The Dialysis book, Chapter 1: A Friendly Meeting

(Author's note, so I have to drive Sarah to the dialysis clinic 3x a week and it gets real boring there.  When I get bored, I write.  I'm not in a good headspace at the moment, but I'm just going to post a few chapters while I'm there... for the next several months, minimum)  

Sometimes in life you had to just stand on top of a hill and look down at all the splendors.  You had to ignore all the bad things, the deadlines, the late hours, the screaming boss telling you that you were not good enough.  You just needed to get out into nature and relax.  Even better if you could bring a trusted companion like your dog.

If you could find him.

“Where the hell are you, you poop ninja!”

I looked again, but I was in the woods and there were so many trees.  I didn’t see squat and of course when you don’t see squat you yelled.  Normally, that would bring my dog, Shadow, running at top possible speed.  He was a good doggo and spending time with me was his favorite pass time.

Fortunately, my name’s Max and I’m a bit paranoid.  I installed one of those airtags on his collar, and when I realized those didn’t work in the woods I also installed a collar that emits a radio signal that could be tracked with a device.

Sure it was expensive, but I loved my doggo and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.  I was careful, and always ensured that my tracker had a good battery and was ready in case of emergencies.

Like my current emergency of the device not working at all.

“I need you one time,” I growled, applying several forceful technical taps to the device’s side.  With a range of five miles, it should have caught a whiff of something.  Shadow had only been gone for like 20 minutes and we were on the side of a mountain.  There weren't exactly a lot of places to go.

“Wait,” I said, considering our walk yesterday.  We came up the hill and walked past a cave.  Caves were made of rock, and rock blocked signals if star trek taught me anything.  I grabbed my walking stick, a solid aluminum device that looked like a ski pole but folded up when not in use.

Nodding to myself, I glanced at the small mirror in my campsite.  My six foot frame was dirtier than I’d like.  My dark brown hair was messy, and I was sporting a 10 o’clock shadow that was well on it's way to a full beard.  Shaving was for civilized men, and I needed to not be one of those for a bit.  Right now I was a mountain man searching for his stupid dog.

The trek to the cave was a short one and I though the tracker beeped once.  It might even have.  I needed Shadow to be safe, he was the last thing my ex-wife left to me before she vanished off into nowhere with her yoga instructor.

“Namaste my ass,” I growled.  “Shadow!”

“Shadow,” the cave echoed back.  

The whole trip to the mountains was me trying to mentally put myself back together before I quit my terrible job.  I had vacation and I was sure they were going to find a way to not pay out on it, so here I was out of cell phone range with a missing dog.

I pointed my flashlight into the cave.  I looked at the ground nearby and thought I spotted something that might have been a dog footprint.  Or it may have been a puma.  You always had to check for those.

If Shadow was gone I didn’t know what I would do.  It wouldn’t be good.  I was at the end of my rope.  Nothing could fix what was wrong with me, and nothing was left.

The cave started to shrink, becoming so thin that I was walking sideways at a point.  Normally I would have been afraid of animals, but I wasn’t.  I didn’t care.  I needed to find my dog.  I need something.

Suddenly I saw a bright light, “I can give you the something you’ve always longed for.”

“What,” I began.

“Just follow me,” said the light as it continued further into the cave, so I did.

The cave opened up a lot.  A lot more than was physically possible in my estimation.  I was in a cavern.  I clicked the flashlight on high beam mode as I looked up and I could see a solid stone ceiling at least 10 feet over my head.  You heard about huge caves in mountains, but I’d never seen one on this scale.  Normally a big one went in about fifteen feet or so and then stopped.

I cast about with the flashlight and spotted a small child in the distance wearing rags of some sort.  I guessed it was a girl based on a sort of skirt she was wearing, but that was a guess.  Turning the flashlight back to low powered mode, I realized none of this made sense.  I was in a natural cave on top of a mountain, there shouldn’t have been other people here.

There certainly shouldn’t have been a small child here.

It was not the musky underground smell that the tunnel had, but rather the smell of death.  I stopped a good ten feet from the child and looked around before I spotted it.  To my left was a very hairy homeless man, who was very clearly dead.  I used my walking pole to prod him and he rolled over exposing three objects protruding from his chest.

It took several seconds to recognize what they were.

“Crossbow bolts,” I whispered, causing the child to shake her head.  That’s when I noticed the girl’s face was the wrong color.  I wasn’t a racist or anything, but I was pretty sure human skin wasn’t green.  Also that humans didn’t have glowing yellow eyes or pointed teeth like a carnivore.

It was a goddamn goblin.  My guts froze.  I’d been lied to.  This wasn't some cute little meme goblin, she looked like a hyena watching her prey.

“Stay back,” I yelped, belatedly pointing my walking pole at her like a spear.  It wasn’t a great spear, but I thought she wouldn’t like it if I smacked her with it.  Even worse, there was sort of a pointy end at the bottom of the stick, I mean it was designed not to hurt people but I figured if I tried hard enough anything was possible.

I stumbled over the homeless man, and when I did so I realized that he wasn’t a man.  His body was covered in thick fur, and his face was clearly not human.  He looked like an overstuff goblin that had eaten a cockroach.

Or been eaten by one that was wearing a goblin’s skin.  Then had sex with a bear.  He was a like a bug/bear hybrid.  I’d have to come up with a name for that.

I looked up and realized none of that mattered.  What mattered was that the goblin had a crossbow, and was busy aiming it at me.  I was wearing hiking gloves and a padded shirt which I didn’t think even approached crossbow proof, even the small one she was using.  She was also about ten feet away from me, which meant I couldn’t just rush her so I did the next best thing.

I turned the flashlight up to a high beam and pointed it at her face.

Like most modern flashlights, mine had a Death Star laser mode that was as bright as the noonday sun in a desert.  The creature screamed and I felt something strike my shoulder, followed by a warm sensation.

I was bleeding.  Not badly, whatever hit me just kept going but I clearly had been hit.  Not knowing what else to do I rushed forward towards my blinded target and slipped the catch poll around her neck before yanking the restraint.

That caused the flashlight to pull away from her eyes and the goblin screamed, or at least attempted to.  I yanked her to the side, causing the small creature to go to her knees while she grabbed at the pole.

“Who are you,” I yelled, and she didn’t respond.  She just glared at me and dropped one hand to her waist, where she pulled out a stubby dagger which was totally unfair.  I grinned wickedly.

“That’s not a knife,” I said in proper Australian, reaching to my side to grab my knife, which was more like a machete, only to come up empty.  Then I saw it as she walked past my weapon.  I had dropped it when I tripped over the buggy bear.

Her first swipe at the pole didn’t do much, it was a heavy aluminum pole designed to support my full weight.  Then she got really angry.  Why so angry? Because everyone was angry when you jam a metal pole into their eye socket.

Which I did.  Strangely, a metal pole to the eyeball didn’t stop her.  When she moved to swipe at the pole again I pushed her forward, causing her to fall onto her ass.  She screamed.  I screamed.  The other goblins screamed.

I turned my head to see three other goblins heading my way, which was a bad thing because they all took a moment to gather up weapons, of a sort.  Two of them had shivs, because calling those gross pieces of metal knives was doing a disservice to daggers.

The other one had a crossbow, a big one.  Well, a big one at least for a goblin.  It was larger than the girl goblin’s and my flashlight was nicely deposited onto the ground next to my knife.  This was going badly.

I pivoted, getting the one eyed goblin between me and the goblins and lifted up the pole.  She was light, maybe thirty pounds, and suspended by her eye socket.  My pole had a thing that grabbed stuff when you walked that… look it was gross.

Having his friend in the firing line caused the crossbow goblin to pause, but not the shiv goblins.  They hated me.  They hated everything, but mostly me.  I could tell by the angry screaming.

When the first one attempted to run past, I adjusted my catch pole and struck him with cyclops.  She proved to be an adequate bludgeon and the goblin went down.  Unfortunately, that tangled up my pole and the other goblin was heading right towards me.

I’d seen enough action movies to know what to do next.  As he closed, I kicked, slamming him squarely in the abdomen with my full strength.  That was enough to lift the child sized goblin off of his feet and send him sprawling to the ground.

I think he died.

When I put my foot back down, I stumbled.  The little bastard cut me when I kicked him.  I was wearing thick denim, known for its knife resistant properties, so the damage was only extremely serious rather than critical.

I mean, getting stabbed with rusty metal is the high point of everyone’s young life.

With my leg weakened, the other goblins managed to push the pole away and I was mortified to learn that one-eyed Willie was dead.  The goblin’s dagger had pierced her tiny, black heart.

Unfortunately, the other goblin produced a poorly built spear and grinned at me wickedly.  I stumbled back waiting to die.  I was unarmed by this point so the practical effect of the spear was to entirely cancel out my reach advantage while keep him separated from me.  Either the little murder hobo was going to do stab me to death or the goblin with the crossbow, who had apparently hidden, would shoot me.

Then I saw the crossbow goblin’s body.  His head was turned to an unnatural angle and the crossbow was nowhere to be seen.  I didn’t see what killed him, but whatever had looked vicious.

Even wounded, I was fairly confident I could deal with the remaining goblin.  Sure, my leg didn't work right and I was bleeding badly but the goblin barely came up to my belly button but… what was I saying?  Oh yeah!  So far, none of them had even been close to a physical match for me and I didn't expect that to go any differently with the new goblin.

The goblin held the spear far more deftly than I would have considered possible given what I’d seen so far of the other goblins' martial prowess.  The other goblins were at best cumbersome with their weapons, the sparkly goblin had missed a nearly point blank shot at me and the dagger wielder had gotten lucky.

This would have almost been fun if I had some armor and a real weapon.

This goblin moved in and my effort to grab at the spear failed so spectacularly that if I had not been wearing my hiking gloves I would have lost fingers.  Fresh blood welled from two deep cuts in my other shoulder.  Suddenly my legs gave out and I collapsed to the ground.  As I sat there bleeding I looked at the goblin and realized something horrible.  He could have killed me, easily, but chose not to.  He was playing with me.  The goblin's expression was one of demented rapture, and I prayed it wouldn't be the last thing I saw as I struggled to stand.

The spear wielding goblin stepped forward, trying to gauge how badly messed up my leg actually was when he suddenly stopped.  The previously joyous expression shattered and his nose started twitching violently.  The psychopath turned just as the glorious dark furred mutt bit down on his weapon arm with an audible crunch.

The goblin screamed, it was mortifying.  Thankfully it didn’t last but a second because that sheprador followed up, viciously tearing out the creature’s throat, and in the process broke it's neck.  The goblin was left with it's head pointing off in an unnatural direction.

I watched the dog for a moment, and it just looked at me, viscera still dripping from his chin.  I was having trouble reconciling the image of this ferocious beast with the frequent depostier of landmines in my apartment.

“Good boy,” I said.

Then Shadow started wagging his tail and panting.

"I think they are all gone," I said, relaxing.  Shadow seemed to relax as well.

This was undoubtedly the strangest day I’d ever had hiking in the mountains and I decided that this was the last time.  Once you were attacked by angry goblins, you need to quit whatever you were doing.  Still, I’d fought monsters and won.

Maybe I wasn’t such a screw up after all.

I looked around the cavern and realized I didn’t know where the path back to the camp was.  This was an honest to god cave of ample proportions and I was in the middle of it after being spun around while fighting the goblins.  Looking back to the way I came, I saw several passages all leading away but the one I entered through was gone.

“So what now,” I asked.

“I have no idea,” replied Shadow.