Feeling a distant pang of confusion nestle itself alongside the light breeze that was wafting through his chest, Blake, a young farmhand, held aloft the rather loudly humming shortsword much in the same way a person might wield a wet rat.
It was a blade of beautiful simplicity, well balanced and clearly made by master’s hand. Its clean edge caught the light and radiated with resplendance, as the steel was long ago polished into a near luminous sheen, a sheen that Blake was having some trouble finding his reflection in.
‘Oh, I thought that ghosts weren’t supposed to be tangible. Sort of ruins the whole apparitional side of things then doesn’t it?’ spoke a disembodied skull, who had been resigned to life as a shelf ornament.
Jumping in fright, and halfway falling through the adjacent wall, Blake looked across the room and searched for the voice, ‘Wa-, sorry, I mean who said that…I have a sword.’
‘I can see. Up here, in between the ever broiling gobblet and the tome of unspoken horrors–which I’ve read by the way, they’re all quite mentionable. Blood this and sacrifice that, its all quite tawdry really.’ the skull paused his rambling for just long enough to interrupt the confused looking ghost.
‘Wel–’
‘Now, ghost! What is thine reasoning for entering the Dreadlords’s lair? Riches? Fame? Wrong address? Speak or I shall summon magics so vile that you shall be but an ember blown in the lofted wind toward the ocean; you shall be a gnat, squished under the heel of a marching army; fire shall rain down from the very heavens and smite at thoust every living moment, YOU SHALL KNOW MY WRATH MORTAL! *cough* Sorry I got a bit carried away there.’
Taken back by the energetic performance of the skull, Blake allowed himself a moment of clarity and remembered that he had seconds ago partly fallen through a wall. Looking down to his feet, he noted that he was also currently standing ankle deep in the floorboards–potentially adding two brown shoes to the decor of the ceiling below him.
Many ghosts, across the ever elongating puddle of existence, have come to accept their spectral malady with a sweeping variety of emotions, and it speaks to the character of young Blake the farmhand that upon realising he was in fact dead, not only did he take it within his stride, but rather accepting it with a perplexed gusto.
‘Am I dead?’ said Blake
‘Yes, quite so.’ replied the skull, still resting on the shelf and obviously lying about any magical power he possesed.
‘What dead, dead? I remember being alive when I entered the room.’
‘Well judging by the scattered ash next to the plynth, the sword must have considered you to be unworthy and vapourised you.’
‘Oh’, said Blake looking at the shortsword he now held in his right hand, ‘why can I hold it now?’
The skull paused for a moment in thought before he replied–as it was quite hard to appear pensive without a face and you had to really sell the emotion, ‘Well it clearly has changed its mind, magical weapons are oftentimes capricious.’
‘Oh, well righto; how do I look…as a ghost?’
‘Haunting, I guess…the sword does take a bit away from the illusion though, what with it being corporeal and all. Hmm, I don’t think you’ll be able to carry it through any walls and if you ask me there’s nothing spooky about a ghost awkwardly stammering knock knock before it enters a room’, the skull commented as his yellow teeth clattered in a weird clip when he attempted to make kn’ sounds, ‘regardless, you can’t go around with that blade stabbing people willy nilly, it was forged to smite only the most fowl of evils that dwell within these Direwastes; frankly boggling as to why the Dreadlord decides to keep it unguarded in an unlocked room just by his front door, but hey no one listens to a talking skull, it’s not like the only thing I can do is think.’
Letting the skull vent for a moment Blake looked across the tastefully decorated room. In his short time adventuring, he had noticed that most evil beings had a certain flare for interior design. Even the cobwebs in this room seemed aligned to converge on some artwork or goulish accoutrement.
Noticing the skull had finished talking, Blake saw a fleeting opportunity to ask another question. ‘What does this Dreadlord want then?’
‘To destroy the world.’
‘What!? To what end?
‘I don’t know, the notoriety I suppose, Dreadlords do that.’
‘But everyone will be dead!’
‘They’ll get over it eventually, I certainly did’, the silence of an awkward moment overtook the room, as they both came to the same realisation that the skull was lying to himself, ‘look, a teenage girl once destroyed reality with just a coin and by mispronouncing a demonic cake recipe; these things just kind of work themselves out.’
‘Why do the gods not intervene then? Surely such evil should not exist?’
‘Bah! Gods, they’re a useless pack of non thinkers, I could do half of their work before breakfast.’
Despite not yet realising he had failed to ascend into the afterlife, and in being raised to be an honest lad, Blake took mild offence to this comment, ‘Well what would you do if you were a god then?’
‘Become tyrannical I suppose, when you’re a talking skull it’s hard not to let things like that get to your head…’
[—]
The magic sword was tired.
Tired of sitting on a plinth, tired of radiating an everburning holy light, maybe even just tired of being a sword. Everything in life sometimes dreams of something more, they dream of daring adventure in far off cloud kingdoms; they dream of grass, greener grass of fields some way past the next paddock.
Amongst all this, things sometimes just suffer from ichy feet. And so, as the weary handle of Fiendhallow was lifted by the ghost of a farmhand it just vapourised, the sword thought to itself, Yeah, why not? You never go out anymore, have some fun for once.
J.McCray 2020
Sunday Short Stories 