Another door appeared. Another threshold Ria crossed. Another tunnel entered. This one was, however, a shade darker than most, a few inches narrower than the last, and incongruously silent. Even her exhales bounced off the walls with a crisp sharpness- like the hiss of a snake coiling nearby, keeping its sense on her and getting ready to spear an attack.
Counting her steps- one, two three…
Her steps splashed nicely in the water because of the silence. She could even hear the water droplets fall back into the stagnant pool, making another festival of lush echoes blister around her. The door motioned to disappear behind her. It didn’t screech on rusted hinges rather closed away with a quick heavy thump.
Ria heard it and it made her steps stall, but the thump eerily didn’t echo like every other thing set into motion by her movement. The sound returned with the door, disconnecting the past from the present with a final salute. She resisted the hunger and the weakness raising their heads inside her and started walking again.
Breathing- inhaling and exhaling.
There was a slight stench of rot in the air. Her hands were to her side, open and clean. Eyes to the ground, she mindlessly watched the water become visible under a distant light source and the ripples move -breaking and multiplying- when resisted by obstacles. She sometimes saw rubble and garbage float by- plastic bottles wobbled with the ripples she produced, hollow metallic cans sunk, and wooden bits either rocked up and down as the rippled passed below them or simply rid along the small waves.
Goosebumps had her hair in their custody. Thank God for the t-shirt that she was wearing. Though tattered, it was doing a good enough job of preventing the cold air from biting into her skin. The water, however, was cold. It had her whole body shivering. Her toes had already curled inwards and were numb. She was simply losing too much heat to the water below.
As she kept walking, the water level dropped until it only remained covering her feet and ankles. She slowly neared the once distant source of light, but she didn’t lookup. The stench of rot was overpowering the sewer odor. And the bloated corpse she saw made her grit her teeth in silence. She didn’t connect any dots. She was back in the first tunnel she had woken up in; the tunnel connected directly with that monsters room.
Grinding teeth and curling a fist.
She was back. This jolt made her remember the goblin's words. “GO down,” he had said. “The exit is down the sewer.” But here she was, once again trailing through the dirty trenches of the sewer lines: whose floor still retained the prints left behind by her feet, whose walls still bounced back her screams, whose darkness still held the odor of her sweat. For how long had she been trapped inside the sewer thinking that she was making progress? She’d been in there for days! She had injured herself because of the promise of safety. But where the fuck was her redemption?
Her face turned pale at the familiar sight. The light was still there and so was the corpse. The only thing missing was the music to guide her toward… toward relief. Where is the music? And she heard the music, the boisterous carnival sound full of joy come from inside the darkness further up ahead. It was like a rope set out for the foolish, the gullible, to grab, unaware of the noose at the end of its length. Something broke inside her upon hearing the all too familiar music.
She ran.
Ignored were the corpse and the light, the stench and the bright. She ran with everything she had got, striding toward the music with rage pilling up inside her in stacks. She pulled the knife out of her back pocket and brought it the front. The dried coating of red still marring its edge, however, gave her a fright and it fell out of her grip. It didn’t disappear out of her sight under the murky water, rather plunged shallowly at an angle into the soft filth floor, remaining standing with its polished handle still visible outside the water's depth.
She stopped to look at the knife, but a loud boom –a cannon firing- jolted her awake and her body moved away from the knife, afraid of the horror it might dig out from the grave of her past. The surrounding darkness blinded her. She pressed forward anyway. The water froze beneath her feet, the music became loud and clear. The door appeared in the distance, light leaking from the central gap where the two panels meet and from the hinges. Her voice erupted in a mixture of scream and anger, as she kicked the door wide open. The goblin sat right in front of the door -naked, smiling, and waiting.
“Ah- you are back,” she heard him say. She jumped on him, ignoring all pretense of civility, manner, and calmness at the threshold.
They both tumbled in a series of groans and yells as her momentum toppled the recliner backward. Ria fell on top of him; wasting no time, she slammed her forehead at his nose. It didn’t help. The goblin tried to push her away, but they were lying on the ground, so she fell back upon him.
“ARRR!” she screamed, standing on her knees, she clawed at his face with her nails. Something wet, something warm, marred her hands, but she kept going. She couldn’t see anything. A deluge of emotions and feelings had busted out of her eyes and were raining over her hands. They fogged her sight, reminding her of this one time she had missed her school bus and had to walk back home in the rain. Nicky wasn’t her friend then. The rain had fallen with an unusually sad sound, drowning everything else in its cold and sharp line and sapping away all her happiness, leaving her alone and stranded. Ria felt the same today.
She wanted to keep going; Tear the monsters apart, skin it alive, and return all the pain it had given her and Nicky ten times, a hundred times over. Pain erupted from her hands as her nails broke. She didn’t want to stop, but the pain made her. A few minutes later when her breathing became laborious and weakness shrouded every inch of her being, she simply put her head on the monster's chest and wept.
The goblin hadn’t stopped her from hurting him and he didn’t stop her from crying either. He didn’t stop her and he didn’t help her. He remained motionless under her, indifferent to her pain. She didn’t see but he was watching her with dead pane eyes as if waiting for the appropriate moment to lift her up and throw her into the fireplace.
“Why?” she asked without lifting her head. She didn’t speak out loud. She didn’t want to hear reasons and explanations too hard for her to understand. She simply wanted her friend back.
“What did we do to you? Why did you take her from me?” Ria growled- seething with pain.
The gobbling who hadn’t acted until now spoke, as if obliged to answer anything which was asked of him.
“A leader has to be fair. A leader can’t be weak. Leaders can’t let their emotions rule them. A leader needs to have the ability to sacrifice for the greater good. A good leader isn’t partial.”
“I’ll kill you,” she said. “I’ll do it.” Her lips, however, quivered at being stared back by his pitch-black irises. They looked like two voids, planning to swallow her whole. No blood leaked from his wounds, no bloody ravines marred his face, and no wounds glorified her actions. He looked immaculate, the same as ever.
“Me can’t get hurt on this floor, miss. You have to go deeper if you want to do that.” The goblin said standing up. “Want me to die? Go deeper. Want to get revenge? Go deeper. Want to leave the sewer and return back to your life? Then go deeper. Me is not sure about the chance of the last one happening, however.”
“What did you do to Nicky? What did you do to her?!” said Ria, stepping back toward the door, distancing away from the monster.
“Me? Oh, me did nothing to her.” He replied, putting his recliner back in its place. “Me only acted as my master had worded. Give the filthy humans a chance he had said. Allow them to pick up the pieces he had said. Me is only staying true to my master's words. Me only wants to help you. Your friend, she was too corrupted to be a leader. But you can become one. Yes. And then me will finally be free. Master promised me freedom. He really did!”
Ria shook her head; she felt a mixture of disbelief and disgust at its response. “Free? You want to go free after stealing my family from me? I’ll never let it happen. I’ll never let it happen!”
“Good-good, anger is good. Follow me. Use it to survive.” He said, walking past her nonchalantly and opening the door which had closed behind Ria. His behavior only worked like salt on her wounds. He didn’t care. He really didn’t care whether she or anyone else for that matter lived or died. He only cared for what his master had promised him. He only cared for his Freedom. No matter the price.
Stopping at the threshold he looked back, holding another glass full of his lust enduing potion. “Come,” he said. “Your task awaits you.”
