With the early hours came a fog swooning down from the mountain. His stomach full, a snoring Kat crouched in the corner of our shack, his right hand hanging like a dead weight over his katana.
Madam B said the sensible thing would be to lock myself here until the morning. I thought about it, and I knew I could walk away from this village, and forget their pregnant bellies and peculiar behavior; it wasn't my problem. Unfortunately, inquisitiveness flows through every detective's blood. The white house intrigued me most, and that is where I would start the investigation.
Getting up from the mattress, I pondered waking Kat, but the idea passed as soon as it arrived. The man cared only for himself, and I already could imagine what he would say: "Remain where you are! Do not disobey me!" or something along those lines. Thus, with care and time taken over each step, I left the shack and a slumbering samurai behind.
Outside, a crystallized frost over everything reminded me of winter in Ontario.
Torches long burnt out, I moved fast, rubbing my arms and shrinking past shadowy hovels, unknowing if anyone was watching from those dark windows. Mud sank and molded around my footsteps as I arrived at the now-empty dinner table, cleared of goblets, cutlery, and plates, with morsels left to the rats. I had to erase the memory of that meal, the food, and company. Why did I have to open my damn mouth?
Creeping toward the white house, I could not stop my teeth from chattering, and felt for the expecting women over my trail. Safe, sure, but happy?
Shrouded in fog, I set my back against a wall of the house, watching the village twinkling in that ghostly vapor. A window blurred bright orange from over my shoulder, so I shuffled nervously toward it. I wanted to heat my hands over the hot glass, but voices beyond those hanging red curtains snapped me from the lure. There were long, distressing moans and desperate panting breaths followed by a terrible, high-pitched wailing.
"Push! Push!"
On tiptoes, I stretched to the windowsill for a look inside, and squinting past curtains, I witnessed the back of a wide woman bent over a bedside. "Push!" she cried again. "Time to push, dearie!"
My guts, or humanity maybe, told me to forget the spy game, to haul ass inside and offer what help I could. I listened to my instinct, ran up the white porch, and pulled back the main door with not a squeak from the hinges. It was an open living space lit beautifully with candles, and that wave of heat caused me to tingle. My presence went unseen at the door as the chill thawed from my face. I saw simple but comfortable furniture before a modest fireplace, and the back of Madam B and another over a bedside, aiding a screeching redhead in labor.
My creak on a floorboard alerted Madam B, who turned, flustered, her two hands hanging like dog paws in front of her. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked, sincerely.
She watched me there for a long second, as if wondering what to do with me. A pale and congealed liquid oozed like fat from her fingertips, and the other women passed her a towel to dry them. "I asked you to stay in the shack!" said Madam B finally, more desperate than angry. "Go back now, Mr. Fox. Before it's too late!"
The redhead’s moaning intensified to guttural, as if a shank was twisting in her lower belly.
"Here it comes!" cried Madam B, positioning herself between the girl's bare legs. "One more push, J! One more! Almost…over!"
Madam J was the redhead who earlier had set up the dinner table, who giggled when Kat shoved me to the shit. She let out a final, excruciating groan before her head rolled back in absolute exhaustion. The wailing of a newborn baby came next, and utterly drained, Madam B exhaled and sobbed. The three women had a union of tears and laughter; and during this overwhelming miracle, I was forgotten at the door.
A weary smile grew on my face too, and keen to see the new arrival, I wiped the damp from my brow and approached the back of Madam B, who passed the newly wrapped baby into its mother's arms. I peered over B's shoulder for an eyeful of the boy or girl and saw a thing so unnatural, so abhorrently alien that it caused me to jolt back as if punched full in the face.
"Mr. Fox!" hissed B. "You'll frighten the child!"
Covered in spunky slime, the baby's bald head was crisscrossed with a network of purple veins. It had jelly drooling out of snouty nostrils, beady yellow eyes turning over, gills squirting juice from the neck, and a mouthful of dribbling gores. Madam B left the mother's side and came at me with a temper and an unbecoming hunch over her shoulder. "I told you!” she yelled. “Warned you, didn't I?"
The redhead wiped the ghoulish face of her baby, its moan revealing one serrated tooth between its black lips.
"Leave this village, Mr. Fox!" demanded Madam B. "Forget everything you've seen here! Run, run, and never look back!"
"This is how you buy your protection?" I said, stumbling back. "This is sick, a sick fucking nightmare!"
Suddenly, a heavy stamp came from the floor above. "He's awake!" whispered the redhead, her face pale and voice terrified. "Oh my God, he's awake!"
The women’s brief delight turned to dread, and the purest kind of fear made up their sweat. "He's coming!" panted B, pretending to wipe down surfaces. "This is your last chance, Mr. Fox! Your last! I won't be held responsible! Stay and die!"
I paused, perplexed in my spot, the baby’s bawl increasing, and the thudding footsteps, too. THUD, THUD, THUD
"Go!" B urged, returning to the bedside and waving me, begging me out the door.
Scared out of my wits, I positioned myself halfway between the main door and outside wall, watching the staircase to the upper floor. I wanted to haul ass, but had too, needed to see it! The staircase creaked from some huge load whilst the women busied themselves, fixing bed covers and their own appearances in the mirror.
THUD! A mighty weight put its strain on the first descending step. THUD! Thick black feet and fat yellow toenails. THUD! Taking the final steps, the giant stood before the anxious women and newborn thing.
"Grutas!" said Madam B, swallowing. "Your son…is born."
***
Haphazardly, I stumbled, splashed, and not once looked over my shoulder. The fog threatened to lose me, but I did not care or stop until, POUF!
Head spinning, I removed Sir Isaac Newton's dagger from its pouch and slashed at whoever knocked me down, at whoever pressed on top of me now. She cried out, and I opened my eyes to discover the blonde-haired Madam L recoiling from my cuts. "You alright?" I gasped and wheezed. "Fuck! Tell me I didn't cut you? Shit! Tell me I didn't?"
She scrutinized the slashed cloth at her arm and found no blood or scratch. She was okay. Searching behind me for the first time, there was only the sitting mist, its churns concealing the white house.
"I am so sorry!" I said, assisting her. "I thought you were…"
"They call him Grutas!" she said, in a hurried whisper. "Madam B said he plans to feed me to his bogs in the morning. Had enough of my excuses. Will you help me, mister? I've no one else to turn to…."
Without another thought, I snatched her wrist and sprinted for the shack.
There was a hefty collision when I barged through the door, breaking it into flimsy bits and pieces. Covered in splinters, I grimaced and crawled to wake Kat, but the samurai was alert already. He pressed his weight down onto my back and held a blade across my throat.
"Don't kill me!" I yelled.
Kat bent for a better look of my face, then grumbled, somewhat disappointed. Relinquishing the sword from my throat and his grip on my hair, I recovered against the bed. Wearing a sour grimace, Kat looked over the breathless and beautiful L, loitering at the door-less doorway. "What is this?" he said.
"She needs our help, Kat. We're in danger!"
The samurai complained under his breath as L carefully passed him to sit on the bed.
"Your harlot stays here," he spat, clearing nasal mucus. "The burden will jeopardize our mission."
"Then the burden is mine," I said. "Grutas will murder her if she stays."
"No purpose…" the girl droned.
"Where is the giant?" asked Kat, preparing his fists for a fight.
"The white house," I answered. "Saw him there myself just now. I figure the wizard uses these women like some kind of assembly line. They are not human beings, but machinery categorized in his fucking alphabet. It's Scarfell who protects this village, Scarfell!"
"It's true," L said. "We are prisoners, brought here by the wizard for our purpose. All women must produce for him."
"You see, samurai?" I said, moving to comfort her on the bed. "I don't know why we're even allowed to stay here, but we're dead if we hang around much longer!"
"Calm her," he said, squinting through the shed cracks. Holding L's frail form, I doubted she or I would be strong enough for a trek up the mountainside.
"Something stirs outside," whispered Kat. "We move now!"
"And the women?" asked L, sniffling. "We collect them, too?"
Kat shook an ill-tempered head, his answer an unsympathetic and unquestionable no.
"We can't leave them to be raped!" I argued, facing him. "That's the reality!"
"Shut up!" he moaned, callously moving for the door.
I took him by the arm, and Kat's response was ferocious. He turned, and picking me up by the legs, he threw my body back to the wall.
"I told you to shut up!" he growled as he tightened a hold around my jugular. "When I tell you to do something, you will do it!"
Petrified, L could not stop Kat or do anything for me, and with a face draining of color, eyes bloodshot, and bulging, crushing windpipe blocking air, I reached for the dagger by my waist; I was left absolutely no choice!
"Do not touch that blade!" Kat said, watching my hand squirm toward the hilt. "I am giving you an order, Fox. What should you do?"
My fingertips grazed the dagger. I could remain conscious just long enough to pull it and kill Kat.
"What should you do?" he asked again, breath hot against my cheek.
Darkness descending, I raised a conceding hand and Kat released me. I dropped like a bag of shit whilst he glowered at Madam L's critical expression near the door.
"Take this." he said, throwing a long length of rope at me. "Keep it over your shoulder. Do not lose it."
"Where," I spluttered, recovering, "did you get it?"
"On your feet!" he demanded. "We leave through the south side. Keep low, move fast. Do not stop!"
Before I could breathe, Kat raced out of the shack and into the fog.
***
We joined the samurai in the nippy night, our breath clear in the cold. Slouching at one hovel, it was not the women, bogs, or Grutas we were avoiding, but Scarfell. Kat would never admit it, but he feared wizards. They commanded a power that made his with the blade redundant.
Low and fast like Kat expected, sparse candlelight glossed like fireflies from various locations, and I heard the rumor-mongering conversation of women near them. The daunting mountain loomed ahead with its precipitous edges glittering silver and rising like a mystical finger to the sky.
"There!" said Kat, pointing to a vague spot ahead. "Come!"
Fixing the rope over my shoulder, I turned to inform Madam L, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
"Kat! She's gone! We have to go back!"
"Move!" he cried, snatching the scruff of my shirt and dragging me ragged.
I carried on, struggling with the rope, and constantly looking back with the hope of seeing L bringing up the rear.
Progressing past the remaining hovels, we reached an area of flattened grass and continued south toward a tall barn remote from the village. Presumably storing supplies, hay or cattle, it was a practically straightforward construction seen on any farm. Kat pressed his back to its main wall and I wedged in, stiff from the cold beside him.
"Where is she?" I wheezed. "Christ, she was right there! You see her?"
Calmly, Kat watched the oppressed village in the gloomy gas and gave no comment regarding the girl's fate. Suddenly, a rustling coming from inside the barn disturbed us.
"Could be L?" I whispered in Kat's ear, the sound like scuffing feet on floorboards.
SCUFF — SCUFF
"Could be the wizard," he replied.
“My call!” I said, and without pause, I hurried to open those large doors. “Madam…” I covered my mouth to hold a scream. It was not the smell of feces that disgusted me, but the wooden pen encasing the barn. Inside, under the warmth of a lantern were over thirty pig-like creatures — bogs. Some of these oily infants slept, some clashed heads with others, while the rest dug their snouts into stacks of yellow hay. Kat failed to conceal his own repulsion when he joined me at the doors.
"An army," he said, palming his stubble.
A trough lined one side of the pen, filled with a blend of bones, hair, and rotting pieces. "They have to be destroyed," I said, emotionless. "All of these things. They can't live, Kat, and we can't leave till it's done."
Kat took hold of my elbow. "You want to protect the women? Destroy these creatures, and the wizard will show them no mercy."
I remembered the lashes on L's back, and the price she was going to pay, but Kat was wrong.
"He needs the women," I said. "They're his bog makers, after all. No, Scarfell will come for us, Kat, and if we can make it to this King Bludgeon, maybe he'll give us an idea how to kill him, and how to set this village free."
Eager to leave, Kat moved outside the barn and demanded that I follow. I thought seriously about running then, to follow him and be done with it, but after one more look over these gooey abominations, I could not tear myself away.
Snatching the hanging lantern from the barn wall, and swallowing all that was left of hesitation, I flung the lighter into the pen of half-breeds, and shielded my face from an explosion of glass and flames over belly and backs.
"No!" shrieked Madam B, appearing breathless at the barn doors, and she quickly was joined by her alphabet of women stock, each with unborn swine growing in their stomachs and rippling torches in their hands.
Kat returned to me inside the barn, his sword protecting us from the grieving mob as the flames set high hay stacks alight behind us.
"Get away!" moaned Madam B, at the top of her voice. "Get away from our children! Away!"
Penned monstrosities wailed their alien sounds. It seemed their slippery skins were extremely flammable, and it did not take long for the blaze to spread. One set fire to another, then another; it was a procession of moving lights around the pen, sun yellows and whites, with that intolerable screeching underneath.
Black smoke began to build in this confined space, and the stench of cooking flesh became sickeningly apparent.
"How could you?" exclaimed one hysterical woman on her knees. "Not our children! Someone get water! Help!"
I was stunned. "How can you love these creatures?" I hollered, watching at least ten running in search of water buckets. "These fucking things? Are you crazy?"
Still, they ran to save their offspring, as if their lives depended on it.
"This ends tonight!" I bawled, over cackling firewood. "You hear me?"
"The wizard can't be stopped!" squealed Madam B, overseeing the dousing of flames. "We have watched Grutas feed our husbands and friends to bogs! To our own children! Stronger women than us have been ripped apart for disobe-"
A distant cry interrupted her. Looking at something beyond Kat’s and my sight, something outside the barn, a goggle-eyed Madam B staggered and dropped her torch to the hay.
"What is it?" I asked, fires blazing. "What?!"
Presently, I heard the thudding of approaching steps, and watched frantic women flee in tears as the giant Grutas came to block the barn doorway, holding the tangled hair and decapitated head of Madam L in his hand. A constipated look sat on her pretty face, the blood dripping like clotted cream from her serrated neck.
"No…" I mumbled.
Behind us, the fire caught something it liked to erupt in a ball of frazzling heat and falling cinders everywhere. Grutas flung L's head far into the pen of roasting children, and then stamped his authority with a prolonged roar.
"You dirty pig!" I roared back. "Dirty fucking pig!"
With no way out of the barn but through Grutas, I felt Kat's sudden squeeze on my wrist. "Do not move." he said, as composed as any man ever has been.
Placing me in his protective shadow, Kat squared off with the beast, which showed us the clump of hair and blood glued to his hand. Grutas then made a fist, and Madam L's blood seeped from the gaps of his fingers like soapy lava from a sponge.
"Kill him." I said. "Kill that son of a bitch!"
Kat flicked the katana tip to the straw at his feet, the heat causing the sweat to bubble from his arm and grease down the blade. "I will not fall…" he told the giant.
Grutas smiled, showing all of his stained teeth and murky tonsils. However, with the smoke thickening and the air cooking our lungs, there was no time for posing. Kat charged full-bloodedly at the monster, only to be caught by a wrenching kick to his guts, sucking all of the oxygen from Kat's body and hurtling him backward through the barn enclosure. Splinters burst every which way as Kat touched down at the hellish end of the barn; meanwhile, I dived to avoid a falling stack of burning hay.
On my stomach, I glanced at my protector, who in writhing agony stubbornly picked himself up only to crunch back to his knees, the scattering babies bashing into his arms and torso. Collecting his sword, Kat sucked in a great breath and began slicing. In the meantime, Grutas stamped toward me, but the barn appeared too hot for the bog, he battered frustratingly at the flames with his arms, and I was saved by a rush of remaining bog babies, who were fleeing on fire from the breached pen and clattering into the giant's legs.
Hobbling, I joined Kat deep in that incinerator, the roof collapsing above us.
"Are you okay?" I yelled. "Can you stand, man?"
The katana was dripping blood in his hand, and still heavily winded, he could not speak, so I wrapped his arm over my neck and saw us both to the furthest end of the barn.
At the rear wall, a towering inferno greeted us. I heard Grutas scream bloody vengeance in the background and turned to see him beat and throw miniature bogs from his path. With haste, I secured the rope over my shoulder again, stepped back six paces, and shared a plucky glance with Kat before we charged in unison toward the incandescent wall.
We crashed out the other side in a wind of shattering wood and jagged flame. Immediately, Kat flapped out the fire in my hair, and we clambered without rest toward the misty route of the Macros, leaving the village of pregnant prisoners and factory of wizard armies behind forever.