I don’t know what the limits of my actual biology are. My bone stopped the slugs that I had taken from the various gun battles today. The two to the skull from the Punisher had left me with a concussion that was still messing with my head a little. The one in my thigh made every step a pain, but helped with the concussion’s fog.
I was still faster than an Olympic sprinter, stronger than a weight lifter on PCP, and could tear the hearts out of a master swordsman before he could realize I passed his blade.
It wasn’t enough.
I didn’t lie. I thought I could do it. I bypassed the drones, the security cameras like a ghost. My goblin magic made me not there for any technological sensor. I bypassed the actual guards with ease. I had been a damned good scout in the Army before I discovered I was a changeling, and unlocking mystical goblin powers made me realize why the Ninja claim they were taught stealth by forest goblins, we are that good at it.
My job was to get to Karen, the Punishers friend, and now hostage. I promised I would keep her safe while he stormed the bastions in the full-frontal violence that made the Punisher into a legend. I really thought I could do it.
Now I am sitting in an air vent, being a little guy is a help, and goblins are double jointed in a way that used to disturb the guys in the unit when I would stretch. I have a great view of the room Karen is being held in, and I just can’t see how not to get her killed by entry.
There is a shotgun set with a dead-man release. Two barrels of 00 buck will carve her intestines out when and if someone kicks in the door to the room. I am in the vent, so that isn’t my issue. If I don’t figure out a way to get to Karen and make it safe, the Punisher will kick in the door and watch his friend's insides paint the walls as a final “Fuck you” from the mob.
She is hanging from a hook in the roof, hands chained, ball gag in her mouth so she can’t warn Frank. Her blouse is open, but her bra is still on. I guess they want Frank to see the whole thing when he kicks in the door. I don’t know I would want that if I was going to be in the room with an angry Frank Castle when he failed to defend another one. The body count for his wife and kids isn’t finished yet, I don’t want to know what he will add for Karen.
There are three guys in the room, pistols out. They are tasked not with stopping Frank Castle, the Punisher, they are chosen carefully from people who are willing to die to piss in his eye just once. They are all tasked to kill Karen when they get the word that the Punisher got through the defenses, he would not be allowed to save her. No matter what, as soon as anyone looked to have a chance to get to her, they would kill her.
I ran every possible entry and set of manoeuvres. There was no way I could get to her before one of them had time to pull the trigger. I was a goddamned GOBLIN, a nighmare of the Unseelie Fey, I was less than twenty feet from her, and the one damsel I was supposed to rescue was going to die in front of me.
Laid out before her, so that she could see what was waiting, was the sickest collection of torture devices these guys could come up with. The usual blow torch, pliers, some dental devices, scalpels, hammer and nails, and for reasons I prefer not to think about a dildo in bright purple the thickness and length of my entire arm.
I was sitting here helpless, unable to figure out how to save her, and these sick fucks were telling her how they were going to torture her as soon as Frank was dead.
I looked into her eyes, expecting to see the fear and despair that even I was feeling at this point.
Karen, whoever she was to Punisher was not your ordinary Damsel in Distress. Long wavy red hair, model build, fairly pretty (if you ignored the ball gag, drool, and bruise on her left cheek), but what got me was her eyes.
She was glaring at them with a mixture of rage and contempt. She was not afraid. She knew why these guys didn’t dare start to torture her. They were 99% sure the Punisher would die before he got here, yet every weapon in the room was there to kill HER if and when the Punisher did in fact make it this far. Not one of them wanted to be found in the room with her tortured corpse and a live Punisher. They were 99% sure, but that one percent unmanned them all.
Somewhere behind my eyes, the presence of my dead “other”, my stolen brother, the human boy stolen and using my borrowed fairy magic to become a no shit Fairy Knight stirred.
Elf magic wasn’t goblin magic. It wasn’t primal instinct and fear, it was moonlight and shadows. It twisted reality like a clown twists balloons to make crowns and cute animals. I didn’t know how to use it, but the ghost of my dead other self did, and he was stirring.
“She interests me.” A voice whispers in my head.
“SHE IS GOING TO DIE!” I scream in my head, which honestly did not help my concussion.
The wave of smugness coming off the elf in my head was driving me to the same rage as the Punisher was showing right now. I could hear the gunfire start and knew I was out of time, that Karen was out of time.
“Let me take control, goblin. She does not need you. She needs me. Let me teach you. I am already dead, but let me save one fair maiden before I fade, then I will leave you my magic.” He whispered.
I howled in my head, letting my defenses down, and letting the dead child that had been stolen from my parents, the dead human made elf that had stolen my heritage and my magic my entire life, take over my body and our bastardized mixed power.
I felt him reaching to the movie I was named after. My mother named me Jareth after the Goblin King played by David Bowie in Labyrinth. The scene he reached for was a trip, a maze of staircases where up was down, down was sideways, where space and gravity danced to the mad whim of fairy and the Goblin King who was its lord.
He used a power different from my glamour. This wasn’t just seeming, not shadow, not illusion. Space folded upon itself and opened like a flower and more universes than this one intruded into the fractured planes of the three dimensions we were meant to know.
He wrapped himself in my flesh, and wrapped both of us in the Goblin King glamour. The three men were waving their pistols, unable to find a simple straight line to Karen in a world where left went right, and right went down.
Then he/I/we began to sing. Music bled from the shattered edges of reality as he stepped out of the vent and along the wall as if it was the floor.
“How you turn my world, you precious thing
You starve and near exhaust me”
I sang as I walked sideways through one of the men snapping his neck, who then fell to the ceiling instead of the ground.
“Everything I've done, I've done for you
I move the stars for no one”
I fell into the wall and stepped out of the floor, coming to stand before her and caress her face once, giving her my best Goblin King smoky glaze.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“You've run so long, you've run so far
Your eyes can be so cruel”
I say as one of the mobsters decides to dumb down physics and press his pistol to my head. I take his wrist as an anchor point, then kick his knee out to bring him to the ground.
“Just as I can be so cruel
Oh, I do believe in you
Yes, I do”
I hammer his throat, leaving him to choke noisily to death as I fall into the floor, to come out of the ceiling.
“Live without your sunlight
Love without your heartbeat
I, I can't live within you”
I ripped the last man’s heart out, and offered it to Karen as if in hope of acceptance, she looked terrified.
“I can't live within you
I, I can't live within you”
The music wound slowly down as the magic he/I/we were using expended himself. He ate the heart as our left hand slowly crushed the double barreled shotgun in the trap. This was so NOT GOING TO HELP with her trust issues, but eating the heart seemed to fill up the well of whatever I just about burned off pulling off that magic, and my own healing.
I could feel him withdrawing, spent perhaps forever from that last exertion of his borrowed magic. I felt the channels he had used to wield it, and wondered if I would be able to do things like that in future, right now it would be about as dangerous as taking a drill and trying to do brain surgery on myself.
I stopped and looked at the three dead bodies, and my own blood covered hand, as I pulled a silk hankerchief out and cleaned my hands and face of the blood.
“Well, that could have gone better. Sorry about the drama, but I don’t really know how to do that sort of thing and had to let my other self more or less do the driving. Frank sent me. I am supposed to keep you safe until he finishes killing everyone.”
I debated looking for keys, then just decided to snap the chain between the cuffs to let her down, then took off her ball gag.
She backed into the corner, not unreasonably, and screamed “Who the fuck are you, what are you for that matter?”
I had been briefed that Karen was not your average damsel, and that the way to assure her I was a friend was to give her a pistol. Being called a gay pirate once too often by Mr Serious Frank Castle, call me the fucking Punisher, I just had to find a way to do it that would drive him insane.
Luckily, Tony the Pimp, my late lamented benefactor, had an oddly terrible collection of firearms. I brought the single most objectionable with me.
Using my glamour to make a silver covered tray appear, and bowing like a butler presenting a caller’s card to his Young Miss, I bowed deeply and presented the tray.
“I am the Goblin King, entirely at your service. Frank said you would feel better with one of these, so please, be my guest.”
She lifted the silver tray lid and her face broke into a smile, and she actually giggled.
“It’s hideous. Oh, Frank would hate it.” She cooed as she picked up, removed the magazine, worked the slide to assure there wasn’t a round in the chamber. Then slapping the magazine back in the well, she allowed a round to chamber, leaving her with a 9mm hot pink Hello Kitty Glock with a round up the spout.
Keeping the pistol offline of your friendly neighborhood goblin, she kept it close enough that she could snap it in line of myself or the door should she need to. I approved of her caution, as the sounds of the Punisher killing his way through half the mob in New York was getting both louder and closer.
In order to look inoffensive, I wandered over to the instruments of torture, and picked up the dildo. I was bright purple, and as long as my arm. I mean, I know what it was for, but I would hate to meet anything that could actually use it for that purpose.
Karen cocked one ginger eyebrow at my sword length toy.
“Are you thinking of using that on someone?” She asked, not unreasonably.
“I honestly feel a little intimidated, this thing is as long as a sword. Or a horse. I find I cannot regret those late gentleman’s deaths all that much. Their ideas of entertaining a fair maiden are off on just a couple of key points.”
She giggled again. I think fear was pushing her deeper into the ridiculous of the moment, but if acting the clown could help her keep it together until the Punisher got here, then a clown I would be.
“You know you look like David Bowie in Labyrinth right? You even nailed the song.” She asked, then ruined a perfectly good compliment by doubling down. “Do you do any other movies?”
Fucking hell, I am not a theater major. I did martial arts and SCA heavy fighting in high school, not drama club. I am not set up to amuse damsels in distress!
The voices on the radio demanding to know if “The bitch is dead yet” were getting frustrated, because now I heard a bunch of feet hammering down the hallway. I guess they had given up actually stopping the Punisher from killing them all and were willing to settle for making sure that his lady friend got dead before he could get to her.
They hit the door in a rush, and with my huge purple dildo in hand, I decided to do as they lady asked, and give her another movie.
Moving faster than any human could, I began to move through the mobsters wielding my weapon in ways that the designers probably didn’t intend.
“Hello. My name is Inego Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I moved through the first four with single strikes to the head. Then I began to pick up speed and strike both harder and faster as it seems my magic leaked into the great purple penis and strengthened it.
“Hello. My name is Inego Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I was in the hallway now, smashing arms, legs, skulls. I flicked it like a saber, lunged with it like a rapier, and began to work my way through the last of the enemies in the hall.
Karen, as terrible an example of damsel in distress as there ever has been, advanced down the wall behind me with her pink Hello Kitty Glock in a beautiful Weaver Stance that showed that perhaps the Punisher may have had a hand in her training.
I came around the final corner to find myself nose to nose, penis to pistol with the Punisher. He snapped his pistol up to the shoulder, pointed at the ceiling. I jauntily saluted with my purple penis sword.
“There is something seriously wrong with you.” He rumbled.
“FRANK!” Karen screamed as she blasted past me and hit him like a blitzing linebacker.
“Karen!” He rumbled in the closest thing to human emotion I had heard from him.
I could tell when I was third wheeling it, and decided to go my good deed for the day and go deal with the sirens that were starting to get close. These two made me feel like maybe I was missing the point of being a superhero altogether. Whatever shaped them, whatever brought them here, made my journey so far seem like a child’s game.
Suddenly I felt both like a child stepping into the grown-up world, and an old man left with nothing but loneliness and regrets. I was the superhuman, but the Punisher was the hero. Real people died today, and for all that she was holding it together, Karen will be spending months to years with the memories of what they intended to do to her, and little bits like some IDIOT eating a human heart in front of her.
I would have to do better. I would have to be better. This was not a game.