5: Churpo Beebo…Jenny Eeka Wonka (Chapter Five…Jenny Crazy Eyes)
Dulp stood with Skippy before the menacing presence of the Chief.
The old gob wanted something from them, something dangerous, no doubt, but after being mauled and molested in the South Quarter, Dulp no longer cared what the Chief’s task was.
Dulp had already been through Heckens for this quarter of the year, so his quota for abject suffering was already filled. The Great Gob would have to come up with something especially nasty to shake him, and everyone knew that the Great Gob was the perfect gob, lazy to the point of stupidity, so coming up with anything more than what Lyga had done to him was pretty much out of the cosmic picture.
“Well?” asked Dulp. “What are we doing today?”
The Chief glared at him in his usual glaring manner before replying in his usual gruff tone.
“Tonight’s a raid night,” grunted the old gob.
“Oooof course,” sighed Dulp with a roll of his eyes. “Why not?”
“We’re low on supplies, pus-bucket!” growled the Chief. “You want me to do it?”
“Oh, would you?” asked Dulp, though he was not being facetious.
“Get your green butt down to the highway!” yelled the Chief. “Take Skippy with you. I’m sending some others with you for hauling stuff, but I want one of those carriages nicked as quick as a wick. Got it?”
“Yep,” frowned Dulp. “Got it.”
“Good,” growled the Chief. “And don’t give me that look, you butt sore! Go grab the stuff out of supplies and meet the others here in the square.”
The old gob turned to Skippy and nodded once.
“This should be old hat for you,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” nodded Skippy. “Won’t be a problem. Everything’s ready…err…We’ll get everything ready.”
“Right,” said the Chief in a strange, knowing tone. “How much do you think we’ll…haul…I wonder?”
“Quite a haul,” grinned Skippy. “You’ll be sitting pretty for a while.”
The Chief’s eyes narrowed and darted back and forth for a moment.
“Excellent,” he said, and Dulp could swear the old gob gave a nasty grin for a split second. “Let’s get moving, then.”
Dulp found their little side conversation extremely interesting, if only because of Skippy’s optimism. Truthfully, they’d be lucky to score a couple of old rugs off of one of the carriages on the highway. They’d nick a lot more in town than waiting for someone out on the road, but…whatever.
“Ugh…Come on, Skippy,” urged Dulp. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Sure thing,” smiled Skippy.
It was weird how the ugly little gob was always so positive and happy, even about going on something as dangerous as a night raid. Of course, Skippy had just traipsed right on over to the South Quarter, so he was about as hardcore as a gob gets, but still…his optimism was annoying at times, you know?
Dulp shook his head and took to walking toward the East Quarter. They were going to have to grab some stuff out of supplies, sacks for hauling goods and disguises to hide their gobness and such. They were going to need these items just to pull off a simple heist.
Skippy’s Field Notes #23:
Field raids for the gobs of Pingo are not the bloody, savage raids that other goblin villages may instigate, but like raccoons, the gobs of Pingo are often seen as unwanted pests that knock over your trash and damage your front door at night looking for a way in. Hence, this is why they use disguises to look like typical human bandits, ugly human bandits, true, but only slightly uglier than the normal thieving human scum that lurk along the highway looking to jump hapless travelers for their goods.
The main goal of the raid, as I understand it, anyway, is to steal as much as possible without letting the humans know it was the gobs of Pingo that did it. This, of course, is to keep the village from being raided and burned down in retaliation.
Dulp tells me he’s quite adept at standing on another gob’s shoulders while wearing a heavy cloak. I have convinced him, however, to switch places with me for this run. He’ll hold me up while I stand on his shoulders, a position he refers to as “the top.” He says I’m more of a “bottom,” but he’ll be the “bottom” for this special occasion, though he’ll retain most of the control, making him, as he puts it, a “power bottom.”
Obviously, I can’t join an actual thieving session. That would violate the non-interference policy of the Academy. However, I can bend the rules as much as I want. After all, they’re not physically here to monitor me…I mean, it’s not that they have a conscience, mind you. This is the Academy we’re talking about. They just don’t want to look bad.
However, I’m not going to screw up the gobs’ raid, and I will be “participating.” This is okay, though, because I have a plan.
S.P.W.
They walked across the village to the East Quarter and entered the supplies hutch without incident. No one came in here anyway, not unless they had to, so he and Skippy could laze around all they wanted to until it was time to do some actual work.
Dulp opened the door to the supplies hutch and ushered in Skippy.
“This is our supplies hutch, though there isn’t a whole lot to see,” he said. “We just have the routine stuff you need to do routine stuff, though doing stuff doesn’t necessarily mean it turns out…uhhh…routine. Anyway, here’s the supplies hutch.”
He turned with both arms out, palms up, to show Skippy in, but he was given a severe start due to an unwanted guest.
Dulp turned and gave a loud, high-pitched shriek at the sight of Jenny Crazy Eyes. The terrifying bogo was standing in the middle of the room, though he could swear she hadn’t been there a second ago.
She was wearing her dark witch’s dress, complete with a raven’s-skull necklace and those stupid wooden shoes she always wore. She had her patented, gnarled, oakwood staff in her right hand, and she pointed that staff, the thing topped by a groundhog skull, straight at Dulp’s face.
Dulp immediately hid behind Skippy. The ugly little gob owed him at least that much.
“I have come with a warning…” said the bogo in a sibilant hiss.
Dulp swallowed hard. It wasn’t just Jenny’s overall look that terrified him, no. It was her eyes, obviously, those dark eyes with a reddish tint that stared straight into your soul and made you feel like you were going straight to Heckens. Those eyes truly scared him.
Skippy’s Field Notes #24:
Jenny Crazy Eyes is possibly one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever laid eyes upon. She has this commanding presence that makes you want to do whatever she demands, and I must say, she is very shapely under that dress, as it shows off her cleavage quite nicely, and whenever she bends over, one can see the soft roundness of her bottom, quite heart-shaped, I might add, though I, being a gentleman, never look upon such things in earnest.
She has grass-green skin in color, but it sparkles with a sheen that I can’t quite identify, and this accents the visible skin of her bosom cleavage. Though it leaves one to imagine such a glisten along the velvet curves of her bottom, only a cad would further imagine gently squeezing either one of these private, succulent areas.
Her eyes are the color of a moonless sky, though you can clearly see her pupils during daylight, and those eyes contain a reddish tint along the outer borders of the irises, something Dulp tells me is a rather rare trait in bogos, as it supposedly allows one to “see into the fires of Heckens.” I, as a scholar and somewhat of an artist, believe her eyes match quite nicely with her overall figure, highlighting the magnetic slopes of her bosom and bottom, though such a thought has never crossed my mind.
Incidentally, I have drawn fifteen sketches of Jenny since our first encounter in the South Quarter, though only ten of those are nudes, those nudes drawn in different ways for posterity’s sake, as I needed to get her profile from every angle, though such drawings are only guesswork due to the fact that I haven’t actually seen her in the nude.
I will have to find a way to get her to pose for an artistic nude so that I can have a fully accurate portrait of her, though such a task may prove quite difficult. I never had much luck with that at the college, though I only asked the sorority sisters twelve times apiece if they would like to pose for such.
However, I think in order to complete my work of her, I will have to get more accurately drawn close ups of her bosom and bottom, preferably while she’s naked.
S.P.W.
“Jenny Crazy Eyes!” squeaked Dulp. “Why are you here!”
“Silence!” commanded Jenny.
Her voice turned manly deep and resounded around the hutch, the standard imposing magical effect that made those of the arcane devil arts even more terrifying than they should have been.
Dulp knew when to keep his lips shut, so he zipped his tight. After all, he had Skippy to hide behind, so if anyone was going to get turned into a toad, it wasn’t going to be him, no sirree.
He laid his hands upon Skippy’s shoulders, fully expecting the ugly little gob to be quaking in his boots, but there was only the slight sensation of tense excitement in Skippy, a trembling that suggested something else, though Dulp couldn’t figure what that could possibly be.
“It’s you!” breathed Skippy, but he did not sound scared. “I’ve been meaning to see you again!”
The strange tone of Skippy’s voice, that tone one of fascination along with something else, something Dulp could not identify, coupled with Skippy’s utter lack of fear, actually confused the witch standing before them.
“What?” asked Jenny in her normal, non-magical, non-terrifying voice, the tone of that voice holding a tinge of confusion.
She stopped pointing her staff at them and held it upright in her right hand as she cocked her head slightly to her own right and blinked twice at Skippy.
“I…I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” stammered Skippy. “I have some…some errr…some sketches I made of you…Umm…Let me see…”
He quickly shimmied out of his backpack, untied the strings keeping it closed, and held the sackcloth pack in his left hand as he pulled forth his sketchbook. He then dropped his pack to the dirt floor of the hutch without a second thought, stepping forward to invade Jenny’s space, sidling in next to her to show her his strange book.
“I drew these after we first met,” he breathed out in audible excitement. “I didn’t know who you were at the time, but now that I do, I was wondering if you would pose for me for some more pictures…umm…Let me show you what I have so far…”
Jenny looked taken aback. Dulp had never, ever, not once in his entire life, seen that expression on a bogo’s face, and he certainly never thought he would see it on Jenny’s. She looked truly out of sorts.
Dulp was compelled by curiosity to see what Skippy had drawn, and this curiosity temporarily overrode the terror that any normal gob would feel while being in the presence of Jenny Crazy Eyes.
He sidled in next to Skippy as the ugly little gob flipped to the appropriate page in his sketchbook.
“Here’s my first one…” said Skippy, a hint of pride in his voice. “I tried to get every detail from memory, so forgive me if I’ve gotten anything wrong, but you can see how I may have made the mistake of putting in an extra crack here on your necklace’s skull…”
Dulp stared down at the first sketch Skippy had drawn.
The picture was one of Jenny, sure, but not any Jenny Crazy Eyes that Dulp knew. It was of professional quality, and Dulp had to admit that Skippy was an exceptional artist, though his interpretation of Jenny was…sketchy…at best.
The Jenny in the picture had a smile on her face, a wistful, care-free smile at that, and she was staring up and off into the distance, as if she were thinking of something she truly longed for and cared about. Her normally terrifying eyes were drawn in such a manner that they looked sparkling, gleaming with happiness, something impossible to imagine unless it was actually down on paper. It was almost as if she were an entirely different person on that white paper.
Dulp had no idea what medicinal herbs Skippy had delved into while drawing this insanely inaccurate version of Jenny, but that didn’t matter at the moment. The only thing that mattered was Jenny’s reaction to it.
The young witch set her staff down on the dirt floor, took the sketchbook from Skippy, and began to flip through the drawings without his guidance.
They were all pretty much the same, delusional pictures of Jenny, all from different angles and profiles, until she turned to the sixth drawing, but according to Skippy’s reaction, it was clear to Dulp that the ugly little gob had forgotten about the bulk of the drawings’ content, or rather, the lack of clothing in that content.
“Oh, wait, I should probably take th…” started Skippy in a quick, panicked voice, but the young witch with the sketchbook would not let him have it back.
Dulp’s eyes glanced over the nude drawing, but that glancing was more than enough for him to back away slowly and toward the exit, his hands up, palms outward…He had nothing to do with this…He did not want to be standing anywhere near Skippy when Jenny exploidied him with her devil magic.
The green skin of Jenny’s face turned a slight shade of crimson as she flipped to the next picture, and then the next, and then the next.
“I…I drew those for artistic, posterity’s sake,” stammered Skippy. “You’re beautiful, so I…I thought I’d have a full collection of you in my book…Not that I could get complete accuracy of everything, as I’ve only seen you the one time…”
Jenny didn’t say anything. She just continued to flip through Skippy’s sketches of her, though her face turned redder and redder with each picture.
Dulp figured this color to be that of sheer rage, an impending doom that was about to explodied Skippy, probably the entire hutch, if not the entire Quarter.
Her tone of voice, however, did not indicate rage.
“You just can’t…You shouldn’t…” stammered Jenny. “You shouldn’t…”
Dulp had never seen her flustered before. In fact, he’d never actually seen any bogo flustered before. Of course, this was usually due to the fact that he was running away from them during any encounters with them, so any social anxiety or embarrassment he may have seen would not have registered anyway.
“You shouldn’t…You shouldn’t draw things like this,” finished Jenny.
“Oh, I…Oh…” said Skippy in his own stammering reply. “I didn’t know…”
“I just think…I think it’s an invasion of privacy,” said Jenny. “It’s not right.”
“Oh…I see…” said Skippy nervously. “It’s just…you’ve already seen me naked, and I thought…you know…you took off my clothes, and you’ve already seen me naked, so…”
“Y…Yeah, but…that’s because we were going to eaauuuuhhh…” stalled out Jenny. “I…I…I mean, heh, heh, heh…yeah…I forgot about that. Silly me.”
She gave a nervous laugh, and that laugh stunned Dulp into motionless silence. He had no idea what he was looking at. Whatever was going on here was cosmically wrong as far as he was concerned, but the sheer strangeness of it prevented him from even twitching so much as a facial muscle.
“That’s okay, that’s okay. I’m still learning how things are done in Pingo,” said Skippy. “But I…uhh…I honestly didn’t know you’d be nervous about these…I’ll tell you what…Why don’t I give them to you, huh? That way you’ll know no one else has seen them. It will be our…little…secret…”
Skippy gently pried his sketchbook away from her and grunted as he ripped the nude sketches out of the book one at a time. He handed them over to her, nodded once, and gave her a nervous grin.
Jenny stared at one of the sketches one more time, and then she folded the collection of drawn nudes in two, folding them into a neat little rectangle, of which, she held firmly in her left hand.
“Could I…?” she asked.
“Yes?” asked Skippy in return, his face lighting up with sudden interest.
“Could I have one of those other sketches?” asked Jenny. “I really like the first one you drew, the one where I’m looking off into the distance…”
“Abso…lutely,” grinned Skippy. “It’s my pleasure.”
He tore out the picture she wanted, and she eagerly took it from him.
Dulp’s lips parted as they turned downwards at the same time, his eyes widening, his mind frozen in stark horror. He had no idea what unholy magics were at play here, but something was terribly, terribly wrong with all of this.
Jenny shuffled her feet as she stared down at the tops of her clogs.
“You wouldn’t be…like…going to the South Quarter again?” she asked, her voice edged with a jittery nervousness. “Would you?”
It was Skippy’s turn to burnish a nice shade of red. He stumbled over his own words as he answered her, something very unlike him in Dulp’s opinion, at least from what Dulp had seen of the ugly little gob in the short period of time he’d known him. Skippy was a lot of things, but underconfident was not one of them.
“Oh…y…y…yeah,” nodded Skippy. “I’d actually like to go over there quite often…uhhh…with the bogo’s permission, of course.”
“Yeah, we can do that,” nodded Jenny. “It’d be nice to have you visit once in a while. You could…maybe…do some more drawings…or something…”
“Of course, of course,” smiled Skippy. “Maybe…when you feel comfortable with it…I could…actually get a real nude sketch of you…but only if you feel comfortable with it. I’m not one of those pushy cads or anything. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”
“Oh…” said Jenny, her dark eyes flitting back and forth in visible thought. “I…heh, heh…I don’t know…”
“That’s okay, that’s okay,” said Skippy with a shake of his head. “Why don’t we start with some sketches of you in your favorite places, your favorite clothes, maybe doing some of your favorite things…”
“Yeah…Yeah,” nodded Jenny. “I’d like that.”
“Oh, good,” grinned Skippy. “Oh, that’s good. I’d like that, too.”
Skippy’s Field Notes #25:
I seem to be having the same trouble I’ve always had when talking to the fairer sex…I’m terrible at it. I always end up saying something stupid or doing something stupid, and then I feel like a complete idiot afterwards, contemplating how I would have done things differently if I had just had the chance to.
I remember one incident at the college involving Ursula Zimmerman, whom I very much wanted to attend the Spring Festival with me, but alas, it was not meant to be. She was sitting down at the Mayer Hall mess table, and I had walked up to her, naturally, to ask for her hand in pairing with mine for the festival in question, and she turned slightly in her seat to address me, but that’s where things went horribly wrong. I, in my own stupid nervousness, ended up tripping over my own two feet, and I plunged headfirst into her skirt, right between her legs, like some sadistic, perverted goat butting at the wrong end.
Needless to say, I was the laughing stock of the academy for the whole next month. There was even a running joke where I was actually Ursula’s son, and I’d just shot out from between her legs during mess time…I’d actually bounced off of her and hit the floor, but apparently, that is semantics to my fellow collegiates…Ugh…Ursula even took to calling me “her little boy,” a nickname she called me all the way up until graduation. It was all very embarrassing, and I’d rather not go into any more detail about it.
Nevertheless, Jenny Crazy Eyes has given me the cordial invite to the South Quarter, and I have happily accepted. This has given me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, to study the bogos in depth, their habits, their work, their likes, their dislikes, their wants and desires…
This new avenue of research has really lit my candle!…I may even get to sketch Jenny in the nude…
Wouldn’t that be something!
S.P.W.
Jenny peered off to the side for a moment as if she were lost in thought. She turned back toward Skippy and gave him a puzzled look, though at this point, Dulp had no idea what was going on anymore.
“I forgot why I came up here…” she said in audible confusion.
“Oh, yeah,” said Skippy. “You were saying something about a warning?”
“Oh, right,” nodded Jenny. “Yeah, I did some divination with some squirrel bones, and there was a warning in there involving you and the whole village.”
“Oh?” asked Skippy in sudden interest. “So, you’re a diviner? Like an oracle?”
“Something like that,” nodded Jenny. “I occasionally look for signs of anything new when I get bored, so I decided to do a little look-see on youuuuhhhh…on the whole village in general.”
“Oh, really?” asked Skippy. “That’s fascinating!…Err…What did you learn?”
“Oh, something about the wrath of the orcs, the living dead attacking the village, the blood moon’s curse, that kind of thing,” shrugged Jenny.
“And you got all of that from just squirrel bones!” asked Skippy in excitement. “That is amazing!”
Jenny turned red again and waved him off.
“Oh, it’s not that special…” she said shyly.
Dulp had never seen this kind of evil magic or unholy power or whatever it was that Skippy was using to pacify Jenny. It freaked him out to the point where he still couldn’t move, and this was in spite of the fact that he had trained his body to run in the slightest presence of danger before his brain could give it the command to do so.
Skippy’s Field Notes #26:
Jenny is incredible! It appears she can see snippets of the future by reading animal bones that have been thrown into a fire. She waits for the bones to crack and break, and then she somehow gleans information off of that. I’ve heard of similar practices in other lower, subhumanoid races, but I didn’t think the practice was implemented here, considering Pingo lacks a shaman.
Apparently, Jenny has taken the place of the shaman Pingo previously enjoyed. The prevailing belief in Pingo is that the shaman of the village was always male, and after he died, he was reincarnated as a new shaman, and that shaman was noticeable as a baby due to the amber tinge in his eyes.
According to Dulp, the last recorded Shaman was Boofer Fatfingers, who died a few years before Dulp was born. It’s said that once the old gob hit the ancient age of forty, his senility was so bad that he renounced the Great Gob right before his death, screaming something along the lines of “The Great Gob is not so great” and “To Heckens with the Great Gob,” and “Why can’t I have normal fingers like everyone else,” and “I want to try some of that blackberry pie those humans sometimes make.”
The story goes that, after his outburst, Boofer Fatfingers was immediately struck by a bolt of green lightning, a “jade bolt that came searing down from the clear blue sky,” and he was reduced to a pile of crystalized, glasslike ash. In fact, I believe there is actually some of that ash stored away in the groundhog skull atop Jenny’s staff.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. Because of Pingo’s unique belief in reincarnation, it came as a surprise when no shaman was reborn. You see, Jenny was born a few years after Dulp, and she was born with a red tinge in her eyes, red rather than amber, meaning that the Great Gob saw fit to reincarnate the only shaman in the village as a bogo, making Old Boofer irredeemable in the Great Gob’s eyes.
Hence, Jenny is the first and only bogo witch I have heard of.
To be fair, Jenny has real, shamanic-like abilities, though they may work a little differently than the traditional gob shaman.
At any rate, I find all of this extremely fascinating, as I do Jenny herself. She certainly is a looker, I’ll tell you that!
S.P.W.
“Well, I think it’s special,” smiled Skippy. “In fact, uhhh…Maybe we can talk about it…Ummm…You know, I’m not doing anything in particular tomorrow…”
“Oh?” asked Jenny.
The young witch flipped her long black hair back in an easy manner, something Dulp had never seen before. In fact, ever since Skippy had shown up in their little village, Dulp was witnessing a lot of things he had never seen before.
“Yeah, I was thinking I could come and visit the South Quarter,” said Skippy matter-of-factly. “I brought some tea leaves with me…I could make tea for you.”
“Oh?” asked Jenny again. “I’d like that. I’ve never had tea.”
“Oh, it’s so good,” nodded Skippy. “It’s Poppy Black. It comes from my vill…uhhh…I hear it comes from this little halfling village called Poppy Seed…Anyway, it’s of the finest quality. I hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will,” nodded Jenny in return. “I think, though, that I need to head back. I’m sorry to cut this short, but I do have some duties I have to return to, but I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, right?”
“You got it,” grinned Skippy. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, Skippy,” smiled Jenny.
“Oh, you know my name?” asked Skippy.
“Fancy told me,” nodded Jenny. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow!”
“See you, too!” replied Skippy with excitement.
The young witch stepped back into the shadows of the small storage hutch, and then she disappeared, vanishing into that darkness as if she had never been there at all.
Dulp hated it when she did that. It freaked him out. In fact, this whole interaction had freaked him out.
He stood near the open doorway, shaking in fear as his green skin blanched to a paler color, much like the color of overcooked broccoli.
Skippy turned toward him, a big grin on his ugly face, but that grin turned to confusion upon viewing Dulp’s shaky countenance.
“What is it?” asked the ugly little gob. “What’s wrong?”
Dulp shook his head to get his mind back in the game. If he was being forced to go on a highway raid, he needed to get it together now, or he was going to get killed out there.
“N…Never mind,” he said shakily. “Nothing…Let’s just…Let’s just get the raid stuff.”
“Okay,” shrugged Skippy.
Skippy’s Field Notes #27:
My interaction with Jenny Crazy Eyes went far better than I had originally thought it would. It’s true that she was a little upset upon viewing her own naked image within my sketchbook, but in truth, that was my fault. Those pictures were intended for my eyes only, and I had completely forgotten about them when I showed her the drawings in the first place.
She is gorgeous, though, doubly so in the nude, though I…haven’t actually seen her naked yet…I’ll definitely have to replace those pictures soon for my own…research. With a little persuasion, I might get her to pose nude for me for just that purpose.
Nevertheless, I pulled my fat out of the gob fryer, so to speak, and now I have a means into the South Quarter without causing a stir like I did last time. I imagine with Jenny’s backing, I should be able to enter and leave without interruption.
Being able to enter the South Quarter at will should give me far more insight into the interactions between gobs and bogos. I can’t wait to interview everyone in there, and the best part is, I won’t even have to catch any!…Although I am a little disappointed I didn’t actually get to participate in any Rush Time activities, next Spring shall remedy that.
That makes me think…I wonder if Jenny would let me catch her? I’d have to get a really good trinket, though, something she’ll really like. I still don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to do after I catch her, but I’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll ask her about it tomorrow over tea.
Incidentally, the tea leaves we shall be using to make tea were grown in my parents’ own field, and it really is of the finest quality, though my parents rarely ever drank the stuff. No, they preferred the fruit of their own fine liquors, especially after I was born. When I was a little tyke, I distinctly remember hearing my mother speak of how she was “never so sloshed until I’d come along.”
I guess that means I bring about good times wherever I go!
S.P.W.
Dulp could not fathom how Skippy was still so flippant about the presence of the village’s only witch, a witch that was so dangerous no one else would even look at her, much less talk to her. If he could pacify Jenny Crazy Eyes, then…by the Great Gob…
Whatever the case, it was clear that Skippy was far more dangerous than his ugly little appearance indicated, and Dulp would handle him with even more care from now on.
Goblins in the Mist: Chapter Five Copyright © 2022 bloodytwine.com Matthew L. Marlott
