~~~
When Jon awoke, his head was pounding and his arms and shoulders ached. The pain became more apparent as he came to and realized he’d been strapped to a tree over-hanging a pond or small lake with his legs up to his knees dangling in the water. He heard the weird woman’s voice speak too as he made these first realizations.
“And ‘ow ‘bout ‘em bullet thangs for dis weapons we gonna use? Have ‘ems in that ewe-man self-movin’ wagon, o’ yours?”
Her words were hard to make out at first, with the pain in Jon’s forehead. He realized something wet was running down his left brow and cheek and dripping onto his chest. It was then that he recognized quickly he’d been striped completely nude. And that there were small…things… in the water chewing at his legs. Some of them, worm-like were reaching up out of the water and wrapping themselves around his legs. They were too long and skinny to be leaches or anything of the sort, but they were black and oozy and they seemed to be chemically burning tracks into his skin. He hollered and tried to pull his legs up out of the water and keep them there, knees and hips bent.
The shadowy woman stood up from a kneeling position at the edge of the pond a good ten feet or more away and strutted around the shore of it to face Jonathan.
“Ah! The udder lit’l fish is a floppin’ ‘bout now, rai-aght?” She cooed.
Despite the grotesqueness in which he found himself suddenly very alert he couldn’t help but notice that the odd, short woman was very beautiful in a way. She had a coy-ish prettiness to her smile as she grinned at him and smooth as satin skin upon her cheek. She was very humanly feminine with hips and curves, but here and there were strapped wrinkled and rough looking bracers on her forearms and knives at her belt, and odd armor pads about her shoulders and knees with spikes that looked like they might have come from the antlers of a big bull elk. Her hair was mousy and appeared to be caked with dirt or perhaps was arranged in dreadlocks but the moon shining on her face, and here and there some of her other exposed skin, made her seem like a siren, calling out to the human.
“Been in the mead tonight, h’ain’t ya, ewe-man?” she said to Jonathan and gave him a wink.
“Wuh?” Jon answered.
“Don’t talk to her, Jon!” Donald yelled from where he’d been strapped up in a similar position. “I don’t know what these things are, but they can’t be up to no good. She wants our guns!”
The woman took another step such that her toes of her odd worn-leather looking boots were nearly in the water. She snapped her fingers and from the cluster of shadows several feet behind her three of the goblins that had attacked the men came scrabbling up behind her and walked quickly into the water. The first hunched over and appeared to be on all fours a bit into the water so that his back, shoulders and his raised head were just above water. The other two waded further out and their shoulders could just be seen above water.
Jonathan couldn’t figure out what the horrid little things were doing until the goblin woman stepped onto the back of the first with a slight jump from shore and then onto the shoulders of the next, followed by planting her boots onto the shoulders of the last. She was then face to face with Jonathan.
“I ask yer if yer had any tah drink tonaight, ewe-man drunkard?” She grinned and winked again. “Yer know? Perhaps yer jes dremin’ all dis tonaight?”
Instinctively as he’d had occasion to practice in the past he denied having had any alcohol, shaking his head vigorously followed by a complete body shiver. He wasn’t sure if it was the cold, the ache of trying to keep his toes out of the water, or the odd discomfort this weird woman was giving him in his heart. He felt cold inside, despite her pleasant smile and grin, and her words and tone were certainly no comfort either.
“Maybe not,” she said briskly and pulled her nose back a few inches further. And then she spoke in much more clear English that made Jon wonder if perhaps he really was still dreaming. “Maybe either way, it won’t hurt to tell a pretty lady where to get some more of these bullets I’m needing for these guns? Have you got some in your truck, then?”
She was nodding as if by the power of suggestion she could get Jon to agree. Instead he shook his head again. The shivers were definitely starting to hit him more frequently. And a small amount of embarrassment at hanging nude before the Goblin Queen and her horde too made him wish to just give her whatever she wanted and be released. But he wasn’t sure that he and Don were going to be, regardless.
The queen pulled something from behind her back and then pointed it towards Donald. It was a handgun, probably a large caliber, magazine-loaded type, though he couldn’t see well enough in the quick movement under only the moonlight.
“We took this ‘un from thar ewe-man, wut we captured last yar’s. He’s one of ewe, but ‘den type o’ magick ‘vestigators, raight?”
Though Jonathan’s head was finally beginning to clear from the impact, some other fog seemed to be entering his brain. He was mesmerized by the Goblin Queen and wanted just to hear her speak in her funny accent, but he couldn’t quite follow what she was saying.
“Jackson, were haim named, nah?” she asked and turned to the horde behind her. They all nodded and bounced in agreement and one or two cackled. “Him a pretty ewe-man, than weren’t he? But we tooks he’s gun, and now we’re gonna use it, raight?”
More of the horde cackled and one howled with approval.
“Aye!” hissed one of the goblins still mostly hidden in the shadows. “I find’en it fors ye, my Queen, didn’ts I not?”
“Quiet!” Bellowed the Queen and she turned on her perch of goblin shoulders just enough to turn and fire at the speaker. The gun blasted Jon’s ears in the cool night and the muzzle flash shocked his eyes closed when she spoke again. “Doan’ be so prideful uv it, wrech!”
The once-brave goblin groaned and then crumpled to the ground. Those around him started cackling and wacked him with sticks and what appeared to be axes and weapons in the silhouette of shadows. A type of hyena-sounding laughter and then guttural bellows followed by hooting tapered off until the Queen could turn to Jon and speak again.
Jonathan’s stomach turned. He was sure neither he nor Don were going to survive this…whatever it was.
“Now…” she said much more coyly, waving the pistol in front of her face slowly. “I understands, dese har guns use different shapes tah fire, raight?”
Jon nodded nervously, shivering at the reply more with fear than with chill. He was struggling to keep his knees just bent enough to prevent the things from touching him. He looked to Don long enough to see his brother was struggling to do the same, occasionally looking back at Jon to shake his head. He looked down to see that the goblin supporting the queen was licking up some of the things that were crawling up out of the water onto his chin and then chewing them as though they were a perk for serving as the queen’s pedestal.
“Raight then,” the queen replied. She aimed the pistol roughly in Don’s direction and pulled the trigger. It splashed the water only about two feet before Donald’s legs swinging, suspended just above the surface. “Ye saw wut I wrought on me own. Think on it, what I doin’s with an ewe-man likes you, if you don’t answer my next questions. Where do I find yer bullets in that ewe-man self-movin’ wagon?”
“Behind the the the seat, inside it,” Jon stuttered.
“Raight…” The Goblin Queen smirked as she continued her interrogation.
She asked several more questions, and the session went for anther fifteen minutes as she asked Jonathan to explain how to load the gun with a bullet and how to aim it and such. Though cold, scared and embarrassed he was glad she didn’t know enough to ask how to clean the gun or they’d be there another hour discussing it. Then at the very end, she tucked her pistol back into wherever she was storing it behind her and then reach into a small satchel at her side.
Bringing her palm cupped before her, she suddenly spat into her palm and then slapped her
two hands together and rubbed whatever it was in her hands back and forth. Finally she took it and placed it roughly over Jonathan’s nose and mouth and with her other hand grabbed and held his neck.
He tried to kick and knock her off the other goblin, but the foul smelling thing in her hands did the trick quickly. Jonathan was slipping under again. Just as he was going unconscious and the light of the moon was flickering behind his closing eyelids she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the check.
The Goblin Queen roughly whispered in his ear in that clearer English again, “I have your keys to get in. I’ll put them on the floor so you can have your wagon back. All I want is your ammo…”
Never knowing if it was part of a dream or the last of the events he could remember, Jon heard his brother yelling and then the Queen retorted in a growl, “Yer next, ewe-man!”
The Goblin Queen's Cache: An IPMA Adventure for Halloween 2014 Page 4