The Monsters Chapter 5
By Serena Elisa
Ozzie’s Fort - 600 A.D.
“You are too restless,” Gorgl was saying, “Gloomy. What’s wrong?”
Flea shrugged. They were walking on the ramparts of Ozzie’s fort. Flea often stopped to look up to the sky or down to the crowd of human slaves and Mystic soldiers in the courtyard.
“Nothing someone like you could understand,” he replied.
Gorgl showed his silly smile.
“I know what you need,” he said, “A girl.”
He glanced sideways at his master.
“Or whatever you’d like.”
"How impertinent this Hench is," Flea thought, "This is my fault, I should treat servants the way Slash does."
Gorgl had been Flea’s bodyguard for so long that he had begun feeling allowed to make personal remarks to the boss.
“Gorgl,” the Magician answered calmly “have you ever heard of me loving a boy?”
“I’ve never heard of you loving a girl either, sir.”
Flea sighed.
“I don’t tell you everything, you know. I’ve never brought any of my girlfriends here...but, in my native village...”
“Yeah, heard about it. Place filled with those strange humanoid Mystics...”
“...like me.”
“Yes, but...no need to go so far. If you look around...”
Gorgl licked his green lips.
“There’s plenty of stuff, sir. You have just to choose and...”
“Stuff? What are you talking about?”
“You know, females! Look at her!”
He was pointing to a human slave on a stair a few feet below them. When the woman raised her head, the Hench waved a hand and she answered brightly.
She was enormously fat, with vulgar features, and looked dirty, heavily sweating.
“She’s Yulanna, my girlfriend,” Gorgl said, with pride.
Flea stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you joking or what?” he asked later.
“Why?”
“She is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Yulanna was coming up the stairs and had to gather her vest, showing parts of her legs. Flea saw what seemed like two lumps of knotty fat streaked with blue turgid veins. A sickening spectacle.
“Look, sir, I’m a Hench and she looks a bit like a Hench female, so I like her, right? I can’t stand those humans so skinny...with only two breasts...”
“She too has only two breasts!”
“Yeah, but they look like more. And she likes me! Er…you are the weird one, sir!”
Flea took a deep breath. He spoke coldly.
“Yes. I’m weird, all right. If loving beauty is weird...if washing myself and caring for my appearance is weird...Yes, I’m weird. So? I remind you that I’m one of the bosses around here, and the most powerful magician of the century...now that Magus has gone. You should show more respect.”
“Sorry, sir. But you were rude about Yulanna.”
“Right. I’m sorry too. Let’s forget the whole business...please don’t mention that Yulanna again, I won’t hear anything about her or any other girlfriend of yours.”
The crestfallen Gorgl nodded.
“Yessir.”
“Have you kept an eye on that human girl, the one that used to follow me around?” the Magician asked sternly.
“Yessir.”
“And what did you find out?”
“She hardly speaks with her workmates at all. I don’t think...” Gorgl hesitated, noticing Flea’s arched eyebrow at the word “think” when referred to the Hench, “It doesn’t seem like there is a conspiration against you, sir. And the girl looks quite harmless...but you never know. She’s strange, that’s for sure.”
Flea smiled, nodding.
“I have an idea about what could have made her react so vehemently seeing me at the banquet...and then hanging around without any apparent reason. So, Gorgl...what are you laughing at, you fool?”
“Heh heh heh...you think...she has a crush on you or something...don’t you?”
“Would this be so unbelievable?” Flea asked in icy cold tones, “I consider myself quite attractive.”
Gorgl fell silent.
Flea resumed his speech after a long pause.
“Well, I don’t know what her problem is, but...I will tell you something now and I don’t want you to reach the wrong conclusion.”
He gently cleared his throat.
“Can you imagine how much damage those Imps inflict everyday on my precious objects and clothes in the attempt to clean up? Well, I have thought that a human servant might work better. What do you say?”
Gorgl didn’t let himself grin.
“Really a good idea, sir.”
He caught himself just before saying something about Yulanna’s sisters.
***
Truce Village - 990 A.D.
"Lucca! Lucca, help me! The password!"
“I don’t know it!”
Lucca, the adult one, was running like she had never done before. Entering a red gate she had found herself back in time, to that horrible day in which her mother, Lara, had been crippled, her legs crushed by one of her husband’s strange machines. Lucca had been just a child at that time, completely ignorant about mechanics and therefore impotent to help her mother.
But now she could change everything. She knew how to stop the machine. She had only to hurry up...Just some seconds left. She reached the controls, inserted the first two letters of the password...the young Lucca was crying...
The noise stopped. The machine remained still. Lara disengaged her gown from where it had been stuck and began weeping, holding her daughter close.
“Oh, Lucca, Lucca...!”
“Mum!”
The grown-up Lucca returned unnoticed into her room, sat down for a while to retrieve her breath and then jumped into the gate again, emerging in her own time of ten years after.
Her companions were sleeping; none had seen her leave except Robo, who welcomed her back. But she was in a hurry.
“My mother! I must see her! I must go home! Tell them...” she murmured and ran away.