“Awww...how’re you feeling, sweetie?”

The groan which Susie answered her mother with was all that needed to be said. The older woman tutted, pulling the bed sheets up a bit further. She felt the teen’s forehead with the back of her hand, brushing aside a few strands of sandy brown hair that had slipped out of the ponytail she usually wore it in.

“Well, at least you’re not running a fever...” she said. “Probably just a head cold then. You get some rest...I’ve got to go now, they need me at the office, but I’ll be back to check on you at lunchtime, ok?”

“Mmmm...” Susie lay back, nose stuffy, throat scratchy, head achy and closed her eyes. She listened as her mother’s footsteps receded out of her bedroom, down the hallway and out of earshot. A few minutes later, the teen heard the garage door open, her mother’s SUV pull out and it close again.

“Ugh...” Susie groaned, grabbing for another tissue in a vain effort to keep her nose from stopping up. The wadded up tissue dropped into the waste basket, already overflowing with half a box’s worth of discarded tissues.

She turned back over, with a sigh. What was the point of getting out of school if you were too sick to do anything except lie in bed and feel miserable? She thought. It just wasn’t fair. Briefly, she considered trying to head downstairs and collapse in front of the TV all day but the thought of that seemed to exhausting at the moment. After giving her nose another blow, she lay back, closed her eyes and started to doze…

***

...Thump!

The odd noise jerked Susie from her fitful sleep. For a brief moment, the teen was confused, wondering what had woken her up. Then she heard the sound again, a curious thudding sort of sound, like a heavy brick or stone dropping into place.

Susie sat up, wondering what on earth it could be. Was one of the neighbors building something? No, it sounded like it was coming from downstairs, in the house. “What on earth could it be?” She thought. Had something fallen over? Curious, she threw back the covers, for a moment forgetting her cold. The teen grabbed her phone and left the bedroom.

As Susie walked down the stairs, she heard the noise again. A curious “Thump! Thump!” of bricks landing in place, one on top of another. But when she got the bottom of the stairs, they still sounded like they were coming from down below her. “The basement.” She thought, walked up the hallway to where the door leading down to it was.

Susie reached the basement door and paused, an ear pressed against the wooden door. More thudding came, one after another, quicker then. Then suddenly they stopped. A second later, there was another sound, this one like wood creaking followed by the slapping sound of bare feet on the concrete floor, like someone was walking around...no, make that several someones…

“Intruders?” Susie wondered, but how could they have possibly gotten in the basement. There was only a small window, maybe six inches tall down there and besides her mother had surely set the alarm system when she left. But her mind was soon distracted by the fact they seemed to be coming towards her, up the rickety staircase and conversing with one another, in voices which could only be described as “chittering”, high and reedy and in a language she didn’t recognize, much less understand.

Hearing this, Susie abandoned her position at the door, listening, and ran to the corner of the hall where she hid, peeking around the corner and wait for whatever it was down there to come up. A few seconds passed, then a few more. The sounds from the basement had faded away to silence as she got further away and now she couldn’t hear anything. She began to wonder if she hadn’t been imagining things all along.

Just then, the door knob to the basement started to rattle, awkwardly as if whatever was on the other side was having difficulty working the knob. Susie’s heart raced, partly in fright, partly with excitement. This was way better then boring old geography and algebra!

Finally, whatever it was seemed to get the knob to turn all the way and the door swung outward, towards where Susie crouched. Hurriedly, the teen brought her phone up, to record whatever came around it. Very suddenly, something popped around the door into view. Susie stared in amazement.

The creature was small. Even beside the teen it would only come up a little past her middle. It had short legs sticking out from the misshapen tunic or dress it wore, sewn from a dozen scraps of cloth, all different fabric and patterns and colors, but uniformly dirty. Above, it had a big round head with a large nose sticking out in a sharp point and tall, slightly pointed ears. Two large yellow eyes glanced up the hallway, thankfully not seeing Susie who ducked back out of sight. Believing the coast was clear, its mouth split into a wide toothy grin.

Susie had seen enough cartoons and video games to recognize a goblin when she saw one, crazy as it sounded. And like the cartoons had said, where there was one goblin, you were certain to find more. Sure enough, the first goblin was followed by three more, very much like the first. The only difference was the latter two appeared to be female. Unlike the males, who seemed to be hairless, these two had full heads of dark black hair, one in a long braid, the other loose and shoulder length. Their dresses seemed to have been made and kept with somewhat more care then the male goblins rags. Beneath them, their small bodies showed feminine curves about the hips and bust.

The two females also carried sacks made of some heavy burlap-like material. The purpose soon became clear as the males headed up the hall, grabbing whatever seemed to catch their fancy: a pair of old rain boots from the hall closet, a half-gone roll of toilet paper from out of the downstairs bathroom, an ugly ceramic dog from an end table. All these random items and more were deposited in the sacks the females carried, which soon bulged and clanked with the accumulated loot.

Seeing this incensed Susie. In that moment, she decided whatever happened, she wasn’t going to let a bunch of goblins rob her house, not least because she was sure her mother would blame her for it. She thought she could handle even the four of them. They didn’t look that scary. In fact, with their big heads and wide ears, they looked kinda cute and besides she was at least twice as big as any of them.

“Hey!” She yelled, stepping out into view and setting a hand on her hip with an air of stern disapproval. “Put that stuff back! It doesn’t belong to you!” The goblin closest to her jumped in alarm, dropping the knick-knack he’d been stealing with a crash. Four pairs of yellow eyes turned to face her with expressions of alarm.

For a minute, Susie thought her telling them off had done the trick. The two females dropped their sacks and all four addressed her in the odd chittering tongue which she couldn’t follow but seemed to have a hang-dog, apologetic tone. But instead of heading back to the basement and then to wherever they had originally come from like she expected, they started walking towards her.

“Stay back!” Susie said, sternly, but she was ignored. The four goblins regarded her with curious interest now their initial shock had worn off. She saw them exchange knowing glances and realized they hadn’t given up their looting: they’d merely decided the teen would make a better prize herself.

“Stay back!” She repeated as two of the goblins moved to circle past her. She took a step back, trying to keep all the goblins in front of her, but seeing this only made the goblins more confident. Too late, the teen realized her mistake. She might be bigger then them, sure, but there was no way she could keep track of four of them at once.

Pretty soon, they were all around her. She turned this way and that, trying to watch them, but son enough she had her back to one of the goblins. That was all it took. With a shrill cry, it leapt at her, going for her legs, to knock her down. The other male jumped on her as well and their combined weight was just enough to hold the teen down despite her kicking and thrashing.

“Get off!” She shouted angrily. “Let me go!” But they didn’t budge.

Meanwhile, the females produced, from somewhere, several coils of scratchy woven rope. Susie struggled for all she was worth but in no time at all, the teen was bound hand and foot with the rough rope. A few turns of the rope between her lips muffled and garbled her demands to be freed.

The goblins retreated for a second, leaving Susie alone to kick and squirm in her bonds. It didn’t take her long to realize her efforts would be futile. She was helpless tied like this. Struggle for hours and she still wouldn’t make a dent in the tight ropes. And she didn’t have hours. The padding of goblin feet told the helpless teen her captors were already returning.

“Mmmmppphhh!!!” Susie grunted in distress as she rolled over and saw what they had brought with them: it was another burlap sack, like the one they’d discarded, but big enough to fit her and the way the goblins looked at the teen as they advanced left her no doubts it was meant for her.

The two male goblins hurried forward and picked the bound and gagged girl up. She kicked and bucked but was only delaying the inevitable as she was carried over to where the females were holding the open end of the sack towards her. Feet first, she was guided into the sack by the goblins, until only her head remained outside. The end was closed shut around her neck, trapping her in it. Susie was set down, none too gently. More rope appeared in the goblins’ hands and they set about tying loops of it, spaced evenly along the sack, pulling it snug against the teen’s form and transforming her into a neatly trussed up package. Susie squirmed, but again her best efforts made no impression whatsoever on the tight ropes now crushing her from all sides.

Chittering excitedly, the four goblins lifted the teen again, sack and all and set her on their shoulders, feet forward. By straining to lift her head up, she could catch a glimpse of where they were taking her; at the moment to the basement door and down the rickety stairs into the dark room filled with boxes and old junk...and something else…

“That wasn’t there before...” Susie thought in amazement. At the furthest wall of the basement, where there had only been bare cinder blocks, Susie was pretty sure, there now stood a large archway made of heavy blocks of some dark, polished stone. It reached almost to the ceiling where a leering stone grotesque looked down, its bat ears and outstretched wings just brushing the basement ceiling. Inside the archway was a pair of stout wooden doors made of heavy old wooden planks and bound with riveted iron bands. In the center were a pair of heavy iron door handles shaped like rings hanging from the mouths of two more grotesques.

“How did this get here?” Susie wondered as they reached the bottom of the basement stairs. Magic, she guessed. The teen had never really believed in magic, but then again, she hadn’t believed in goblins either and yet here she found herself trussed up in a sack being carried off by four of them. Under the circumstances, she shouldn’t have been surprised when they reached the door and the lead goblin grabbed one of the handles and pulled.

The door opened with a loud creak, revealing a tunnel beyond, a dark round shaft of rock with plenty of stalagmites below and stalactites above. About thirty yards down, it turned, bending out of sight. Susie whimpered in fright as she realized she was going in the tunnel, but the goblins ignored her panicked struggles, carrying her through the door and into the tunnel. Once they’d gone a dozen paces or so past, the door creakily swung shut on its own. The dim light from the basement was cut off, plunging the tunnel into near total darkness and eliciting another wail of fright from the captive girl. In contrast to their captive, the goblins didn’t seem bothered by the dark at all, plunging further into the tunnel.

Any thoughts Susie might have had of remembering the route she was being taken were soon abandoned. Their journey stretched on for what seemed like hours, the goblins turning this way and that, until the teen was hopelessly lost. “How am I going to find my way back?” She wondered, trying very hard to ignore the looming fear that that wouldn’t be much of a problem, since she might never get the chance to try…

For the longest time, nothing seemed to change. Briefly, she wondered if her mother had come home already and if so what she must be thinking. But the teen was then distracted as, for the first time, since they’d come down into the tunnels she saw some light ahead of them. To her dismay, it wasn’t the clear white of daylight, but the red and orange flickering of torchlight. Still, after so long in near total darkness, even this seemed an improvement.

The light continued to grow brighter as they came to a bend in the tunnel. As the party rounded it, a large structure came into view. It resembled the small arched doorway they had entered through, but built on a grander scale with nearly a dozen gargoyles and grotesques leering down from a wide wall which stretched across the whole width of the tunnel. Susie shivered in fright as the sight of it, but her captors kept going, carrying her up to an arched gateway, half again as large as the previous set of doors. Like that one, the door swung shut behind them after they’d carried the helpless teen through it.

Past the gates, they entered the streets of what seemed to be a goblin town, maybe even a full city. Buildings rose on either side of the tunnel, stretching from floor to ceiling and pressed together in unbroken blocks that only ended at intersections where Susie caught brief glimpses of other streets of the same sort extending beyond her sight. Light spilled from barred windows and torches outside almost every door kept the city tolerably well lit, save a few dark pools of shadows.

The streets were bustling. Everywhere Susie looked there were goblins. Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, hurrying this way and that with purpose, buying and selling at makeshift stalls, getting into fights, their chittering babble echoing off the stone walls of the building in a cacophonous racket.

And it wasn’t just goblins, though they seemed to outnumber the non-goblins nearly ten to one. Susie saw other humans: girls, some her age, some older, some younger. She saw creatures as short as the goblins, but looking more like human women, save they had gossamer wings and delicate antenna sticking from their multicolored hair; fairies and slightly taller ones with long pointed ears she took for elves. Once, she even caught a glimpse of other creatures: a pair of female centaurs hitched to a cart and a mermaid in a fountain.

One other thing the non-goblins had in common, besides their gender, was they all appeared to be captives like Susie, enslaved by the cruel goblins. The rags they wore were, amazingly, even more dirty and ragged then their captors and often far from sufficient to cover themselves. A few, Susie saw, her face flushing red, weren’t even given that small decency. Nearly all had some sort of collar fixed around their neck with some sort of chain, or rope or leather leash either tied to a ring fitted to a wall or held in the hand of a goblin whom they trudged after dejectedly.

Besides the collars and leashes, many were further bound with metal shackles or loops of coiled rope. Gags muffled their sad moans as they went glumly about their tasks under the harsh jeering of the goblins watching them. Susie looked on with mounting horror. It sunk in to the teen that this was likely the reason she had been taken and what her fate was to be: a helpless slave of the goblins for the rest of her life. But what could she do about it? Struggle all she liked, it made no difference to the goblins who carried her deeper into this awful city.

After some time, they came to their destination. Susie saw lots of other captives, who all seemed to be heading to the same place: a massive sturdy building of heavy stone blocks whose small barred windows gave it the look of a prison...or a dungeon. Susie guessed these others were like her: freshly abducted captives of the goblins.

Instead of slave rags most had on normal clothes: at least the other human girls did. At one point, Susie was carried past a line of girls dressed in pajamas like hers; their hands lashed behind their backs with rope, tethered together at the neck. Perhaps the goblins had raided a girls’ slumber party. Another group of women seemed to have been kidnapped off the beach. They were all wearing swimsuits, though many had had theirs partly torn off at some point during their capture.

Besides their clothes, the attitudes of the captives marked them as freshly captured. In contrast to the glum misery and resignation the experienced slaves showed, long since inured to the horrors of their enslavement by familiarity, those experiencing this terrifying abduction reacted with a wide range of emotions.

Many, like Susie, reacted with fright, glancing this way and that with looks of terror, seeking some escape or rescue that didn’t exist. Others shuffled along with blank looks of shock and disbelief, unable to believe this wasn’t some awful dream: that they really had been kidnapped and enslaved by goblins. A few reacted with anger, struggling fiercely against their bonds, pulling back against their leashes and kicking out at unwary goblins who got too close. It did them little good though. As Susie had already discovered to her misfortune, though a grown human, or even a teenage girl might outsize a single goblin, when they had numbers on their side, they could overcome a free and determined woman, let alone one already caught and bound.

Upon reaching the dungeon, Susie’s captors carried her through another gate. There, they waited in line between a knot of captured businesswomen in disheveled business jackets and skirts, and a short coffle of elves wearing dresses made of green leaves. Their goblin captors seemed to be amusing themselves by picking at the leaves to expose more of the slender, curvy elven bodies beneath.

Finally, they reached the front of the line where a fat goblin seated behind a desk briefly looked Susie over, exchanging barking conversation with the party that had kidnapped her. Eventually, he wrote something down in an enormous ledger book, pointed to the right and barked an order. Susie’s captors promptly obeyed, carrying the teen up the hallway in that direction.

Eventually, they arrived at another door, this one a sturdy one of metal with a narrow, barred window set at what would be eye-level for the goblins. A pair of them, their rags supplemented by a mishmash of dented, rusty and bent metal scrap that served as armor, carried crooked spears as they stood guard. One of them took a key ring from his belt and unlocked the door as Susie’s party approached, so her captors could carry the teen through.

On the other side was a large room of bare stone walls, floor and ceiling, about 6 or 7 feet high. The only ‘furniture’ if it could be called that were a couple mounds of straw heaped in two of the corners. The only light came from the open door and, opposite it, a narrow barred window set up close near the ceiling. It was, in short, a prison cell.

At the moment, the cell was filled with about twenty other girls, all human and all about her age. The group abducted from the slumber part were there, along with another half dozen girls wearing cheerleader outfits. The rest had a mix of ordinary clothes, pajamas and school uniforms.

Susie’s captors set her on the floor, none-too-gently, and began to undo the ropes binding the sack around her. The neck was loosened and the burlap bag pulled down her body and off her kicking legs. To her disappointment, they made no effort to untie her hands or feet, or to undo the gag between her teeth. Looking around, Susie saw all of her fellow captives likewise still had their hands and feet tied and an array of gags silencing them from ropes like hers to bands of cloth, wooden bits and stranger contraptions of metal and leather. Meanwhile, her captors had finished bundling the large sack up and hurried back out of the cell. No sooner had they done so then the door was slammed shut, cutting the light in the cell to a bare sliver that came in through the window and viewing slit in the door.

Susie spent a brief moment trying to communicate with her fellow captives, but soon gave up. Most of the other girls ignored her, lost in their misery or stunned disbelief, or simply trying to pretend they were anywhere but here. Those who did answer her garbled grunting replied with equally unintelligible groans, the gags the girls wore making any kind of understandable speech impossible.

As the cell settled once more into quiet, save the occasional muffled sob or whimper, Susie noticed, for the first time, a sound coming in through the narrow window. It sounded a bit like the crowds outside, but even more animated and chaotic. Awkwardly, the teen maneuvered herself into first a kneeling position and then up onto awkward bound feet.

From there, she was able to hop ungainly over to the window. It was a few inches over her head and showed only the roof of the cavern the building was in, thickly covered over in large stalactites. But when she hopped up, she was able to get high enough to catch a good, though brief glance out the window.

At the rear of the building were two wings forming a large ‘C’ shape, with a courtyard in between. Along the inside wall of the main building, a stage had been erected. The window of Susie’s cell looked out, scant inches above the old boards. On the stage at that moment was a single captive girl, dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt, her hands bound behind her back. The girl had her back towards the cell window, but Susie could see she was trembling with fright.

Beside the girl were a pair of goblins guarding her. One held the free end of a rope that was tied around the girl’s neck, like a leash. A third goblin paced the boards of the stage, gesturing and shouting out at the huge crowd of goblins which crowded the rest of the open space. Periodically, he would be answered by shouts or gestures from the crowd. Though she couldn’t understand what they were saying, it didn’t take Susie long to figure out what was going on: this was a slave auction. They were selling that poor girl!

After a while, the goblin auctioneer gave a cry that could only mean “Sold!” The crowd cheered. The goblin holding the girl’s leash pulled sharply on it. Head bowed, she was led away. At that moment, the door to the cell opened and a couple of goblins entered. They glanced around for a second before their eyes settled on one of the slumber party girls: a cute blonde. She whimpered into her gag as the rope tying her to the rest of the girls was cut and she was hauled to her feet. Grabbing the dangling end as a lead, the goblins dragged her, hopping on her bound feet, from the cell. The minute they were out, the door slammed shut once more.

Susie turned back to the window, balancing on the tips of her toes, stretching herself out to see the stage. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the blonde girl appeared, being dragged out onto the stage. The auctioneer addressed the crowd and the bidding for the new slave began. After a while, she was sold like the first girl and led off. Again, at that same moment, the door opened and more goblins entered to select the next girl to be auctioned off.

This pattern continued for at least the next hour, maybe longer. A few times, the cell door would open and the goblins would push in another fresh, terrified captive, but steadily the room began to clear out. Finally, it was Susie’s turn.

The teen was still by the window, watching the last of the cheerleaders led off to meet her new owner when she became aware the goblin’s had crossed the room and were standing around her. All of the other girls had shrunk back fearfully, so there was no doubt she was their next pick. A thrill of fear raced through her, the old fight-or-flight instinct, but with her hands and feet tied, both were equally impossible.

The lead goblin barked something at her in their language, which was as unintelligible to her as the rest of their speech, but the accompanying gesture: pointing up at her and down at the ground, and the rope in his hand got the intent across, after a few repetitions. He wanted her to bend over so he could tie the rope around her neck as a leash. Briefly, Susie weighed her options: against a dungeon crawling with goblins and her just a helpless, tied up girl, she decided it was best to play along. Glumly, she bent over, almost double, so the goblin could slip the open loop of rope over head head and hand around her shoulders.

As she straightened up, he held the long free end in one clawed hand. When he tugged it, Susie got the message. Grunting through her gag, she started hopping forward on her bound feet, following the goblin who had turned and started walking towards the door with seemingly little care whether his prisoner would be able to keep up. She hopped as quickly as she could and soon they were out of the cell, the door slamming shut behind her.

Susie was led in a wide loop around the building to where the back of the stage was. The corridor terminated in another arched doorway. As the gnarled wooden doors swung open at her captor’s approach, the teen could see a set of wooden steps leading up onto the platform. When the captive girl reached them, she had to hop extra high to reach even the next step, her captor standing several steps up from her, tugging on the rope to encourage her to hurry.

As she finally reached the top, Susie gasped as she looked out across the stage and saw a sea of goblin faces, hundreds of them, all looking back at her in eager anticipation for her sale. She shrank back, but the insistent pull of the leash dragged her onward, bound feet shuffling, until she was at the very front of the stage.

As the auctioneer began his sales pitch, what Susie assumed his chittering was, realization sank into the teen with crushing weight. “I’m being sold as a slave!” She thought with a thrill of horror. The goblin running the auction gave a loud cry, one Susie had heard before, and always it marked the end of the auction: when the unfortunate girl would be dragged away and the guards would come for the next one. Only this time, she was that girl. Sure enough,  there was a strong tug at her neck. She turned and hopped after it, to avoid being pulled off her feet and dragged by the rope.

On the far left side of the stage was a small staircase. Susie’s hobbling progress brought her there just as the next trembling girl was dragged up onto the stage. Susie hopped down one step, then another, but before she could descend a third, the goblin yanked hard on the rope in his hand. This time, she lost her balance entirely. With a wail, she fell forward, towards the crowd of goblins which mobbed the base of the stairs. Susie shut her eyes in terror as numerous tiny hands grabbed at her, shaking the frightened girl back and forth…

***

“...sweetie...sweetie wake up...” With a groan, Susie awoke to the gentle shaking of her mother. The teen opened her eyes, blinking in surprise to find herself not in the cavern of the goblins, but in her own bed, in her own room.

“Did you sleep the whole time I was gone?” Her mother asked.

“Mmmm...I guess...” Susie answered, a little uncertain. There was no gag between her teeth, muffling her screams, no ropes binding her hands and her feet. Relief flooded through her as the shack and terror faded away like a bad dream.

“Well, it’s good you got some rest...you could use it.” Her mother continued. “I’ll go downstairs and make you some soup for lunch, ok?”

“Ok...” Susie nodded. She still couldn’t quite believe it had all been a dream. It had all seemed so real...but dream or not, Susie decided, she was just glad to be back home and not a slave of goblins in some sort of underground cave.

“Oh, by the way...” The teen’s mother stopped, remembering something. She turned, reaching into her pocket and took out Susie’s phone. “You dropped this downstairs, near the basement...” She set it on the bed and turned, walking out of the bedroom. Susie stared at it.

“It couldn’t be...” She thought, picking it up. She pushed the power button. Nothing happened. The phone was out of power, like it had been dropped and left with the camera running for hours. Hurriedly, Susie got the charger and plugged it in, waiting for it to charge enough to switch on.

“Thunk! Thunk!” The teen was startled by the sound of a loud thudding coming from downstairs…

“Mom!” She called out.

“Thunk!”

“I don’t know what that sound was sweetie!” Her mom called back up.

“Thunk!”

“Sounds like it’s coming from the basement. “I’m gonna go check it out...”