"Friday and the Oddgoblin" by Jeanna Roberts

[ShortStoryContest]

The following story has been selected as a featured runner-up in our 2015 short story contest (Contest Theme - "The Self-Destructiveness of Vengeance and Hate")

"Friday and the Oddgoblin" by Jeanna Roberts

I got out of the car outside of our block of flats and walked up the stairs. This was going to be an anniversary we would remember forever, our last one before we were married. Back then I was just a little girl, leaving school to go into the big wide world, now I’m really a woman. Time flies, seven years feels like nothing at all. I figured I’d come home early and surprise him, make the place more romantic and get looking fabulous for when he came home to start our night of fun. Normally on a Thursday afternoon I’d be working at the bookshop but Isla said she’d cover my shift if I did hers on Saturday. I turned the key in the lock and walked into the kitchen. I lit some rose-scented candles in the kitchen and put a nice table cloth and some fancy placemats on the table. I went into my bedroom to get changed into something more fitting for the evening’s celebrations. But then I saw. Felix was in bed with another woman. I blinked. My eyes weren’t deceiving me. I screamed.

“Friday wait! It’s not what it looks like!” Felix screamed after me

“Felix who the f*ck is that?” the woman in my bed asked

“I was his fiancee, but NOT ANYMORE!” I wailed, throwing my engagement ring at him before running out of the flat. I ran down the stairs and straight into my car, driving hysterically towards my parent’s house, then letting myself in and running straight to my old bedroom, collapsing onto the bed. I cried. I hadn't stopped crying since I saw them. I rolled over, burying my head into the pillow. I took shallow breaths and sobbed into the pillow.

“Cheer up, it’s going to be ok!" a voice said next to my bed. I panicked and scrambled away, wrapping myself in the blanket, too shocked even to scream. I quivered and stared down the creature. Was I hallucinating, or mad? This thing looked way too real to not really be there, but I had my doubts.

"I'm sorry I scared you, my name is Gorkil and I'm here to help you feel better!" I looked over at the thing by my bed. It was only about a metre tall with a long nose and pointy ears that stretched out from the sides of its head. It wore a grey tunic and trousers. It smiled at me intently, which was actually pretty adorable if you blocked out the fact that this thing had somehow got into my parent’s house.

“What the f*ck are you!” I screamed at Gorkil

“I’m here to help you! I heard you just went through a breakup and you look pretty down in the dumps to me, let’s get you all cheered up, eh?” it replied in its high pitched tone that made it sound just like a child.

“Ok, but if this turns to sh*t you are extremely dead, ok?” I assured

“Ok!” it answered, “Let’s start by planning how we are going to get back at that nasty, horrid wimpy excuse of an ex-boyfriend of yours!”

“Ok.” I sniffled as I sat up and wiped my eyes.

“Good!” Gorkil said enthusiastically, “do you have any ideas?”

“Well… I could key his car?”

“Hmm… that’s good but I think we can get a little more creative, like cut holes in all his trousers around the crotch! He isn’t going to be keeping his dick in there if he’s so busy sleeping around, we’ll be doing him a favour!”

“Oh my god, that’s a fantastic idea! I can do that when I’m going to get all my stuff back!”

Now I look back at it, I really should have questioned why this thing knew all about me when I hadn’t even told it my name but planning my revenge on that ass hat just felt so good that I didn’t really care.

“That’s the spirit, what else can we do?” he enthused



“We?” I asked

“Yeah, I want to come with you and help!”

“Ok… Well, I’m sure his PlayStation gets very dirty, so we could give it a bath!”

“That’s the spirit!” Gorkil said, giddily clapping its hands.

“And… we could swap all the food and his clothes around, shirts in the fridge and milk in the wardrobe?”

We were making all sorts of plans and laughed and joked about how much of an arse Felix was when my mum came home.

“sh*t! I forgot to tell mum and dad I’m here!”

“I can’t let them see me! I’ll be back soon!” Gorkil said as he disappeared with a poof.

I got up and called to Mum to make sure she knew I was here before she heard me coming down the stairs, I didn’t want to frighten her too much.

“Darling!” my mum said “Why are you here, shouldn’t you be at home, with Felix? Isn’t it your anniversary today?”

“Good a day as any to find him in bed with another woman isn’t it?” I replied angrily. I wasn’t sad now Gorkil had cheered me up. I was just really f*cking pissed off.

“Oh my dear, come here! You must be devastated!” she said as she dropped her bag and pulled me towards her, holding me tightly.

“I’m really annoyed, yeah.”

“Let’s get you fed and work out what we’re going to do, ok?”

“Ok.”

I sat in the kitchen while mum cooked in awkward silence, neither of us knowing what to say.

“I’m just going to ring Isla and tell her what’s happened” I said, leaving the room. I got my phone out of my pocket and phoned my best friend.

“Hey Isla.”

“Get off the phone you, you should be having fun with your man, not talking to me!” she joked

“About that…”

“Oh God, what’s happened? Did he get sent on a business trip or something?”

“Nope... I got home to find him in bed with some slapper.” Isla gasped and said nothing “I’m at my mum’s now, she’s just doing my dinner. I’m gonna go round tomorrow and get all my stuff out of the flat.”

“Are you ok? Why did I ask, of course you’re not ok! I’ve got no plans tonight so have your tea and then come round to mine for a nice girl’s night in eh? Just the two of us, no boy talk allowed.”

“Ok,” I reply, “I’ll see you then!” I put the phone down and text Felix:

While you are at work tomorrow I’m coming round to get my stuff. I don’t want to see you and if you do try to stay and talk to me you’ll get a kick in the balls and be pushed down the stairs. You can’t fix this.



**********



I arrived at Isla’s house at around quarter past eight, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a massive bag of Doritos in the other. Isla opened the door, already in her pyjamas with her long brown hair in a scruffy side braid. How she managed to still look a million dollars in her pyjamas and no makeup on I have no idea.

“Hi! Come in! Give me those and go get in your jammies!” I went into her, incredibly tidy, bathroom, past the pictures of Isla with her family on the walls to go and get changed.

“Should we watch Mean Girls or Tangled first?” Isla shouted from the living room

“Tangled! Disney is too good for drunk watching!” I replied, leaving the bathroom.

I got downstairs to find a, rather large, glass of wine and a bowl of Doritos and dip on the coffee table. As Tinkerbell flew over the Cinderella castle I settled into a really comfy position where I could reach the table without moving too much to watch an hour and a half of Disney magic. We laughed at Maximus being sassy, the big beefy guy with the tiny horses and we sung Flynn and Rapunzel’s duet dramatically at each other, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes then collapsing into a giggle fit at just how dorky we were.

The next morning I woke up, slumped across Isla’s lap on the floor, not remembering much after watching Mean Girls and finishing our second bottle of wine between us. As I sat up Isla woke up too and we made pancakes together before I left to clear my stuff out of Felix’s house. Today was going to be fun.

As I started my car Gorkil appeared in the passenger seat.

“HEY! Can you try not to poof into existence when I’m about to start driving? I’ll crash into something here!”

“Sorry! I’ll give you more warning next time.” Gorkil replied cheekily looking strangely pleased with itself at my last remark.

We arrived at our flat, correction: Felix’s flat, and the fun began. We got all of my clothes out of my old room and into the car before I found a pair of scissors from the kitchen and grabbed the first pair of Felix’s jeans. I felt nervous, like a knot was growing in my stomach. I sat there for a minute or two before Gorkil returned from the car and saw me, frozen.

“Just do it already!” he shouted. I closed the scissors on the tough fabric and heard the satisfying snip before opening them again. I never knew revenge could be so sweet. I hurriedly started mutilating the rest of his trousers with the hatred coursing through my body and I felt like I was on an insane coffee high, full of energy, wanting to do more so I took all of my DVDs out and then gave his PlayStation a bath then I took all of my food and then put his food in his wardrobes and clothes in his fridge and I had never felt this good before because this high was better than sex and better than morphine and better than anything else I could think of. It was definitely a Friday today because today was MY day so we got the rest of my stuff out and left flour on the top of the kitchen door and cling film on the toilet before I locked up and put my keys through the letterbox. Cord cut. That f*cker was out of my life for good.





**********



Saturday morning I arrived at the bookshop, ready to work Isla’s shift. I started my day, as usual, stacking shelves, when I began to feel a little woozy. I sat myself down on the stool I was using to reach the higher shelves with my head between my knees.



“Are you alright?” Ethan, one of my colleagues asked.

“I’m fine, just feeling a little light headed.” I replied.

A few minutes later I tried to stand up again but immediately fell to the floor with a loud thud. Ethan came running and tried to help me up.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked

“No, I feel really sick. I don’t understand, I felt fine when I came in but now I can’t even stand without wanting to puke my guts up.” I panicked

“Let’s get you in the back out of the way, who can I call to come and get you?”

“Call Isla.” I said as Ethan gave me a bin just in time to stop me spewing all over the shop floor. Ethan lowered me onto the floor in the stockroom at the back of the shop and rolled up his coat as a pillow for me to bunch under my head. I kept the bin next to me because if I didn’t I wouldn’t reach it in time, but its acidic smell made my body want to add more to its contents. My vision started to close in, as if someone was slowly covering my eyes. Then everything went black.

The next thing I knew Isla was over me, shaking me awake. As I opened my eyes she breathed a massive sigh of relief.

“Thank god! I was just about to call 999! What happened? Ethan told me that you said you were fine and then you just fell off the stool!” she said, relieved.

“I have no idea,” I said groggily as I tried to sit up with Isla supporting me, “I was fine when I came in and then I just all of a sudden felt really light-headed and then this happened.” Isla handed me a glass of water and I swilled my mouth out with it. It felt nice to get rid of the acidic burning and all the bits from my mouth from being sick.

“Have you been feeling ok the last couple of days? Other than feeling angry because Felix is an arse of course.” My mind started replaying the events of the last few days as I lurched over the bin, Isla holding back my hair.

Immediately Gorkil came to mind; maybe he was some weird hallucination like I had first thought all along? That would explain how he seemed to know everything about me. But Isla would think I was crazy right? Well, she was my best friend in the whole world - even if she did think I was crazy, she wouldn’t laugh at me for it.

“Well, when I left Felix and went to my parent’s house I think I started hallucinating, this little weird creature that called itself Gorkil showed up and was convincing me to get back at Felix. It was really short with long ears, like a cross between Dobby and those things that work in Gringotts in Harry Potter and…”

“You mean like an Oddgoblin?”

“What?” I replied, slumping back against the wall.

“You’ve never heard the story of Mandy and the Oddgoblin? My grandma used to tell it to us all the time. It was about this little girl who really hated her older sister because she got new clothes and toys but Mandy only got her hand me downs, so a little creature called an Oddgoblin came and convinced her to all sorts of horrid stuff to the sister but it turned out the goblin was using her hatred as a way to feed on her energy, so it made her really weak and sick. I think some fairy told Mandy that if she didn’t stop hating the sister she would die, so she apologised to the sister and then they made friends again and the Oddgoblin left her alone.”

“So what? I’m hallucinating some fairy tale I’ve never even heard of?”



“All myths and legends start from a grain of truth right? Maybe they’re real? If it is real and you don’t want this little thing following you around making you feel like this every couple of weeks until you die, you are going to have to apologise to Felix.”

“How the f*ck do you expect me to make up with Felix! He’s a f*cking…”

“Stop doing that! You’re getting angry at him, that little leech friend of yours is just going to suck more out of you and you won’t get better,” she rebuked, brushing my hair out of my face, “think happy thoughts, read a book or something?” She was right, I needed something to take my mind off just how sh*t I felt. I got my copy of 1001 Arabian Nights out of my handbag and started to read Scheherazade's tales, finding myself in the same place as the sultan, wanting to read more, to finish the story, only to be catapulted into the next one. Out of my own head I started to feel a hell of a lot better. I got my strength back, pushed the bin away and felt a lot less woozy. Isla brought me a mug of tea and by the time I finished it I was ready to get back to work. But I realised, Isla was right, I had best try and apologise to Felix, even if we ended up arguing over the phone and I ended up feeling like that again, it was a risk I would have to take to try and get Gorkil off my back. As Isla left the stock room I picked up my phone and found Felix’s number in my contacts. I called it.

“Hey Friday, thanks for the hundreds of pounds of damage you’ve caused in my flat!” he greeted sardonically, “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He sounded f*cking pissed as hell.

“About that… Look I’m sorry I did all that. I let my anger get the better of me, I’m sorry.” Suddenly Gorkil poofed into existence next to me, “What are you doing Friday? You should be giving him a piece of your mind, not apologising like some little weak ass pansy!” it shouted at me. I angrily put my finger on my lips and waited for Felix to respond.

“f*ck you Friday. You can’t just fix the fact that you just cost me 2 weeks’ wages in damage to my stuff because you said ‘sorry’. It doesn’t work like that!”

“I know it doesn’t. I’d offer to pay for it, but I don’t have that kind of money, and because you wasted 6 years of my life the second you cheated on me. If I got paid for all that it would be in the hundreds of thousands.” sh*t. Should not have said that. I panicked and put the phone down. That probably wasn’t the best plan either. Now I had an incredibly angry ex-fiance to try and reconcile with and an oddgoblin to deal with. Fantastic.

“Gorkil! Why the hell do you always poof into existence at the most annoying times and WHY THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN TRYING TO KILL ME!”

“What on earth are you on about? Why would I kill you, you’re my friend!” it said, faking that it was about to cry.

“Don’t play dumb with me Gorkil, I know you’re an oddgoblin and I know that you were just using me for my energy!”

“Oh, you know. Ah well no regrets, gotta eat!” Its attitude changed immediately. Its childish voice changed into a voice that sounded more like a grumpy old person and its posture instantly slumped.

“Why don’t you just go and suck it from the people who are hateful all the time anyway like the homophobes, racists, islamophobes, transphobic arses, mysogynists, war criminals, terrorists, why INNOCENT PEOPLE!” I was getting angry again, although I knew I shouldn’t. I was imagining Gorkil suffering the same fate that it had planned for me, dying by spewing up its guts and feeling f*cking awful.

“The innocent are more fun. They don’t let their hate out all the time like the others do, so when it starts, it’s so much more delicious than the steady trickle from the guilty. It’s like the difference between a hit of heroin and an aspirin. It’s just so much more… alluring. Oh and when I can get someone so angry they want to exact their revenge, that’s like sitting down to Christmas dinner. Oh. It looks like I’m going to have two Christmases this year.

“Why?”

“Oh, I thought you were smarter than that. One when you trashed Felix’s house and the other is right now. I can tell you are plotting all the horrible things you want to do to me, and that’s giving me power, can’t you feel yourself starting on that high you got last time? This time it will be a HELL of a come-down. And that’s what will happen every time you plot to kill me. Looks like you’re stuck with me, until you die, just like the others ”

I had to stop being so angry because I was high on the kick it was giving me now but if I didn’t calm down soon it would be another torturous come down and I couldn’t imagine going through what I had just experienced again. My hands and feet were jittering like crazy from the caffeine like hate-high it was giving me and I couldn’t seem to be able to get myself up to leave; it was like I was stuck in there but I didn’t know why so I tried getting my book out to read again to calm down so I could try take my mind off Gorkil so it would leave. But Gorkil just sat there staring at me and I couldn’t concentrate because it seemed to find the fact that I couldn’t hold the book properly because of the jitters absolutely hysterical which really infuriated me which obviously only made the situation worse and it was all too much and suddenly Isla came back in to check on me.

“Hey, are you ok? I thought you were coming out…” She saw Gorkil. “Now listen here you little ass, stop f*cking around with my friend, ok? You leave her alone and never come back, because this girl is pretty much everything to me.”

“Isla, don’t get angry at it or it will get you too, and I am not going to let that happen. Get out before it does”

“Come out with me then!” Isla shouted at me.

“I can’t, that thing is keeping me here, I tried before!” I replied, trying again to get up and leave but my legs felt too heavy even though every other part of me had the jitters and my brain was thinking at a million miles a second from the stupid high but my legs were as heavy and still as rocks while Gorkil just sat there, laughing at me. I knew I was playing right into its hands however I really couldn’t do much else.

“Friday, do you still have some of that water?” Isla asked

“Yeah, why?” I replied, confused

“Wash your mouth out. No questions, just do it,” she said as she bent down next to me as I spat the water into the bucket then she moved it way out of the way so she could kneel next to me.



“Ok, now wha…?” I didn’t even have time to finish my sentence before her lips were on mine. It like I was finally achieving something I had dreamed of for years, but the thought had never even crossed my mind until this moment. In that moment my legs freed up and I positioned myself more comfortably and cupped her face in my hands.

“AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!” Isla and I both jumped out of our skin at Gorkil’s scream and we saw it explode into a flash of light. A second later, it was gone like nothing had ever happened.

“What the f*ck just happened?!” I asked Isla, completely disorientated and puzzled as hell.

“I had a random idea that if the Oddgoblins need hate to live then the opposite, love, must kill them, so I kissed you and apparently it worked?” Isla replied, as confused as I was.

“So… was that a real kiss, or just some crazy idea to kill that thing?” I asked tentatively

“Ermmm… both?” she answered, testing the water.

“I can live with both.” I replied, a huge sigh of relief crossed Isla’s face.

“I set you up with Felix all those years ago because I really liked you but I never thought you would like me back because, you know, I’m a girl and I just wanted you to be happy.” My heart melted a little as I sat there, stunned, waiting for my brain to process the events of the last two minutes.

“So… do you want to try this? As an actual thing?” I finally replied

“Umm, ok,” Isla replied as we got up off the floor. We left the stock room together and after I cleaned out the bucket I went back to stacking shelves. Isla left the shop and I blew her a kiss. She smiled and blew one back.

“What was with all the screaming and banging and shouting in there?” Ethan asked

“Long story,” I replied.