Sometimes they slip away from you and all of a sudden it’s ‘at ease before slaughtering them’ and ‘bones into neat little piles,’ and before the three major rewrites, it was honestly just a simple knife and fork . . .

you’ve been warned . . .

- He’d Heard the Legend; He Found the Book -

At first she smiled without looking at us; fork and knife in hand. She seemed so simple and innocent, just a lovely wisp of a girl at a small table in front of us.

Her utensils were clutched comically in her fists as though she was preparing for an art show and wished to perfect the clichéd pose of ravenous appetite as it had been presented in all those old cartoons. Her utensils were oversized and the small bistro-style table she perched at was covered with a checkered tablecloth that bunched up slightly where her forearms pressed into it, surrounding the empty plate.

Several of us laughed as we rounded the corner and confronted this apparition.

As our attentions met in that one shimmering moment she licked her lips with a series of wet smacks and thrust the handles of the knife and fork against the table’s surface thrice before turning back to her original position of ignoring us. We heard the distant thunder of her appetite and it made us afraid, because the reverberations of the earth shattered the illusion and showed how monumentally large she actually was.

She was the fourth guardian we had come across since our adventure began, and her sudden transformation from the relatively benign put a terrible fear into the hearts of so many among my party.

After the losses we took defeating the third guardian, some lost the stomach for our task. They did not admit as much, but it was apparent.

If she would only have taunted us as the second guardian did, I know it would have brought out the fire inside them. But it was not to be; the one and only time she turned her eyes to us, when we had managed to draw our quavering selves within inches of the bridge to her realm, only then had she drawn one slow unwavering gaze across each one of our faces, etching out that moment of contact which still has me chilled.

If only she would have hurled insults, we might have been able to advance and win, but her sheer and utter disdain simply destroyed even attempts at bravado. We were ruined by contempt, after that moment we could not even pretend.

I knew that when I went to advance across that line the next day, I would have less than half of the fourteen who remained with me after the carnage that had become of the original brave spirits who’d sallied forth. I have collected the names of every last person who was with me before we ever met the first guardian in the other side of this book, more often than not with a word or two about where and even how they died.

I considered them all friends.

Facing the forth guardian, down the long path from her monumental table and utensils that must have been twice as tall as I stood, I knew which of my friends would leave me; I saw it in clearly in their eyes even though they would not dare to meet my own.

Forgive me, but I had to outline my tale in this manner because the solution that eventually came to me was so vile I could not immediately accept it. I still am sickened, especially at how well it worked; but if you have found this then it means the sixth guardian still stands and I am dead.

You found this book in the path before that bridge.

If you read this in hopes of help in defeating the guardian before you, I can offer you none, my party is weary and I have seen only one glimpse of this beast.

The thing that we will face after I lay this book down was so horrific that those four of us who are left have decided that it is our fate for what we did to defeat the giant at her table and are going in to see what fate will do with us.

If you are reading this we have not survived it and can now only wish you courage and greater numbers than we who went against that you must now face.

I am sorry, this is no guide; this is just another confession, I thank you for reading it.

Perhaps you saw the ways the bones were piled, some seven days back along the trail. That was my sword that was left in the giant’s back; those were my friends, those piles upon her table.

That night I pulled those who I knew were with me aside. I found unanimous agreement, we had all felt it.

We did our best to put the others at ease before slaughtering them on my signal. I shall never forget the faces of the comrades we killed.

I was the first across the bridge, carrying my offering of a friend who I myself had slain for showing fear. Her smile grew wider and her gaze finally came back my way as I approached, I threw the corpse at her feet.

She leaned over, skewering a fallen warrior on the long tines of her fork and laughing deep within her throat she told me that I could pass.

As she proceeded to strip flesh from bone she waved the next offering forward, beckoning daintily with a bloody knife.

I waited in the rocks behind her massive table and watched her at her feast; she stacked the bones into neat little piles on her table as she gnawed them clean.

I killed her after she slept, drowsy from the meal I had offered up.

- finite

hahahahahahahahahaha

if only i could properly explain where the first sentence of this, this, whatever the hell this is came from . . . . which would be really funny, because after about three fairly major rewrites, the original sentence is long since gone . . . .

anyway if i could explain the first sentence, hell even remember the first sentence properly, well, you’d probably be even more befuddled than you were before.

hee hee, hah hah, hoo hoo,

this started out so differently; i had something else entirely that i was aiming for, and then partway in this other thing just sort of wandered thru and said hey! howdy!

those are the ones that can be fun to follow . . .

i’ll keep writing ‘em,
gotta do something with a reckless imagination
you, you do what you gotta do

lewdcognoscenti
odd fiction more weekdays than not

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