Chapter 4: Meat Market

I could not bring myself to look to my right.

The seven zombies did a pretty good job of making a mess next to my cell.

The congealed dead blood did not flow as it should have naturally. It sort of glopped together in chunky curds.

The zombies did not look sated. They were dead, how could they!

The necromancer just called them away from their horrid meal before they burst. A simple curl of the hand, and the animated dead distended with their necrotic meal bulging out their guts below their ribs. They just moved off like nothing happened, like their dead forms were not slathered with human blood and entrails.

Once my cell companion next over started grabbing and ripping and blubbering at me about not here, not now, not real, I peeled away from their grasping fingers.

Still too shocked to believe what I was seeing, at least I was holding together better than that dude who was at the party with me. I recognized his torn and tattered superhero get-up. But I was holding my shit together at least

Even if I was pressed, hard backed into the rough stone wall, five feet from the left, and five feet from the right side iron bars, I was in better shape. Never mind that I clenched my knees to my chest like some scared toddler, I was not the one crying and bawling my eyes out incoherently.

I was getting hot but was reluctant to remove the minimal protection of my comfortable fleece shirt. So I rolled my sleeves back with the simple expedient of popping the buttons and shoving my sleeves back until they rammed into a clump at my elbows.

Above my arms that encircled my knees, I could watch the passing people, as I rested my chin unmoving. All that moved was my occasional breath of the foul-smelling and feted air, now tainted with the stink of spilled entrails and sour blood, and my eyes following some interesting person passing before my bars.

The ogres came by hours ago and scooped up the largest remaining chunks.

They seemed to be the caretakers of the place. The one I called ogre number two was replaced by a different one. So there were at least three of the massive creatures acting as jailers and janitors.

All manner of mythical creatures strolled by window shopping, or more to the point, cage shopping.

It did not take long once I woke and recovered from my disorientation to realize that I was trapped in some kind of slave market. I was trapped at the slave market with a few of the other guests from Liam’s party in cages next to mine.

I had no one coherent to discuss it with, but I wondered if poor Tinkerbell must have reacted to whatever they slipped into that drink. The only thing that passed my lips was the alcoholic potion that Nyx tricked me into drinking.

All I could think of was that they slipped Tink the same brew. She was already out when I arrived late. Maybe because she was a bigger girl it took too long to affect her, they got impatient, and they gave her a second dose.

I cringed thinking that macabre thought.

If they were impatient to down her, and she had been given a second and it killed her then that spoke volumes of how powerful that junk was.

But I really had no way to tell what it was that did her in. I’m a school-trained chef, for God’s sake! My dad was the military man in the family. I don’t have the mind for this devious shit.

All I could reason was that the chunky blood that spilled was not natural or normal. And now I, well we remaining party guests, are still trapped in this meat market being reviewed by fantastical people of all descriptions.

I never in a million years would have thought that I would have watched two half-snake, half-men, slither by on their long, powerful, lower-body snake appendage. Like Medusa, but dudes!

Fortunately, no one turned to stone at their gaze. But still, what the Hell! Snakemen were slithering down the hall.

There did not seem to be the ‘creatures of good’ legend. The ones who passed were the ones with marginal to bad reputations in the stores. I found that disconcerting.

Then a cluster of nasty-looking child-sized goblins chittered as they pointed this way and that. Their quick frantic eyes and movements seemed to take in everything all at once. The greenish pallor of their skin seemed to reflect the torchlight wickedly. Their wiry muscles and strong grizzled hands and flesh tickled at the back of my mind that while these were weak creatures in this land of big powerful monsters, these were the hard, fast, and wicked survivors of those fights.

They chittered right past me, coughing and making their extra fast speech as they toured, ignoring me.

My frantic mind raced down dark paths along the lines of, ‘Maybe everything here is bad!’ I also turned over, ‘This place could be so shit that there are none of the good things here!’ Another thought that frenetically ricocheted around my head was, ‘What if I’m, like, super far behind good versus evil battle lines and I’m never going to be freed by the good side?’

I eyed a group of powerfully built, rangy humanoids with dark skin, bristling with weapons and dark ugly armor. Some were patched together with plates hammered into their skulls that looked like they wielded closed grievous head wounds. And if they did not fit the bill for a small party of Tolkien’s orcs nothing would!

I remained still and silent, curled in my pathetic little ball. My mouth was hidden by my knees and arms. My chin pressed hard the indent between my knees. I left my nose clear breathing over the gap between my knee bones and remained perfectly small and still, only hazarding the movement of my eyes alone. I moved not another muscle!

A single squid-headed monstrosity with wicked-looking tentacles instead of cheeks eyed my party companions with apparent hunger on its unreadable face.

But those eyes!

Those eyes spoke hungry volumes!

I flicked my eyes left and right quickly counting my fellow captured party-goers. Two other men and five remaining women. The women in their skimpy Halloween costumes were probably having a rough time of it.

As I reached the last at the end of our human cluster, I noticed that the small orc party was eyeing one woman at the end in particular.

I felt ashamed when I looked away from that and flicked my eyes back to the passersby in front of my own cage.

My hard old man, the combat veteran, spoke in my head. The guy, my bitch of a mother, tortured and hid us from, for a decade and a half, while she lied to my sister and me about my dad the whole time. His voice burned into my mind from years of catching up and family functions excluding my ex-mother. My departed father’s voice growled in that quiet, but hard as steel, straight-Scotch-drinking survivor’s voice of his, ‘Not your problem! Keep your eyes on your own survival. Ya can’t help ‘em if you’re dead, because you went stupid brave, ‘n got yourself killed. Ya can’t keep someone else from gettin’ themselves killed for bein’ stupid either! All ya can do is not be next to them when the explosives go off and rip their body to pieces in front of ya.’

I felt myself blow a long hard shuddering breath through my nose and across my knees, so hard that the unsteady wind tickled my exposed arm hairs.

That strange chittering goblin language in front of me drew my attention back to reality after who knows how long of daydreaming, and away from my momentary self-protective fancy.

My eyes flicked in front to stare at my cage door.

I blinked several times, recognizing the same goblin kind in front of me. Child-sized but women this time.

The eldest chittered at me harshly again.

My head tilted and I felt my brow furrow lacking understanding.

That one had once black hair aged and long ago turned mostly a frazzled white, pulled back into a clumpy tie that exploded out behind her head and shoulders. Age wrinkles creased her face and hid angry black eyes.

As that elder goblin matron chittered at me, two of her companions looked young. Their faces were smooth and vibrant like girls still in school. Those two looked around wary and attentive to the much larger beings trundling past as their group stood at my gate. They kept what looked like needle-sharp spears at the ready.

Their group stood only about four to four and a half feet tall each, their spear shafts were goblin head height. It was hard to tell because the young little female goblins kept their spears at the ready in two hands. The two carried blue and purplish hair respectively, which framed their faces and pulled back into harsh braids behind their heads. But by guess, at about their ear heights, the spears carried a broad flat guard, spanning out about my hand-width on either side of the polished and gleaming steel of their twenty to twenty-four-inch long spear blades.

Blue and Purple both wore what looked like light-colored padded gambesons, sort of an off-white, with leather plates formed over their vitals, adding a little more protection. The armor naturally minimized their female shapes, but their faces were obviously female.

The gray matron barked at me again. Her tan burlap sack-colored robe flowed complicated with pouches and stitching making it look like someone had spent a lot of time and care crafting the garment.

These girls were definitely put together better than their male companions who passed by earlier. Appearance and hygiene wise at least.

I still did not know what the fuck she was saying!

I knew that Tink’s cell was empty so I looked to my left and found that dude curled into a fetal ball in the far corner of his cell facing the rock wall. He must have been trying to hide from reality again, or still.

The fourth goblin female huffed loud enough to draw my attention back to the gate. Her robe was black, simple, clean, and elegant without the dirty unkempt edges the male goblins paraded about earlier. She wore a thin and what looked from across the cell to be an etched gold circlet around her neck, looking similar to my collar but without the bulge. She also filled out her robes with the voluminous curves some women, well human women, try to hide with bulky sweaters when they did not want to be noticed and ogled at for their voluptuous shape.

Red removed her hand from the elder’s shoulder. Staring at me she swiftly cracked her hands together, clapping harshly. Her eyes were hard on me. Her full red hair contrasted sharply with her smoothly attractive, but still weirdly green features.

Staring at me, Red pointed at my nose with her fingers. Then she made a vertical finger walking gesture and slammed her fingers down pointing sharply at the base of the cell gate.

I hesitated.

White huffed hard and yanked something from some hidden pouch on her person.

Red snatched it out of her hands with angry authority.

Red jabbed her finger down at the base of the cell’s gate again, only this time holding whatever it was.

I looked at her, not understanding.

Angry, Red smashed that same finger down onto the device, and cold lighting seared violently into my neck from the collar!

I could not gasp, shout, or do anything but convulse as rampant pain seared every nerve from that neck thing down and out of my body!

Twitching in my little ball I toppled over to my left.

Pain seized my muscles, locking them into place. That little primitive falling instinct shouted in that back brain of mine that we were going to hit the ground.

I could do nothing about it!

My face slammed into the stone, as gravity and convulsions laid me flatter and flatter on the cold floor.

Pain still ripped through me, until it suddenly stopped.

Gasping desperately for air, I inhaled clumps of dirty straw and that dry dust that always accumulates in filthy barns, straight into my lungs.

Seized by a coughing fit, from the dust, and expelling straw, the four pint-sized terrors at my gate were laughing their asses off at me!

I shoved myself upright angrily back into my seated position. My teeth grinding and now understood exactly what that stupid box on my neck was for. I quivered with unreleased helpless rage!

Red smiled at me, amused. This time she crooked her finger at me. She made her little walking gesture with her fingers. And then she pointed twice at the floor inside my gate.

I huffed and growled, still angry at her. Eyeing her with ill-concealed rage.

She wiggled the thing in her left hand and waved her finger over the trigger, slowly and deliberately tormenting me!

I sighed remembering.

I caught myself making one of my juvenile tells that used to always get me in trouble, as I finished rolling my eyes a full circuit left to the ceiling and around to the right before focusing back on her.

My ex-mother used to smack me. And dad would call me a whiny little bitch when I did that in front of him. For two people who could not even agree on the color of the blue sky, that was a serious accomplishment for them to agree about that.