This is the short story I wrote, poked at, and have finally made available.  I’ll be releasing it in bits throughout the week, but if you are impatient and just want to read the whole thing, I have it available here: Dr. E versus Da Goblinz.

Melo was drawn into the center of the summoning design, the design that from this vantage looked completely in place despite my inept bumbling through the bushes of earlier.  If I’d had more time, maybe, or that flamethrower, I could have done more.  Of course, I hadn’t thought of the weed-killer, or of going through the gate instead of climbing the wall.  I never finished college, either.

Dare started to scream, or yowl, which decided me.  I heard the low thrumming of the gate, the taste of fresh-mown grass on the back of my teeth, and pine sap on my tongue while I started pulling the goblins off Dare.  Blood was everywhere, and thorns pierced my hands.  I remember yelling, “No!” several times as my hands grew numb and I started trying to kick them from me, petals and leaves everywhere as my carnage against the goblins matched what they did to Dare.  They ripped bits of flesh with curved claws of thorns.

Dare rose up, pulling from the vines and fragrant perfumes with a roar, his face a mess of blood and fury.  Some of the goblins had smaller clubs made of roots and spines that they used to beat and bruise against him.  A word, a motion, and the plants in the area withered, as if water was drained from them, as if the force of the sun blighted them from the roots out.  The kind of thing you’d use against mushrooms, I suppose.  Caught in the edge of the magic, I felt dizzy, as if I had been crossing a desert.

Melo countered with the song of the gate drowning out the strange almost-silence of the night, and the fight wordless except for grunts and moans from the combatants. Burrs attached themselves to Dare, a flood wiped away the drought, and the scent of evergreen filled the air.  The sunshine relented somewhat, and I was deafened by sudden creaks and pops of tree limbs cracking and changing, as wood bent as part of Melo’s invocation. I took a moment to glance at him, and saw in his hand a rod of living wood.

Dare wiped blood onto his shirt and dove for his gun.  I moved to get to it first, and the grasses beat us both, rippling the gun from us stalk by stalk.  Melo raised the rod, and the younger man called out.

Dare threw a gesture at Melo, a word, a curse, and the darkness was absolute. For a moment all there was were the trees, giant sentinels transported into the occasional bursts of my eyes trying to make sense of what the streetlight and pale moon gave.  Dare lunged at me, and I ducked, and I heard the sound of “huge” (that’s a note that has its own orchestral section) behind me.  I felt the wind as it passed.  I felt the thump as it hit Dare, hard, and the sudden crashes, a fall of logs instead of a pile of bricks.

There were words I couldn’t make out, a curse broken as a stream of goblins followed the revived sunshine, slipping into the cracks where a tree fell down and broke through the brick wall, onto what was left of a twitching, murmuring Dare.  I stared, listening to the birds sing their pre-dawn songs over the sounds of Dare’s slow descent to silence.

The sudden dawn burst, showing the ruin of the backyard.  It looked as if hit multiple times by lightning, trees and shrubs split, and everywhere the movement of a quiet mass of small creatures as they harvested the night’s work and took him into the darkness.

I was exhausted, but I looked for Melo.  I saw that he had fallen as well. A ring of mushrooms surrounded him.  I couldn’t help myself; I hesitated for a moment.  I read too much. I moved towards him.

I was pulled away by soft grasses, and the smell of fresh apples.  “Shhh,” said the creature, green and brown and growing.  A creature of this place and Beyond.  “Shhh,” it repeated, the sound of wind through the meadows, and the first brush of a cool breeze on a hot day as it rattles the leaves.  I was pushed down to the ground, sobbing, I think.  Manly tears, of course.  Very manly.

I woke up on a cushion near a window.  I recognized the backyard from occasional glimpses I have had when Beatriz went from front to get something out of her shed.  My hands were washed, and there were bandaids carefully applied.  My jacket, full of blood and green stains hung neatly on a chair.  I could hear someone singing mournfully in Spanish from a radio somewhere deeper in the house.

I saw flowers, a late summer garden awash in yellow.  Sunflowers, amber primroses, hollygrapes, golden corydalis, and in the corner yet another cluster of pretty yellow flowers: a spray of cheery, carefree, Goblin Gaillardia.