Source: displate.com

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode click here. To read it from the start, click here.

With the help of her brother Zack and her friend B’frona, Gina has climbed atop her monstrous nemesis‘ snout.

The Beast tried to rid itself of her by jerking its head from side to side. All Gina could do was cling to its bark-like hide and hope not to be hurled off. When it stopped, she drove the “letter opener” into its muzzle, and used it to pull herself forward.

The diamond-shaped object between its eyes was different from the rest of the creature. It was made of fine-meshed purple-gold wire. Yes, “made,” for it wasn’t living tissue. Still, it was alive with pulsating waves of light. Mesmerized, Gina looked directly into it. And the moment she did, she saw her deepest longings embodied, saw the golden helmet from her dreams, and her own perfected self.

Suddenly, something slimy struck her face. What the… Wait, where was she? She wiped a clump of sod from her eyes, and looked down to the left.

Zack and B’frona were flinging mud at her!

“Hey! Why did you—?”

“Don’t look at it!” yelled Zack.

The Beast yanked its face downward. There was a crack like a branch breaking in a storm, and then the creature jerked its head violently back upward. Gina was hurled into the air, but landed once more on its snout, just a few feet away from its eyes.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, but then the monster lowered its face. Steam spewed from its nostrils. Gina braced herself, and looked below. She could just make out B’frona and Zack before the flames engulfed them!

With all her might, she pushed herself forward and thrust the letter opener into the golden diaphragm. It ripped like gauze! Red-green pus began gushing out of the opening, hissing like a viper, burning her pantlegs. She scrambled back as the Beast’s face started to dissolve. Scales floated away, exposing liquefying bones and melting fangs. Its tongue crashed up through its disintegrating skull and smacked against Gina like a rotting whale carcass.

Before she could jump, she was thrown from the Beast’s crumbling jaws.

Her fall was broken by Zack and B’frona. They hit the ground together. Hard. Nevertheless, in a moment the boys were on their feet, and despite their mucous-covered hands, they were able to drag Gina away from the decomposing Beast.

“I was afraid you guys were…I mean, I saw the flames and—”

“The moment you pierced the creature—” said B’frona.

“—the fire turned to this,” Zack added. He and B’frona were covered in blood-streaked sputum.

The creature’s neck receded like a garden hose. Its massive tail disappeared. Its legs coalesced into a single rotting lump. Within seconds, it was a tentacled blob once again, yet still in flux, unable to hold any form for more than a moment. It continued to shrink, briefly taking the shape of Gina’s dragon pup Puff, then “Divine Gina.” Finally, like an untied balloon, it shriveled into a wrinkled little mockery of itself, and then disappeared altogether…

With a pathetic sploot.

φ

Thoughts: In the end, evil always turns out to be transitory, even illusory. For it cannot remain where it is disinvited.

To read the next episode, click here.