Chapter 11 We Were Alone Again

My arms, still holding the hatchlings out, began to sink. 

The boy in front of me shouted, "Get those disgusting freaks out of my sight, you filthy goblin!"

He stepped forward and kicked, a brutal, sweeping arc of his boot.

It connected with the tangle of hatchlings cradled in my hands.

The impact made a sound like a wet bag of twigs being stomped. The tiny bodies, so light, so fragile, were torn from my grip. They went spinning through the air in different directions, limbs flailing limply.

They landed with a series of sickening, wet splats and muffled crunches on the hard, rain-packed ground. They did not cry out. They just lay where they fell, twisted into broken shapes.

"Goblin freaks don't deserve to live! You're nothing but ugly, evil freaks!"

A wounded sound tried to tear from my throat, a howl of pure, soul-deep agony, but I never got to voice it. The same boot that had scattered the hatchlings now swung up and slammed into my face.

CRUNCH!

White pain. Then blackness at the edges. My head snapped back, and then a weight drove it forward, grinding my face into the dirt. I couldn't see. I could only taste mud and my own blood. Above me, the spear-pole beatings resumed on the others. The wet, meaty thuds were endless, a rain of blows. It too maybe a hundred blows until eventually, they slowed, then stopped, replaced by the heavy, panting breaths of exhausted children.

Through a haze of pain and the dirt in my eyes, I saw shapes move. The kids, sweating and breathing hard, weren't done.

They went to the hatchlings.

Two of them picked up the broken, but still alive, little bodies. They held them by a leg or an arm, letting tiny heads and torsos dangle. 

"En garde, goblin-scum!"

"Try to block this! And that! And some of this!"

They began to fence.

They used our precious hatchlings as living swords. They swung them, smashing the tiny bodies together with wet, slapping sounds. They parried and thrust, until small bodies in their hands were no longer recognizable as anything but bloody bags of skin and loose bone, dripping onto the grass. Only then, with shrieks of disgusted laughter, did they throw the remains down.

Another kid picked up a different hatchling. He held it by its ankles, swinging it gently like a pendulum for a moment, as if considering. Then, with a sudden, sharp motion, he swung it in a wide arc and slammed its head against a sharp, protruding rock with all his might.

There was a wet pop and a terrible, tearing sound. The tiny body split messily in half.

The last hatchlings were gathered into a small, pathetic pile. The biggest kid found a rock the size of his head. He raised it high over his shoulder, grinned at his friends, and brought it down with a grunt.

The sound was a soft sploosh. A splash of goblin blood stained the grass and children's legs. When he lifted the rock, there was only a puddle and a few flattened, unrecognizable bits.

We lay broken, watching the end of our world. But the humiliation, the violation, was not complete.

One of the kids, tired and breathing heavily, looked at our beaten bodies. 

"Y'know. These freaks were making babies in that cave, making more freaks. Goblin freaks! They got no right to have babies. But I got an idea. How about we castrate them?"

The others looked at him, then at us. A slow, ugly understanding dawned on their faces.

"Yeah," David said, "Yeah, good thinking! Let's make sure no more freaks are made."

 And then, with stomping kicks, I saw the boot descend on Snag's ball sack. 

"WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Then on Fort.

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

And the rest of us.

 The wet, bursting sound was disgusting, a horrific pop followed by a sickening squash. Like overripe tomatoes thrown against a wall. Our bodies just gave one final scream and a violent shudder before going completely still.

Then the shadow fell over me. I tried to curl, but a good smack with spear shaft over my back straightened me up. I looked up at Erwin's face, shiny with sweat and hatred.

"No more freaks for you!"

The boot came down.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, please no-WREEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEK!"

There was an explosion of pain so vast, so total, it was beyond anything I had ever known or imagined. It was a white-hot nova in the core of my being, swallowing the world, swallowing thought, swallowing everything, leaving only pain. But our suffering did not end with just that.

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I didn't know how long they beat us, but it eventually stopped. The panting of the children was the only sound for a long moment, broken by the weak, wet gurgles from the broken bodies around me. The frenzy had passed, leaving behind a field of shattered green flesh and the smell of blood and voided bowels.

One of the new kids, the one who had used the hatchling as a sword, wiped his brow with a trembling, blood-smeared hand.

 "Okay... huff... Okay. That's… that's it. I think we punished them enough. We gotta finish them. Kill them and get out of here. Before something… something smells all this goblin shit and comes to eat us instead."

He raised his spear; the rusty point aimed shakily at Grill’s motionless chest.

"Wait! Stop. Don't kill them."

 It was David. He was standing over what was left of Grill. Blocking the way with his body.

"Why? Why stop me? Don't tell me you're thinking about leaving them alone! Don't you want revenge for your little sister?!"

"More than anything! That's why you don't kill them. Not yet."

He looked around at the ruined goblins, his gaze lingering on the pulpy mess that had been the hatchlings. 

"This?" He gestured with his chin.

 "This is a start. But it's not enough pain. Not for what they did. Killing them now… it's letting them off easy. It's an easy way out. They need to be punished more, suffer more. They need to suffer until they drop dead. On their own. Only then are they allowed to die."

Erwin, who had been staring at his own bloody hands, nodded slowly. 

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. My brother… they found him half-eaten by these damn goblins. You think something like that deserves a clean spear through the heart? I don't. So, here's what we do. We tie a rope around their necks. We throw them back in their shit-cave. We drop the rock again. They can't crawl out. Tomorrow… we come back. We just pull on the rope, drag them out, and beat the living shit out of them, rinse and repeat until they drop dead. Sounds good, right?"

A slow, gruesome smile spread among the others. It was perfect. It was cruel. It gave them something to look forward to.

 They didn't gently loop it. They made tight, choking nooses, yanking them hard around our throats, the rough fibers biting into already bruised and torn skin. 

One by one, they dragged us by the rope to the hole. Snag first. They shoved him headfirst into the darkness. We heard the wet thump as his broken body hit the floor far below. Then Fort. Then Trog. Muddy. Grill.

My turn came. Hands grabbed the rope at my neck and hauled. I was dragged over the ground, every bump sending explosions of agony from my shattered groin through my entire being. At the edge of the hole, they kicked me in. I tumbled into the blackness, the rope snapping taut for a second, crushing my windpipe, before the slack returned as I fell.

I hit the stone of our burrow with a bone-jarring impact that stole what little breath I had left. Others lay around me, a pile of broken bodies.

Above, the last sliver of daylight was blocked out. The great stone scraped back into place.

Silence. Darkness. And the rope.

The noose was still tight. Not enough to hang me, but enough that every shallow, agonized breath was a fight. The rope bit into the raw, bleeding flesh of my neck. To move my head even an inch was to invite strangulation.

We lay in a heap of shared misery. The cave, once a sanctuary, then a tomb, then a flooded cell, was now a choking pit. We couldn't lift a broken finger. Couldn't call out. Couldn't even breathe without pain. 

The night was an eternity of shallow, choking agony. We lay in the mud, our bodies screaming from injuries, the ropes cutting into our skin. 

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Dawn came as a faint, grey seepage around the stone. Then, the sound we had dreaded: scraping. The stone was hauled aside. Harsh morning light stabbed down.

Hands grabbed the ropes. They yanked.

The nooses tightened viciously cutting off air and dragging us by the neck. We were hauled, scraping and bumping, up through the rough hole. Every jolt was a fresh explosion of pain. We were dumped onto the grass like sacks of wet garbage, gasping and retching.

The children stood over us, their faces fresh with a night's rest and renewed malice. They held their spears, ready to resume their work, to continue the sentence of slow suffering.

One of them raised his spear butt over Muddy.

Then, a low, rumbling growl. It was a deep, chesty vibration that we knew in our marrow. It came from the treeline, from the direction of our old cave.

The Forest Hound. The same kind of beast that had taken our first home. It must have followed the rich, days-old scent of blood and fear.

It emerged from the tall grass, a monstrous thing of matted grey fur, corded muscle, and slavering jaws. Its yellow eyes fixed not on us. The broken, stinking goblins. But on the four standing, healthy, meaty human children.

The kids froze, their confidence evaporating. Panic flashed across their faces.

"A forest hound?! Wh-what do we do now?!" 

"Back up! Slowly!" 

But panic makes for stupid decisions. The boy who had been about to beat Muddy acted on pure instinct. He saw the hound, saw the goblin at his feet, and made a connection.

 "Run! Everyone run! I'll use goblin as a distraction!"

He bent down, grabbed Muddy by the leg and with a grunt, he flung the limp goblin body at the advancing hound.

Muddy sailed through the air; the hound didn't even snap at him. It flinched, shook its massive head as if annoyed by a fly, and with a contemptuous twist of its neck, it headbutted Muddy’s body away. Muddy tumbled through the grass and lay still, a piece of trash discarded.

The message was clear. We were not food. We were trash. The real meal was standing upright, smelling of clean sweat and fresh fear.

The hound’s growl deepened. It took a step forward, saliva dripping from its teeth.

"RUN!" Erwin screamed.

 All four children turned and bolted, crashing through the grass toward the distant stone path. The hound let out a booming bark and launched itself after them.

We lay on the ground, forgotten. The sounds of the chase faded quickly, shouts of terror, a commanding snarl, the crash of undergrowth. Then, a distance away, a noise: a human scream cut short, the pained, high-pitched yipe of the hound, more shouts, the sickening thunk of a spear finding flesh, then a final, gurgling canine squeal.

Then silence.

Children had spears. There were four of them. The hound was one. The odds were in their favor, but not without cost. We’d heard the hound strike. We’d heard at least one human cry out in a way that wasn't just fear.

We were alone again. Beaten, broken, leashed to nothing but our own broken bodies now. The children were gone, either dead, wounded, or fleeing home in terror.

They had promised to return and resume our punishment. But as the silence stretched, broken only by the moan of the wind and our own ragged, painful breathing, a new, fragile thought emerged.

They might not come back today. Maybe not ever.

We were not saved. We were simply… left. Abandoned in our brokenness at the edge of the wild.