Meeting someone new

Oh god no… he steps forward, grabs me by the shoulders, and begins to shake me while yelling gibberish at me. I close my eyes tight and wait for some form of pain… but it doesn’t come. Instead he lets go and starts eating some food, starting with the smelly bad meat. I slump down, relieved to not be hurt… and confused. His babbling, it almost sounded… happy? Like he was congratulating me. Or praising me. He seemed happy I opened the door they clearly hadn’t been able to figure out, and found this food stash… fucking aye, these monsters have no understanding of social dynamics. He must have difficulty understanding the difference between being owned by the tribe as a prisoner, and just being part of the tribe.

I… might actually be able to escape. I just need to earn enough trust to be let outside. Then I can make a run for it. After I eat enough food to actually be able to run anywhere… okay. It’s a plan. I escape and… return to dumpster diving for food. Assuming I can make it back to civilization without being eaten by wolves or something else.

I shake my head. It’s okay, I don’t need a plan for everything just yet. Escape first, then worry about the rest. Maybe being a lab rat for the government wouldn’t be so bad compared to… this. Yeah, I’ll turn myself in and just hope someone takes pity on me. Anything has to be better than staying here. I tentatively start to eat more food, while keeping an eye on the leader.

He doesn’t seem to care if I eat. Once he gets his fill, he apparently taps into some kind of leaders instinct to share the wealth. He leaves with a full stomach, and shortly after the room is filled with other goblins tearing the room apart, emptying it of every scrap of food. I grab one more apple before escaping from the crowd.

Outside I see the leader assessing the kitchen, his eyes drawn to the locked freezer. He looks at me and grunts, pointing at the door. Oh shit. The doors and handles look very similar, except for the lock. He must think I can open that one too. My legs begin to shake as I desperately think of how to explain that I can’t open that one. “Um, I’m thorry… I can’t.” I know my words mean nothing to him, so I shake my head and point to the lock, hoping he realizes they are different.

He huffs and shoves me into the door. Not overly hard, but with my legs already shaking with fear I collapse in a heap when I run into it, curling up for defense in case he is ready to beat me. While I feel a lot more energy in me now that I’ve eaten, I still need time to digest… and honestly I doubt I could fight him even if I wasn’t partially starved. My old body could have punted him across the room, but that’s no help to me now.

There is a moment of tense silence. I peek one eye open to see him looking at me. It’s hard to tell, but he seems to be thinking. Finally he turns away from me and leaves. I realize if I find the key to this door, I better show him it was needed to open it. Opening it without his understanding might make him beat me for lying to him about not being able to open it… assuming he understood that’s what I was telling him.

I go back to the lobby. It’s emptier now with many of them raiding the kitchen anew. But I still can’t just walk out the door. I walk back to the stairway, with the leader keeping his eyes on me from his place by the throne, and head back up. My body is still pained walking up the stairs, but I have enough energy now to make it up and open the doors a little easier. Instead of going back to the room where I was first taken, I explore the other rooms. Unfortunately I don’t find much of interest or use, except a new set of clothes. I don’t know how I’ve been able to survive in just my hoodie this whole time, perhaps my new body is more resistant to cold. Regardless, I happily strip and wipe my body as clean as I can before donning a red dress that was probably meant to be skimpy but covered me near to my feet, and a new black sweater without a hood, and a pair of children’s shoes and socks… I try not to think too hard about the previous guests of this hotels fate. The child shoes matching clothes were probably stolen or destroyed by the goblins.

It’s a small thing, but new clothes make me feel a thousand times better. I even have layers! I head back out and realize there is only one door I haven’t been into yet. A locked one. Maybe it’s the euphoria of having new clothes, or the despair of how fucked I am regardless of what I wear, but I knock on the door and jokingly call out. “Room thervithe!” Of course no one could be still inside, it was probably empty when the goblins came and killed everyone…

“Who’s there?! Is it safe to come out?!” Oh you’ve got to be shitting me. I stare at the door, speechless. How?! How could someone survive in a room for… I don’t actually know how long it’s been since the goblins moved in but it seems like a few days at least. The voice is a woman’s, maybe middle aged?

“I’m… my name ith Jameth. The blue goblin thingth are thtill here, but the hallway ith clear now. Pleathe let me in. I don’t want to be hurt by them again!”

“Fine,” the door unlocks and opens and I start to walk in.

“Thank y…” I see the lady in a simple suit open the door, and immediately panic and kick me in the chest. She slams the door again.

“You fucking monsters can talk now?! Fuck off!” I can’t breathe, her kick pushed all the air from my lungs. It hurts. I try to breathe more but even shallow breaths hurt. I think she might have broken a rib or two, but that might just be because I’m not used to feeling this kind of pain. I’ll have to wait until later to discover if the pain is from more serious damage.

I just sit and wait for the pain to go away. Unfortunately the upper floors are not completely devoid of other goblins, and one pokes his head out of a nearby room to see what the noise is about. He investigates my curled up whimpering body, and then looks at the door to the woman’s room. He sniffs around it before running off to the stairs. Oh please no. I can’t really move much, let alone talk. I have to warn her. The fridge was one thing, its multiple layers and steel out coating would have laughed at any attempt of the goblins to get inside. Her room’s door? She’s been lucky they haven’t brought any hatchets or knives to bear. If they know she’s in there now… I try to get my lungs to work again. I need to warn her. Or, more selfishly, at least leave so I don’t have to watch.

I just manage to get to my knees when over a dozen goblins come running up the stairs, with several more trailing after the main body of them. Of course the leader is there. They see me desperately gasping and clutching my chest on the floor, while one of them babbles and points at the door. They begin to savagely hack and slam at the door. I’m not sure if they have some sense of protectiveness over me as their prisoner, or if they just want to eliminate a threat in their territory. Either way, I silently apologize to the woman. I didn’t mean for this to happen.

I can’t leave entirely with my chest in so much pain, but I manage to crawl to a nearby room. I can still hear them slamming and screaming as they work on destroying the door, so I grab a torn up blanket and a pillow and go into the closet. The door is miraculously still attached, so I close it behind me and curl up on the floor with the bedding. I hide my head under the blanket and desperately try to muffle the noise.

Don’t think about the smashing, the breaking, the sudden screams. The sudden lack of screams. This is just a nightmare, I’ll wake up back in my room with my girlfriend and my parents still alive and the world not falling apart and no idea what flavor dumpster grease adds to food or what it feels like to get a second person killed. I cry for what seems like the millionth time, not just for the woman whose name I don’t even know, but now also for the man who just wanted his dumpster left alone. I hadn’t realized I felt guilty for his **** until just now. Yeah, both of them were being jerks to me, but I didn’t want them dead. I just want to be left alone. I just want to be safe.

I cry myself into an uneasy sleep. When I finally wake up, I feel much more filled with energy as the food has had time to digest. In every other way I feel crappier. My chest still hurts, although now it’s at least a dull pain as long as I don’t breath in too deeply. My nether region is still chafed and sensitive. And I’ve internalized the idea that my existence brings **** to those around me.

I shakily make my way out of my temporary refuge, keeping the blanket with me for emotional support more than anything else. Do I really want to know? No, but I need to know. I slowly take step after step towards the now destroyed door. I take a deep breath, and wince when it goes just a bit too deep and hurts my chest. I exhale, and look inside.

And immediately collapse to my knees and shuffle away. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I was hoping there sexual appetite extended to humans, and she might be hurt but alive. The spine with half the ribs still attached in a pile of viscera and blood leave no doubt as to her fate. I hold in the need to throw up. I can’t afford to waste food in this situation, no matter what else is happening. I compose myself, and go inside. If anyone had a working phone, this lady might. All the other rooms either didn’t have guests electronics, or they were smashed or useless.

I search and am quickly disappointed to find her phone smashed to bits, probably an early casualty of the struggle. I almost throw up again when I notice her smashed and partially skinned skull in the corner. I keep looking, and am as delighted as I can be when I find a laptop under the bed. I turn it on and am even more happy to see it still has battery, if not much. And then I cry again as I remember the power is out so there is no internet. I close the laptop and wipe tears away as I consider the phone again… maybe it’s not as bad as it looks? I try to turn it on, and it works… the screen is obliterated and hardly comprehensible, but the power is there. The screen is too smashed to use the pass code even if I knew it, but it’s the kind that has a finger print unlock.

I take a look around as part of a macabre scavenger hunt, looking for her fingers or hand. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything. They all are probably inside a goblins stomach. I… I just can’t keep doing this. I keep trying, and at best the world gives me just enough to taunt me with how little it all matters. Parents dead, lost your girlfriend? At least you still have some savings and a car. Actually, no. You can’t use your car anymore and you lose your bank card and identity, and the whole world wants you dead… but hey, at least you have a hovel under some trees and a dumpster! Actually scratch that, you don’t have that either. Or that, or that. The universe just keeps taking things away, leaving just enough that it has something else to take away a bit later.

I let the useless phone drop from my hands. I leave the room, making sure not to leave my new security blanket. I don’t pay attention to which room I go into, I just need it not to have a corpse in it. I still feel full, and this day sucks. This world sucks. I’m going to bed. Since I somehow managed to be undisturbed in the closet, I make sure this room has a closet door and drag some more bedding inside. I then close the door and get comfortable. Tomorrow I find a way to leave. I have to.