Goop's Game

        This is a dangerous game, why do we play it? Goop questioned the pitted stone walls of the goblin spire. The walls, for all their love, remained mute. Goop answered her own question. Because Mother gives us no choice. Teeth as jagged and pitted as the spire ground against each other in a desperate attempt to quell her rage. Her one good hand flexed against the rock floor of her small nest; stone chipped and gave way under Goop’s intense grip. Unlike her teeth, her nails were strong, a fang snapped. Goop reached for it and found her nails buried in her most precious friend. Goop wept for the stone. 

     The day of her birth she decided never to weep for herself. Spat out by the malicious hag, she lay on the earthen floor covered in birth fluid and her mother's blood. Bigger than most goblin infants, she tore her mother on the way out, and war was declared. 

      “Goop” the name delivered like a curse. Yet the bulbous head of the newborn swiveled to meet the voice and revealed her deformity. Mother shrieked at the sight of Goop’s left arm, a stubby tendril ending in a cruel mockery of a clawed hand. Goop was introduced to a foot, the kick sent her sliding across the stone, a smear of thick blood marked her passage. 

      Father roared, and for a moment Goop knew what it was to be loved and protected. Mother’s hand was a blur of hatred as it cut through the air and Father’s throat. The stone floor accepted the offering of Father's blood. Goop wept. She liked Father, for the second she knew him. The cave accepted her tears too. 

       Mother stood; bigger than anything Goop had ever seen. Her shadow fell over the weeping infant and Goop convulsed in fear. She was a fast learner.  

        “You are my curse, so I will be yours.” Mother hissed. She knew the other Mothers would look at Goop and see a reflection of weakness. Among their kind, weakness was an invitation for challenge.  Mother could not afford to be challenged.

     “We will play a game, little Goop,” Mother said almost matronly. “If I see you again I will kill you. So hide little Goop, hide and I will find you, and end your existence for both our sakes.” 

     The shadow vanished as Mother left the birthing room, her mates body cooling in a pool of his own blood. Could the hag know that Goop understood her words, that from birth Goop had the gift of true speech and her threat did not fall upon deaf ears. Goop crawled to her father's corpse, and claimed the small knife from his belt. Ran the knife along the ribs of her tendril, the obsidian edge split her thick hide with ease, Goop wiped away her tears with her stumpy hand. 

      We will play, but I will not lose. She dipped the knife into the blood pooling around her. Licking the blade clean Goop smiled for the first time in her short life.  She would need strength, sustenance; Mother like it or not provided her first meal. 

      Game on.