The goblins are not dancing; rather, they are thrashing, flailing and pushing. Their limbs jerk limply or strike outwards with force. They are all corners and twisted edges. A pulse runs through them as their bodies bob on the same beat before one crashes into another, sending them all scattering like billiard balls. Their expressions are snarled or impish, crowded with teeth either way. Their faces move choppily in the flashing of the strobe light, disappearing, then shifting underneath a rapid eclipse. 

I’ve never seen goblins before, didn’t even know of any, and yet seeing the mob in front of the sweaty band, I am sure I am looking at a horde of goblins. It could be whatever I smoked in the rain with Lizzie. She didn’t tell me what it was when I asked, but I would have smoked it regardless of what she said. It could also be that I stopped taking my antidepressants cold turkey three days ago, which I hadn’t told anyone. Yet, looking at them, I feel certain that these had never been men; they had always been goblins. I must be seeing just beneath the surface, past the haze of creamy skin, into a green tinge and sharpened features. 

Lizzie takes my hand and guides me past the bar towards the mass of goblin bodies flitting, flapping, and writhing. We reach the jagged edge of the horde, and she jumps shoulder-first towards the goblins. I expect her to fall, but then she's a body among them, pulsing with them. Her atoms bounce off theirs with an explosion. I leap, arms close to my chest and elbows pointed, and I crash through the membrane. I am pushed this way and that, my head following my chest. The bodies pressing against mine are wet, slick with slime. I see a goblin with a face like a weasel spit, the glob soaring for a moment above the crowd. I close my eyes and let the tide ebb and flow with each beat. Some of them are screaming, some yelling razor-throated along with the singer and grime-tongued guitar. 

The goblins begin to shout, “cunt bitch, cunt bitch!” over and over again. For a moment, I think I am the cunt bitch, that they have all turned to face me and put their hands on me and push until their hands tear into my flesh. But I open my eyes, and they are not; it is just the song the goblins are chanting. My foot catches on a goblin boot, and I fall, floor to tailbone. Then greenish hands are covering me, and I am up and pounding among them. 

Lizzie meets me at the bar and says something about not being able to find me, which I know is a lie; she always flutters through a space, adrift on the wind. She has a foul habit of leaving me to fend for myself. She orders a beer, so I get one too, even though I hate beer. I am too self-conscious to get anything else. Anyway, this dive is unlikely to have anything else. I hear Lizzie’s name, and we both turn, and three goblins have crowded around our spot at the bar. She clearly knows them as they say their hellos; she knows everyone, it seems, but she fails to introduce me. I sip my bottle and try not to make a face. The goblins offer us shots from a tray, and I shoot them back without a second thought. It burns my throat, but it tastes like plums, and I immediately feel warm. One of the goblins is staring at me, the one with the hooked nose. He glances at his fellow goblin, the one with the rat face, signalling each other, brother to sly brother. Hook nose presents a gnarled hand. 

“Laura,” I say as I shake it. It’s rough and not as slick and slimy as I would expect from the look of their bodies. 

“Sammie,” he says, and I immediately know who this is. Lizzie glances at me, a concerned wisp of the eyes. I didn’t completely understand the story she told me about him. Something about a girl we know through friends, Jeanie, who hooked up with him and was obsessed. Then he grew cold, and she dwindled and grew grey. But I am not Jeanie. As I look into his black eyes, I can still taste the plums and my mouth waters. 

It’s still raining outside, but Sammie steps out from under the awning, his brown workwear style jacket quickly splattering with water. I follow him, thinking about my straightened hair and how it will curl in patches from the rain. He lights his cigarette, and before he even blows out the smoke, he’s holding it to my lips. His fingers touch my lips as I inhale. 

“You owe me now,” he has returned the cigarette to his own lips, and it wobbles as he speaks. 

“I don’t have any cash,” I shrug. I feel like a cliché, but say it anyway. He fingers a front piece of my hair, which has begun to curl at the bottom from the rain. It looks almost golden in the streetlight, and I nod at him. His keys jingle as he brings them out, flicking out a small knife from a multitool on the carabiner. He bends the hair over the knife and pulls it, the curl severing from the strand. Then the clump of curl is in his pocket, and his fingertips are on my lips, and I’m inhaling again. 

There are more shots when I return. One tastes like cherries, another, like peaches, and a mouthful of figs. I salivate at each one, the burn fading into thirst. The goblins laugh and clap and pull wry faces at each other. When Sammie goes to the washroom, I follow him. There’s only one stall, and the door is falling off of it, so I place my back against the entrance. Sammie looms over me, his black eyes penetrating mine. He leans down and drags his hook nose from my clavicle to my ear, so I stretch my neck back like a swan. I want him to wrap his bony arms around me, want him to hug me, kiss me, suck my juices. Instead, he puts his hands on my shoulders and presses me down till my knees hit the tiled floor. His belt jingles as he unclasps it and slides down his zipper. The floor is cold, but I am burning. 

Later that night, I will awaken still drunk and so thirsty. Instead of water, I will grab the orange from the fridge. I will tear it in half and latch onto it with my mouth and begin to suck. That is what I do now. I suck and suck, squeezing the fruit and pressing out the extra juices with my tongue. I use my teeth to gently scrape the flesh from the white skin. I suck until my lips are sore, and with a groan from Sam, I swallow goblin pulp and goblin dew, squeezed from goblin fruit. I try to meet his eyes, want to stare into the blackness from my knees and see his satisfaction, but he doesn’t look at me, not even as he does his belt up. I stand slowly, stiffly, from the hard floor, my eyes following him as he swings open the bathroom door and leaves me wiping my mouth in the graffiti-covered mirror. Alone in the bathroom, I feel as if something has been taken from me, although I did the swallowing. I sit on the toilet to pee, not caring if someone comes in the broken stall, and make eye contact with the soaking crotch of my underwear. I use my thumbnail to scrape some of the white goo off, wiping it on a thin square of toilet paper. I am still burning, but the fire will slowly go out; it will not be fed. The wetness of my underwear is cold and uncomfortable. I will have to sit in it for the night. 

I try not to meet Lizzie’s eyes when she greets me outside the bathroom. I can feel her gaze morph from concern to disapproval and back again. 

Lizzie floated above sexual temptation, too cool to give over her power to anyone, let alone a man. “I don’t know why you bother with boys,” she said to me once. I want to tell her this is different; they aren’t boys, they’re goblins. 

One of Sammie’s friends approaches us, the goblin with the pointed ears, and tells Lizzie loudly over the music that they are leaving, likely going to an after-party. She tells them to have a good night, and her side eye confirms to me that we have not made the invite list. I see the back of Sammie and run up to him.

I hand him my phone, open on a new text conversation. “Your number,” I yell through the music. He doesn’t respond, just types in his number with green fingers. He hands back my phone without looking at me. I watch his back as he leaves. 

When I step back towards Lizzie, my feet seem to twist beneath me, and I stumble. Spit is swelling in my mouth, and it tastes like sweet plums. 

“I already called an Uber,” Lizzie says to me, her eyes scanning over me. “We’ll get you home.” 

The car smells new, and it turns my stomach, making my eyes spin in my head. I put my head on Lizzie’s lap, and she strokes my hair. With unsteady hands, I type a text to Sammie and hit send. I watch the typing bubble pop up and then retreat. I’m going to throw up. 

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Olivia Hornacek (she/her) is a Montreal-based writer and the titular author of her Substack “Titular Girl”. She completed her undergraduate degree at Concordia in English and Creative Writing and has been published in Soliloquies Anthology, an upcoming Headlight issue, and more. She lives with her muse and cat Hazel.