In the outer limits of the forest a horse expected our arrival. His fur was so dark one could confuse it for the sexual life of your average politician. His nostrils big, round, and alluring. His muscles on the thick fore and hind legs and back, all chiseled by some Abderan deity. This aforementioned magnificence was crowned with a long, silky, black mane of wavy hairs. Each detail of this being was fitted into place with utmost care by both mother nature and the hands of a skillful breeder.
The paralysis spell disappeared and I recovered my ability to move. After sitting up, I slapped Mariana. She was happily munching on a treat while the pitties watched with jealousy. Free from the spell of Mariana and the hex of the tree, I admired my captor. She had to be in good physical form to be able to traverse a forest in that armor, and without breaking a sweat. This could mean she had an exercise routine, and, due to the fact that she did not smell like a rotten corpse, that she had access to a bathtub and/or a shower. Concluding: she knew how to obtain something that I needed.
The kidnapping went forward smoothly, with me climbing on the muscular back of the horse—who was very handsome— being tied by the hands with a rope not rough enough to violate international treaties, and Mariana following as she recited dog folklore[1] in howls and translated them with telepathy.
The pit bulls marched behind us as a veritable army of hell, the hell from the version of the apocalypse told in geriatrics to scare patients with dementia. “Take your pills, Mr. Harrison, or a pit will maul you like it did with your late wife.” just to provide an example.
The dusk flooded the plains, slowly transforming the greens and yellows into shades of red and orange. Terrible as it seemed, the scenery was turning into despicable communist propaganda right before my eyes. Concomitantly with the sunset arrived a blood freezing feeling of reality. The warm light over my skin, the movement of the horse, the wind revolving my hair. This world, dreamlike and absurd, was now my home. The people and the horses, the mosquitos and the blades of grass, all were breathing and, probably, doing their best. The silliness of the game-like systems was just part and parcel of a normality not meant to be disturbed by me, or by Mariana. It was not my playground, nor a task that could be half-assed. If I had an ounce of empathy and were not a hopeless misanthrope, I would have felt pretty bad. But, I am me —and I thank God for that— and this meant there was no path but the one that was laid by my hedonism and acute talent to give no fucks. I had Mariana, and the elf’s death propelled me to level fifty. If we were going to meet a person with any sort of political power, I could analyze, let my perfidious side free to plot and scheme a takeover, prepared to strike as soon as my power was safely over theirs. Worst case scenario, they would try to execute me and Mariana would unwillingly foil their plans. Being the owner of a Golden Retriever meant that the forces of chaos conspired in my favor… fifty-one percent of the time, at least.
I contemplated my captor, and, yes, she was gorgeous. I hated her for that, for taking me as a prisoner, and because she was undeserving of the title of owner of such a perfect specimen of an equine.
We made a short stop to eat and drink. The bread was not moldy or old, and the water did not taste like it was taken from the nearest toilet. Mariana and the pits had become something equivalent to friends, if such a concept exists among dogkind. It was not the kind of hostage situation I was sold by society. They had lied to me, and that was a source of indignation.
“How long till we arrive to some horrible dungeon where I will get sodomized by horrible creatures?”
“Years, if you really try to get there. My dad says only idiots form other worlds hunt elves, expecting them to look like something they deem as, and I quote, ‘traditionally fuckable’” she explained with a casual, even friendly, tone.
“So… your father is Matu?”
“Effectively. He tells stories about a world of marvels, and materializes many of them on ours. People say before his arrival nobody had spread the concept of plumbing, or pasteurizing milk, to some regions,” she said, before signaling me to climb back on the horse as she took the reins to guide the animal on their walk through the night.
As she passed besides me I noticed her hairs were not single threads, but a bunch of thin ones that converged in a central stem. Each putative hair presented this structure, and that meant only one thing: she was either not human or sick.
I went with the first hypothesis as that stripped away her presupposed human rights and made things easier in case I had to kill and skin her to steal the horse and the armor and make a fashionable purse. I mean, Mariana deserved to get one, eventually. On the other hand, she was the nicest person I had met that was yet to be head-butted into oblivion by my pet, so maybe I could just steal the horse without the murder, if need arose.
“So, why do you have those weird plumules on your head?” I said knowing Mariana, who was leading a passionate howl concert a couple dozen meters behind us, was for sure ready to defend me.
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“I am half elf,” she answered, not concerned with the fact I had asked.
“Oh, that makes se…” then the nefarious realization washed over my face. Her father had managed to fuck an elf. This was not your everyday benevolent dictator; we were dealing with the definition of a madman. Someone whose sheer lunacy wore an aura of pure and primal dread. An elf-fucker, nothing more, nothing less. The kind of person that is considered an illegal immigrant in hell because Satan fears they will take his job as ruler. An elf-fucker.
“What’s the problem? Tits ate your tongue?”
“No, but they for sure ate your dad’s dick.
“And here I am, world, kidnapped by the daughter of a degenerate and the thing which ornithologists who also happen to be Lovecraft fans have wet dreams with,” the words stampeded out of my mouth.
“Thanks for the mental image, but it was unnecessary. By the way, my name is Florencia. Yours?”
“Walter, not pleased to meet you. How’s the horse called?”
She said the Spanish word for black.
I sighed.
“Of course.”
It was not a bad name, but I should have expected it. A black animal owned by someone with Latin-American roots was doomed to be called either that or the diminutive.
As the night tucked in the plains we kept on going, our way illuminated by an orb of pale light she had conjured. The stars in the sky were a precious, yet unfamiliar sight. None of the constellations I could recognize in the south or north hemisphere were present. The moon had an HP bar, which made the situation even more unsettling. This planet, so full of life earthlike and, at the same time, alien. It felt like the very horse I was riding on was a terrible creature clad in the skin of an equine. As though my own being had been replaced, with my body being just a weird android, a puny replacement for the one Mariana had killed.
Not me, not me, not me, not me…
“Walter, are you okay?” asked Mariana, that had sneaked her way to the right side of the horse, covered by the shroud of darkness and the high grass.
“No, you are not supposed to talk, I am not supposed to be a necromancer, and the moon is not supposed to have a health bar.”
“Dad says that is normal, that people like you, those who come from the land of wonders, feel out of place here. Sometimes I wish I could fly and see the world in all its angles, like mom does. But I cannot, just like you may never go back to whither you came from.”
Even immersed in my anguish, my logical side had a new, terrible question that needed to be brought into the world.
“So, changing subject… are you sterile, Florencia?”
“What?” she replied, startled and visibly bothered.
“Let me rephrase: being a hybrid, are you capable of bearing children?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“The logical one. If elves and humans can produce viable progeny, it means we all are the same species, according to at least some of the multiple definitions of the word. Therefore, if I ever want to sleep again, I must know: can you and your kin of abominations reprofuckingduce?”
“I never tried! But I’m going to have a baby nephew. So I guess the answer to the weirdest question I ever got asked is ‘yes’. Don’t get any funny ideas”
“Lord, there are at least three of you,” I said, and then turned my head in direction to the purebred bitch among the grass. “We must cleanse this fucking world with fire, Mariana.” I sentenced. Sometimes, the inner führer had the reasonable solution to mundane problems (such as, but not limited to, an elf-polluted gene pool).
“I can cast Armageddon at your command, Walter.”
“Mariana, I don’t want you anywhere near any spell or skill whose name is taken right out of Revelation.”
“Other books of the bible are okay, right?”
“It will be a case by case basis for them. I know your works; you have a reputation…”
“That bible, dad never stops talking about it. He had one on him when he came, so he transcribed it a thousand times. He is very fond of Genesis 19.”
“Fitting for an elf-fucker” I sassed.
“Oh, come on, he has only fucked one elf, to my knowledge. Also, I am sure other people marry elves. I have a friend who…”
“Lord, there is at least another elf-fucker!”
I decided to stop digging into the subject, mainly because unveiling the existence of a secret society of elfscrewers was not among my objectives back then, and, with some luck, never would be.
“We are almost there. I hope dad is lenient with you.”
“If he is not, I know nothing with numbers bigger than Mariana.”
“Venezuelan economy,” said Mariana.
“Good girl, got me there.”
“We have an army of pit bulls.”
“Nice, so you have your own fantasy version of Planned Parenthood. But, and here is the fault in your plans, Mariana is not a baby.”
“You think she can take on hundreds of level two hundred dogs?” she asked, stopping and turning to look at me with a grin of disbelief.
“No, Florencia, she does not need to. Mariana is an innocent and stupid entity that causes disaster after disaster unwillingly.”
“Says the degenerate that could be controlled by attaching a doujin on a stick. A stick. A stick. I wanna.” Mariana provided the perfect example for my statement, and then proceeded to stare into the void.
“As you may observe, she is terminally moronic. Sassy at times, and I admit that, when we initially came here, she explained to me the working basis of this god-forsaken place with flying colors. Immediately after, she fell in a downward spiral toward dumbness that, as far as I am aware, may have no end point.”
“You should be less cruel with your pet.”
“She sold me for three treats,” I reminded the dumb interbred sin against good taste and perhaps nature.
“Perhaps she wouldn’t have, if you were nicer,” she argued, and it was cute to see such innocence about to be brutally ended.
“I would have; three whole treats are nothing to scoff at.”
Florencia shut up in the face of the evidence and kept on walking.
“We are almost there; we will arrive before dawn.”
And that was the last thing she said during that trip.
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[1] Urban legends about supernatural beings, such as the Mailman or The Leaf Blower; and tales of places that included the accursed Land of the Vet, The Dimension of the Shiny Skies, and The Field of the Old Good Boys and Girls.