Goblin

People have a lot of ideas about the end of the world. 

Atomic annihilation. Disease. Zombies, perhaps zombie bovines if you're being fanciful. 

A few have even given vampires a whirl, but nobody would have seriously expected a twelve year old goblin queen.

Her three foot tall minions creep up to you from the cover of darkness, inject a magic needle in your body, and you somehow cocoon and metamorphose into an ugly, often diminutive monster. 

The cocoons produce...foliage as their occupants depart and their shells decompose. Apartments have turned into jungles overnight. 

We know there's a queen because our spies have seen her surveying her territory. A pinafored little blonde girl with pigtails and ice blue eyes, always accompanied by large, hideous horned beasts, one resembling a golden retriever, the other some sort of turtle.

Our tribe had little power to stop her. Our best fighters had given their all, and only added to the queen's vast army of tiny mutants. My team's only goal at this point: Survival.

Today we commenced a scavenging expedition to the college, armed with iron implements, the only thing known to kill goblins. Our leader, Stan, thought the campus was too risky, so he only sent five of us on this suicide mission: Sandy, the Pilates instructor, Antoine from Dairy Queen, myself, and Joe, a heavy set printing press assistant from the Union shop on Armor Boulevard. 

We traversed a cracked, weed pitted crosswalk, approaching the schools main courtyard. The place had only been abandoned a couple weeks, but plant growth suggested that the owners had vacated for several semesters.

The dreadlocked ice cream vendor balked at the sidewalk approach, nervously hefting a fireplace poker. "I don't know, man. Those weeds look awful tall..."

"Chill, Blizzard." Sandy passed him an iron swing blade. "There's a reason we brought these."

"Man, freak that! I didn't come here to do no landscaping for free!"

Big Joe, appearing to think this was a cakewalk, nocked an iron arrow in his bow and marched down the concrete path, thickly muscled calves sidestepping a suspicious clump of weeds. 

Weighted down with a pot belly, and wearing very impractical khaki shorts, I found it hard to take the guy seriously, but you should see him on the practice range. 

"Holy tomato!" Sandy cried as she warmed up with a few yoga stretches. "Does that man only exercise his legs?"

I followed Joe. Off to the left lay a glass and concrete gymnasium, vines, creepers and tree branches bursting out its smashed windows. To the right: an older brownstone structure with sculptures of questionable taste around the door. The Art Department. We might come back to the gym later, the art building only if desperate for oil, paint thinner, and some paintings with which to scare goblins away.

Despite being out of shape, Joe was an expert marksman. He caught a bespectacled tie wearing warthog-like creature sneaking around a sculpture of...something of comparable ugliness that a student provably once tried to pass off as a female nude. "I think that one was a loner," he remarked.

I raised the swing blade and got to work. The cheap wooden gardening implement felt unpleasant and splintery in my hands. I'd probably end up with blisters.

Obviously, we didn't come to tidy the grounds. We were playing jungle explorer, hacking a path to the welcome center.

Joe sniffed. "You guys smell that?"

The ragweed played havoc on my sinuses. If the place smelled like anything, I didn't know what it was.

Sandy coughed. "Yeah, Joe. When's the last time you took a shower?"

"C'mon guys, I'm being serious."

"So am I. You stink!"

Joe flipped her off. "I'm smelling burning tires."

"I don't see any smoke."

"Maybe it's old."

Sandy shrugged.

The July sun beat down on our necks as we hacked away. Even if we hadn't been cutting weeds, we would have been sweating. Sandy's brown curls were matted and dripping, her company issued tank top...somewhat revealing. My Pac-Man t shirt felt like a damp wash cloth.

"Man, couldn't we have picked a cooler time of day to do this?" Blizzard, knowing he was a sitting duck, had followed us down the courtyard, 'DQ Something Right' polo shirt dampened with perspiration. Not sure how much of it was from fear.

Sandy paused to wipe brow sweat on her pink capris. "Blizzard, those things love the dark. Most of them won't dare come out into the open right now."

"Yeah, great. But we're about to go into a dark, cool building."

Joe kept searching the foliage. "We stick near the windows, work our way in."

The ceiling to floor windows of the visitors center upper lobby had all but caved in. We walked through the frames into a room dominated by jungle vines and a massive oak. 

A thick, cloying odor filled the air, like bleach, manure and skunk. Since these new trees often exuded vapors just as bad as the contents of goblin needles, we broke out packages of Covid masks to filter the impurities out.

Rows of aluminum chairs and the 'Information Center' desk still stood untouched, thick vines growing harmoniously around them, but the walls seemed to consist entirely of moss and ivy, the tile floor more or less invisible beneath greensward.

With some effort, Joe pushed open an auditorium door, then with sudden surprise, jumped back to fire an arrow. "Great balls of fire," Joe mumbled through his mask. "It's a goblin orientation meeting! Run!"

He drew an iron knife, but a second too late. A three foot tall demon pig flashed an emerald ring with a needle sticking from its center, and I immediately saw one of Joe's oversized calves turning green. The man skewered the snooty miniature pantsuit wearing creature through its horned head, but then a campus police badged bird goblin got the man's other leg, and he toppled to the grass.

"Shuddering cat piss!" Sandy shouted. "Let's get out of here!"

Unfortunately, she only took a couple steps out the window frame before a dark tentacle shot up from the grass and yanked her shrieking below the dirt.

"Holy cheesecakes!" Blizzard gasped. "What the flipping hedgehog do we do now?"

I pointed to an ivy covered staircase.

"Down there! Have you lost your mother-pumpkin mind!"

But I was already hurrying down the shadowed steps. 

The air was humid, and filled with the sounds of faint guttural noises. There used to be a set of big glass windows at the far end, but now, with so many jungle vines, and tree parts in the way, sunlight came in a feeble trickle.

"Monkey cheese and crackers," Blizzard muttered behind me, eyes darting back and forth. "Oh Gobstoppers."

We reached the cafeteria, a disturbingly wide open place - I already could see something scurrying around the Taco Bell and the pizza vending station.

"Fuck meeee!" Blizzard screamed, but the moment I turned around, I saw only a dark shape dragging his skinny ankles and athletic shoes through the entrance of the campus bookstore. Blizzard was gone.

Clutching my iron swing blade tightly, I made a cautious but hurried approach to the far end, where I hoped to find an exit.

I only made it far as the pay phones before a little girl in a dress stepped in my path, giant demonic figures flanking her on either side, one with a German Shepherd head busily gnawing on a rawhide bone.

The girl gave me a nasty smile. "Hello, brother!"