by Gary Foshee
spring rains.
From the towers, gogs launched two harpoons with curved
bronze tips. Long cedar logs hummed through the air, cutting
the water with a blunted splash. The hooks glided through the
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water and attached between the scales on his back. Feeling the
tension on the rope, the gogs locked the wheels and fettered a
thick twisted rope with a rusty hook to a large trol . The trol ’s body cringed under the massive weight as he walked down the
wall slowly towing leviathan from the deep.
Leviathan spun sharply and dove. He flicked his tail stretching
the rope to its max. Small cords popped and unfurled. Leviathan
flicked his tail again, pulling the troll from its fortified perch, col apsing the tower and spilling several guards into the sea. He swirled back around and headed for the mouth of the cave.
In the cave, and gaining momentum, his body snaked through
the tunnel generating a giant wave. Gogs, standing guard at the
end, heard a loud rumble right before a wave tsunamied around
the corner. They scrambled from their posts, running up the
stairs trying to escape, but the wave, which was accompanied by
a stream of flames, overtook them drowning and roasting them
al . Leviathan spun around, opened his mouth, and vomited
Caboose onto the rocks. He then thundered down the tunnel,
quickly disappearing back into the depths of the sea.
A large pile of slime, which resembled the afterbirth of a
croaker, lie curled up on the rocks. Unsure what had just hap-
pened, Caboose opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. He
wiped his eyes. Strings of slimy mucus streamed from his fingers.
He shook his hands and then wiped his face again. Still trauma-
tized by the whole event, he stood up. Strewn around the cave
where dead grike trol s and gogs—the stench from their roasted
flesh was unbearable. Not realizing what had happened he walked
up the stairs uncertain of his whereabouts.
Long shafts, burrowed in the rock, branched out in many
directions. He noticed a flickering light down one of the shafts and followed. Small torches clawed into a long winding tunnel
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that splintered into numerous tunnels underneath the throne.
The light cast an ominous glow on the dirt floor. His eyes scanned in all directions. He turned left and then right and continued
straight.
Back at the stairs, two gogs found the bodies and sounded
the alarm. Trol s and gogs filled the tunnels searching for any-
thing out of place. Caboose heard footsteps coming his way. He
ran back down the tunnel and squeezed into a crag he had past a
few yards back.
“Do you smell that succulent stench?” spit a gog walking
toward Caboose.
“Yeah, it smel s like, rotten fish,” said a trol .
“It smel s like rotten fish and grunter,” answered the gog.
Their eyes leered down the dimly lit passageway. They
searched every hole and overhang. The gog stopped. He held
his light up and sniffed and then shined it over the hole hiding Caboose.
“Hey take a look at this,” said the trol , just before the light revealed Caboose.
“What is it?”
“Tracks; grunter tracks.”
Turning to take a look for himself, he tripped over Caboose’s
tail. The gog fell on his light breaking it and setting himself on fire. He rolled around on ground trying frantical y to put it out.
Embarrassed, he jumped to his feet.
“What is it?” shouted the trol .
“Nothing! Nothing!” he shouted, embarrassed over what had
happened. He turned around to examine the trip hazard, but in
the dark, Caboose’s tail looked like a rock.
The troll dropped to the ground, sniffed the tracks and then
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backtracked. They faded into the darkness. With the coast clear, Caboose peeled out of the hole and started to walk away.
“There he is!” cried a small throne slave with his arms full of
bloody garments.
Caboose glared at the poor hopeless creature and then darted
down the tunnel searching for a way out. He rounded a corner and noticed a door in the distance. He ran around in a circle and then ran down the tunnel to the left for about twenty-five yards. He
then tiptoed backwards to the fork and ran headlong for the door.
Hearing voices back at the fork, he burst through the door,
slamming and locking it behind him. With his back against the
door and eyes closed, he sighed deeply.
“Boys, dinner is served!”
He opened his eyes and froze—he had run into a room full
of gogs playing bones.
Without hesitating and tired of being scared, Caboose flung
his tail around and smacked two of them off their stools smashing them against the wal . The other one grabbed his battle-axe and
hurled it at him. The axe spun end-over-end sticking in the door inches from his left ear. Caboose’s eyes cut left and then focused back on the gog. Both of their eyes then cut right at the sword
leaning against the wall at the other end of the table. Caboose
bellowed a war cry, lowered his head, and charged horn-long, as
the gog dove from his stool reaching for the sword.
Caboose charged across the room smashing everything in
his path. He rammed the gog in the stomach with his horn crash-
ing them both through the wall into the next room.
Red blood burst through the hole covering Caboose and the
gog who was holding his stomach trying to stop his own blood
from spilling out onto the ground.
Caboose panicked.
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Lying on the floor, he frantical y searched his body. He wiped
his hand down his leg thinking he had been injured. He sniffed
the mysterious fluid dripping through his fingers and then tasted it—Thunder Juice. He had crashed into a room filled with thousands of casks of Thunder Juice. It was everywhere. Pools of it
formed on the floor all around him and it had spilled out into the passageway.
Caboose pushed the barrels off of him. He ran down aisle
after aisle of wooden casks stacked from floor to ceiling searching for a way out. Finding a door, and without stopping, he scuttled from room to room looking for an exit or a place to hide.
Many of the rooms under the throne were large storage
rooms filled with supplies and various objects used around the
colosseum. Behind him he could hear gogs and trol s from the
tunnels searching the rooms for him, following the scent of aged Thunder Juice left behind by his tracks.
He ran into a room and squeezed behind a mammoth dark-
stained trunk with copper handles: The handles looked like ropes twirled together and were attached to two copper plates on both
sides of the doors.
The room was dark and cluttered with crates, ropes, pulleys
and various sized wheels. Caboose pulled a pile of crates stacked high into the air in front of the crack hiding him and softened
his breath.
He listened.
Footsteps stopped outside. The door opens.
Terror caused his heart to beat wildly.
A gog walked in and searched the room. He jabbed his sword
into a crate. He threw ano
ther one across the room, smashing it
against the wal .
He walked over to the crates beside the trunk. He plunged
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his sword into the middle and then wiggled it around trying to
get it unstuck.
Caboose drew in his stomach. He looked down at the silver
blade slightly slashing back and forth inches in front of it.
He let out a short gasp.
The gog freed his sword and walked around to the front. He
grabbed the handles and swung the doors open. A thin gaunt
man, with sunken eyes, a long scraggly beard, and extremely long fingernails, jumped out of the trunk yelling, “No! I’m not going back! Please don’t take me back!” The gog spun out of the way
and smashed his face into a crate. He yelled to the others and
then dragged the unconscious man from the room.
He paused at the doorway, looked around the room and then
shut the door.
Caboose waited several minutes. He moved the crates out of
the way and walked over to the door.
He quietly opened it and looked both ways.
Torches lined the wal s leading down the hal way. A slight
breeze jostled the flames. Hearing footsteps, he entered a cold, dusty room that smelled rancid of flesh and blood; the putrid
odor wrenched his stomach causing him to gag.
Barbed hooks hung hauntingly from ceiling planks above
his head. The chains clanged against each other as he walked
through.
Blood-stained stones screamed out in agony as he walked
across their surface—his skin prickled with the thought of what
this room was used for. Terrified and feeling sick, he spotted an old weathered door in the back corner. Carved into its wood
was a foreboding figure of a serpent with a stinger-forked tail.
Without thinking, he opened it and walked around a stone wall
and froze—he had just entered the Lair of the Serpent.
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Stacked high, in the center of the room, was a pile of bodies.
Hundreds of serpents slithered sinisterly in and around the pile gorging themselves on soulless carcasses. His first impulse was to run, but he didn’t move. Besides, he didn’t know where he was nor did he know where he was going. He edged against the wall trying to make it around to the next door without being noticed, but there was no escape. The long scaly beasts wound tightly around his feet and body with their sinuous coils. Lifting him from the ground,
they took him to two gogs standing guard at the death cel s.
The gogs smiled.
The dark and dire cel s stretched ominously underneath the
colosseum and were filled with hundreds of frightened souls
awaiting destruction in the pit. As he passed by, prisoners of
fantasy scratched frantical y at him with dirty hands. The gog
slammed its club against the bars driving them back. He swung
the door open and bowled Caboose in.
Caboose rolled across the floor and crashed into the people
standing in front. He stood up and looked into each battered
face searching for his Papa. Each face stared back unable to hide the horror lying within, their eyes filled with tears and hopeless-ness. The people looked comatose, like they were in some kind
of a trance. All their hopes and dreams lost; drowned in a sea of fantasy and delusion. They were scared, real scared, and so was
Caboose. Surely his Papa was not in a place like this he thought.
“Papa! Papa! Are you here, Papa?” he shouted, asking peo-
ple if they had seen his Papa. He yelled at the top of his lungs,
“Chesty Puller, can you hear me?” Papa, are you here, Papa?”
From across the cell a head popped up. “Caboose? It can’t be.”
He stood up, “Caboose is that you?”
“Papa, I’m here.” They pushed their way through the crowded
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cell to each other. Surprised and disappointed, Caboose stopped.
“Mack! What are you doing here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same question.” Mack didn’t
say it, but he was sure glad to see a familiar face.
“I’m looking for my Papa. Have you seen him?”
“No.” Mack hesitated. “You haven’t seen my Mom, have you?”
“Your mother, she’s here too?” responded Caboose taken back.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since I deposited that stupid
coin in the tree.”
“Oh yeah…me too,” said Caboose rolling his eyes.
“Some mansion, uh?”
“Yeah,” replied Caboose.
A gog walked by leashed with two howlers. He slammed his
club up against the bars and then spit. One of the howlers stuck its head through the bars and snapped at them.
Caboose and Mack made their way to the back of the cell
and took a seat. Many questions ran through both of their minds.
Both of them had a parent lost somewhere in the valley and nei-
ther of them knew what to do about it.
“They’re going to kill us, I know it,” said Mack, fidgeting with his hands.
“Don’t talk like that. Everything is going to be just fine.”
“No. I know it—we’re all dead. I can smell it in the air. Death
lives in these cel s.” He looked up at the wal s. “Whatever you do, don’t read the wal s.”
Caboose looked up at the wall and then back down again.
“Why?”
“Just trust me. Where have you been? Everyone at school
thought for sure you were dead.”
“I’ve been lost in the valley for months trying to get here.
How long were you in the valley?”
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“What valley?” replied Mack, with an offended look on his
face. “All I remember is putting a coin in a hole in the middle of a tree. A trap door opened up and I fell down a long tube right
into a wagon with several other people in a tunnel. The wagons
hauled us to a ferry, which sailed across the sea and then I was brought here. Is that what happened to you?”
“Not exactly,” responded Caboose, realizing something was
definitely wrong.
“I have something I want to tell you,” said Mack hesitantly.
“Before I die in this place, I want you to know…that…well—”
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry for being so mean to you. I don’t know why I acted
like that.”
“It’s alright, a lot has happened since then.”
“No…no it’s not alright. I want you to know why I did
it…I…I was jealous of you.”
Caboose was not expecting to hear that. All kinds of reasons
raced through his mind, but not that one.
“Jealous, of me? But why?”
“I was jealous of the life you had. You had the perfect family.
You guys always went places together and did things as a fam-
ily. The way you and your Dad spent time together laughing and
playing, it made me mad that I didn’t have the same.”
‘ Caboose is a goose and he smel s like a moose.
Caboo boo is coo coo.
I’m different. I’ll never be like everybody else.
But my leg, it’s my short leg.’
Voices, excuses ran through his mind. They had become a
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THE REDMADAFA
himself. But it was a
ll built on a lie. It wasn’t his leg that was holding him back from life. It was his belief that it was.
Caboose didn’t know what to say. He thought it was his leg.
All these years, he thought it was his short leg. “I…I don’t know what to say. Thank you. Thank you for telling me.” He reached out and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Can we be friends and put
all this behind us?”
Mack’s eyes glittered. A smiled cracked across his face. “You
mean you want to be my friend after everything I’ve done and
said about you?”
“Any man that can lay aside his pride and say he’s sorry, and
look another man in the face when he does it, is a pretty good
man to me. That’s the kind of friends I like to have.”
Mack didn’t know how to respond. Something was different
about Caboose—something good.
A few cel s down a burly-looking man looked over and said,
“Hey. You. Don’t I know you?”
A face looked up, “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, you’re an elder at the temple. Puller. You’re Chesty
Puller. I just heard someone calling your name.”
“Are you sure?” Chesty couldn’t believe his ears. He shoved
his way to the front and yelled, “Caboose! Caboose is that you?
Son, I’m here. I’m here!”
Caboose jumped up from his seat and pushed hard to the
front. He looked down the corridor and there he was. His dirty
wrinkled face looked like an angel glowing with the radiance of
the sun. They both just stood there in disbelief. Caboose had
done it. He had found his Papa.
“Papa, I found you. I found you. Don’t worry. I’m going to get
you out of here.”
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“Are you alright? How did you get here?”
“It’s a long story. Papa, I’m so sorry for leaving home. I never meant to bring you here. Please forgive me.”
“No. I need you to forgive me.” His eyes held him for a moment.
“Papa, it’s because of me you are here.”
Mack stood there crying. It was the most beautiful thing he
had ever seen or heard.
“No son. I should have told you a long time ago but I didn’t.”
He paused and then said, “I’ve been here before.”
Caboose dropped his head, Seven was right. “But how,
why did—”
“Son, we all have skeletons in the closet, things that we’re