Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 8

by Christopher D. Carter

  **********

  The giant held several items in his hands, among them a lamp and a chest, and after he had entered the room, he closed the door behind him with a squeak of the hinges. He strolled over to the far side of the room where the countertop of the wooden cabinets rounded the corner of the wall, and he placed the lamp and chest down on the work area of the countertop. Searching in one pocket, he then retrieved a large key and walked back to the door, where he inserted it into the empty keyhole, and locked the door. Adjusting the flame of the lamp higher until the countertops were fully lit, the giant then stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a clump of gold chains in his fist. He raised them up to his eyes so that he could carefully examine each one. He then separated one chain from another, and he sorted them discretely on the countertop.

  Simon sat perched on Crush’s back, and the monkey peered over his shoulder to watch the giant’s every move from the dark corner behind the door. They had been fortunate that the giant had not noticed them when he had entered the room, and they dared not leave the shadows for fear of being caught. Knowing what had happened to the monkeys in the forest, there was no way that they were going to risk being seen by any of the giants that were holed up in the castle. As they watched the giant sort the treasure, Crush noticed a chest with a small keyhole in the front sitting on the countertop near the set of gold chains. The chest was made of a dark wood, and the brass reflection from the lamp glittered in the pale light. As they watched, the giant dug his hand back into his pocket and retrieved a smaller key on a ring which he then inserted into the keyhole of the chest. The chest popped open, and the sparkle of treasure reflected throughout the room and coated the ceiling in vivid colors of light.

  Crush’s eyes grew large at the sight, and he suddenly felt a dangerous curiosity rise up within him. With Simon perched on his shoulders, Crush risked peril and darted out across the long distance of the floor to the opposite corner of the cabinets from the giant, and he began to climb the outside trim of a closed cabinet door. While the giant continued to dig through and admire his treasure, Crush scaled the face of the cabinets to the bottom of the overhang of the countertop. Simon then leaped off of his back to catch the edge of the countertop with both hands, and the monkey pulled himself up over the top to disappear from Crush’s sight. Seconds later, he reached his paws out and helped Crush climb over the last overhang to reach the top surface of the counter.

  As if he had caught the whiff of a strange and horrible smell over the air of a toilet, the giant suddenly tilted his head back from his work and sniffed the air in the room. He wrinkled his lip up in a sneer and turned around to look at the door to see if it was still shut. Crush and Simon bolted quickly behind the edge of a large dusty tome that sat on the top of the counter, and they hid there in the gloom as the giant closed the top of the chest and stepped suspiciously over to the closed door of the room. Turning the key, the giant opened the door with a squeak and stuck his head out to look into the hallway. Seeing no one, but still catching the foul odor in the air, the giant took the key from the inside of the door and stepped out into the hallway to lock the door again from the outside. Clearly the giant had something to hide, and he was acting very cautiously in regards to the treasure he had copped and locked away. Crush could still see the shadows of the giant’s feet as he stood in the hallway just outside of the locked room. Then the shadows disappeared from beneath the door momentarily, and Crush heard the door to the rest room open further down the hallway.

  Quickly seizing the opportunity to exercise his curiosity, Crush sprinted over to the treasure chest with Simon following behind, and he cracked open the top with his hands to let Simon jump inside. Simon then held the lid open for him to enter in turn. Together, they closed the top of the box and stumbled around curiously in the dim glow of the magical jewelry, clinking over chains and rings and buttons until they came upon a handsome golden cameo pendant that blazed a bright green hue in the dark of the treasure chest. The beauty of the piece was mesmerizing, and the stunning face of a woman was carved into the piece of giant jewelry. Crush positioned his hands on both sides of the pendant to lift it out of the velvet clasp that held it in place. As he lifted it out of the holder, the green glow that had emanated from the carving ceased, and Crush felt a warm sensation pass across the outer layer of his skin. Spinning it around, he found that the pin mechanism on the back was inserted and locked into two large metal loops. He stuck his arm through the loops and found that the cameo pendant fit perfectly in his arm as a shield might for a warrior. He thought it odd that it was fashioned that way, but the cameo felt natural resting in its placement on his forearm.

  “What do you think?” he asked Simon, and the monkey simply scratched his armpit and returned a blank stare. “It’s the pits, huh? Well, that’s about what I should have expected from a monkey,” he said sarcastically as he grabbed a bracelet from the pile as well. He tied makeshift circlets around the metal loops of the pendant, and then he slipped the shield over his head and shoulders like a backpack. Perplexed, Simon twisted his head to the side, and his little eyes twinkled a more serious look of concern than before. “They’ll never miss it, buddy. Besides, I’m sure this jewelry was stolen at least once before it ended up here,” Crush said in an effort to convince himself that lifting the treasure was acceptable. Though the monkey could not speak, Simon clearly was unimpressed with the notion of stealing, yet there was little that he could do to deter Crush from taking the object away from the treasure chest.

  “Simon, have you so soon forgotten the monkey that was eaten by the giant in the forest? We need all of the armor that we can get to protect ourselves, even if we have to take it from our enemies,” Crush explained to his companion, and the monkey nodded his agreement. It seemed an odd procedure, explaining himself to a monkey, but Simon was no ordinary primate, and Crush valued his view point and companionship.

  With the monkey’s approval, Crush tightened the golden chain around his midsection, and he was just about ready to open the lid back up to leave when he heard the sound of a key turning to unlock the door to the room. Seeing that they had no time left to escape from the treasure chest, Crush and Simon quickly darted beneath the shelf where they had found the cameo pendant and waited for the giant to enter the room. The door squeaked open and closed once again, and the key turned the latch to lock the door from the inside. Footsteps moved across the room to the countertop where the necklaces and chest lay. With a lift of the lid, light flooded into the chamber of the chest, and the glistening jewels nearly blinded Crush’s vision as he hid perfectly still beneath the narrow shelf. The giant returned to his work of placing the new chains of gold into proper piles, and the goliath’s fingernails nearly brushed against Crush’s ribs as the colossus adjusted each of the piles into a new formation inside of the chest.

  Then the giant stopped moving altogether for a moment, and Crush held his breath in silence as the giant gasped and sputtered. The colossal fingers suddenly dove back into the chest, moving the piles of chains this way and that way. Rings and buttons flew wildly, and sensing trouble, Crush snatched the underside of the shelf with both hands and lifted his feet from the floor of the chest to suspend his body beneath the shelf. The giant fumbled awkwardly through the chest with his massive fingers, moving the shelf that Crush held on to back and forth in order to look beneath it for his lost prized possession. The chest was shaken from side-to-side, yet the giant missed the cat-man entirely in the process.

  Simon, however, had not acted quickly enough when the lid to the treasure chest had opened. Once the giant could not find the missing pendant, he dug around through every corner of the open box, and with a yelp of astonishment, the giant glowered down on the helpless monkey as he cowered in the back corner. With a single leap, Simon skedaddled up the side of the lid and grabbed the key to the chest from the keyhole. In the flash of an eye, the monkey bounded down the giant’s leg to the tile
floor below with the key cradled in his hand. Then he scampered across the floor and vanished beneath the gap in the door into the castle hallway.

  Crush almost yipped out in terror when the monkey leaped from the treasure chest, and it was all that he could do to contain himself and stay hidden beneath the movable shelf while his newfound friend confronted the giant alone. Though he could not see the commotion, he stayed calm there hidden in the chest, and to his amazement, he saw the giant’s shadow disappear and heard the giant run for the door to the room and quickly turn the key to unlock it. Daring to peer out from under the shelf, Crush watched as the giant hurriedly swung the door open and headed out into the hallway. Crush could only guess that Simon had successfully escaped into the castle, and he marveled that the giant had left in such a hurry so as to abandon the treasure chest in such an open and unprotected condition. He also noticed that the key to the chest was gone as well, and he reasoned that Simon had actually stolen the key and scurried away with it in the process.

  “Now I’m not the only thief in the bunch,” Crush thought to himself as he clambered out of the chest with a long golden chain in his hands. Simon had bought him some time, and he was not about to waste any more of it in this treasure room. He formed a lasso with the chain and lowered it to a knob on one of the cabinet doors below. With a lucky first try, the lasso looped around the knob and Crush pulled it tight. He hoped that the chain could stand his weight, and he stretched the golden links back along the edge of the countertop and dove straight down with the chain looped around one arm and the pendant strapped upon his back. The floor tiles rushed towards his face, and he held his breath as he passed by the knob of the cabinet. Before he struck the floor tiles, the chain pulled tight around his wrist and Crush swung down and back up in a loop. Then the momentum carried him over the top at the peak of the swing, and the chain wrapped around the knob. Crush’s momentum slowed on the next loop around the knob, and he began to swing backward before he could make another revolution. Falling backward, Crush stretched out his free arm and grabbed the edge of the cabinet door trim to stop the pendulum swinging of the chain. Once the motion had ceased, he unwrapped the chain from his arm and climbed down the face of the cabinets to the floor below. Sprinting for the open door, he stopped at the edge of the doorway and listened for any movements in the hall. He could hear some commotion coming from the restroom down the corridor, followed up by the flushing sound of a toilet and a shout of anger that reverberated down the hallway. Crush was shaken to the bones by the outburst, yet he was reluctant to miss the opportunity to explore the castle. He dashed the opposite direction down the corridor and turned the corner to find himself at the beginning of a long passageway lined from floor to ceiling with man-sized jail cells. Crush took a mental note of the number of chambers, and he quickly ran along one side of the corridor, looking side-to-side to see if Boulder was incarcerated in any of the cells. Many people came to the front of the cells to watch him running freely in the corridor, and he wished that he had time to help them escape. Some of them mumbled aloud to themselves, and several even cried out to him for help. Sensing that time was slipping away and that he may be in danger of capture if he did not focus on the job at hand, he ignored their pleas and continued to look up one side and down the other for Boulder. There was no sign of him where he could easily see in the bottom two levels, but as he studied the upper two levels, he noted that there was one cell on the fourth floor where the bars were glowing a magical green color, not unlike the color of the pendant he now wore on his back. Trusting to fate, Crush scaled one level to the next until he reached the third row of cells, just below the glowing green bars. He grabbed onto the bars to climb up to the next level when a hand reached out of the cell and grabbed onto his arm in desperation. When he looked into the eyes of the person who had touched him, he found that it was a child, a boy of no more than eight years old, who stared back out at him from between the cold metal bars. A pang of guilt crossed his heart as he gazed down at the boy, and he almost stopped what he was doing to try to open the cell and free the child. Then he heard the giant storming down the hallway where the treasure chest was hidden, and he came back to his senses and to the task at hand. Crush reluctantly turned away from the child and climbed to the top level in hopes of finding Boulder. The boy never said another word. He simply watched as the cat-man climbed into and out of his life.

  Standing at the outside of the glowing cell on the fourth floor, Crush placed his hands on the bars and tugged on the locked door. Boulder emerged from out of the shadows and gripped the bars of the cell with his strong hands of granite. The magical green force field that had kept him at bay had waned in power with Crush’s appearance, and with the might of a mountain, Boulder ripped open the doors to the cell and stepped to the edge of the floor where Crush now stood.

  “I thought I told you to go on without me,” Boulder said as he stood next to his friend. “You should be at the river by now,” he added.

  “I couldn’t leave a friend behind, but it looks like you didn’t need my help getting out,” Crush replied sarcastically while he pointed at the heavy metal door in Boulder’s hands. He was suddenly very glad that Boulder had chosen to make the journey with him. “Follow me. We don’t have much time, if any. Simon distracted one of the guards so that I could find you, but I’m certain that when the giant goes back to his treasure, he’s going to see the chain that I used to climb with and figure out that Simon wasn’t alone.”

  “Chain? What chain?” Boulder asked, but Crush grabbed his arm and pulled him along.

  “I’ll tell you later,” said Crush as he climbed over the edge. When he passed the third floor, the boy that had reached out to him was gone, and Crush blocked the memory from his mind as he raced to the bottom floor. There had been many casualties in his journeys, and he was having trouble letting this one go. He had to stay focused though; it was the dragon that held his purpose now. He quickly scaled back down the remainder of the prison wall to the corridor below. Boulder, on the other hand, simply jumped down from the top level and smashed the tiles as he landed on his feet at the bottom. “Nice touch. They’ll know you escaped without even looking in your cell,” Crush added and shook his head at the man of stone as he looked at the damaged tiles. Hesitating for a moment and regretting the obvious sign of escape that the man of stone had created in the floor, Crush waved the doubts away, and he chose to head back the way that he had come, perhaps in hopes of stumbling across Simon, but more likely because he knew the way out. Boulder followed behind, and at the corner where the hallway turned ninety degrees, Crush peeped one eye around the bend to see what was going on at the treasure room. He noticed that the door was closed and that a light was coming out from beneath the gap, meaning that there was a good chance that the giant was in the room admiring his treasure. Crush turned his head back to tell Boulder what had transpired since he was captured when he noticed a moving shadow behind him on the far side of the prison cells. A giant cloaked figure appeared, a prison guard as it were, and the time for decisions was expired.

  Crush quickly turned the corner and headed for the restroom at a full sprint. There was no time for explanation, and no time to look for Simon. There was only escape from this castle at all costs. The first mission, getting to Scalus Mountain, was the most important, and if they did not escape now, they might never be free again. “Then where would everyone enslaved under Argentine be? They would still be slaves,” he reasoned. “Their freedom is my mission,” he told himself as the door to the treasure room passed him by unnoticed. The restroom was just ahead, and as he slowed down to catch his breath from the long dash, the emotions that he was fighting inside, the ones that he was running away from at a sprint, began to surface. The pain of leaving innocent people behind to their doom was overwhelming him, and he began to stream tears of anger at the circumstances that he found himself trapped in. This was one of the few times in his long ca
reer as an agent that he found himself out of his league. So many people’s lives were riding on his shoulders, and all that he could do was run to the restroom to mourn.

  “Real men don’t cry,” he told himself as he wiped the tears of anger from his eyes with his shirt, and then realized where his shirt had been not that long ago. “Man, I hope I don’t get pink eye. Or worse, hepatitis of the eye,” he said to himself as he pushed the door to the restroom open and ran inside. Boulder trailed him, and together, they closed the door to so that no one would suspect that they had run inside. With no time to spare, Crush scaled the outside of the giant toilet and found the flushing mechanism on top. Then he told Boulder to hop inside the bowl.

  “That seems a tad bit harsh, human. If I need a bath, please just tell me,” Boulder retorted, not knowing what Crush had in mind. Boulder did as he was instructed however and stood in the bowl with his midsection in the water. Crush pulled the chain on top and dropped down into the bowl to join him in the swirl. Within seconds, they were washing across one pipe and then down another to the bottom where they were submerged in the muck momentarily before the water leveled off. Digging around on the bottom, Crush found his shoes and held them up with a look of success, until he remembered they had been soaking in sewage.

  “Crap. Literally,” Crush said as he put them back on his feet. Boulder stared at him incredulously, and Crush felt as if the man of stone were judging him for his actions. “Better to have them on than risk a cut to my feet in this wet rubbish,” he explained.

  “You are a strange one, human,” he said as he shook his head, making the flints spark on his neck.

  “I can smell your brain burning when you think,” Crush added, and then together they ran down the tunnel toward the daylight of the gated exit. Ten feet from the semi-circular exit, they stopped to look out the hole for any signs of giants roaming the backside of the castle. It was fortunate for them that they stopped when they did. A few seconds later, footsteps vibrated the ground and sent ripples through the stream of waste as it poured out into the creek. One of the passing guards came into view, his feet and ankles clearly visible outside the gated hole, and to their chagrin, the giant relieved himself in the stream nearby and then walked away. When they were certain he was gone, they peeked out the hole again before slipping out.

  “I always marveled at the river, it’s mighty power and authority,” Boulder said with a sigh as he looked at the slowly drifting yellow stream as it wound its way downstream into the woods. “I am forever scarred,” he said as the odor dissipated. Crush looked back at the castle, remembering Simon and those that he had left behind, and he agreed with his partner.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame,” Crush said with a sad nod as they snuck back into the woods. Not more than twenty yards into the forest, a monkey dropped down by its tail to dangle before them. The monkey looked familiar to Crush, and when he noticed the key to the treasure chest that it cradled in its arms, he struck his fist in joy. “YES!!” he yelled before he abruptly stopped to see if any giants heard his roar. Then they all snuck off together and followed the stream to the great river.

  Chapter 3

  *

  Along the River