“Help! I’ve been stabbed!”

Sprinting through the underbrush, Tristram reached over with his right hand and touched his left shoulder, where a forearm-length blade stuck out like a spade shoved into a mound of dirt. He had heard stories of people dying of blood loss when a foreign object, such as a knife, was prematurely removed from their body. He, therefore, thought it wise to leave it where it was. Currently, the pain was a polite, but cutting suggestion at the periphery of his mind. Shock had the podium and was pounding its fist and screaming nonsense at the top of its metaphorical lungs. “I can’t believe you actually stabbed me!” Tristram bellowed as he leaped over a mulberry bush.

Behind him, making no less of a racket, Kaya was doing her best harpy impression, screeching out variations of ‘Give me back my knife!’ and ‘Stop running so I can kill you!’

Tristram had no intention of honouring either request. At this point, he had no intentions at all. Only an objective: Survive. A colony of polka-dotted mushrooms went squish under the rubber soles of his knock-off Air Jordans and Tristram began to slide as though he were on ice. He saw the snare, made of what appeared to be braided boar hair, clumsily hidden under a smattering of dead leaves. Only the dumbest and most imperceptive of animals would be foolish enough to get caught in something so obvious. Tristram, leaving a fungal skid mark in his wake, slid foot first into the snare. Next thing he knew, he was hanging upside-down fifteen feet above the ground.

Kaya came crashing through the underbrush, ravening. When she spotted her quarry and his precarious position, she first froze stiff, then doubled over in a peal of laughter. She wiped a tear from her eye and stood up straight and looked up at Tristram. She took a moment to catch her breath. “Okay. I’m good.”

“Great,” said Tristram. Blood oozed from his shoulder down the handle of the knife and dripped down on the dead leaves with a steady plop, plop, plop. He was starting to feel the pain. “I’m starting to feel the pain.”

“Well, just cut the rope and come down.” Kaya smiled, a little too much like a crocodile. “I know how to kill pain.”

Tristram sucked air through his teeth. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll bleed to death if I pull the knife out.”

Kaya looked up at him and raised her hands. “You’re dead anyway.”

“I don’t wanna die,” blubbered Tristram. “I just finished dying.” He began to thrash at the end of the strand like a moth caught in a stray spider web. “I wanna live!”

Kaya frowned and looked around. “Hey keep it down, will you?”

With twice the timbre, Tristram bellowed, “I wanna live!”

Kaya clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tight. They were livid when she opened them again. “Okay,” she hissed. “Stop screaming. I’ll cut you down.”

“You will?” screamed Tristram.

“Yes!” screamed Kaya. She clapped both hands over her mouth and peered around. Through the lattice of her fingers, she asked more softly, “Do you still have your knife?”

“My knife?”

“Yeah. The one with the creepy little effigy of me hanging from it.” Kaya shivered at the recollection.

Tristram patted his pockets. He let his arms fall above his head and he craned his neck to look down at the ground below him. “I think I dropped it.”

“Where?”

Tristram peered at the blood speckled leaves below him. He pointed. “That might be it.”

Kaya began to move toward where he was pointing. She chose her footing carefully and scanned the foliage for any other trickery.

“Wait, no,” said Tristram. “That’s just a rock.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Kaya grit her teeth.

“That might be it.”

“Where?”

“Oh, that’s just a drop of blood.”

Kaya grit her teeth harder.

“There it is!” exclaimed Tristram.

“Where!?”

“Um. Oh, shoot. Sorry. That’s just another rock.”

“You’re not helping at all!”

“I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“That’s no excuse for being an idiot.”

Above her, Tristram stirred. He raised a hand to his brow like a visor even though the sun was above his feet. “Hey, I think I see it.”

“I’m not listening to you anymore.”

“I’m serious,” said Tristram. “That’s definitely it. I’d bet my life on it.”

Kaya sighed. “Where?”

“Behind you, in the hand of that giant two-headed man leering at you from the shadow of the trees.”

Kaya went white as chalk. Slowly, she turned first her head, then her body until she was facing the opposite direction. There, tall enough to peer through the canopy of the yew trees, was a giant two-headed man, dressed in rags, smiling a caveman smile, a knobby club resting on his left shoulder. Between his finger and his thumb of his other hand, like a grain of rice, he held Tristram’s pocketknife.

Kaya screamed, took two steps back and stepped into another snare. With a snap she was pulled foot first to a height of fifteen feet, her aquamarine hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet.

“I think you stepped in something,” said Tristram.

Wild-eyed, Kaya looked from him to the treeline. The two-headed giant was ducking out of the woods and making straight for them. Out in the open, she could see he had a wicker cage strapped to his back. She could guess where she’d end up if she didn’t do something fast.

“The knife!” she gasped, turning on Tristram, reaching out to grab the blade stuck in his shoulder. She brushed its handle with the tip of her middle finger, causing Tristram to cry out and squirm like a caterpillar in a hot frying pan.

“What the hell are you doing?” he wheezed.

“Please! The knife!”

“Oh, sure. Let me just manoeuvre myself for your benefit after you attempted to murder me.” Tristram laughed hard, then grimaced. “Ouch. That hurt.”

Kaya looked back at the giant. He was about halfway to them. His heads were grinning in such a way that it seemed they shared one smile between them. Kaya whimpered. “Tristram, please. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stabbed you. It was wrong.”

Tristram scoffed. “You’re damn right it was.”

“Remember what you said?”

“No.”

“You said you had a purpose.” Kaya sniffled. A single tear rolled up her forehead and was absorbed by her hair. “You said you’d serve me.” She sobbed. “You said you were a fan of mine.”

Tristram hung lifelessly. He blinked like he had something in both his eyes.

“Don’t you remember?”

Without a word, Tristram reached out and with his fingers just managed to touch the trunk of the tree from which he hung. He pushed off and his body swung a few inches toward Kaya. “Take it,” he growled through his clenched jaw.

Kaya rubbed her forearm across her eyes. She reached out and grasped the handle of the blade. It slid out of Tristram’s shoulder as his momentum swung him back toward the trunk of the tree. For a moment, the two of them looked into each other’s eyes. Tristram smiled through the pain, his face drawn, glowing with the melancholy of martyrdom. Kaya smiled back. But it wasn’t exactly gratitude that exuded from her features.

“Thanks, sucker.” She did an upside-down crunch and cut the braided rope. As she fell, she was enveloped by a victorious and not a little insane-sounding fit of giggles, which was abruptly cut off when she fell straight into the mitt of the two-headed giant, who had caught her like a pop fly.

“Into the cage, you go,” said the left head, tossing her over his shoulder like a no-look three-pointer. Her body somehow made a ‘swish’ sound as she fell into the wicker cage.

“Say, Crake,” said the right head.

“Yes, Blake?” said the left.

“For the stew, we don’t need two of them, do we?”

Crake thought for a second. “You know what? I think you’re right. If memory serves, the recipe only calls for the bone marrow of one human. The rest of the broth is mostly salt and water.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Blake. He turned to look at Tristram. “Today’s your lucky day, little man.” He smiled, showing off immaculately white rows of soup-bowl-sized teeth.

“I got this,” said Crake, raising their right hand and plucking Tristram out of the snare by his foot. He set him gently on the ground where he swayed left and right as all the blood that had pooled in his head rushed to his extremities.

“Thanks,” said Tristram, his lips numb.

“Don’t mention it, little man,” said Crake. He got down on one knee and held out his hand, which was about the size of a barn door. In its palm was Tristram’s toy-like knife. “Want this back?”

“Sure.” Tristram had to lean over the giant’s palm to reach his knife. He grabbed it and pushed himself off and stood as though he were a fence post hammered into the ground. “Thanks.”

Crake and Blake shared a smile as they stood up. “Polite little bugger, ain’t he?” said Blake.

“Sure is,” said Crake.

“I’m Canadian,” blurted Tristram.

Crake and Blake shared a concerned look with one another. They shrugged their shoulders. “Sorry to hear that,” said Blake.

“Must be hard,” consoled Crake.

An awkward silence settled between them. At last, the heads of the giant said, “Welp,” in unison.

“Dinner’s not going to cook itself,” said Crake.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Blake. He looked down at Tristram and smiled. “Take care of yourself, little man.”

“I’ll try,” said Tristram, shaking at the knees from shock.

“And I’m sure there’s a cure for being Canadian,” said Crake.

“I hope so,” said Tristram.

Crake and Blake nodded as one, then turned away and lumbered off.

The last thing Tristram saw was Kaya clinging to the wicker bars of her cage, staring at him like a lobster in a pot.