CHAPTER SIX

With great, final effort, the dwarf hoisted himself over the hole’s lip and up onto bare, cracked tile. He breathed in. He was not sure where he was. He breathed out. As long as it wasn’t another hole, the dwarf thought. And then he began to laugh, his dwarfen lungs producing a gruff but songlike quality. The laughter bounced off the broken floors and tall, tall ceiling. He noticed a peculiar gap in the latter, right above that which he’d crawled out from. Then he caught the statues, the windows, the pews:

His smile fell. He wasn’t in the forest.

The dwarf laid there for some time before deciding to push forward, kicking his stubby dwarfen legs out and straightening himself atop the echoing floor. He stood for but a moment before laying back onto the ground and drifting off into sleep once more...

Day fast grew to night, the dwarf learned upon awakening. Inside the church, a pale blue dominated the dark. Stars from outside filtered their way through the stained glass making up much of the walls. They--the stars--danced on tile, on pew, on dwarf, he realized glancing at his arms. His worn, tired arms, he mused. Veins had popped, parts of skin wholly bruised. The dwarf groaned. But he didn’t wish to spend another second on the floor.

Rising to wander down the aisle, the dwarf took in the statues and faces he could not make out. His dwarfen feet tread a red carpet, and he remarked at its texture. He considered collecting from the empty pews, an act he’d seen often through childhood. Back then, the boy didn’t care for the break from farmwork--not if it meant worship. Nor did he appreciate the dictations on animals--the same he loved. This clashing of ideals meant a tensening of what already had been a difficult paternal relationship. The father instructed his son after church rigidly while the hens clucked The dwarf wondered how a rug could unfurl to such length.

But at last he came to an altar, and across it a book sat open to which the dwarf drew near. All blank. Apprehensive, his hand rose and fell towards the book, a page then turned. With sudden great force, its paper began flipping and billowing as if sails, and a translucent black box shot up and out, large words featured before the dwarf:

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAVE YOUR PROGRESS?”

The dwarf froze, panicked. He knew little to parse this. And he wasn’t illiterate. As a boy he’d read the Bible--repeatedly. But the dwarf could not create sense from the flow of events, the blank book bursting with a pop-up that fixed itself onto his sight like the remnants of retina damage. He couldn’t shake the words that expected an answer he did not know how to conjure. Not even the experience announcements stalked so obviously. He had made progress, that much was undeniable. The last thing he’d want to see was his ‘progress’ undone, or not ‘saved’, or however and whatever was happening. So the dwarf decided yes.

“SAVING... SAVED.”

The message disappeared. Stars twinkled on tile. The dwarf, scratching his head, wandered over to a pew and sat. He stared hard at the steeple’s silent dancefloor. He cursed again the tree that had cursed him to this place. He then at once became incredibly self-conscious, God overhearing and shaking His head. The dwarf muttered a quiet apology, clasped his hands and continued his sit. Nothing stirred then but the hot gasses above and below.

Knocking came with tremendous force from far behind the dwarf. A heavy set of wood double doors stood between himself and the producer of the noise. So the dwarf himself stood, knocking continuing--less like rapping knuckles than first believed--and he gripped the pew’s back, steadying himself. The dwarf’s energy had long sapped after the brutality climbed up from, and the dwarf questioned if determination alone could spare his life What little rest he had received helped, he hoped, but many wounds would require more than rest to heal. The dwarf staggered over to a tall candelabra and took the tool up into his hands, a grip used similarly on pitchforks past. But what did he intend to really do? This was no father returning to his chapel--what bashed on wood surely meant ill-will. The dwarf little relished the idea of a fight--not this soon or particularly ever in perhaps exception of the tree aforementioned.

Yet the dwarf approached the doors. By then, the sounds had ceased, but this did not slow the sweat beading down the dwarf’s bald dome. His arms’ thick hair raised themselves, reminding the dwarf of their existence. They were right to--at once, the doors flung open and a grotesque amalgamation of bee and boar postured before the dwarf. Its weak wings hefted the creature up revealing a stinger the stars glorified. Hooves, tusk, antennae: the dwarf stained the carpet with bile. He staggered backwards, releasing the candelabra crashing clumsily against red. The creature advanced forward, the dwarf tripping, spilling over and crushing a pew with his weight. Stinger glinting with a menace he’d never felt in his life, the dwarf realized he was going to die.

The insectoid swine swung once again at its prey, instead embedding itself into a stray pew. The incident ended nearly as quickly as it had began, and the beast resumed its chase. With a sudden speed of which the dwarf could neither anticipate nor parry, it rammed his gut with its hooves, and the pair fell backwards--back to the depths where man had become dwarf. He gripped the beast with a resolve that surprised himself--despite the hurtling circumstances. The dwarf would not die alone, he demanded from his murderer. So down the two fell into an indiscriminate abyss...

The dwarf awoke to a corpse and an unresponsive leg. It--the corpse--responded, he thought, prodding triggering reactions in the wings. It otherwise laid dead atop his lower half, the parts that failed managing to land in water like the rest of him had. The dwarf felt three layers of pain that slipped themselves over one another: a remainder from his transformation, the obvious aching of overworked muscles, and limb death. He could not muster any noise worth properly conveying the injuries he’d sustained. And all this at the bottom of a well. The dwarf smiled strangely; then cried. When his tears dried, he did little more than stare up at the nothing above.

The dwarf could not answer any question that put the matter of time to him. He sat still in silence. A stiffness set in and yet the dwarf did not stir. Some amount of time left the dwarf when he jerked himself up from the muck silently--teeth grit--and took the corpse’s stinger into his hands. He stared at the tool as if he hadn’t glanced away from above. Some amount of time passed and the dwarf screamed himself hoarse into the void and cried more tears and gouged his chest with the stinger. He held the thing a little longer, let go and laid dead.