-Lain-
It took some time, but I finally found a river not too far from the highway. Not wanting to waste any more time being covered in goblin juices, I make a mad dash for the water.
Stripping off my second set of ruined clothes in so many days, I leap into the river’s cool water like a cannon ball. Submerging myself completely under the water and raking my fingers through my hair. Clumps of goblin mystery bits and dried blood freeing themselves from my tangled and messy hair.
Ah, so disgusting! I scream internally as I fight too clean myself.
After a few moments of violently scrubbing myself, I finally emerged from the water. Flowing downstream from me is a long stream of brown clouded water, the dried rusted blood slowly flowing off my body as it is carried away by the current.
“Ha, and I thought they smelt bad on the outside. Hah ha…” I joke to myself half-heartedly.
Cringy joke out of the way, I get back to washing myself. Despite the water being absolutely freezing, I don’t find myself getting particularly cold; I’m not even shivering. Even with the constant cold temperatures and horrible weather I don’t find myself being affected all that much. When I was still normal, out scavenging and hunting, I would have to be bundled up in thick and warm clothes. If I had gone in this river when I was still human, I would have been reduced to a shivering mess. Instead, I’ve spent the last few days walking around in jeans, a t-shirt and mostly barefoot with hardly an issue.
Just another thing to add to the long list of weird changes made to my body I guess, honestly at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m fireproof or some other nonsense too. I think to myself as I clean the end of my tail, the tuft of hair at its end having ended up with bits of blood dried in it.
Actually, now that I think about it… When I burned my house down like an edge lord I wasn’t really bothered by the heat. House fires get really hot, don’t they? Hmm, note to self, ‘Stick hand in fire and test if fireproof.’
Occupying my ADD riddled mind with shower thoughts [river thoughts?] I continue to scrub myself down until I’m left with clean grey skin and my hair is finally free of mystery bits and dried blood.
Blessedly clean, I climb out of the river, easily navigating the sheer wall of dirt, rock, and hanging tree roots that I had dived off of when I jumped into the river. Walking forward and dripping with cold water, I follow my trail of discarded clothing, picking up each piece, and retrieve my backpack.
Digging into it, I fish out a bath towel and get to work on drying myself off. I’m not entirely sure if I can even catch a cold anymore, gut feeling says no, but it doesn’t mean that I am suddenly ok with remaining dripping wet.
As I work on drying myself off, I look over my clothes. Both the t-shirt and my jeans are ruined. My shirt is missing an entire arm and is soaked with blood, while my jeans are even worse off. The goblins having grabbed on and tore wherever they could during the fight. With how damaged they are, I could probably just tear them and turn them into shorts, not like I mind the cold, but they are even more stained than my poor shirt is. Even if I wash them, they will probably be permanently stained a rusted red.
Not to mention the hole I cut out for my tail. It tore… I’m not about to go walking around with my underwear peeking out the back of my pants.
With a sigh, I toss aside my ruined clothes, “At least my underwear didn’t get hit too bad. Just a quick wash and it should be good.”
Setting those aside, I dig into my bag and fish out a fresh set of clothes. With my towel draped over me I get to work on my last set of jeans, cutting a hole in it for my tail.
“I really need to find a sewing kit or something, I can’t just keep cutting holes in jeans like this. Eventually I am going to end up mooning somebody and it going to be so embarrassing…” I tell myself as I focus on my work.
With that done I wrap my towel around my hair and get to work on getting redressed. Putting on fresh underwear, my freshly modified jeans and a funny t-shirt with a pineapple mounting a pizza; still several sizes too big.
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Finally dressed and no longer covered head to tail in goblin blood, I gather up my stuff and walk along the river until I find an area where I can wash what is left of my clothes. Who knows, maybe the shirt can be saved with enough scrubbing.
Finding a nice little area, I leave my bag leaning against a large boulder, finish drying my unruly hair and then get to work on washing my clothes.
While I work on scrubbing dried blood and goblin mystery bits out of my shirt I take in the sounds of my surroundings. The flowing water, the sound of the wind moving through the tree branches, the noise of insects buzzing around and songs of birds taunting us lowly ground dwellers because we were too stupid to evolve to have wings. The little bastards.
Scrubbing and scrubbing, I watch as more red bleeds away from the fabric in my hands. Turning the water an ugly rusted brown as it flows away in a gently stream of lost life.
My eyes never leave my hands as I continue to scrub, the sounds of nature being reduced to background noise. I am left with nothing but my thoughts as eventually I stop scrubbing, my hands remaining under the water holding my shirt as the cold water continues to flow without a care in the world.
How many did I kill...?
About thirty, I think… and I just slaughtered them. For what, a shirt? I just snapped and slaughtered a bunch of harmless creatures for a shirt. I tore them apart, broke their bodies and left them as a mess on the road. I basically bathed in their blood over a shirt. They weren’t even a threat to me, just an annoyance on the road.
“Why did I snap like that?” I ask myself.
I mean, I’ve killed goblins before because they were being annoying, but I never went that far... Hells, I used one of them as a club to beat the others to death. I didn’t have to do that. I could have just walked away, or ran, they wouldn’t have been able to catch me.
Blood continues to gently flow from the shirt in my hands. My eyes never leave them as the gentle trail of rusted brown flows over my grey skin.
I think to myself, ‘Is this because of my mutation? Am I just a torn shirt away from ripping apart anyone that so much as ticks me off?
“No, no, it can’t be that. I don’t feel like I’m perpetually pissed or anything…” I tell myself.
Maybe it was just stress? Almost dying, suffering from all that pain, being left behind and mutating into an imp or something. The goblins were just one more thing going wrong and were an easy target to release my stress on. So, I snapped…
I continue to just stare at my hands, trying to digest everything that happened. Unpacking and sorting my feelings about what I did.
This time it was just goblins, dumb weak little monsters, but next time it could be people, human beings. If I forget my strength and end up lashing out, I could end up killing someone unintentionally. And that could be very bad for me. Looking like I do; it wouldn’t be odd if people freaked out and thought I was a monster. Killing someone, even on accident, would be doing me no favors. I need to figure this shit out before I reach civilization.
Setting my mind to be more careful in the future, I try to focus and get back to work on scrubbing away at my shirt. As I scrub away, I can’t help but notice that things have become very quiet. The birds have stopped chirping, and I can feel a sort of weight on the world around me.
I’m in danger.
Tensing up, I focus my senses on trying to find where the danger is coming from, remaining very still and ready to move on a moment’s notice.
The only warning I get is a moving shadow from below the water. Within a single second, the surface of the calm river explodes as a large gaping maw launches itself at me. Faster than I can think, I release the tightly wound and tensed muscles in my legs and leap into the air with an explosion of dirt and rocks. Hardly a moment after I vacate the spot, a gaping maw clamps down on where I used to be.
With a crash and the catastrophe of snapping branches and startled birds, I come to a stop high up in the canopy of nearby tree, slamming to a stop against its trunk. Completely tangled up in its branches and digging my claws into the bark, I manage to keep myself from falling back out of the tree.
Down there, on the river shore is a catfish that would make a shark run for its mother. Easily over twenty feet long, covered in sharp spines and looking uglier than sin, it flails around as it tries to pull itself back into the water. Hanging from the rows of sharp teeth lining its mouth is a piece of fabric that catches my attention.
Quickly checking my hands, my heart sinks as I find them empty.
It stole my fucking shirt!
Snapping myself out of my stupor, I flail about as I try untangling my limbs from the tree branches. Down on the shore the catfish is working its way back into the water.
“Ah! Wait, wait, wait! Don’t eat my shirt, I only have the two!” I call out.
The catfish doesn’t listen, obviously not understanding English or caring to heed the desperate call of a flailing imp stuck in a tree.
Finally freeing myself from the tree, I jump down and immediately take off towards the oversized fish. Before I can reach it, it slips back into the water, the tip of its tail being the last I see of it before it becomes nothing more than a bleary shadow swimming away downstream.
I just stare and watch as it disappears from sight, both it and my shirt probably never to be seen again. Dropping my arms to my side, I just stare dumbfounded at the river as I try to process what just happened.
After several seconds of stunned silence that could best be illustrated with a rainbow wheel loading circle floating over my head, my brain finally decides on an appropriate response for my situation.
“WHAT THE HELL!?”