I would say there is a short list of things that I could normally expect to happen when I get home from work on the majority of days.
First, I will be greeted by my dog at the door and get bowled over by the large chocolate lab in her infinite excitement at me getting home after an eternity away (eight hours). After a minute of petting and belly rubs I’d let her out into the yard so she could have her evening freedom run, do her business, then we’d go inside together.
Next, I’d try and pet my two cats if they deigned to acknowledge my existence and accept my affections while they lounged on my couch, though they usually ignored me until it was time for their dinner.
Then, I’d open my fridge to grab whatever leftovers I had, a cold drink, then sit down at the kitchen table to eat dinner before gaming or reading until bedtime.
Yes, I know, it sounds like a very mundane evening, but I am a creature of habit.
On an average day I'd say that I wouldn't usually expect something to come leaping out of my fridge to attack me, with the exception of that one time with a very angry raccoon when I moved into my first apartment.
I had a very normal, if exceedingly long, day at work. I used to sell firearms at a local gun store, and that brought with it the typical amount of stress that every gun store employee experiences. I cannot count the amount of loaded firearms that got pointed at me whenever someone was “looking for a holster for this”. I had to make sure that paperwork was exactly right (with customers that seem to lose all reading comprehension and ability to write the exact moment that their pen touches the paper). I sold a decent amount on the day in question, had lunch at the Subway across the street, and spent several hours of the afternoon dealing with one old boomer who led me on a tour-de-France of the store to look at damn near every gun we had before he finally bought a single box of discounted .22LR and left.
Oh, and there was this one guy on vacation from California, who’s knowledge consisted solely of “black gun scary”, to whom I had to explain that machine guns are in fact highly regulated and not normally available for just anyone to buy, prohibitively expensive, and no that AR does not shoot .50 Cal magazine clips at four thousand rounds a minute.
A typical day really, at first.
I made it home a bit later than usual as I had to deal with traffic and road work that never seemed to end. I swear that it is a written law in the Midwest that road workers are not allowed to just get the job done in a timely manner. The sun had set long before I pulled into my driveway. As usual, I let my dog sprint around for a bit to burn off her excess energy, gave her bellyrubs as she laid in the grass, then went inside. I kicked off my boots at the door and tossed my coat onto the couch, disturbing the napping cats.
I didn’t even bother changing out of my work uniform before going into the kitchen to get my dinner. Inside my fridge was supposed to be a pot of chili that I had made two days ago, that would last me at least three more days. Next to that was supposed to be a six pack of my favorite alcoholic beverage.
In the first few milliseconds as I opened the door, I was annoyed to find that the light had apparently burnt out, and would need to be replaced, made worse by the fact that I hadn’t thought to turn on the kitchen light.
In the next few milliseconds, I wondered why my fridge seemed to be deeper. I didn’t have much more time to think, or to look into it, as something leapt out and latched onto my chest, knocking me on my ass. As I fell backward, my foot kicked the door, slamming it back shut. I felt small clawed hands wrap around my throat and start to tighten, as the thing on my chest tried to strangle me. My hand flailed, striking it in the side, to little effect, as it either didn’t care about the impact or didn’t feel it.
The thing was small, about half the weight of my dog, but it was strong, and I could already feel myself getting lightheaded. Its claws dug into my skin, both on my neck and my chest, and blood started to trickle. I couldn’t see it in the dark, just a vague outline of black.
Just outside the kitchen door, my dog whined and barked, but refused to enter the kitchen to help me. It was a longstanding stubbornness of hers, no amount of coercion or treats had ever convinced her to enter the kitchen, and I had long ago given up on trying.
There I laid, struggling to pry the creature off of me, to no avail. By no means was I weak, I worked out regularly, but it had far too good of a hold on me.
For a brief moment, I thought that maybe this was it. This was going to be how I die. Assassinated by a midget in my fridge.
Then I remembered I was still in my work clothes.
I still had a loaded 9mm handgun on my belt.
With a motion that I had drilled into muscle memory with countless hours at the range, I reached down and grabbed the familiar grip of my pistol. My middle finger depressed the button that released the retention that would keep attackers from drawing my firearm without my consent. With a tug, the steel slide started to clear the polymer holster, and my thumb instinctively flipped the safety down and off.
From there, it was easy enough to punch the muzzle into the side of the creature on top of me. I even remembered to back off half an inch to make sure the slide wasn’t pushed out of battery.
Then I pulled the trigger.
In my small kitchen, the gunshot was deafening, and left my ears ringing, but I could feel the creature lurch, its grip loosened as a 124 grain jacketed hollow point burrowed into its flesh. I felt its warm blood start to pour down onto me. Then I heard a pained snarl and its grip tightened with renewed resolve to kill me. My dog was going ballistic just feet away, scratching at the floor but still refusing to come in and help. My lungs were burning, my head was spinning.
I aimed the muzzle up a few inches, and pulled the trigger two more times. The creature tensed up, then slid off to the side. With my ears ringing, I couldn’t actually hear it hit the floor, but felt the thud. It took some effort to get off the floor, coughing as I tried to suck in air. I fumbled around looking for the light switch, and a moment later the bulb kicked on.
There was blood everywhere. A good portion of my own, but the rest of the purple fluid was-
Wait.
Purple?
A puddle of purple blood pooled beneath the thing as it writhed on my kitchen floor. I’ve played a lot of video games in my life. I’ve watched quite a bit of movies and shows. I dare say that I’ve read more books than most of the country. So you have to believe me when I say I recognized the thing in an instant.
I know a goblin when I see one.
The pale-green skinned creature had the typical hooked nose, warty face, and bloodshot eyes that were still looking at me with pure hatred. It would maybe stand three feet tall, and was skinny, but I could see the lean muscle even under the tattered rags it wore for clothing. It didn’t have any shoes, but its clawed feet were calloused. I didn’t see any weapons on it, but still kept my pistol trained on it.
Its chest was heaving as it tried to breathe. If its anatomy matched our own, I’d wager that my first round had been a gut shot, not enough to immediately incapacitate but it would’ve been a goner in hours. The next two, judging by the foamy blood trickling from its mouth, had been in its lungs. It was suffocating slowly, just like it had tried to do to me.
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For a brief moment, I felt a bit of pity for the small monster. I leveled my gun where I thought its heart should be, and fired. Its body seized a final time, then it went limp, and was dead.
I finally took the time to examine myself. Looking down at my chest, my work shirt was ruined, between stains from both my blood and the goblin’s, and the massive tears where its claws had dug into me. My neck was bleeding, though not enough to be fatal so long as medical attention was quick. I holstered my gun, sat the whole rig on my counter, and started dialing 911 as I rushed to the bathroom, dog chasing after me now that I had left the dreaded kitchen.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I was just attacked in my house by a-”
My voice came out hoarse, ragged, after having been strangled, but I hesitated to tell them what had actually attacked me. They’d think it was a prank call if I was truthful.
“What was that sir? You cut out.”
“I was attacked by some kind of animal in my house. I shot it, it's dead.”
“What is your address? Officers will be there in a moment.”
“Thirty zero six Browning Drive, I’m bleeding too.”
“An ambulance will be on its way, I’ll stay on the line with you until they arrive.”
My first aid kit is nothing to write home about, just the essentials. Gauze, chest seals, band-aids, tourniquet. I tossed the tourniquet aside as presently useless and applied pressure with the gauze, while I waited for the EMT’s and cops to get there. I sat on my front porch, with my dog at my feet, waiting.
Soon enough, they were there. One officer stayed outside with me to render first-aid, the other two went inside to check it out.
“Is this a fucking joke?”
Huh?
One officer came back outside.
“You said an animal attacked you and you shot it?
“Yeah, four times.”
“Where exactly in the house?”
“Kitchen, right by the fridge.”
“Uh huh.”
He went back inside, and a moment later came back.
“Well, best I can tell, whatever you shot must’ve had enough juice to get up and escape, with no bleed.”
“What do you mean? It was dead!”
“Must’ve played possum. Look, I don’t see any blood, if it wasn’t for those wounds on you I wouldn’t even think an animal had been here. We’ll stick around until the EMTs get here to patch you up, but then we’ll head out.”
It didn’t make any sense. That goblin had been dead as a doornail, in a pool of blood.
True to their word, the EMT’s stitched me up, and I declined the ride to the hospital, my insurance wouldn’t cover that. They assured me that I would be fine anyways, so long as I kept the stitches clean. The cops left shortly after.
I walked back in the house, and my dog ran into the bedroom and leapt onto the bed, it was long after my normal bedtime and she wanted to sleep. In the kitchen I found a puzzling scene. The floor was spotless. The corpse was nowhere to be seen
If it wasn’t for the four spent brass casings on the floor, with four mangled 9mm slugs laying there, you’d never even realize I had shot a living creature less than an hour ago.
Even all that purple blood was gone, and I doubt even the most professional murder-scene cleaner in the world could have hidden the evidence in the few minutes it took the police to arrive, especially without me noticing the noise,
Only three things marked that the goblin had really existed, and hadn’t been a figment of my imagination.
I clearly had the marks. Though someone could say it was just a wild animal, nothing about my injuries would clearly scream “GOBLIN”.
Then there were the two things on the floor. A small lump of yellow metal, which looked quite a bit like gold, and an even smaller glowing lump of blue crystal.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually keep pieces of gold in my kitchen, and I don’t think the cops would have dropped that so carelessly. As for the crystal, I’m not a college-age white girl, so I don’t collect them, especially ones that glow. The “gold”, I picked up and examined, and pocketed. I had a buddy who could confirm what it was, but he’d be asleep by now and I didn’t feel like earning his wrath by waking him with a call.
The crystal, I was hesitant to touch. I had watched far too much media starring radioactive materials to trust it. Luckily, I remembered something my uncle had purchased years ago. He’d grown up in the middle of the Cold War, and had gone full prepper. When he passed away a few years ago, he left a portion of his gear to me, which included a geiger counter.
I retrieved it after a short search from the garage, and waved it over the crystal. The results told me that at least I wasn’t going to be growing an extra toe. It could have still been toxic to touch, so I used a pair of tongs from the cabinet to pick it up and drop it into an empty tupperware, and sealed it. I sat it on my counter, next to the gun. From the closet came my broom and dust pan, to scoop up the brass and projectiles so that my dumbass cats wouldn’t knock them down the air vent, and I poured them into a bin in my workshop for later use.
I thought about investigating further, but decided I’d just pretend that it had all been a bad dream. The cops had found nothing, my wounds would heal soon, and I could just pretend it was all my imagination. With how far away my neighbors lived, and with all the trees in between us, they likely didn’t even hear the gunshots, so they wouldn’t come snooping for info. It would be so easy to just open my fridge, fish out the food and drink I had been originally going for, and go about the rest of my life.
I opened the fridge again, and realized that in fact the light was not out.
It was completely gone.
Where there should have been several shelves of food and beverages, instead there was a swirling blue and black void that stretched several feet past where the back of my fridge should have been, and past where the kitchen wall stood. On the other end of that void was floor of rough stone, with patches of moss. The lighting was poor, provided only by the single bulb on my kitchen ceiling, but I could just make out the shapes of worked stone blocks, meaning this wasn't just a cave.
"A dungeon."
The words escaped my mouth as I realized what I was staring at. I closed the fridge, and reopened it, but to my great surprise the void was still there.
"So it's not just a moment of insanity... Great."
Suddenly the shuffling sound of footsteps on stone hit my ear, and the vague form of a short creature came walking out of the shadows. My hand went to my side, grasping for my gun, before I remembered I had set it on the counter. I spun around and grabbed it, and turned back in time to see another goblin leaping toward me through the refrigerator door. I fired twice, hitting it square in the chest, dodging to the side as it sailed into my counter. It hit with a crash, breaking the wooden door, and slumped to the ground, unmoving. I nudged it with my foot, to no response. Flipping it over, I found it was dead, my shots had hit its heart.
"Fifteen rounds left," instantly came to my thoughts. I normally carried a twenty round magazine in my gun at work, with another in the chamber, for twenty one rounds in the gun. I also normally carried a spare magazine in a mag holster on my belt, but that morning had forgotten to put it on. Nothing else came from the dungeon toward me, but I closed the fridge door anyway.
Now, at this point, I could either conclude I was insane, or make another more foolish decision.
Walking into my workshop, I grabbed the tactical vest that hung on a rack near the door, and retrieved my close-quarters AR-15 setup from the large gun safe in the corner. It had a fourteen and a half inch barrel, with the muzzle device welded on to make it legal without the annoying Form 4 process. It had a flashlight, which was going to be useful, and a red-dot magnifier combo, then a sling for ease of carry and retention. I made sure the rifle was fully loaded then slung it onto my body, and shoved three spare mags into the vest's pouches, then topped back off the mag in my pistol, grabbing two spares as well. There was a large roll of duct tape on my workbench, so I snagged that too. My electronic hearing protection clasped firmly to my ears. Stopping for a moment make sure the weapon-mounted flashlight on the rifle was functional, and grabbing a spare battery just in case, I went back into the kitchen to find the second goblin corpse was also gone, leaving just the mushroomed 9mm slugs on the ground, along with the "gold" nugget and the crystal. Of course I couldn't leave those on the ground for my cats, so I had to clean them up.
I walked up to the fridge and opened the door.
And walked right in.