{"id":810,"date":"2012-09-11T13:32:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T19:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/?p=810"},"modified":"2012-09-10T13:35:45","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T19:35:45","slug":"176-dr-e-versus-da-goblinz-2-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/2012\/09\/176-dr-e-versus-da-goblinz-2-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"(176) Dr. E versus Da Goblinz (2 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the short story I wrote, poked at, and have finally made available. \u00a0I’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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I circulated with a large glass of orchata, trying to keep up with the rapid bilingual patter of knowing exactly what was happening amongst some twenty-odd cousins and their extended families.\u00a0 I had a couple hundred words of street Spanish. \u00a0I could string them together into “sentences I’m not sure I could repeat in any circumstance,” and “words that were probably safe,” and I was able to recognize a little bit of both.\u00a0 I’ve been in cities where the architecture zones out “undesirables” and Denver doesn’t do so much of that.\u00a0 (“Undesirables” are always, “people who don’t look and speak the way we do,” under this definition.\u00a0 Alas, I have had to add things such as, “Vampires,” and “Dragons,” onto my list.)<\/p>\n

I’ll be honest. \u00a0I sometimes worried that they were talking about me, and not in flattering terms. \u00a0I think anyone in a group of people who don’t speak the same language probably has that same latent paranoia. \u00a0I tried to smile, not stare at anyone, and act friendly. \u00a0I can’t help but be white and generally nerdy. \u00a0I managed to strike up a conversation about the food (don’t ask how the menudo is made) and then my conversational partner was called over by a small child to hit a pi\u00f1ata. I took his spot in a lawn chair at the edge of the gathering.<\/p>\n

I leaned back, balancing my plate of chips and salsa on my lap, when I heard it. \u00a0It was a thin thrumming noise, a small but active gate, the sound of strumming a six-string guitar but somehow holding the strings so they can barely vibrate. \u00a0I felt it in my tongue more than my teeth. \u00a0I opened my eyes and scanned across the yard.<\/p>\n

That’s when I saw them.<\/p>\n

Before I panicked, I brought out my cellphone and tried to translate “goblin” into Spanish. \u00a0Neither of the words fit what I was looking for, so I moved closer to the clump of flowers. \u00a0I pretended to be walking with my crispy tortilla pieces and dip. \u00a0A nest of goblins can take down a grown man, given every advantage. \u00a0Only a few goblins would be needed to grab a child. \u00a0There were too many to not take the chance.<\/p>\n

They drag you into the darkness.<\/p>\n

I dropped the first chip next to the edge, waited for the goblin to grab it, and then aimed at the malignant sprite with my boot. \u00a0I could feel its stem cracking as I ground it into the lawn. \u00a0It felt like crushing one of those boxy cartons of milk with a water balloon full of water and cheap matchsticks inside it. The shooting pain of a fang in my calf, sharp enough that I hopped away and dropped my chips all over the ground was my reward. \u00a0Good thing I was wearing jeans, as the thorn left in my leg was about three inches long, if only a quarter inch penetrated the denim. \u00a0I pulled back, and saw the goblins take the crushed body under into the root system.<\/p>\n

Into the darkness.<\/p>\n

“I will return with flamethrowers,” I hissed. \u00a0I heard a chittering that might replicate a bunch of birds in a bush. \u00a0They understood me. \u00a0I had no doubt. \u00a0And they were saying, “Bring it.”<\/p>\n

I took my plate to the table, hoping not to limp. \u00a0“Who does the gardening here?” I asked, making the effort to not put too much strain in my voice.<\/p>\n

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Dare asked me, lazily.<\/p>\n

Beatriz’s face puckered, like she was biting into a lemon. \u00a0Carmelo shrugged, but his dark eyes focused on us.<\/p>\n

“I was wondering about the flowers,” I pointed to the suspect bush. \u00a0I didn’t expect anyone else to see the goblins. \u00a0No one ever does. \u00a0“They’re a bold statement in the overall color scheme,” I said, trying to bluff my way through the discussion.<\/p>\n

“Ah. \u00a0Have you seen my larkspur?” he asked. \u00a0“They’re beautiful, but they poison cattle. \u00a0Come, let me show you my garden.”<\/p>\n

I knew then. \u00a0I knew what he was. \u00a0All I had was that he didn’t know what I was. While he suspected I was some sort of practitioner (my term; my ex- prefers the words of artistry, but the wizards I\u2019ve met have had their own nomenclature), he had to figure if I was sympathetic or an enemy.<\/p>\n

“May I?” Carmelo asked, getting up from where he had been sitting.<\/p>\n

Did I see a flash of anger in Dare’s eyes? \u00a0“Of course. \u00a0I would love opinions from a fellow gardener.” \u00a0He packed scorn into that last word, but so smoothly that Melo didn’t have a good chance to say anything.<\/p>\n

He showed me his Yellow Salsify, or the Goat’s Beard. \u00a0Some prickly roses. \u00a0Yucca, plenty of yucca. \u00a0Beehive cactus. \u00a0There was no sagebrush. \u00a0No traveller’s joy. \u00a0Baneberry at the edges, bindweed in the neighbor’s yard. \u00a0That means something. \u00a0I knew a little, and my cellphone told me a lot more. \u00a0What I had seen as chaos had pattern to it, which was even more disturbing. \u00a0Letting entropy take over is a sin against humanity, but the deliberate design to invite the Beyond is where I draw the line.<\/p>\n

We were rushed whenever Carmelo went to look at a flower, or underneath a bush. \u00a0I was getting nervous as the sun passed over the mountains and the ambient glow began to fade. \u00a0We circled around the house, and I was glad that Melo accompanied me, because I could have been lost. \u00a0I could have been hit over the head and buried somewhere. \u00a0Carmelo just made his casual shrugs and kept his eyes on me, doing this careful dance where he occasionally moved between Dario and me.<\/p>\n

Beatriz excused us when we came to the front again, and stuffed me into the car for the drive home. “Needs more irrigation near the deck,” Melo said. \u00a0“Some cut back,” he decided.<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” I told myself. \u00a0“Irrigation with gasoline.” \u00a0 I didn’t say anything aloud, but I nodded.<\/p>\n

It bothered me. It bothered me like a bug bite, an itch you\u2019re not supposed to scratch. \u00a0I did not know what kinds of things a garden would summon, but whatever it was, it wasn\u2019t supposed to be in this world. \u00a0My world, my rules.<\/p>\n

I close doors, but that doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t know how to use a knob. \u00a0The invitation to his place would expire once the sun came up again, and the \u201cnew day was begun.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s not a hard and fast rule, but it works. \u00a0There are things that care not for sunlight, either way you want to parse the sentence. \u00a0Myself, I like to be able to see, but that\u2019s what flashlights are for… \u00a0we harnessed fire, and electricity, and let there be batteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I will return with flamethrowers,” I hissed. Irrigation…with gasoline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interlude-madness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}