My father. How many times had I heard that laugh before? Back when I was in my room at home, and he would be watching television, and something would make him laugh out loud. That laughter shook the entire house. Or we would be driving, and he would see a bumper sticker or a funny restaurant or something that would amuse him.
I always loved the sound of his laughter. It told me that he was happy and happiness for him was such a rare thing. Now I followed that laugh deeper into the earth.
A sudden scarlet light burned through the darkness like a tainted sun rising on a bleak day. The red light gave me something else to follow with my eyes, even as I followed the sound with my ears. My face was flushed and warm and wet with sweat. I could not help but tremble, wondering at what I might find. I had been walking for so long, maybe I was going to the center of the earth.
The tunnel opened and there I was, looking through an invisible doorway. I stood upon the threshold of perversion. The cave had been painted to resemble a room with wood paneling. There was even a window, although only warm red rock shone through. There was a bed, and a scarlet couch made of crushed velvet. Spent wine bottles rolled on the floor and ash trays were filled to overflowing with cigarette butts. There was a mirror and jars of make-up on a night stand. There were wigs on top of skulls and little cases made to hold jewelry.
I was just barely old enough to recognize it, had I not always dreamed of it? This was a whore’s boudoir, or a prostitute’s lair. A chest of drawers was open and filled to bursting with all sorts of naughty lingerie. There was a closet where costumes were hung with care.
And there was my father, lolling about on the bed, as naked as the day he was born. For the first time in a long time I caught a glimpse of his penis. It was hard and long, much larger than mine. Right now, it was standing straight up like a good soldier. Two elf women hovered over him, both dressed in costumes. One was a Catholic school girl, and under her pleated skirt I saw white skin. She was not wearing panties. The other was decked out all in leather, complete with metal studs. Her tight outfit hugged her body in all the most uncomfortable places, revealing the most heinous curves. They did not notice me. All their attention was focused on him.
My father was laughing again as he guzzled some Elfin more wine. It spilled all over his naked chest like freshly drawn blood. “Naughty boy,” the bondage elf said, slapping her hand with a short whip. “Now you must be punished.”
“Do it!” my father begged and rolled off the bed. He knelt in front of her and groaned as his penis twitched.
“Dad?” I asked. But they ignored me. They did not even see me.
The school girl got on her knees, looking my father in the eye. “Do you know how we punish little boys like you?”
He shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. She stood up and smiled, then lifted her skirt. Underneath her skin was smooth, and I could see a little pink slit. Nothing much, barely a gash.
I couldn’t take anymore. My mind could no longer accept this. And then the Quicksilver Stallion was there.
It filled the room with power and grace. Both the elf girls stepped back, afraid of the creature. It snorted, looking at my father.
“Put your fucking pants on,” I told him, finding his castoff clothes on a small chair and throwing an old pair of jeans at him. “We’re getting out of here.”
“But I can’t leave,” he whined. “I haven’t been punished yet!”
“You’ve punished me enough.”
***
My father was asleep in the van as I ventured into the dark forest again. One down. Three to go.
Nothing in this world called Gurkiel made much sense. Where a clearing and a fire had been the night before there was now a city, as if it had grown in the darkness. A dirty, awful city like something from a story book. It would have been cute if I hadn’t been on such an important mission. All the dwellings were squat, about head height. The buildings themselves were made for much smaller men than me, like elves or dwarves, gremlins or goblins. People saw me walking down the street and they hid away, ducking inside before I could see them. Except for one. He wasn’t quick enough.
“Hey,” I reached out and grabbed Lordax roughly by the lapels of his coat. His armor was gone, replaced with a suit made of some emerald fabric that made his eyes glow. An imitation brown leather trench coat was thrown over it, the hem drifting inches off the ground. He also wore a bowler hat that sat atop a wreath of cherub gold hair.
All in all, he reminded me of the drug dealers I had known back in school, dressed in that shabby sort of chic style that just screamed villain. He was even twitching, like the drug dealers I knew in school. And his eyes were shifty, darting about and furtive. For him enemies were everywhere. I could feel the hands of fate again, pushing me towards him.
“Yes, yes yes?” he tried to smile but all the while he was shaking. “How can I help you, young human?”
“I want to know where my brother and sister are,” I demanded, shaking him. Lordax was very small and very light. I could have lifted him right off the ground if I had wanted and judging from the fear filled frown on his lips he was scared. Very scared.
“Brother and sister?” he asked stupidly, looking about. “I don’t ...”
“You know who I’m talking about.” I shook. He stammered. “My brother and sister. Jimmy and June.”
“Ah, yes,” he smiled. “The younglings. I was just on my way to see them, actually.”
“Then you can take me with you,” I said and let him go with a shove. He stumbled to the ground, rolling over and looking up at me. I kept my face stoic and angry, as if I was playing poker with a mob boss. But I was not playing games. Not anymore.
“Of course. Yes,” he nodded at me, all his nervous teeth quivering. “Please. It will be so nice. The family of men, back together again!”
I followed him, giving him little pushes whenever he started to move too slowly. I must admit that it was kind of fun bullying this little creature. I had never been anyone tough. In fact, I was picked on through most of my school days. It was kind of nice being the aggressor for a change. Although the irony did make me sick to my stomach. In most of the story books I read the humans were the enemy.
And I was an enemy of Lordax.
We passed through the tiny town and I soon found that the distance the eye perceives meant nothing in Gurkiel. One could cross a lawn and take an eternity. Or move through an entire city in moments. The eye would blink, and everything would change. The land itself lifted away from reality and hovered on the edges of perception. When you are in Gurkiel, it is very hard to leave.
It was maddening. Spend enough time here, I knew, and one could go completely insane. But I was not thinking about this. Lordax took me to a dark bridge that stretched over a dry lake bed filled with scummy brown mud. What were we doing here? I suspected treachery and was ready to kill this little elf when I heard a shallow chuckle. Again, it was a laughter that I recognized. I remembered that laugh from the times we went to the movies together, or when I did something funny. The laugh belonged to ...
“Jimmy?”
I looked under the bridge and there was the object of my quest. Jimmy and June, my brother and sister. But they looked so different, I didn’t recognize them. If they hadn’t been blood relatives I probably would not have known them at all. They were covered in mud, so much mud that all traces of flesh had disappeared and only their eyes were showing. They had gotten fat and their massive legs were crossed Indian style in the muck. Their hair had grown out, everywhere. Even little June sported a small beard that was scraggly and dirty, like pubic hairs falling off her cheeks.
What had happened? They had changed overnight. Then I remembered that time moved differently in Gurkiel. What had been over night for me could have been ages for them.
They were no longer children, that much was certain. Their faces had become broad and flat, like a cro-magnon, and I watched my brother pick his nose, which was long like a witch’s. Happily, he
slurped the trail of snot up, licking the buggers off his fingertips as if they were the height of culinary delight. He looked at me and grinned. His eyes were the same color as the snot.
He did not recognize me. He did not know me. He was a complete imbecile.
Only my sister was still somewhat coherent. Her face brightened as she saw me, and I could see faint traces of the little girl I knew under all that muck. I smiled back at her. Then Lordax passed by and I was forgotten. She got excited as he approached and did not care about me at all. Her own brother. Her own blood.
“You have?” she jumped up and I could hear the tone of her voice. It was her. I knew it was her. That was the tone of voice on Christmas, when she was waiting for her presents. That was the tone of voice on her birthday, when she wanted to blow out the candles. I knew it was my sister and I shuddered.
“Of course,” Lordax said and reached into his coat pocket. He took out a dirty syringe filled with a strange blue liquid.
“Me first,” Jimmy shouted and shoved her back into the muck, reaching selfishly for that needle like a spoiled baby for his bottle. “Gimme!”
“No,” June spit back, fighting him by grabbing huge fistfuls of his long hair and pulling. “Me first! Me first!!”
“Ho ho ho!” the elf king said, dancing backwards with a quick skipping move that almost appeared to be choreographed. “A moment, please!” He pulled out a second needle, like Santa with a fresh candy cane, and gave one to each. “Now, what do you have for me?”
“Gold,” Jimmy snorted and pulled a few coins out of his ass.
“More gold,” she said, and reached into her twat to get some coins out.
“Stupid gnomes give us!” Jimmy said.
“Stupid gnomes!” June agreed.
Lordax counted the money quickly before it disappeared into a leather pouch at his side. “A good business, eh?” Lordax looked at me and smiled. “Trolls always collect their toll.”
But I was frozen in a state of horror. I watched them shove those needles into hungry veins and the blue liquid, whatever it was, disappeared.
“What is it?” I asked the elf, grabbing him by the shoulder and burying my nails in his flesh. “What the fuck did you do to them?”
Lordax winced but smiled anyway. “Just a little bit of elf-drug. See how much they love it! Look how happy they are! Were they ever so happy in that other world?”
I couldn’t argue with that. They did seem happy, a lot happier than they ever were with my mom and dad. But it was a perverted happiness. It was not real. It was disgusting, like everything else in weird old Gurkiel. And Lordax ...
I pushed him off into the mud. Lordax tripped and fell in the muck as I went to her. “June?” I asked, kneeling and looking into her eyes. Too late. She was already gone. “Jimmy?” I looked over at him. He was busy licking the needle lovingly with a long tongue, making sure none of that precious liquid got away. “What are you doing? What have you become?”
“Would you care for a taste?” Lordax asked, reaching into his pocket for another syringe. “Things will make a lot more sense with some of this in your system. And this bridge could use another guardian. Don’t you want to be with your family again?”
“No,” I said, pushing him down, harder this time. “June!” I turned to her.
“No June,” she croaked. “Only SisTroll.”
“BroTroll!” my brother hollered and pushed her. She kicked him square in the stomach and then the sickness started.
BroTroll rolled over in the mud and wallowed like a pig. A huge smile cleared his face and he slapped at the muck with open hands, picking it up and playing with it.
Movement from the corner of an open pipe. I looked over and saw a fat rat crawling out, its pink nose quivered. June scrambled, reaching for it. Jimmy slapped her away, pushing her face into the mud and snatching it up by the tail.
“Food!” he screamed in glee.
“You share!” she argued and shoved him. They began to fight again, hitting each other with the rat until it was bent and broken and smeared with blood and muck.
I stood up, my jeans were covered in the strange mud and who knew what else. I looked at them. They were too far gone. They had both been sucked up into this world. My brother and sister. They may as well have been dead. In fact, better dead than this.
Behind me Lordax was trying to crawl off. I grabbed him again and pulled him to his feet. “Take me to my mother.”
***
I have never been in a dungeon before. The experience was disheartening, to say the least. It had all the things you would expect. The stone walls were there and the chains. There was also an overwhelming stench of sweat and feces and vomit so strong it nearly bowled me over. You don’t know what stuffy is until the only heat in a cold room is that coming off a human body.
Unfortunately, it was her body.
King Lordax had brought me here, to this room on what had to be the wrong side of town. The top half had a bar and there were other elves, scruffy looking fellows, sitting and drinking a mead-like substance. But that was not where he had my mother. She was below, in the dungeon.
Carefully I managed to navigate a flight of sharp wooden stairs that took me lower and lower, into the very bowels of the earth. The heat got hotter and hotter, until sweat was dripping off my body. And King Lordax was there, every step of the way. Finally, we came to a large oaken door.
“You’re sure you want to see this?”
I snarled at him and, like a whipped pup, he opened the door.
I stood in the entranceway and looked at the two, copulating against the wall. Sweat glistened in the dim torchlight, and the elf’s body was white, pale as driven snow. He was naked. So was she. He stood about the height of her breasts.
My mother was chained to the wall, her body pressed into the stone in an obscene manner. From my vantage point I could see the elf’s nose poking at her tits, and his buttocks grew tense as the two of them quivered together in rapture. The sounds coming from my mother were inhuman. It almost sounded like bleating, as if she was part goat. With a final grunt the elf heaved. They both moaned in unison. My mother damn near shrieked and I wanted to cry. Then he took a step back and I saw a long line of silver semen moving from his dickhole to her puss. I watched him wipe his scummy cock off on a long piece of velvet that hung from the ceiling.
I looked at his penis. It was so long it might have belonged to a horse. And red. There was something unnatural about it. I could sense dark mysticism in the air. Slowly it shrank as it was spent, still lacquered in his own elfin semen. Then there was my mother.
She fucking smiled. Smiled! The elf leaned in and kissed her the way one would kiss an observant dog. I could see welts all over her skin, and bruises. Something white and glowing dripped down her leg and collected in a silver puddle on the floor.
“See?” Lordax said beside me. “She’s fine. Here. Have a cigar. Soon we’ll have a birth to celebrate.” He reached into his coat and pulled out two rolled sticks of tobacco.
“What have you ...”
The words got stuck in my throat as I looked at my poor mother, chained there. She was a pitiful thing, hanging like a slab of meat. The chains had scraped her skin raw and her hair was matted with filth, hanging over her eyes like a funeral shroud. As I watched her stomach grew fat and bloated, as if a pale balloon was being blown up inside her. I watched it expand and saw the skin being stretched to the breaking point. She screamed, and her stomach was rosy red with bursting capillaries.
Something slipped and fell out of her. Something slithered out of her, covered in blood and mucous. It screamed, and it sounded like a cross between a human and a goat. I looked at it.
No. It was not human. I could not accept the fact that it was human.
Happily, King Lordax reached out and caught the slimy, wriggling thing like a farmer catching a runaway pig. It screamed again, louder this time. I could hear the power in its voice. This was a creature capable of moving mountains.
As he held it up in the dim torchlight I looked closer. It was a half-breed, a child somewhere between human and elf. And it was disgusting.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” I shouted and sprinted forward. But the elf king was far faster. He dropped the half-ling and grabbed up a sword. I stopped as the silver blade hovered before me, the edge pointing at my Adam’s apple.
It was sharp enough, I knew, to run me through. A twist of his wrist and my head would be sliced right off my neck.
“You are being very difficult, boy,” he said, then reached out and tugged a cord. “It is time for your punishment.”
His subjects filtered into the room at this signal. They surrounded me, all holding long swords of glistening elf-made metal.
“I demand that this manling be put to death!”
Acquaro Page 8
