“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
Desperation flickered on its face, but only for a moment, before a swarm of bees buzzed in to sting the Troll’s lips, rendering them puffy and puckered. The bees then moved on to the Troll’s posterior and gave it the same treatment. “Just tell me I’m beautiful,” the Troll demanded.
“Fine, you’re beautiful,” Diane lied.
The Troll was delighted. “Thank you!” it cooed. The Troll stepped aside and the arm of the toll booth went up. The Fare had been paid. The road ahead was clear.
“You’re such a nice lady,” the Troll lied pleasantly as Diane walked past.
The road was piano keys. Black and white. White and black. Each foot-fall was terribly out of tune. No matter how hard Diane stomped or how light she tip-toed, disharmony warbled over the rhythmless world.
“Won’t you please shut the hell up?” a voice demanded.
A small Goblin with a red face stepped into the road to intercept Diane. He was wearing a trench coat that was much too large for him, obfuscating his skeletal frame.
“Just what the hell is your problem, anyway?” the Goblin raved, poking a dagger finger at Diane’s chest. “Such a terrible noise. It’s probably you that broke the music, isn’t it? You and all those other clowns. That’s why I couldn’t find a job at the Fair. You’re just another stupid clown, aren’t you?"
Diane blinked. “I don’t think I’m a clown.”
The Goblin appealed to the yawning sky as to what he did to deserve this. “That’s your problem, you don’t think at all! Do you think that was a good thing you did to that Troll? It thinks its’s beautiful now. Do you think that’s healthy? Boy, you are an idiot. An idiot clown, just like all the other clowns.”
The Goblin shoved Diane. She staggered back and struck an ugly chord on the piano keys.
“Hey,” Diane objected.
“What are you going to do about it?” The Goblin shoved Diane again.
Diane frowned. She tried to pass around on the left, but the Goblin blocked her path. She tried to go around on the right, but the Goblin blocked her path. The Goblin was shrinking, yet it loomed larger in the road with every passing barb, as the road itself was shrinking even faster.
The Goblin spat acid in her face. “You clowns are everything that’s wrong with the world.”
Diane shoved the Goblin out of the way and continued on down the road.
“Oh, violence!” the Goblin wailed, rolling around on the piano-road in apparent agony. “It always comes down to violence with you clowns! What you lack in brains you make up for in fists!”
Diane tried to ignore it, but the Goblin’s shrill words followed her for a long, long time before they faded to background noise. The acid scarred her face for all eternity.
The road widened. First a little, and then a lot. Eventually it was so wide that Diane could no longer see the broken guitars anywhere. Piano keys no more, grass grew in the road. Flowers bloomed. Trees stretched up to the sky like the arms of a man waking from a long slumber. Rivers and lakes fed each other like lovers sampling strawberries. Mountains loomed in the distance, nearly as domineering as the mighty Dragon who lorded over it all.
