Week 4 Storytelling: The Dead Should Be Gagged

Mahal sighed as he nearly tripped again in the stupid graveyard. Seriously, did no one clean? Whatever happened to respect for the dead? His master could have at least sent him to a properly tended graveyard to grab a hanging corpse, but noooo, he had to go to the weed-infested, untended, creepy-as-all-get-out graveyard to grab a hanging corpse.

“One day,” Mahal muttered to himself as he dragged the large man down from a too-thin looking branch, “I’ll be the master, and then I can send him out to grab random hanging corpses for some random stupid purpose in the middle of the night.”

“That does sound like a conundrum,” the corpse told him, and Mahal couldn’t help the scream. The catching his foot on another root and tripping, now, wasn’t his fault. The apparently animate corpse immediately sprang to it’s feet and tried to run, but Mahal managed to snatch it by the ankles.

“Oh no you don’t,” Mahal growled out. He got to his knees and dragged the protesting dead-but-not-dead thing towards him. “I can’t go to bed if I don’t bring you back, and I’m running on little enough sleep as is.”

“But there are rules to these things!” the corpse protested. “You must answer the Goblin Riddle!”

“Great,” Mahal groaned as he stood and hauled the dead weight onto his shoulders again. “Tell it while we walk.”

And the thing did, prattling on about pretty ladies who exploded heads, or had three suitors who died, something like that - he wasn’t listening. He was trying not to trip again as he exited the graveyard and started out upon the long road home. Honestly, he couldn’t wait until he learned enough to gain his master’s skill, and then it would be goodbye master, hello resurrected master slave. Then Mahal could send him out to -

“Wait,” Mahal stated as he stopped walking in the middle of the road. “What did you say?”

The goblin gave a great huff before repeating, “Whose wife should she be?”

“But she’s dead!” Mahal couldn’t help but to protest. “All he did was sprinkle some water on her! That isn’t enough to raise the dead - you’ve got to have the right incantation, and phase of the moon and time of day, not to mention the -”

“Just answer the question!” the goblin snapped.

Mahal dropped the stupid thing, and stepped on it before it could run. “It’s impossible - she’s dead, she’s nobody’s wife.”

“Wrong!” The corpse cried. “But how about another - ”

“I’m done,” Mahal stated, taking off his head band and leaning down to gag the stupid thing. “No more stories. We go home, and then I get to sleep.”

Ignoring the muffled protests of the stupid goblin, Mahal took the corpse on his shoulders again and headed home. Just five more years of this indentured servitude and then he’d have learned enough from his master to become a necromancer himself. Then he could send his own apprentices off after goblin corpses in the dark for… whatever his master wanted it for, he didn’t know. Probably another vain beauty treatment. As long as Mahal could sleep through it, he didn’t care.

(Jareth the Goblin King)

_________________________________________________________________

Notes: So I did Twenty-Two Goblins as my reading this time, and the first story just really popped out at me. How did some words and holy water work necromancy? In most stories it's a bit more complex than that. So I immediately thought of this little thing and was highly amused. I also decided Mahal would have the smarts to just gag the stupid thing so he wouldn't have to go through re-fetching the corpse 22 times. Seriously, the honor in Indian tales is just ridiculous sometimes.

Bib: Twenty-Two Goblins translated by Arthur W. Ryder (1917). Web Source.

Image: David Bowie as Jareth in the wonderful 1986 movie Labyrinth. Web source.