Kendo and Melanie weaved, ducked and dodged their way through the crowd of walking fish, paint goblins with buckets strapped to their heads, gremlins and dragons. They passed the hut “with anger issues” who was currently shaking off the excess ash from when it exploded and rushed over to the one next door: a humble looking hut whose ceiling made of peacock feathers had been almost completely picked dry by tiny orange parasitic flies.

Melanie grimaced at the swarm of flies above the door and Kendo nudged her inside. Grivgas was there, huge eye settled in the center of a dripping oozy body. Grivgas sank into five chairs in the far right corner where a waiter with pointed ears and gray spiky fur for hair who looked otherwise human in his diamond-white tuxedo bowed and sauntered off toward the back room, gold tray topped with animal skins balanced on his fingertips.

“Don’t touch the tables,” Kendo told Melanie with a look on his face like he was about to puke. She innocently looked down and saw why he was making that disgusted face. Some of the round golden tables had mouths and nipped at the chairs, while others were tarnished and being eaten from the inside by maggot-shaped things with too many legs that squirted their blood-filled clear eggs into whatever was left of the metal. Melanie tensed and shivered closer to Kendo, putting as much space between herself and the tables as was possible. One of the mismatched chrome chairs hopped closer to an infested table and bounced on top of it. The table spewed green puss that smelled of melting tar as it collapsed and the back of the chair molded into a mouth with an evil grin. Melanie turned away before she could see what the chair would do next, but she heard something that sounded like a shaking can of needles and deep, throaty laughter and horrible, vivid swallowing noises from behind her.

Kendo’s pink hair stuck up on the back of his neck and Melanie focused with tunnel-vision on Grivgas, marching like she was on a mission over to the sagging monster.

“Grivgas,” Melanie demanded, “Why did you take my mother.” Any and all fear was gone now.

“M’melanie,” said Grivgas, “How did you, a human, get to Creature’s Court?”

“Don’t change the subject!” Melanie screamed, and the entire hut full of monsters fell silent. The waiter was almost halfway back to the table, carrying on his golden tray three more dead ferrets when he stopped what he was doing along with everyone else to witness Melanie’s spectacle. “You bought yourself enough time making me get all the way out here, wherever the hell this is, for you to back out on your explanation!” Melanie narrowed her eyes and Grivgas actually slunk backward, intimidated. “Tell. Me. Now.”

Kendo had never seen Melanie like this. She was starting to scare him too, not to mention a few of the smaller creatures that buzzed in circles on the opposite side of the hut, yellow and green pixies with batwings and fangs whose expressions were gaping and cowardly. He watched in his peripheral vision some of the chairs scoot backward by themselves and another table collapse into a heap of soulless debris.

Grivgas groaned and it was loud enough to thunder around the room. “It is my duty to clear the roadways of the dead,” Grivgas told Melanie, “Your mother died on the road; it is and always will be my job to remove the corpses that die in traffic. I have had this duty since the days of horseback travel, since beaten paths first existed for man.”

“Oh yeah?” Melanie shrilled, “Well you haven’t been doing a good job of it! I see road kill practically every day on the highway! Where are you then, huh? That can’t possibly be the only reason! And we humans have our own way of dealing with accidents on the road that have nothing to do with fucking monsters like you!”

“Melanie!” Kendo yelled over her. Grivgas’ eye was narrowing in that pool of a body and the rest of the creatures were developing a communal sinister glare, directed straight at Melanie. “That’s enough,” Kendo said, feeling out of breath from the utter foreboding in his gut. He was sweating, skin prickling as if spiders made of ice were crawling all over him.

Melanie came back from her rage just in time to hear the lowest, fiercest growl. The waiter bore his teeth at her as he placed his tray of ferrets on one of the less-tarnished tables and hunched closer. “You don’t talk to my customers like that,” he said, his fur-for-hair rising and wafting outward as if it were growing longer. Kendo had heard people say, “Fuck off and die” with less malice. Melanie gulped; it dropped on her like an anvil that she had gotten herself into some seriously deep shit. Every single non-human eye in the hut glowered at her; every lip seemed to lick like it was itching for a taste.

There was nothing left to do but run. Bursting out of the hut with a flurry unmatched by any human those creatures had ever seen, Melanie and Kendo sprinted as fast and far as their legs would take them. Their blood pounding, bursting in their ears, they dashed under, over and around the goblins and ghouls, vaulted over the monsters and inch-worming slime. They left Creature’s Court behind them and bolted back into the mountain range of trees. Luckily, nothing followed them past the boundaries of the Court.

They skidded to a halt and braced themselves against one of the giant trees and sucked in as much air as they could to catch their breath. A howl resounded in the distance and then faded; leaving only the faint conglomerated whistles and monster music in the background of Melanie and Kendo’s heaving breaths.

“Maybe next time,” Kendo gasped, “You shouldn’t yell at something that’s eight times your size.” He swallowed, inhaling another revitalizing breath, “In a room full of monsters that could all want to eat you.”

“Well I’m sorry,” Melanie said, out of breath and still with most of her weight supported by the tree trunk, “But I got mad. I just saw Grivgas and… and snapped. I dunno.”

Kendo sighed. He really should be used to her mood swings by now. He knew given the circumstances they were normal, but it still pissed him off sometimes. Looking at her now though, leaning with her back against the tree and her head flipped backward in momentary exhaustion, he couldn’t stop the smile spreading on his lips without considerable effort. He sat down next to her. “Yeah I know, things just get to you sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Melanie responded, admiring the orange and red vine-lights squiggling above them. “My mom was like that too. You know, before um, before everything happened.” She folded her legs and held them, removing her eyes from the sky and the dancing vine-lights. “I feel so alone now, surrounded by monsters. I didn’t believe in anything a week ago; now I don’t know what’s just in my head and what’s real. I don’t know what to believe.”

Kendo regarded her earnestly.

She kept talking, getting quieter and quieter, on the verge of tears but forcing them back so her eyes were soggy and wet. “I just don’t know what to do anymore. I thought, I thought Grivgas would have some answer, something to go on. I thought I could just follow enough monsters and clues and then eventually I could get back to mom somehow. Somewhere in my mind I knew it was impossible but,” Melanie turned her face to Kendo, all tears and sobs and a running nose, “I just wanted to see her again. I wanted to see her alive and apologize for everything, for being a brat, for being so immature and stupid. I wanted to make things right but then I went and left and it was all over so fast and I never got to even say goodbye. I never got to say I’m sorry.” She buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t even know I wanted to say I’m sorry until she was gone.” Voice muffled and hoarse, she continued as Kendo sat there next to her, the only person to ever really listen to her. “Why do I have to take everything for granted? Why do I have to be so spiteful about everything? When did I get to be such a failure?”

“You’re not a failure,” Kendo said, inching closer.

“Yes I am.” Melanie would not raise her head from between her knees. She thought of her dog Mippy, of her mother’s fish, of those days she actually went to school and passed the time by doodling little crisscrossing designs into her spiral notebooks, of her mother’s condescending tone that was always somehow followed by a smirk or a cocky smile. She had thought it so annoying at the time but right now, sitting in such an unfamiliar cold place, she missed it. God did she miss it.

Kendo, not knowing what to say, finally gave in and wrapped his arms around Melanie. It was only then that she lifted her head, too depressed to blush. Finding words, he told her, “You aren’t alone. I’m here with you. You even have a place to stay once we can get the hell out of here. We can go back; we can still get out of this and when we do,” he softly touched her chin to get her to look straight in his eyes, “I promise I’ll fix everything.” And he meant it, every word.

Melanie knew it was impossible to fix “everything” but hearing him say it so determined made her a feel more at-ease, if only slightly. “Okay,” she said as she rested her head on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his leather jacket and overly pigmented hair dye. After an age of sitting unspoken, listening to the distant Creature’s Court music and cackling monsters, Melanie was so comfortable she dozed off and Kendo was left wracking his brain to figure a way out of Olden.

Mindlessly caressing her hair, he thought about using the vine-lights to get back, but it looked as if they were only able to transport things from one great tree to the next, or to lower them to the ground. That was no good for getting back to the real world, the human world where monsters didn’t roam around all over the place dismembering each other. Kendo found himself wondering where they even were, geographically speaking. Not that it mattered. He made a promise and he intended to keep it.

“Why’d I have to promise something I didn’t know how to do?” He furrowed his eyebrows and licked the back of his teeth, thinking so hard he gave himself a headache. He really had no idea how to get out of this place and he didn’t trust any of those freaks in Creature’s Court to give him accurate information.

Then he thought of the girl with purple hair, the only one to claim she was human. He wondered if that was a lie or if it were really true. She seemed normal enough, given where they were. And she had told them exactly where Grivgas was.

Melanie stirred.

Kendo strained his neck to see her face. Her eyes were slowly opening. “You awake?” He asked.

Melanie nodded.

“Feel better?”

Melanie nodded again. “Thanks,” she said. Then after an eternity, “Hey, Kendo.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re comfy.” She wiggled into him.

Kendo laughed and hugged her tighter, “I would hope so since I’m serving as your pillow.”

Melanie smiled a small smile.

“Oh how precious.”

They both stiffened at the voice from above. Slowly, terrified, they both craned their necks to see Fowlina with her claws dug into the wood, facing them with a spiteful, hungry grimace. Her wings spread outward to keep her balance, she licked her lips at Melanie and Kendo and they felt their breathing hasten.

Fast as they could they crawled out of her range, tripping as they scrambled to their feet and ran off. Fowlina flapped her wings, sending a gust towards them that toppled them both. She flew off the tree trunk, stomping down with her feet on either side of them so hard the ground curled under her talons. Melanie screamed and Kendo tried scooting out from underneath Fowlina but her fist bulleted into the earth, stopping his attempt.

“You killed one of my children,” Fowlina cawed at them, “He had not yet learned to fly.”

Kendo remembered the owl-child falling out of view from the treetop, squealing in terror, and the slightest pang of guilt struck him. It passed immediately when Fowlina turned her attention to Melanie. “And you. You befriended the Veins and now they won’t let me rest in my nest without flickering nonstop. It’s driving me and my children mad!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Melanie choked.

Kendo worked his brain into overdrive and an idea hit him. “You hate us so much,” he said so quick he was almost rambling, forcing Fowlina’s attention back on him instead of Melanie, “Then tell us how to leave Olden. We’ll leave and you’ll never see us again.”

“Oh-ho,” Fowlina narrowed her big owl eyes and stuck her beak mere inches away from Kendo’s face, “You think I’d be satisfied just letting you go?” She stuck out her chest, feathers fluffed out like an angry porcupine. Melanie shivered in fear. Kendo gulped. “I have a better idea,” Fowlina said.

And then she struck. She widened her beak and came down on them in an avalanche of pecks and bites and nips. Kendo rolled out from under her, shielding himself with his arms, pulling, scraping, dragging himself along the ground as swiftly as he could, avoiding Fowlina’s pounding batwings and the thrusts of her beak like spears. Melanie was screaming, writhing back and forth but unable to maneuver her way out from under Fowlina’s claws.

Kendo rose from his knees to his feet, bending and leaning, trying to make his way back under Fowlina to reach Melanie, who was still squirming around unable to escape. A hard thwap of batwing whacked Kendo away right when he was close enough to grab Melanie’s hand; as he landed hard on his back he heard something that bucked his heart. Melanie’s screams had ceased.

Not only was Fowlina blocking Kendo’s view when he yelled Melanie’s name, her wings were waving in triumph from a sickeningly hunched back and she seemed to have completely forgotten his presence. A gnawing, gurgling, clicking sound and the smell of iron and flesh made Kendo’s legs buckle beneath him. The world felt dizzy and sunken.

Ever so slowly, Fowlina turned to face Kendo, blood dripping off her beak, Melanie’s foot sticking out from behind her, twisted and broken. Kendo couldn’t bear to think what the rest of her looked like; there were flaps of skin and ripped clothing drizzling out of Fowlina’s beak and down her chest, staining her feathers crimson. The bird woman advanced on Kendo like the shadow of a vulture and told him articulately, “You have killed my child and I have killed your lover. Now be gone, you dreadful rat.”

Kendo’s body ran, tripped and bounded back to Creature’s Court, the only landmark his feet knew in this godforsaken place, but his mind stayed behind, stayed planted in a squat staring straight at Melanie’s dead broken leg, smelling her hair and then her blood, hearing a sliver of her skin drip off of Fowlina’s beak and land in the dirt with a plip. He saw Fowlina’s satisfaction when she had ripped apart Melanie, felt how he’d gone into shock, felt terrified and wrathful and utterly alone.

He stalked the Creature’s Court as if he belonged there, unafraid of anything now, kicking the smaller creature’s between his boots, never apologizing for walking into anyone. He didn’t care if that seven-year-old girl with silver dragonflies for hairpins threatened to zap him into oblivion, he didn’t care if that white cat with black shadows for eyes was going to turn his world upside down and backwards, didn’t care that a demon woman beside the smallest pin-prickling hut winked at him with a lust in her eyes like fire, he didn’t even care if he ever got out of Olden; nothing mattered any more. Kendo wished he were dead.

But of course, now that he wanted it, none of those monsters even gave him a second glance as they shuffled by, off to whichever hut their lopsided deformed bodies would fit into.

“So when’s the wedding,” Kendo heard his father say in his mind, that goofy smile across his face. He remembered Melanie blushing too; he had seen it before he stomped off in a huff to his room that day. He had thought it was cute, that she was cute.

He remembered Melanie’s longwinded explanation when he asked her what was wrong and she finally gave in and told him about Grivgas and her mother. He remembered her cocky remarks and her stupid comment about his cooking and her scent and her big brown eyes.

And then Kendo remembered her weight, how she felt leaning on his shoulder, the comfortable pressure against him like he finally had a purpose in life. It was that memory that made him wail in agony and fall on all fours, right in the center of Creature’s Court. For the first time since his mother died, Kendo cried.

For a while, no one paid him any mind. No one at all.

Then, out of nowhere, “Ready to go back?”

Kendo raised his tear-streaked face to Frock, who was human-sized and smiling. Frock burst into laughter seeing Kendo’s expression, rhinestoned eyes even shinier in the swinging light of the Veins.

Kendo caught Frock’s throat in his fist, not even thinking, not even realizing he had moved until he felt Frock’s voice box between his fingers; Frock broke free and stammered back, coughing and laughing simultaneously.

“Uh-oh! Looks like someone’s agitated,” Frock mocked and giggled in a horrendous high-pitched hyena laugh.

Kendo didn’t waste time with words. He kicked Frock square in the stomach. Frock careened backward into another monster, one with too many lidless eyes and a formless watery body who shoved the laughing imp back toward Kendo. Kendo caught Frock by the collarbone and glared daggers into those disgusting sparkling eyes.

“Get out of my sight and never come back,” Kendo commanded.

Instead of complying, Frock laughed again. Kendo’s blood curdled and his hands clenched so tightly on Frock’s neck that something snapped.

Then Frock’s laughter turned into an earsplitting scream. The imp shrunk back to the size of a toy and contorted in pain. This time without laughing, held by the hair sandwiched between Kendo’s knuckles, “Don’t you want to go back to your realm?”

Kendo crunched his fist and sent what was left of Frock whizzing into a nearby tree. The imp dropped to the ground lifeless and a cluster of fly-sized fairies flocked to the corpse to feast. Kendo didn’t bother scoffing and resumed his dragging march through Creature’s Court.

He didn’t think he’d ever want to do anything else for as long as he lived.