shirt hem and, grinning, he began to slowly unravel the shirt.

When Kali ceased to hear anymore grumbling from the closet, she went outside. Sunlight shined bright and warm into the yard, though nothing grew in that barren place. She swung on a swing hanging from an ancient, rotting tree and began to think for the first time in a long time about her parents. It wasn't long before rivulets of tears were tumbling from her cheeks. Whatever that devilish little creature of wood and ash had done, it had, at the very least, placed a seed a doubt. How long would she be safe with her grandfather? Lately he'd gone beyond wisened and had progressed headlong into senile. His obsession with goblins had only grown words. Unbeknownst to Kali, he sometimes forgot about her parents and other times he did not even care about them specifically. All he wanted was to catch every last thieving, grubbing, snickering goblin for examination. Post mortem or otherwise. Kali continued to swing back and forth and back and forth until the daylight began to fade into dusk. Then, she went inside and seemed to trouble about her parents no more.

For dinner, there was canned spaghetti and frozen bread. She and her grandfather ate in mutual silence; both were thinking and dreaming too far away to truthfully acknowledge each other's presence. Before beg, Kali's grandfather told her a story about a one-legged child who managed to escape being turned into a stew by pretending he was a great waterbird that was too confused to know the water from the ground. The goblins, not always particularly bright, were so befuddled that they merely stared as the little boy hop-trotted out of the lair and, eventually, out of the city. Goodnight kisses were given and limbs were tucked safely away from the edge of the bed. He told her time and time again that sometimes goblins yanked children from their beds by grabbing dangling arms and legs. Lights were out and everyone went to sleep.

​Days and nights waxed and waned and soon it wasn't long before Kali would turn twelve. She didn't hear much from the statue. Though sometimes there would be muffled obscenities drifting from the closet, cabinets, drawers, and once, her shoes, but everytime she checked such places, there was never anything except two, small, ashen footprints.

And then, quite suddenly, Kali woke up one morning and discovered she was one year older. Outside the sun shone cold as it always did in November. Wind blew through the naked trees. They shivered, waving the cold away with their thing fingers, clattering quiet chants as they did. Still it was a rather beautiful day compared to the rest of the year. Kali inhaled deeply, stretched, and sighed. "Presents," she murmurred with a smile. As she walked into the living room, the air instantly felt colder, and it felt empty in a way that beyond the emptiness of no one being in the room. Deserted was the feeling. Nevertheless, Kali ignored these troubling omens and strode to the dinner table. There was a cake and there were twelve candles, lit, and there was an envelop, which without a doubt contained a birthday card and even a brightly colored box with a bow. But her grandfather wasn't to be seen. So she looked in the kitchen. Then in his workshop. And then his bedroom. After that, she checked in the cold cellar, the closets, the oven, refridgerator, and pantry. She looked outside and found nothing. Kali searched everywhere (even under the couch cushions, though she found nothing but lint and an old cracker). He wasn't anywhere. For the first time in her life, she was utterly alone.

Since it was her birthday, she decided, she would at least have some of the cake and maybe open her present. In all honesty, she didn't think her grandfather would mind; however, deep in her head, the seed of doubt whispered that she shouldn't be expecting him back. Not now, not ever.

"Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me," Kali sand quietly to the house. When it was over, she blew out the candles but didn't make a wish. A long time ago she made wishes. They had always been the same ones: "I wish my parents were okay." She never asked to see them again, because that secret seed of doubt told her they were gone forever. Now she had given up entirely on wishes, though sometimes she wanted to believe in her wish-dreams again. Taught in her early life all about propriety, Kali picked up the card first. The envelop was light blue and the handwriting scrawled upon the front was the same thing script her grandfather had always used. She turned it over to try, and fail, to open the envelope carefully, but when she went to pry open the flap, she found it unglued and torn a little at the edges. The only substance holding it closed was a gob of sticky, rancid slime the color, and smell, of bad meat. Inside there was a letter rather than a card. In something that was scarcely better than chicken scratch was written:

We took yor Rooker, wus shee a looker!
We skweesed yor Lon Guest, did hee evor request!
Now gon yor Doctor, cleer off his roker!
And now thair u sit,
Elbo deep n bat shit.
Jus waiting untill
The marvelus thrill
Of beeing ower deer
Sissy goblineer!

Kali had no idea what this meant. There was a name, perhaps, sprawled on the bottom of the page. She couldn't read it. I believe her best guess at this point was that her grandfather was far off the deep end from senile. She suspected he had truly lost his mind this year. But this nonsense could wait until later. A present was to be had! Unlike the envelope, the box was untouched; however the red and blue of the wrapping paper seemed supernaturally bright. Shivering involuntarily, she opened it.

A grinning, annoyingly familiar face peered at her from the bottom of the box. "Why good morning little miss, lock-me-in-a-closet! Funny seeing you here!" Silus cracked his joints, smiling obscenely at her expression.

"You! What did you do to my grandpa's gift!"

"Surely you must realise your nutter of a grandfather left you nothing at all. I told he he couldn't reason his way out of a paper bag anymore! And," Silus cackled and clicked his tongue in disappointment, "Look what's happened to him now. Seems like your relatives just love mucking about with goblins. Poor breeding if you ask me." He grinned.

"They took granpa?" Kali's voice wavered as tears started from her eyes.

Silus only massaged his temples in frustration. "Of course they took him! Do you know anything at all about goblins? About your family?"

"Well. I..." The short answer was, she hadn't a clue.

"You're hopeless! Absolutely hopeless!" The creature lept out of the box, kicked at the box futilely, and disappeared down the hall. It took Kali a moment to realise nearly all the cake had disappeared with him. Taking what was left, she ate with her fingers and cried when she swallowed the last bit. She didn't understand. What had she done to deserve losing everyone close to her? Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily, she did not know the answer. By this point, she realised the room had gotten stiffelingly silent; like the quiet before a rain storm. Then, there was a quiet whistling coming from the box. The whistle grew slowly until it graduated to a howl like the wind. All of the air in the house began to move, and move quickly. In only a few moments, gale force winds were tearing through the rooms, whipping sheets and shirts and shorts against the door as the winds were sucked into the brightly wrapped box.

Kali clutched the table until her arms were burning relentlessly, and thought she might fly away. And then. Just ask quickly as it started, it stopped. Things in rooms clattered to the floor. Moments passed and only when all was still did Kali dare to breathe. But instead, she hacked and coughed out the dust motes in her lungs.

"What was that?" she said, carefully.

"What indeed," Silus whispered as he climbed back up on the table and stared at the now-sealed wooden vessel. It was like a bread box only much smaller and carved with words and symbols no one alive knew the meaning of; except for a large letter "C" on the center of the lid, which Silus could only guess meant "Camden". "Well! Time to go!" He leapt off the table and trotted to Kali's room.

"What do you mean 'Time to go!' " She chased after him.

"You know, 'Mosey on out of here', 'Hit the dusty trail', 'Make like a tree and leaf'."

"We need to leave?"

"Very good. Now I suppose you'll show off your marvelous powers of deduction by telling me the sky is blue," Silus chided. He was hurriedly looking through Kali's drawers from something. So far, he'd only managed to redecorate the room with socks and panties.

"But the sky is blue. And don't-- Hey! What do you think you're doing! You can't just go through my...things like that!" Cheeks burning, she rushed about trying to collect her undergarments and stuff them under the sheets. Then, not succeeding with her first object, she went after Silus. He dodged her small hands nimbly, giggling as he searched the drawer. "Aha! Gotcha you little..." But her fingers only held air.

Silus's head popped out from the remaining sea of socks. "I was looking for these."

In his large knobby hands were eyes, small ones. Like the kind you might find lodged in a small sculpture. They were carved out of black obsidian and embedded with a topaz iris. Kali backed into the wall in horror as Silus shoved the eyes into his head. It wasn't the sight that was disturbing so much as the dry creaking sound the eyes made as they were pushed in.

"I...I thought you could see me before," she said, clearly shaken but not stirred.

"Of course I could! I'm not blind. These are special eyes. These keep me from falling asleep when that damned sphere tells me to!" At that, he disappeared in a wisp of ashy dust and appeared next to the globe, which had begun to shimmer again. "See these! You can't touch me!" The living statuette did a dirty little jig around the globe, chanting and cackling all the while. Kali finally snapped out of her reverie.

"Where are we going?"

"Away. I mean you do want to find your grandfather, don't you?"

She only stared.

"But hey, if you don't feel like finding that nutter that's fine with me. With or without you I'm leaving!"

When she didn't say anything, Silus grinned a dastardly grin, his new yellow eyes alighting in a way far more sinister than before. "I'll take my leave. See you later alligator." And Silus left her. Above the fading giggling Kali thought she heard a distinct reptilian growl coming from the bathroom down the hall. He was right, she knew. She had to find her grandfather. Even if he was a crazy, senile old man, she still cared about him and didn't think it fair to let whatever goblins did to people happen to him.

Although Silus was nowhere to be seen, she began to gather her belongings to pack. She found the satchel her grandfather gave her and put the globe and monocle in the side pockets. When she'd first opened it, the statuette had taken up almost all of the main space. This time that space was filled with snacks and canned food, a fork, a can opener, the coin purse her grandfather had--filled with as many coins she could find in the house, the box she'd been given that day, pictures of her family and a flashlight. Kali knew she wouldn't be long, it was only the City after all; she'd only be gone for a few days at most. However, just as a precaution, she took everything out and put some clothes in the bottom and crammed everything back in. Despite the amount of stuff in the satchel, it never changed its shape though it was rather heavy.

Kali pulled on some shoes and a coat and strode out of the house. Reaching the end of the driveway, or what was left of it, she turned around and stared aghast. The house looked as if it should have been condemned. Over the living room the roof had sagged and created a hole. Another hole yawned in the side of her grandfather's workshop. From there, a trail of shuffling footprints led down the hill to the City. Something gleamed in the trail. It was a brass button from Kali's grandfather's vest; Kali put it in her pocket, trying her hardest not to start bawling. Looking down the old paved, but not really paved, road she saw the labyrinth city and its silvery walls and towers. A light haze clung to the city like heat to a road in summer. The girl hefted her satchel, breathed deeply, began her first step of her journey...and promptly fell backwards. She tried to stand up, but found the bag too heavy to life. Struggle as she might, she just couldn't stand up with it on her shoulders. Kali growled and grabbed the straps and started to slowly, and forcibly, drag it down the road.

---

And thus ends chapter 1. I see I once thought of splitting it up and making this chapter smaller. After typing it up, I agree that I should have made this shorter. But I shall shake my fingers and wrists loose and resume the next chapter.

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

​--Kyriel