We must not look at goblin men. Charlie looked at a goblin man one night when he was stumbling home drunk from the pub. He saw the goblin sitting in the moonlight smoking a pipe made from the skull of a bird.
It drove him mad.
In that moment he knew his wife had never loved him. He knew that his daughter thought he was a shameful embarrassment, and that she would grow up into a wanton woman who would marry a bastard as bad as himself. He knew she would be a miserable mother who slapped her children, and that she would never visit him when he was dying.
And in that moment Charlie also realized that he was going to die. Not in the general existentially angsty way that we all know we are going to die. But soon. Maybe tonight.
He looked up from the goblin man’s smoky red eyes. He noticed the air was quiet and the sky was and eerie greenish-yellow. There was a tremendous amount of pressure and tension around him and the sky suddenly cracked open like a putrid egg.
Spiders scurried out of the cracks.
Soul Vomit 