GOBLIN
Picture this, if you will. Eight AM on a beautiful Sunday morning. It's May. It's a special day in May, because it's Mother's Day. That's right,
Mother's Day, the
one day a year where Mike does whatever his beautiful wife Miranda asks, without question, because she's earned it. In Mike's head, it's not very much different than any
other day because Miranda's always sort of held the reigns of the relationship, but that hasn't ever bothered him. He loves her. He worships her. Beautiful goddess. Mother of his three wonderful children. Buyer of beer. Singer of karaoke. Vomiter in the back of the van after company Christmas parties.
And on this beautiful Sunday morning, next door to his house, Shane Lyons was, instead of celebrating this special day with his own beautiful wife and son, had sent Arielle off to a spa day. Tyler was spending the night with his god-father Erik for "cool man stuff" the next day, and Shane? Shane was busy with a book that he shouldn't have had reading words he shouldn't have read.
Somehow, a book of old Fae lore had crossed the desk of one of the operatives at ISIS, and they had stupidly agreed to let Shane take the book over the weekend and see if he could ask around on what it was. Shane had no real experience with Fae. He was just trying not to admit that he had no idea what it is. His male pride got the better of him, and when Vanessa arched her eyebrow and said, "Are you sure?" what Shane
should have said was "No, absolutely not, I know next-to-nothing about Fae and I'll probably read this aloud like those idiot kids did in the Evil Dead and I'll bring about the apocalypse," but what he said was, "Sure, no problem, I'll see if I can't figure it out."
And so while Mike was busy cooking a massive breakfast while Miranda slept through four alarms in her booze-comatose from the night before when she'd had to have Mike come pick her up from the bar and then threw up all over his favourite plaid shirt, Shane was next door accidentally reading Fae text aloud from a book that wasn't
lore at all. It was text on bringing creatures to life for the bidding of the controller. Very 'Sorcerer's Apprentice'. Except Shane wasn't a sorcerer at all. Shane was an idiot.
Neither Mike, nor Shane, nor Miranda nor River nor Stormy nor even little Dreama had any idea that while they were all inside enjoying the day in their own way, outside, the stone garden gnomes that sat in old pervy Miss Farmer's yard were...
moving. Slowly at first, they began to twitch and writhe, and gradually their little stone eyes
blinked and their little brightly coloured chests rose and fell with their first painful breaths. They were alive! They had been given purpose! And that purpose? To find the Master, the Bringer of Life! To obey His command! They all set forth on their journey from the old woman's yard straight across the lawn and right into
Shane's
front
door.
Shane heard a rapping at his door, almost a gentle tapping, and shut the book with a bang. He went to the door, opened it, saw nothing, and closed it again.
taptaptap Shane paused in the hall, pivoting on his heel. No, he definitely heard knocking. He went to the door again, peering out of the peephole, and saw nothing.
BANG. Shane jumped, and then flung the door open, hands shaking from adrenaline. It took him a moment, but on the porch he finally realized, were about fifteen or twenty - wat.
He shut the door, pressing his back firmly to it. Then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and pressed send on the the first number he could think of.
"Mike, I need your help," he said, his voice panicked.
Mike, cradling the phone against his shoulder as he struggled to pour the perfect pancake, tried to ignore the sweat as it rolled down his brow. Honestly, the kitchen was hotter than hell right now, and he gestured for River to open the sliding glass door to let some of the heat out. One window was not enough.
"Not today, Shane," Mike said. "It's Mother's Day. Andy is asleep, and when she's up we have plans as a family. I can't get roped into any of you or Cam's ridiculous shit today."
"Dad...." River said slowly, still at the door to the back yard.
"Yeah kiddo?" Mike asked, not turning around, listening to Shane as he babbled something incoherently about
reanimating and
Sorcerer's Apprentice bullshit.
"Dad.... I think you.. might want to help Mr. Lyons..." said River hesitantly.
"Why would I do that?" Mike said, now annoyed that his morning was being disrupted.
"Maybe you should see for yourself," his son advised.
"Hold on, Shane. I'll call you back." He set the phone down, passed the pancake job off to Stormy, who was standing there wide-eyed, having already seen what her brother was pointing at, and she nodded wordlessly and continued to pretend that -
"Our backyard is being invaded by lawn gnomes?" Mike said, voice full of utter disbelief. He was silent for a second, as was the entire kitchen save the sound of cooking food, and then in a low, angry tone, he only said four words. "I'm gonna kill him."
Because, the gnomes, now living breathing goblins, released from their stone prisons finally by the Master, had only been given vague instructions - they could only make out
help,
kill, and
Mike. So, they heeded their Master's wishes, and began moving their tiny army across the fence lines so that they could help kill this Mike fellow. They didn't know what a Mike was, but they would know when they found it. And when they laid eyes on the man standing on his back porch with flour on his clothing and smelling of cooked pig, they knew, they just
knew that he was Mike, and that they had to help kill him.
"Kill... Mike..." they all hissed in unison.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Mike just
stood there. He didn't even - what? He called Shane back, who was panicking because the gnomes had vanished from his porch and he was pretty sure they were on a mission from some Fae god to bring about destruction and death and pixie dust. "Oh, I found them alright," Mike informed him, his voice trembling with rage. "They're all forming up in my back yard like a little army and they're definitely saying
kill Mike so, Shane, friend of mine, you want to explain what is going on?"
The entire situation came pouring out as Shane ran through the book, trying to find exactly what passage he'd read.
"But why did you read it aloud if you didn't know what it was?" Mike argued, taking the baseball bat that River handed him. "Haven't you ever seen the Evil Dead? That's how those idiot teenagers started the apocalypse!"
"I know!" Shane yelled. "Look, I was stupid, and I'm trying to find it now - I don't know how to fix this!"
"Well, think," Mike demanded. "Because you obviously told them to come kill me, so now instead of spending the morning with my wife, I have to play cricket with a bunch of zombie ghouls," he snapped.
"Uh, technically I think these are goblins. The stone forms and all. They're probably - "
"Shane? Shut up. Think of a solution." Mike hung the phone up and looked at his son. "Well, River. You remember how I told you that you absolutely under no circumstances were to touch or otherwise maim the old lady's garden gnomes?"
River looked at Mike curiously, his father's 9 iron loosely held in his grip. "Yeah? Why?"
Mike gritted his teeth and shut the door behind him, effectively closing he and River off on the porch while Stormy and Dreama were inside. "I take it back. Destroy the unsightly little assholes."
Miranda woke to the distinct sound of wood-and-metal on ceramics. She opened one eye first, then the other, and realized that there were other noises to be attended to - like all of the 'reminders' Mike so generously set on the phone she had, plus her work phone, plus the alarm clock,
plus the laptop. She finally rolled out of bed, slowly ambling to each sound and eliminating it. All the while, she was still fairly certain that she heard shouts and smashing pottery, and if she didn't have to pee
right then, she'd have gone to see what it was.
Going pee turned into taking a nice, long, hot shower - which was good for Mike and River, who ran at top speeds around the back yard, ducking dirt clods and tiny pebbles that the animated gnomes flung at them. Mike managed to corner one with a triumphant HA, only to get a face full of sod, and then get knocked over as two more ran behind him and attacked his ankles. He yelled in frustration and covered his face as River ran in and successfully smashed the three in sequence with one mighty swing of the golf club.
"FORE!" he yelled.
"God damnit, what is Shane doing?!" Mike shouted. He jumped up and stuck his head over the fence that separated their yards. "Shane, I don't know what's taking so long, but you'd better figure it out! Have you just tried reading the shit backwards?! Fae are assholes, they write in riddle ALL THE TIME!"
"SINCE WHEN ARE YOU SUDDENLY AN EXPERT ON FAE?" Shane yelled from the porch, book in hand.
"WELL CLEARLY ONE OF US HAS TO BE!" Mike countered. He grabbed one of the creatures by its pointy hat and slammed it down onto the ground so hard that bits of it flew off in all directions.
"Okay, OKAy!" Shane yelled. He began (poorly) reading the text backwards as best he could.
"Hey, I think it's working!" River said. He pointed at the remaining gnome/goblin things, which had begun to twitch and convulse in an utterly unnatural way. "Look, they're turning back to stone!"
"Hey honey!" Miranda called from the upstairs window. She had spotted Mike and River in the yard. "What are you guys doing? Breakfast smells amazing! I'll be down in a little!"
"Oh god, they'd better be," Mike hissed. He approached one, nudging it softly with the bat. Nothing. Experimentally, he dropped the bat down on it with a mild amount of force - it shattered almost instantly. "It looks like they are." He turned back to Shane. "I'll deal with you later, asshole," he promised. "Come on, get inside," he told River. "And whatever you do - "
"Don't tell your mother, yeah dad, I know," River said, rolling his eyes.
Some time the next day, as Mike was out the door and on his way to a parent-teacher conference because Stormy had apparently turned in a history assignment detailing why alien abduction was clearly rampant throughout history, he spotted a small, colourful object in the grass. He walked closer to it, brows raised in suspicion. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was one final garden gnome that had apparently fled in terror and gotten as far as his yard before it was turned back into stone.
With a frustrated yell, Mike yanked his leg back, and kicked the thing as hard as he could, sending bits of ceramic in all directions.