A huge shadow loomed over him, and irregular hooves plopped themselves into the licking flames. They hissed as the fragments of trampled souls puffed into noxious farts.

“George.”

Jeremiah acknowledged.

“Jeremiah.”

The beast replied, his cavernous mouth expelling moths, maggots and caterpillars against the immortal wood. The demonic voice caused crows, ravens, and other spooky things to flutter and fly.

Cowards. The carrion eaters always had been Hell’s lowest rung.

The two sat for some time in respected silence, Jeremiah, a tired man of four thousand five hundred and sixty four years young (but he certainly did not look a day over half that) simply enjoying the view. George, a demon born of fire, hate, and the loathing of a thousand mothers easing his sore hooves after a long day of forcing repentance.

He itched his single, asymmetric horn. His giant red fingers showering his friend with flakes of dried blood, shit, and other bodily goodies.

“Say, Jeremiah. We’re friends, right? I mean, I wouldn’t say great pals, but we respect one another. Right?”

The demon hissed with vipers. In its wake, a thousand earthly drug addicts shot up, four infants were aborted, and two basset hounds were left in an SUV, boiled by summer heat.

“Sure, George. We’ve had our differences, but I like to think I can count on you. Why?”

There was a beat between the two sentient creatures.

“Well?”

Jeremiah inquired after a lengthy wait. Satan’s army hardly ever hesitated.

“You’re human, right? Or, were. You died. You never said how. Or why God found it worthy to cast you into our hospitality. You’ve been here for life times, and you haven’t repented. You never said why.”

Jeremiah sat there for a brief moment, watching a six headed dragon devour Sister Alexandria, a nun who word had it, liked it rough and ready.

“You never asked, my friend. Ever met him, the big guy upstairs?”

“No.”

An earth quake shook a heavy urban metro.

“When I was a kid, I always thought god was some big white guy walking in sandals on puffy white clouds. You never saw his face, maybe a big fluffy white beard, or a giant hand. But never his face.

“I didn’t have an imagination, you might guess.

“But anyway. They burned me at the stake. I used to kidnap little boys and girls and use them, if you catch my drift. Little buggers were all brats though, I say I did their mothers a favor.

“They found a couple of the tastier ones in my meat cellar, the parts I didn’t fancy, anyway.”

Jeremiah smiled.

“So, sodomy, gluttony and murder.”

The demon said, causing gasoline prices to reach record highs.

“No, actually. Can you believe they actually set me ablaze because I ate them on Friday?

I tried to contest that it wasn’t really meat, but once you’ve pissed off the mob there is little turning back. So yeah, they tied me to a big fucking tree, covered me in sheep’s blood and made me the centerpiece to one of their book burnings.

“Illiterate Hillbillies.”

“Sheep’s blood?”

The demon contested, his voice churning up a tornado somewhere in the heartland of America.

“Yeah, can you believe it? Guv’nor said it was my color.

“Anyway. It took them awhile, you see. Morons couldn’t start a fire to save their lives. Upstairs right now that wouldn’t big such a big deal. Humans have all those fancy gizmos, lighter fluid, blow torches, flame throwers, Zippos. The works.

“But this was a long time ago. We lived off of sticks and pinecones for Chrissakes. Everyone knew had to start a fire in those days. Apparently to those Neanderthals it was a mystery. How they had the intelligence to keep breathing was beyond me.

“Imagine how hard I laughed when I found myself here, in this lovely place.”

He gestured all around him, the scene dominated by fire and lava flowes.

“So they had their book burning, me as a center piece. It took all god damned night, it was sort of like school, really. Waiting for every jerk off to get his rear in gear to finish the job up. So what did I do?

“I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was at God’s doorstep.”

The demon stared at him in anticipation.

“So, when I was a kid I imagined these huge pearly gates in the clouds. I didn’t get in of course, so I can’t tell you how the rest of it was. But the doorstep was sort of a let down.

“It was just a room, well furnished of course. There was a big cushy chair, an empty fire place, and some tea.

“I guess God fancies Darjeeling. I don’t care for it much myself, you see. I’m more of an Earl Grey man, but I was his guest after all. Who rejects God’s tea? I certainly didn’t have the balls at the time.

“There was a man sitting across from me. He was dressed in all white, except for a pair of purple gloves. I guess God fancies purple gloves too, because just as I realized that I was dead, the man opened his mouth and said

‘I am God.’

“Straight forward fellow, I‘ll give him that.”

“What did he look like?”

The Hell Spawn inquired quietly, causing super tanker to spill its guts in the Caribbean.

“Handsome fella‘, except for the gloves. He wasn’t the big white guy I thought he was.

“He sort of looked like Julius Caesar, but thinner and without the sweating. Or the holes oozing blood.

“So he looks at me over his teacup, which was probably of the cheaper variety, pinky in the air and tells me what I’ve led a very strange life, with the eating of little girls, the sheep’s blood, the foot fetish, the five years as a pastor, basically my life story.

“He says that if I truly repent my sins to him, he will spare me Satan’s embrace. He said it with an ominous tone, but after I prodded him a little, he confessed that if I just said sorry he’d probably let me in anyway.

“Just if I tried real hard to be a good guy, keep the music down at night. That sort of stuff.”

The demon, suddenly self conscious of his hooves curled them up under the dock. In the process he accidentally kicked a dolphin that had homosexual relations in the life prior. Hell was equal opportunity, apparently.

“So I sat there for a moment, sipping that tea that really could have been hotter. A pile of scones materialized before me, so I sank my teeth into one.

“Of course I was hungry, I had missed supper because I was on that damn stake all night. A man has his needs, even if he is dead, George.

“We talked for awhile, God and I. About life, the universe, what my life would have been like if I decided to be a doctor, that sort of stuff.

“There were no windows to mark the passage of time in this room, you see. And while I don’t know how many people went to heaven in those days and needed to speak with the big man himself, I figured it wasn’t many. We were there for awhile.

“He was good about it though; never for a second did he seem impatient. I guess you get that if you’re the alpha and the omega.

“Somehow, I don’t know why, the conversation came to Lucifer. Rather confident with our rapport, I asked him something I had always pestered my Sunday school teachers about.

“That when everything is all said and done and the rapture finally comes to man’s domain, will he finally admit Lucifer back into heaven?

“He jerked like a nervous bird and made a distasteful noise. He told me that he’d never allow Satan and his peons back into his good graces, ever. That they were good blokes who did their jobs, but never would they know bliss again.

… sorry George.”

The demon sniffled, a single tear of fire dribbling down his cheek.

“It’s okay, Jeremiah. Go on.”

He said, causing a hundred unfaithful men to “forget” their conscious once again.

“So I asked him if his forgiveness was infinite, and if he was willing to accept me into heaven after all the bad things I had done, why not forgive the fallen angel and his cronies after they did their jobs?

“He looked at me for a moment, and then he said something. I didn’t hear what the hell he said, though. I was so distracted by those purple gloves.

“When I asked him to repeat himself, he only smiled and sipped his tea. However much I asked him to repeat himself, he only sipped that damn tea and smiled.

Maybe he ate a scone or two, but that‘s not the point.”

“So what did you do?”

George asked tensely, causing a man to swat a housefly that could have evolved into a space faring race of super creatures, given time and life.

“I did what any other respectable man would do. I told the bugger to sod off, thank you very much. I’m not a rude man, by far, but the bloke totally blew off my question. I don’t take kindly to that, no sir.

So as I was walking toward the door that fireplace caught my eye. It was really quite lovely. Exquisitely cleaned with a really fine set of pokers. There was even a small stack of birch bundled up next to the wrought iron gate.

“I turned to him, my hand on the door knob and told him it was a really nice hearth, and asked if he had ever used it.

He told me that no, he had never used it. When I inquired as to why he just smiled and told me;

‘I don’t know how.’

That is why I’ve never repented, George.”

]]> http://vesta.freeweb7.com/adeli/?feed=rss2&p=19 http://vesta.freeweb7.com/adeli/?p=18 http://vesta.freeweb7.com/adeli/?p=18#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:39:39 +0000 Ed Flash Fiction http://vesta.freeweb7.com/adeli/?p=18 I found myself unable to write anything meaningful. So in the bit of free time I earned myself I decided to do a little bit of exercising. Below is the end result. Before beginning I created some ground rules to work on.

1. Every entry should involve the randomly generated topic word.
2. Every entry should somehow use something from the previous entry.
3. Thirty seconds. No more. No less.
4. No editing.

Pick your favorite. I will write a 600ish word flash fiction entry for it by Friday.

About
“Well, what’s this all about?”

The headmistress said, her voice jaded and rough, born of a lifetime of bathroom smoking.

I glared up defiantly, the dead body of my best friend beneath me. His jaw was slack.

“What the hell do you think this is about?”

I replied with an edge that could not be placed.

Talking
They were talking about me when I found them huddled in the filthy men’s room. Julia was snorting up lines of coke on one of the cracked toilets. Michael was making sure he took full advantage of her vulnerable view.

“So, you see Pete the other night? Christ, he must have emptied his entire wallet on that whore.”

Gray
If there was one color that fit mister Peter Graham, it was gray. He was always the shifty child in school, the one that always had the air of a grave digger about him. He’d often play by himself, the other children too afraid or indifferent to bother with poor Petey.

Then one day he stopped coming to school altogether.

This is his story.

Bag
They found the body in a couple of heavy duty garbage bags outside the train station. It didn’t take them long to find it. I guess there were a lot of strays in that area.

A feral pitbull (an altogether nice dog, though) dragged one of the larger bags into the middle of a nearby kickball field. It’s a pity school was out on holiday.

Loan
Gregory was amusing himself with a game of tetris on his cheap disposable cell phone when the train platform shuddered. 9:25 was right on time and he didn’t even have to interrupt his losing streak to notice the rather busty woman getting off.

He loaned her so much money, it had become second nature.

Burn
Ian was used to the burning sensation by now. He even managed to control the fierce itching when on duty. What would the other bridge officers think if they saw their skipper sticking his hands down his pants to relieve a fierce case of crabs? If he had one vice in life, it’d be cheap women.

What he wasn’t used to was the bleeding.

You’d be surprised at how badly blood stains white slacks.

Lovely
Ken stared down the barrel of the combat shotgun that was suddenly thrust in his face. It filled his world and for a brief moment he could taste the gun powder and feel the shockwave.

He managed to mouth “Just lovely” before the buckshot tore off his lower jaw entirely.

Spring
A lot of people like spring. They like to go on about rebirth and reproduction. You know, the kind of stuff they write romance novels about.

I don’t. That’s when they defrost. And sure, there’s a lot of rebirth and reproduction. But I prefer to keep my lovely brains in tact.

Maw
She was discreetly shovelling ramen noodles into her gaping maw when I settled down on the far end of the cafeteria. A lot of the time she’d stop half way through to pick the bits of noodles from her braces.

It was a pity it’d be her last meal.

She’s was very lovely and I was so lonely.

Can
Jeremy was starving. It had been days without a single sign of civilization and he was becoming a little touched in the head. The heat was hard on them all, but Jeremy was taking it the worst.

When Jack found him he was beating the single can of creamed corn left in their food stores with his bare fists.

He never really fully recovered. Neither did the corn.

Ice
Aceline griped her gladius and gritted her teeth, but the wind kept driving into her. It was like a living, icy wall. It seemed determined to keep her away from the town’s tiny church.

Outside in the grassy green yard, a dozen or so children played telephone with old cans and bits of string.

She was mysteriously absent from their vision.

The sun had just disappeared completely from horizon as Joel hastily fiddled with his antique lantern, lighting the kerosene soaked wick with exquisite care not to spill any fuel. His father’s fields were over grown and parched, there was dried grass and bales of uncollected hay for as far as his eyes could see in the shadowy light cast by his lantern.

It was strange being home again. After all this time so much had changed in town. People used to look at him with happy, optimistic faces. But as he strolled through the deserted main street just hours before, he was met with only a couple of hollow stares. His town definitely remembered him, but it was as if he was a ghost barely in their realm of perception.

He gleaned from a couple of friends that were too poor to flee the drought that the wizard of the four winds had died just after he left. His tower had been found ruined by a fire that ground the granite walls into dust. They never found the body, but the old man claimed to be hundreds of years old. Everyone had assumed he simply burned in the fire, simply too old to escape the flames he had likely carelessly created.

Everyone had always been cautious of him and it seemed they were right in doing so. With his death he was told that the air became hot and brutal, an oppressive dusty thing that zapped the earth of life. It wasn’t long before the rains stopped completely. Grass withered, dried and ultimately died.

He had been gone little more than a year. The devastation wrought by this Wizard of the Winds was remarkable.

So lost was Joel in thought of the disaster that he did not notice the grass around him shivering in a nonexistent wind and coalescing around an especially large bundle of hay.

He had been told his parents had not been seen for several weeks. They were still young enough to maintain their family farm outside of town, but the disappearance was strange. Times had been especially rough recently and no one had the time to check on them. The walk was too far, the air too hot, and the chores at home too many

He suspected that his brash father had a falling out with his neighbors and they simply didn’t care that much. Joel had always been the white sheep of the family.

Secretly he hoped that was the case and nothing else had gone wrong. His grandfather had a weak heart when he died, his father likely did as well.

There was a faint grumbling from a bundle of hay, the iron strips that bound the tightly compacted grass together whined and snapped.

Joel spun around. His free hand instantly went to the bronze gladius he kept sheathed at his side.

“It’s Joel, dad. Stop messing around, I’m home!”

He swung the lantern out before him. Ghostly images materialized from just on the threshold of darkness. Bales of hay he had just past were shifting positions. The field around him seemed to be suddenly alive with movement and odd noises. The rustling of dry vegetation was pierced by the occasional loud CRRRAA-ACK of bindings giving out.

Turning, he began to sprint toward the farmhouse in the distance. The ancient structure was cold and quiet and not at all reassuring.

The field churned around him as if blasted by a tornado, but the air was still, heavy and incredibly hot. It was like being in an oven.

He ran until his lungs were burning and the sound around him grew into cacophony. Clearing the fields, face slicked with sweat he came to a sudden stop as the house suddenly materialized in front of him.

While the structure as a whole was left standing, the north facing wall had collapsed inward and was littered with hundreds of pounds of hay. His childhood home was in ruin.

There was a stale scent he recognized from his younger years. When he and his friends wandered through the halls of the ancient mausoleum in the hills. It was the smell of old death, an unattended and dry smell left to its own devices. It came from the interior of the ruined first floor. The lantern light played over smashed furniture and shredded books flecked with brown and red.

The ground shook behind him.

He turned slowly, gladius in one hand and lantern in the opposite.

Joel craned his neck upward not comprehending the sight before him.

He barely had enough time to gather his faculties before it swung its enormous arm.

This is more of fleshing out an idea rather than a literary prize. So, forgive me if it sucks. It’s something.

It was moments like this that Decima lived for. Her long life had brought her many heartaches and even more joys, but she lived for the all or nothing moments her line of work often brought her across. She’d spent weeks tracking it across the ruined city scape that sprawled across the barren plain. She often abandoned sleep entirely for the off chance at picking up just the right hint of wind or the faintest bit of its tell tale scent.

It smelled dusty and old. Like ancient papyrus and stale leather. There was always the smallest bit of a gritty talcum powder that hung in the air and stuck to the back of the throat just before it fed, the smashed remnants of objects too precious and unique to ever be replaced.

It quite literally was a relic of an age long since passed into dust.

She crawled on her belly putting further abuse on her antiqued breast plating. The sky was washed out and grey, hinting at rain. It must be so desperately hungry to risk destroying itself in a downpour. It had to be here, the path of destruction it left was unmistakable. She’d come across delicate cedar carvings ground into drift wood, remarkably well preserved masonry pitted with tiny meteor impacts, even a king’s tomb ground down to the sarcophagi feet. Each of her findings were more recent than the last.

Her technology may have been out of date and in-operational half of the time, but years of tracking its kind honed her senses. She could feel it in the air, a faint electricity. Or a magical aura thatpermeated the physical world. Something science couldn’t explain quite yet.

Hastily she tied her hair back into a pony tail and scrabbled through the remains of a toppled and sand blasted Romanesq column. Her line of sight was filled with debris and tumbleweed, but she could feel it. It was close. Her heart was pounding.

The city was well planned and even in its death she could easily navigate the grid of streets and alley ways. There were no street signs, but they wouldn’t have helped her anyway. Every where there were signs of the golem.

Just as she peeked her head above the cracked bust of a long forgotten war hero in what she believed to be the epicenter of the forgotten civilization, she heard it. A terribly loud cry that cut into her head like a scythe. She flinched instinctively.

Instantly Decima was in a maelstrom. Tiny pebbles and a fine powdery grime drove into her hardened flesh as a confined whirlwind roared over her. Wiping her eyes frantically she stumbled in a completely random direction. Not interested in the puny woman it happened upon, the construct continued its rapid escape from the city.

Decima wiped her eyes and managed to catch a glimpse of it before it disappeared behind a cathedral. Bipedal and roughly humanoid in shape, it had to be well over 20 feet tall. It’s limbs were constructed of a fierce confined windstorm and painted a dull tan by ground stone work and tiny shreds of paper. It blended in perfectly with its surroundings. The creature was surely native to this city, it was entirely made of local materials.

In what would past for its chest cavity, there was a promising glint of shiny metal. The dynamo that drove it. Her prize.

The fierce sound died just as suddenly as it started.

She gave pursuit not even bothering to spit the dry muck out of her mouth.

It seemed fitting that it’d be her last meal.

Her captors possibly agreed. She glared down at them from the relative safety of the orange tree. They moaned, their broken fingernails digging into the thin bark of the old and twisted orange tree. Secure as ever, the tree just wobbled slightly.

One of them was her brother Marco. He had joined the ranks of the undead not more than hours before. His mode of transformation was more violent than the subtle symptoms brought on by the air borne variety of the illness. His infection had been direct through the bodily fluids. He had been partially eaten. Delilah had accepted their fate weeks before, when the first signs of infection began to become obvious. It didn’t hurt to look at him now. He was done suffering, the intelligent glint that was the human soul had left his eyes the moment he fell from his own tree and snapped his neck. It was a pity all the fruit had been picked. He didn’t have a last meal to savor.

Delilah wiped the sweat from her face and absently wondered how he’d manage to eat her flesh if he lacked an esophagus.

She bit into the bitter fruit without peeling it. Juice ran down her chin as she sucked it for all it was worth. Damned if it wasn’t safe to eat them without washing first, the pesticides wouldn’t really have time to make her ill.

It was good. She felt more alive than she had for as long as she could remember. Dropping the spent fruit into the mob of undead beneath her she stood up in her little crook.

Closing her eyes, she jumped.

Click. Clickity. Click click.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment would shape the rest of my life. My parents had always told me that the wizard was a bit touched in the head, so mad was his ramblings about extra dimensions, mechanical automatons and empires that spanned more than the stars. A young lad at the time, I did nothing more than ferry his taxes to the magistrate and perform the odd, mundane chore on occasion. It was rare, but sometimes he’d give me lessons on alchemy.

But as I rushed toward him, so weak and pathetic looking a strange feeling came about me. Tears welled up in my eyes like I was losing my best friend. He offered a warm smile and coughed, the soot in his beard sending a cloud that filled the wood ash smelling air.

He was enormous to me, even in his sickly state. He was bigger than most humans, and even the smallest of his kin would have two lengths on my father any day.

His giant’s hand ruffled my hair into a sooty mess. I didn’t mind.

“Rit, my boy. I knew you’d be the last. You’re right on time.”

“I’ll- I’ll- I’ll get the doctor!”

I stammered. I’d never seen a dying man before. I didn’t know what to do.

“Your doctors can’t help me now, boy. There’s only a couple men in this world who could make me well again. But.. it’s been so long since I’ve seen any of them. I think they’re still alive. But they’re too far away. It’s probably for the best anyway. I betrayed them too long ago for them to care about what happens to Ol‘ Aeolus.”

I didn’t even know his name. I had always called him “sir,” like my parents taught me. He never offered his proper name. How wrong he was about his companions. I’d discover later that long after his death in my own manhood.

He was shaking, but he managed to prop himself up against the wall using me as a crutch. Aeolus smiled, his green eyes devoid of much life.

“Be a good boy and listen, won’t you?”

I nodded, my tears turning the soot on my cheeks into mud. I was so young and naive.

“I’ve spent many years in your village, Rit. I was an old man long before your grandfather was born. There was a time when you would have been given a far grander education, a time when your life would have been much more fulfilling. That’s why I exiled myself, my boy. To give some of you a chance at becoming something more. The others, they didn’t think you were ready. But I’ll prove them wrong yet!”

Old wizard Aeolus fished around in one of his pockets for something.

“The fire, ugh. It’s destroyed much of my work. My eyes are not as good as they used to be. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. But this.. this is more precious than all of what this tower used to contain by a hundred fold. I almost lost it, too.”

He narrowed his eyes, producing a beautifully crafted metal bracelet. Tiny rubies studded the entire work at regular lengths and as it caught a ray of sunlight, it shone. It was sized for a Halfling, it would never fit on one of his own kind. Even where he touched it, the bracelet stayed beautiful and clean.
“When I die-… and I will die Rit, no matter what you have to say, people will come looking for me. Tell them of me as you knew me before this moment, Rit. Tell them that I’ve missed them so very much, but I had to do it.

“They won’t hurt you or your family. There will be a small man with eyes and skin like mine..”

He coughed for a long time. Flecks of blood found their way to his sooty beard.

“Tell him that I never stopped loving him. Even after he stopped loving me.”

As I stared at him, he took my wrist gingerly in his enormous hands and slid the bracelet on me. The rubies gleamed and produced a light of their own. I could feel an itch inside my head, as if something was wiggling around in there.

“Never tell them I gave this to you, not even the man with my eyes. They won’t understand. They’ll steal it from you and pulverise my tower into the ground. I’d like them to think I left this world contributing nothing.”

I couldn’t fathom what I was being told. Why me, of all the people in the village? Was I the only one who he knew?

“Sir, … I don’t understand.”

I said, rubbing my wrist. The bracelet felt oddly secure, like it was part of me. I’d later find out that was exactly the case.

“Of course you don’t. How could you? But you will, oh.. you will.

“Keep it on, always. Get plenty of sun. And talk, a lot. If there’s anything she likes, it’s that.”

She? Was the wizard really as daft as everyone thought he was?

But as I was mulling over his sanity in the back of my head, the little life that was left in the wizard’s eyes had bled out. He looked so pathetic and undignified. I had never seen a dead body, and I was so scared.

So I ran. I could hear soft sobbing as I sprinted through the forest toward home. At first I thought it was my own but as I distanced myself from the tower, I came to the sudden realization that it was a woman. And it was coming from my own head.

I came to a sudden halt, terrified. That was then that a hot wind blew through the forest, and I could see ghostly shapes materialize in the direction from which I came. They coalesced from nothingness. They shouted a language I still don’t understand to this day.

That was when things got really weird.

How many people had sought shelter in this literal dump, only to realize at the last possible second that their only hope was a horrible, dirty place? She wouldn’t be the last.

A rusty nail, embedded in some poor sod’s mutilated and moldy forehead ripped a gash in her smart-webbing. Most of what she had in the world spilled to the ground mixing with cigarette butts and rock hard lumps of feces. There were a couple of crunches as glass and over used reactive plastics shattered. Her last grenade rolled off into the inky darkness.

She didn’t bother to check if it was live or not.

Bending over for a mere split second she snatched up her light-blade and left the rest behind. A lot of it was climbing gear anyway. Hopefully she’d never have to use any of it ever again.

The white beyond the cavern was blinding. A fierce blizzard was about, whipping dry ice and nanodiamonds. Aceline turned, throwing her long platinum hair about. She caught the soft glint of red, blue and white metal in the darkness. She smelled the sickly sweet smell of high fructose corn syrup. The air from the darkness was humid and sticky, like the bottom of a dumpster on a hot summer day.

She was standing in the middle of two stark contrasts. There was a horrible metal on metal grind from the darkness as it began to advance. She never gotten a full look at it and despite her severe injuries, she was intensely curious. Which probably explained why she was attracted to such god forsaken hell holes.

She only managed to see bits and pieces of it as it mangled her hours ago, deeper in the caves. It had been the worst wake up call of her life.

It had long, aluminum claws and it belched ingots from between dingy buzz saw teeth. It was particularly interested in her mouth.

She was getting dizzy. A lot of the blood on her back was already starting to freeze from the cold blizzard wind. Her face was pale and sweaty.

It roared, spraying her with flat Mountain Dew spittle. Turning back toward the opening in the rockface, she broke into a full run.

The metal grinding increased in pace. It was a constant and steady thrumming that shook the cavern floor, sending nuts, bolts and old beer bottles rattling from beyond her field of vision. The walls and ceiling began to close in on her. A rain of condensed garbage water rained on her from above, only to freeze in her already filthy hair.

The opening wasn’t much larger than a windshield. She scrambled up a steep incline, her curiosity again replaced with terror.
Her lungs burned as she burst into the freezing light of day. She gasped and rolled in dry snow, still frantically trying to escape the horrible metal monster.

She could hear it. The behemoth was still giving pursuit. It had to be 30 feet tall, it’d never fit through the opening.

Scrambling up to her feet she ran away, embracing the freezing cold day.

There was a horrible sound of rock giving out behind her. What felt like a sheet of metal sent her sprawling into the snow again. Trying to regain some sort of balance, she turned over on her back.

Her last sight was an enormous mouth composed entirely of spent and crushed soda cans.

Joan smirked and issued a little giggle from the back of her throat as she tinkered with my spell pouch. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was up to, but it was probably something that’d cost me a pretty penny. I had a lot of valuable things in there.

I craned my neck and tried to look over her shoulder, but the woman was enormous. My short legs didn’t help matters.

“What are you doing?”

She paused for a moment, looking over her shoulder. Her clothing was worn and faded; I could see her mottled grey skin.

“Fleesh..”

“… excuse me?”

Her voice was guttered, rough and scratchy. It was difficult to understand her even after all the years I’d been with her. Joan had always been a curious friend of mine. The soul of a little girl trapped in the rotting body of an Orc. I wasn’t entirely certain if that was literal or not.

“Fleesh. Soffft. Ike ah lamm.”

Oh. Fleece.

“It’s the second pouch on the left. That’s the hand that looks like an L, dear. It has a picture of a star on it.”

She squealed, spooking a couple of crows that had perched above us in the dense forest. I guess she found it.

They settled back down a couple of heartbeats later. They always seemed to follow her. Were they just hungry, or did she have some connection to them that I wasn’t aware of? She always avoided the question.

“Come on, you’re going to break something..”

I implored to her while edging closer. She caught me in the corner of her eye like a tigress. One of her tree trunk arms lashed out and held me at bay.

“Noooooooooo!”

Her pudgy fingers were stained with red clay.

“Nnuuuut yit!”

I backed off, not about ready to cause the 600 pound little girl to have a temper tantrum. She frantically went back to whatever she was doing.

“Peen.”

“There’s a pin in the sewing pouch. It’s the one with the picture of a pin… on it.”

She giggled manically.

I could have sworn I heard a mewling noise, an injured animal or something.

“Joan, you’re not doing anything bad, are you?”

I edge closer again. I taught her not to “play” so rough with animals a long time ago. It was an undead habit. I wasn’t about to allow a relapse.

“Noooooooo!”

She looked over her shoulder at me again, her tennis ball sized eye was frantic and dilated.

It’s difficult to look menacing when you’re 45 pounds, dressed in a woman’s sorcerery robe. But I tried, stamping my feet and edging into her “threat” zone.

“Joan Ellis Mitchell. Show me what you’re doing. Right. Now.”

Something made a soft noise in front of her. Like a sheep.

“Kay!”

She spun around, nearly losing her balance. Her hands were stained red with clay and grime. She had cut her palm.

In her hands she held an expertly crafted sheep figurine. She had never shown any interest in art before. The fleece pattern was expertly etched into the clay.

It remained perfectly still until I drew closer to admire her handiwork. The tiny figurine shook its head and nudged toward me on its little legs. It issued a small plead for food.

Looking at her in amazement she simply grinned back with broken teeth.

“Hiz ‘am iz Goleb.”

“Golem?”

“Nooooooo! Gol-EB!”

I offered an uneasy smile as she gently placed him in a small sunny spot to dry. The animated sheep shook its head and settled on a warm rock. It grazed on grass that didn’t exist.

“Goleb it is then, sweetheart.”

I read through it in a single night, but some people would probably find it easier to read in chapter segments.