Bully.
Jack
had an arrow nocked, his bow half drawn, but he trusted Six, and did not take
action, but the smell of blood made him woozy, and he feared he might faint.
Other than the perpetual television violence of his former life, he had
experienced very little violence in the flesh, at least of any substance, until
yesterday, or the day before, or whenever this part-nightmare, part-wonderland
had begun, first in the alley behind the Coffee Dump, with the Martians, and
then his run-in with the colossal snake, and finally, this brutal encounter
with the giant.
It
did not seem to matter, the surreal nature of each violent encounter, because
they were real, visceral, palpable, and ugly. You did not care that Humpty
Dumpty was an adorable fairytale being, when he appeared in your home, in the
middle of the night, with a bloody ax in his adorable fairytale hands.
But
there was nothing adorable about the giant before them, all nine feet of
height, with its too vast skull, leering green eyes beneath a Neanderthal brow,
a domed head the size of a small refrigerator, and that jutting lower jaw with
too many, too big teeth, in a sneering smile. The thing had introduced itself
by snapping the neck of the great white horse, the steed belonging to Lord
Meren Dulance of High Vale.
Jack
stood numbly, not moving, watching the towering brute as it ripped the
beautiful white head off the dead horse. The giant lifted the head in his
hands. As big as the horse had been—much larger than a Budweiser Clydesdale—the
head looked small, like that of a miniature pony, clasped in the massive hands
of the giant. The giant crammed his square, pink tongue into the gory hole of
the horse’s neck, and sighed loudly, but its staring gaze of murder never departed
from Jack and Six.
“Just
stand still,” Six said, his left hand locked upon his sword scabbard, his right
hand on the hilt of his great sword. “This is just a High Vale mugging, meant
to terrorize us. If we leave the crooden
giant alone, it shouldn’t come after us. If it does, don’t fight it, or wound
it, but run. Get into the cottage, it’s a safe zone. Hell, all of this is a
safe zone.”
Jack
counted six fingers on the giant’s hands, but that wasn’t what was so strangely
fascinating about the giant, because the six fingers matched the six hands,
which matched the six muscular arms. This was some nightmarish interpretation
of Kali, only decidedly too male, and without any touch of beauty. There was
something almost insect-like to the nightmare being, for six appendages
protruding from a VW-bug-sized torso just didn’t look human. Most everything else was apparently human to the giant,
however, except for the hooves at the ends of its massive goat legs. It wore a
filthy loincloth, but no other clothing.
If
you counted the bizarre legs, it was more of a spider, with a total of eight
appendages.
“I
think I could put an arrow in each of its eyes, while it’s standing over there,”
Jack said, voice quavering, “because whatever else happens, I just don’t want
the thing standing over here.”
“Don’t
do it, these things are incredibly fast. They are warriors, to the max, and I’ve
heard tales of crooden taking out six
fully armed knights. Not even a full party of adventurers led by a wizard with
a healer want to go toe-to-toe with a crooden.”
“So
what, we just stand here, after he killed your horse?” Jack said, feeling a
rising anger that matched his terror. He was sick and tired of getting pushed
around. He was sick and tired of running from big things.
“No,
we don’t just stand here,” Six said, “we run, and we run like we’ve never run
before.”
“You
two alive,” the giant snorted, in an almost reasonable tone, sounding like a
grizzly bear, holding the gory head in one hand, like an ice cream cone, still
licking at it, “cuz I got treat. Delish. But run, I eat all.”
“That
doesn’t sound too promising,” Jack whispered.
“Guess
we’ve been talking too loudly,” Six whispered in return. “I didn’t think it
could understand us.”
The
giant grinned at them, with blood-stained teeth. The two rows of teeth were
almost nicely laid out, as if the brute had worn braces when it was a brutish
teenage six-armed giant. In fact, the giant’s smile reminded Jack of Julia
Robert’s too big, too perfect teeth.
“Me
understand. Crood like pretty talk. Crood like pretty fairies,” the giant said,
but Jack didn’t know if it was talking directly to them, or to itself.
“We
are not fairies, but men,” Six
declared in a surprisingly confident shout.
“Men.
Fairies. Same, Crood. Din’t tink wuz real,”
Crood growl-laughed. The giant stood from its crouch to its full height.
Jack
blinked, recalculating his earlier visual measurement, the giant’s head would
probably go right up through a basketball net and wear the hoop as a crown.
“Tuh-Ten
fuh-feet tuh-tall?” Jack stuttered.
“Yeah,
this a big boy, even for crooden,”
Six answered, drawing closer to Jack. The two men huddled together, trembling.
The
crooden showed them the palms of five
hands (one hand still held the gory head), and these looked like normal hands
(other than the six fingers, and the incredible size) as if the monster were being
utterly reasonable with them, and took two impossibly long strides toward Jack
and Six on its weird backward goat legs. Jack thought that must be the
strangest thing about the giant, its legs, which looked like human legs, only
twisted, with the elbow in the rear—knees, whatever—however the logic of this twisting of animal and human worked,
because it seemed to be albino-white human skin, terminating in human-looking
ankles into what could be viewed as beautiful hooves, hooves the size of boulders,
hooves that made loud clopping noises when they struck and shuddered the
ground.
How
in the world had the thing snuck up on them? One second everything was right
with the world, everything was beautiful, they’d had such a lovely night in the
little cottage, and the morning had begun so beautifully, and then without
warning, the giant was there, and the horse was struggling in its grasp, but
only for the briefest moment, and then the horse’s neck was twisted, and now
they stood facing an approaching behemoth on boulder-sized hooves.
“No
fraid,” the crooden growled. “Me
nice, Crood nice.”
Suddenly
Six grabbed his own crotch and squeezed.
“Whatever
you do, don’t pee!” Six whisper-shouted to Jack. “The smell will drive it
crazy.”
Jack
clamped down, because it was close, when something like this monster strode
toward you and the ground boomed beneath its hooves, you could easily lose
control of your bladder.
The
crooden boomed laughter.
“So
funny,” Crood snickered. “Funny fairy. Go pee-pee, Crood no care. All good.”
“This
is a safe zone, newby zone, you shouldn’t be here!” Six shouted, seizing Jack
in a hug and moving them backward, away from the monster, toward the cottage.
It was only two strides away from them. Two strides of those legs, and those
hands would have them, and the men would tear as easily in those hands as had
the neck of the majestic horse.
“Why
fraid?” the crooden snickered,
obviously enjoying their terror, crouching down, reaching out one arm across
the distance, its finger pointing at them, as if it meant to tickle them. Its
finger actually tickled the air, just five feet away from the two huddling men.
“Crood play fairies. No fraid.”
Six
clenched his eyes shut and squeezed Jack, but the younger man could not look
away from the approaching doom, Jack could never close his eyes to whatever bad
was coming. Then a black stick came crashing down on the wrist and the crooden stumbled up and away from them,
and a figure in a black hooded cape stood between them and the monster.
“You’re
just another bully, aren’t you?” the man in the black hood said, twirling a
black club in his hand.
The
crooden stared down with incredulous
eyes, one of its hands cradling the wounded wrist. The giant’s too big, too
perfect teeth jutted out in what appeared to be a smile of rage. The bulging
eyes slitted.
The
man in the hood turned and looked back at Jack.
“Stacey!”
Jack cried, and then: “Watch out!”
Because
even as Jack recognized Stacey’s smiling face, the crooden giant leapt forward, swinging one of its massive fists.
The
man in the black hood reacted while turning back to the giant, swinging his black
club up to block the approaching blow, and it was fast, everything was fast,
but horribly, the fist connected with Stacey’s head, even as Stacey rolled with
the blow and the black club seemed to absorb at least part of the force of the
monster punch, but Stacey was lifted up and thrown, end over end, to crumple
ten feet away on the ground, twisted and broken, face-down in the grass.
“Struck
Crood! Fairy struck Crood!” the giant bellowed, its head opening up in a vast
crack as its great mouth lifted to the sky. How could a mouth open so wide? The
giant dropped the gory head and all its hands formed into fists that looked
like knobbed wrecking balls. Except for the hand that Stacey had struck, which
flopped impotently.
Jack,
still hugging Six, looked from the giant to Stacey, and was amazed to see the
man in the black hood pushing himself up from the ground, shrugging out of his
hood and cloak, the left side of his face appearing torn and bloody. Stacey
wasn’t dead! How was that even possible? He’d been thrown ten feet by that
blow, and now he stood there, shaking his head, smiling, leaning upon his black
walking stick.
“Ah,
Pugilist,” Crood snarled, great lips drawn back in a rictus leer. “Fight Crood!
Fight Pugilist!”
“You
wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been sucker-punched,” Wolf said, shaking
his head. His left eye was swollen shut, and the cheek below the eye hung in a
bloody flap of ripped skin. “Ernie always said I was too cocky. When you look
away from the bully, that’s when he strikes. I just never seem to learn, do I?”
The
crooden took a half step forward, its
massive hoof crushing the severed horse head.
“This
is Stacey, your friend?” Six said, pushing away from Jack, drawing his sword.
“Yes,
it’s Stacey,” Jack said, drawing his bow and sighting down the arrow at the
giant’s teeth. Just open that mouth again, I dare you, crack it open like you
did before, come on open that mouth, Jack mentally commanded, concentrating.
Just one perfect shot. Come on, open wide, Humpty Dumpty.
“Stacey,
you can’t fight it!” Six shouted. “Don’t try to fight it! You have to stay
alive, I need you, that’s why you’re here! Don’t waste yourself on this crooden!”
“I
am Wolf. Let me handle this bully,” Wolf said, his black stick suddenly up from
the ground and twirling. He snapped his hand and the shillelagh danced away,
skipping end-over-end toward the giant, who barely had time to glance down, and
the black club bobbed up and punched squarely between the giant’s thighs,
smacking into its great groin. The stick came skipping back end-over-end into Stacey
Wolf’s hand.
The
giant’s giant eyes bugged out.
“Ooiiip!” Crood croaked in an
uncharacteristically high-pitched bleat.
Then
Wolf strode forward, tall, his black shillelagh twirling. The giant flailed at
Wolf in an ungainly punch, but Wolf ducked the blow and tapped the sweeping
fist with his stick. There was a loud crack and the giant winced and stumbled
backward.
“Hurt
Crood! Hurt Crood!” the giant bellowed.
“That’s
the idea,” Wolf said, in close now, doing a double crack on each of the giant’s
ankles.
The
giant roared, in pain, in frustration, but mostly in fury, its eyes livid, its
great smile more prominent than ever, as it stumbled away from the
comparatively small attacker’s onslaught. It was in pain, it was hurt, but the
giant was certainly not retreating, as its fists aligned into a fighter’s
stance, and the giant crouched and honed in upon Wolf.
“Crood...crush!” it sneered, and its smile now
took on the form of enjoyment, as it poised on its own attack. It would make
short work of this meddling fairy, and then it would enjoy pulling the creature
to pieces—tiny, tasty pieces.
“Crood
read too many Hulk comics,” Wolf
laughed, beginning to dance, his boots trotting gracefully, waltzing to the
left, and then tap-dance snapping to the right, but he stayed right there, in
the giant’s kill zone, the black shillelagh twirling and spinning, the stick
moving like a helicopter propeller blade, moving from left hand to right, from
right hand to left hand. He looked powerful in his renaissance garb, breeches
and vest glowing burgundy in the morning sunlight.
There
was a loud crunching noise.
“Ooiiip!” Crood gasped, going very still. It
stood there, like a statue, as if it were turned into stone, and briefly Jack
thought of Tolkien’s Hobbit, and
wondered if perhaps the rays of the morning sun had magically done its work.
The giant’s eyes rolled and stared at Stacey Wolf, at Six, and then at Jack. Its
eyes seemed to swell bigger, literally bulging out of the great egg of its
head.
Then
the giant turned his head, very slowly, and looked over his shoulder. The monster
did an almost comical double-take, and then threw back his head and roared.
Jack, sighting down the length of his arrow, cursed, because the giant’s head
was turned in profile, and he just didn’t have the shot he most desired. He did
not wish to waste a single arrow.
The
giant’s six arms writhed in the air, fingers clasping, gripping at the air, and
again Jack thought the giant looked like some bizarre insect, its arms looking
like grasshopper legs, flexing. The giant spun about, and only then did they
see the truly huge animal attached to the giant’s body, a great wolf, its teeth
sunk deep into the giant’s meaty right buttock. The giant continued to turn,
bellowing in fury, and the great wolf was lifted off its feet, spun about,
swinging through the air.
Stacey
Wolf dodged back as the wolf came around, and Jack was amazed to take in the
wolf’s size, it was as big as a small horse! But still, in comparison to the
giant, it looked like a poodle dangling from the giant’s butt.
“Damn
it all!” shouted Six, “you’re just pissing it off!”
The
giant crooden kept attempting to turn
around, to get one of its many hands back to free itself from the wolf, but the
big animal had its paws dug into the soil, and it was yanking backward, its
jaws locked in flesh.
And
then Stacey Wolf danced in and cracked it on one of its elbows. And the giant
roared and came at Stacey, who danced to the side, cracking out again at
another reaching hand.
There!
Jack, concentrating, had his shot. The tip of his arrow was aligned with the
giant’s open mouth, facing full on, and all he had to do was release the grip
of his right hand, there, now, do it, do it! But then the moment passed and the
giant went still again, his mouth closed, lips pulled over the vast teeth. Jack
closed his eyes. You missed it. You had it right there, you could have shot him
right through his open mouth, right up there into his brain, you had it and you
blew it. Jack sighed. Why hadn’t he fired?
Then
Stacey Wolf went right up the middle, right between the giant’s six arms, and
he actually ran up the giant’s belly in a dazzling Parkour move, his boots striking the giant just above the waist,
and with both arms he brought the black shillelagh down upon the giant’s
forehead, just above and between its eyes.
Curr-ACK! It sounded like Mark McGwire hitting
one far out of the park.
Stacey
Wolf fell back, landing on his feet, dancing back away from the giant.
The
crooden giant, vast even among crooden, stood still a few moments. Then
its eyes came together, crossing, and then rolled up into its head, and the giant
went over backward. There was a loud scrambling as the great wolf behind the
giant released his hold, and danced away from the falling behemoth. The ground
shook as the giant struck the soil.
Jack
ran forward and seized Stacey in his arms, actually lifting the large man off
his feet.
“It’s
you!” Jack cried, holding onto Stacey, and weeping. “I thought you didn’t make
it through.”
“I’m
here, it’s me,” Stacey Wolf said, woozily, and then he saw the world spinning,
and his own eyes rolled up into head, much the way the giant’s had a few
seconds before, but Six was there, and they caught him, and lowered him to the
grasses.
And
then the giant wolf was there, licking Wolf the man’s face.
“Please
stand back,” Wolf the wolf said between licks.
She
stood at the railing of the observation deck, leaning on the cool aluminum
bannister, sipping at her hot cocoa. She did not know what she was going to do.
She didn’t know if she could go back to Vestigial Surreality, because she was
right there, huddled beneath a blanket when they removed Toby Winnur from his
chamber, and they tried to keep the mess of what had been him hidden from her, but she had seen, just enough. Poor Toby was
gone, only vestiges of him were in that black body bag upon the stretcher. She
had seen the outlines of what could have been interpreted as a hand, a human
hand, in the remains of the flesh, or not flesh,
but bubbles. What they carted out had not been human, not anymore. At least the
bundle she had carried across the floor had been somewhat substantial, although
foamy, and light. Molecularly, he had become something else. Toby Winnur,
Number Six, had become slime.
That could still happen
to Seven.
But
what bothered Seven even more than the fact that Toby Winnur was gone—she had
at least expected that—but what was worse than his inevitable death, was the
fact that no one had come to question her. None of the EMTs had even glanced at
her. None of the security men in their uniforms had come to talk to Seven.
Worse, no one had tried to comfort her.
What
kind of company handled things this way?
She
had to go back, she knew that, regardless of her eventual fate, because she had
to go to her Inner Sanctum. She couldn’t leave herself there. She understood
Six, if only now, because Seven was truly Seven,
only there, in that world.
Seven
toyed with the locket beneath her shirt, tracing its heart shape with a finger.
She sipped at her cocoa and frowned. There was something...?
Something
bothered her. It was right there, on the edge of her mind, circling her, and if
she could only reach out, and grasp it, but she couldn’t quite get a mental
hand out there, far enough. But something was bothering her.
She
clasped the chain around her neck and drew out the locket. She smiled at the
silver charm, a heart, tracing the intricate carvings with her fingertip. She loved
the feel of the cool silver, with the aged deep lines, the silver was polished
bright by the constant movement beneath her clothes, but the grime of ages had
worked its way into the etchings, the tracings, the veins. It calmed her to
work the locket in her fingers.
But
something troubled her. Something.
What was it?
She
studied the heirloom locket. What was the shape in the center? Funny, she
thought there had been initials engraved deep, but no, it was a shape. It
looked like a ball, a globe, with a circle going around it. Was it supposed to
be a figurative representation of the world, spinning? Or, was that supposed to
be an airplane flying around the Earth? No, it looked like a ring, kind of like
an iconic depiction of the planet Saturn.
But
it was so old, this locket, the engraving so worn down after time, that it was
almost impossible to figure out what the engraving was supposed to be.
Her
mother gave her this locket, and her mother before her, going all the way back
to the ancestor, him, the mythical one, their patron saint, their beloved
forefather. Supposedly this locket had belonged to Jack Messenger. She didn’t
know if it were true, what her mother told her, because there were a lot of
things about her mother that she couldn’t quite trust, but her mother
supposedly knew Old Jack, the Patriarch, when he was more than two hundred
twenty years old, when her mother was just a little girl.
Seven’s
eyes filled with tears. She wondered where Six was, had he made it, as he
planned, was some part of him even now alive, in some utopian world?
“Right
on time,” a voice said at her elbow.
Seven
turned and smiled at a little girl. A funny little girl, dressed in an
old-fashioned frilly dress, all shades of pink, hair up with bunches of golden
curls. Seven set her cup of cocoa on the railing and turned to face the little
girl.
“Hello,”
she said, smiling, wiping at her eyes.
She
heard an alarm sound somewhere in the platform and noticed people rushing
toward the back of the observation deck, and the ceiling suddenly closed in,
sealing off the atmosphere. The air immediately felt warmer in the confines of
the deck.
“I’m
Manda,” the little girl said, putting out a hand to shake.
“I’m...”
Seven began, taking the little hand in her own, and she hesitated, because she
was almost going to introduce herself as Seven, it’s how she identified with
herself, but this little girl—something about her, something familiar—she
smiled and squeezed the girl’s hand, “I’m Sandy.”
“We
had best catch a taxi,” Manda said, not releasing Seven’s hand, but
transferring it to her other hand, and walking, pulling Seven along with her,
so that they were strolling and holding hands.
Seven
laughed, wow, what a little controller, but she had to admit, the little girl
was charming. Seven thought she had caught sight of the little girl earlier, in
the food court, as she was rising on the crystal escalator with her cocoa. She
glanced back. Great, she left her beverage sitting back there on the railing,
she almost paused, but the little girl drew her inexorably onward.
“Didn’t
I see you earlier, with a handsome man?” Seven asked as they entered a
stairwell and began the spiraling descent to the taxi platform.
“A
very handsome man, oh yes,” Manda answered, smiling sadly, “but handsome is, as
handsome does.”
Seven
chuckled. She might have said, never
trust a pretty face. And she thought of Stacey, and without thought her
hand grasped at her locket, which she had tucked back into her shirt at the
little girl’s approach. And there was that troubling...feeling, again, as if she had left the stove on, or the door
unlocked. Something gamboled off in the darkness, playfully tickling at her
conscious mind, like a moth batting at an electric light, so close it burned,
but still, it couldn’t get in.
They
were on the taxi level and the little girl hustled her over to an open portal,
and that was weird, because you always had to wait in lines for a taxi, despite
the seven portals. Even with seven portal on either side of the
platform—fourteen portals in all—you still had to wait for a taxi, always. As
they walked into the waiting taxi, Seven glanced along the portals and saw at
least five people in each line.
“You’re
not a queen, are you?” Seven asked, chuckling a bit as she seated herself close
to the little girl.
“I
used to think of myself as a princess, but I was only pretending,” Manda said,
smiling at Seven.
“Dada
is dada,” Seven whispered, troubled, her eyes widening.
“You
remember me,” Manda said, nodding.
“That
was you,” Seven breathed. “Dada is dada. Data is data.”
“Could
be a coincidence?” Manda said, giggling. She was playing with something in her
hands. Seven leaned in close as the taxi pulled away. Distantly she considered
that she did not know where they were going, and they hadn’t said anything to
the driver silhouette up front. She felt the craft lurch and her tummy dipped
when the vehicle sped away from the platform.
“This
is beautiful, an heirloom, your mother gave it to you?” Manda said, holding up
her hand and dangling the chain, the heart-shaped locket swinging, a pendulum.
“How?”
Seven breathes, her hand clasping at her heart, but wait, that was in the Inner
Sanctum, not here, she distinctly remembers crafting the locket, placing the
crystal cube—the size of a vitamin pill, yes she distinctly remembers—she
places the crystal cube into the heart-shaped locket, a smooth locket without
engraving—yet she distinctly remembers Mother, a High Jackian Priestess, giving
her this locket, on her thirteenth birthday, a token from Old Jack himself,
before he died at the age of two hundred thirty, she remembers all this.
“Keep
it safe,” Manda says, handing the chain and locket to Seven. “Don’t pull it out
in public like that. Trust Old Ben, though you never know what he will do next.
And talk to Mr. Kronoss, don’t be afraid of him, but never, absolutely never
trust him. Especially if you’re a pigeon!”
Seven
placed the chain over her head and dropped the locket inside the top of her
shirt. She did not wish to look at the little girl, not anymore, and she could
barely breathe. She realized the taxi was stopped, settled, the door opening.
As she went to flee the taxi the little girl, Manda, seized her arm.
“Tell
me, Sandra Newbury, Seven,” Manda said, and despite herself, Seven looked into
her eyes. “Are people worth it? Do you think people are evil, or good?”
“People?”
Seven said, unable to look away from the blue eyes of the little girl.
“I
know there are good ones, I especially like Jack, and Stacey too. In fact, I
think Stacey is my favorite, of all the people that have ever lived. But
mostly, aren’t people just...crazy,
little universes inside coconut skulls, scrambled like eggs, always turning to
evil?”
Seven
tried to snatch her arm away but the little girl’s grip was a vise of steel.
Coconuts. Eggs. Her own brain seemed scrambled. Images of snakes and Humpty
Dumpty swirled about for a few moments, and she thought she must be suffering a
stroke. She witnessed dead pigeons suddenly take flight. Angry eyes glanced at
her from a cell phone video. She was behind Stacey, Jack’s hand on the big man’s
spine, and the Martian were approaching. Old Ben stood in the corner, leafing
through a book. And Saturn glowed behind her eyes.
“I
can’t figure it out, truthfully,” Manda said. “I love people. And I hate them,
desperately. Don’t you?”
“Yes,”
Seven said, and when the hand released her, she shot from the back of the taxi
onto a deserted sidewalk.
“Bye-bye!”
Manda cried as the taxi doors shut and the craft lifted up into the sky
Seven
turned and looked up at the vast building before her, the steps leading up to
the rear entrance mere paces away. She saw the red glow of the giant VS logo,
even though she couldn’t see the letters, which were too high up and just
around the corner of the building The little girl, Manda, had dropped her right
at the steps of Vestigial Surreality.
Slowly,
she climbed the steps. She had two minds, for just these moments, she could
cling tenuously to both of them, both of her minds, both of her collection of
memories, for she remembers creating the locket and she remembered her mother’s
gift. The same locket. Different lockets, of different worlds, of different
realities.
And
Seven remembers the little girl, Manda, too, for it was her own face, the face
of Sandra Newbury, when she was seven years of age. Manda was a perfect
reproduction of seven-year-old Sandy.
© Copyright 2016 Douglas Christian Larsen. Vestigial Surreality. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
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