Help Wanted: Only Reliable Good Natured Fellows Need Apply

            Two haggard weather beaten villagers stood beneath the tavern awning to escape the glare of the noonday sun and argued loudly about, which village maiden had the lustiest bosom. They swayed gently back and forth with mugs of cheap liquor in their hands trying their best to keep their inebriated bodies upright, but the pair’s friendly bickering immediately ceased upon sight of a familiar yet sinister silhouette in the distance. The pair silently watched as the hunchback lumbered into the village on his donkey being careful to remain unnoticed by the hulking disfigured lout. They observed with curiosity as the hunchback nailed a piece of parchment to one of the common hall doors, contributing to the thick layer of parchment, which already adorned it, and then followed the creature with their eyes as he rode out of the village toward the tower, which loomed oppressively over the horizon.

            The two men waited, and when they were satisfied the hunchback would not return, they staggered up to the common hall door’s to see what the fiend had posted. Most of the town’s folk never bother with the parchments nailed to the door, ‘they was covered with rich men’s letters,’ and most figured it wasn’t worth the bother to decipher them. The town crier was a better source of information anyway. But, this wasn’t the usual circumstance. The villagers rarely saw the hunchback from the tower post anything on the common hall doors, at least not while the sun was still shining high in the sky.

            “What’s it say?”

            “Can’t you read?”

            “You can’t read neither.”

            “I’s can read just fine thank ya.”

            “Proves it. What them curly letters say?” the man said pointing to the parchment.

            “They says,” the man said with a confident smile. “Five gold pieces to a good able bodied fellow who’s wants to help at the keep for one day.”

            “Five gold pieces for one day of work,” the man whistled. “Them letters really spell that?”

            “Yep, them’s what they says.” The man however could only confidently recognize the word for ‘work’ and the word for ‘gold,’ which was all he thought a man really needed to know.

            “I’ll take that gimp up on his offer. I could use five gold pieces.”

            “Well than you’s as empty headed as you’s ugly. Nobody go up to the keep, and ifs they do, they don’t come back,” the peasant said adding some menace to the end of his warning by running an invisible knife across his throat.

            “You’s just a yellow coward, who believes anything those old crazy coots say at the tavern. I don’t believes anything that come out of those geezers mouths.”
            “I’m not a coward,” the other peasant protested.

            “Then come with me and prove it. Two and a half gold pieces is still worth it for half the work.”

            “I’d go, but I gots things to do.”

            “Like what?”

            “I just got stuff to do. You’re not my keeper.”

            “Good. More money for me. I wouldn’t want to share that kind of money with you anyway.”

            The braver villager tore down the parchment, rolled it up, shoved it into the waist of his mead stained pants, and took off for the tower keep thinking of what he would do with his five gold pieces all along the way.

            The peasant emboldened by alcohol knocked loudly on the tower’s great door but there was no answer. The time stretched on with no sign of anyone and he was beginning to think about leaving when Hump answered the door with his great axe in hand. The peasant took a few steps back, summoned his remaining drunken courage and produced the now wrinkled parchment from his trousers.

            “I’ve come about the work sir,” he said meekly.

            Hump looked the peasant up and down, and then moved his gaze to behind the man to scour the area for others who might be lying in wait to ambush him. When he was satisfied there was no immediate threat, he pushed the door open fully and muttered in a soft gruff tone “Come this way.”

            The sobering peasant nervously trailed Hump through a winding maze of dark corridors and locked doors to find Dark Francis sequestered in his chamber absorbed in study. The gray haired wizard sat hunched over a large wooden table, which supported a large array of books, scrolls and jars filled indiscernible contents, carefully counting off drops as they fell from a long glass pipette into a small cast iron cauldron held aloft above a candle flame, which licked at its soot blacked bottom.

            “53… 54… 55,” Dark Francis counted.

            Upon the utterance of fifty-five, an extra drop escaped from the long glass tube, fell into the cauldron and caused a large multi-colored cloud to explode up into Dark Francis’s face, the result of which turned patches of his beard a bright iridescent purple. The wizard coughed, sputtered, and collapsed onto the stone floor motionless. After several moments passed, he regained consciousness and noticed the pair for the first time.

            “Oh, I didn’t see you there. Please, come in,” Dark Francis said making his way to his feet and brushing himself off. “Are you here for the job? Fantastic. Let me show you where you’ll be working.”

            The villager found himself at the mouth of a cavern closed off by an enormous barred gate and secured by an iron lock the size of a man’s head. The cavern opened up below the tower at the end of a valley and looked to the poor man like the tower’s wicked tooth filled mouth waiting to swallow him whole. He then began seriously scrutinize his life’s choice.

            “It’s a very simple job I assure you,” Dark Francis said with his arm around the quaking peasant, half to reassure him and half to keep him from running.

            “All you need to do is clean out her cave and replace the straw bedding. It should only take the rest of the day to do a proper job, and if you do well, you can return each month to perform the task.”

            “What exactly…” stuttered the peasant, but Dark Francis interrupted.

            “Don’t worry,” Dark Francis said with what he thought was a comforting tone. “She’s as gentle as a lamb, unfortunately. She’s just for show now I guess, but she’s very shy, which is more than a little annoying. I mean what is the point in having one if you can’t show it off occasionally. You know what I mean?”

            “I… guess… so… sir,” stuttered the peasant.

            “Oh, another thing. To make sure she doesn’t bother you, You need to smear the contents of that barrel all over you. If you stay in there long enough without it on, she’ll get comfortable enough to come out and then she’ll never leave you alone. This will make sure she stays away so you can work.”

            The peasant removed the lid from the barrel and immediately jerked a hand up to his face to cover his nose.

            “It’s just some rotten fish guts. She hates the smell. Don’t worry you can’t put too much on. Just apply generously, and you won’t even know she’s there,” Dark Francis said while he unlocked the gate.

            The peasant hesitated at the barrel with his hand still clamped firmly over his nose frantically contemplating whether he could out run the hunchback if he wanted to make a hasty retreat.

            “Hump why don’t you give the man a hand,” Dark Francis said observing the peasant’s reluctance.

            Hump grabbed the man by the shirt and trousers, and lifted the man with ease head first down into the barrel until only the man’s legs were sticking out above the rim kicking wildly at the air. A few seconds later, Hump withdrew the man, who gasped and sputtered frantically trying to expel fish ooze from his nasal passages.

            “There you are my good fellow. Now you’re all set. I’ll be back to check on your progress in a few hours,” Dark Francis said before he and Hump departed for the tower.

            “Five gold pieces, five gold pieces, five gold pieces,” the man said repeatedly as if it were a protective spell meant to fend off the odor.

            The peasant found a wheelbarrow, shovel, pitchfork and broom propped up on one side of the gate. He stacked the tools inside the barrow and crouched down behind it to use as a shield to protect himself from whatever unspeakable horror he might find inside. The villager wheeled everything cautiously into the fissure expecting a huge one eyed giant to grab him the moment he entered to bite his head off and roast his limbs, but he only found a large heap of dung and a larger mound of compressed dirty straw both illuminated by the light that filtered in from outside. The cavern continued farther than he could see in the dim light, but from what he saw there was no monster, beast or animal within the hollow waiting to gobble him up. He breathed a sigh of relief followed by a gag caused by the muck that covered him. He vomited a bit into his mouth, swallowed it back down and got to work.

            First, the peasant heaped the dirty straw onto the wheelbarrow, deposited it in the forest and replaced it with fresh straw he found housed in a covered shelter nearby. He then proceeded to dispose of the dung by making several trips loading the excrement into the wheelbarrow and dumping it in the woods.

            The peasant mused that the dung smelled like a field of wild flowers compared to the stink of the rotting fish guts that clung to his skin. He could even taste it in the air with each shallow breath, so after a few unbearable hours of sporadic dry heaving and retching, he marched off to a creek to wash off the sludge. He normally reserved his bath for the end of each month, but this was a special situation. After a thorough scrubbing, he sufficiently removed the smell from his body and clothes, and returned to the cave to sweep.

            The man whistled happily to himself as he swept, thinking of the bounty he would purchase with his new found wealth. He daydreamed of fine meals and mead, the women who would flock to him and more importantly the envious men, who would now fantasize about being in his shoes, tattered and holey as they were.

            The peasant was deep in his revelry, when he heard a noise behind him. The sound of what he imagined to be rough scales sliding over rock. He turned only to see nothing but empty space and shadows, so he told himself it was the sound of the broom and reminded himself not to let his fancy run away with his sense. He continued to sweep, but stopped cold at the feeling of hot breath beating out a slow cadence on the back of his neck. It’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me, he told himself. He closed his eyes took a few large deep breaths to try to calm down and slowly turned around. When he opened his eyes, he was staring into a pair of great shimmering eyes. A female dragon stood before him, her flame colored eyes stared right back into the villagers framed by an aggressively horned crown and rows of dagger like teeth, which protruded from her narrow muzzle.

            The man stood frozen, a warm sensation sprouted from his groin and ran down his legs to puddle on the floor, his hands clenched the handle of the broom so tightly that it drove splinters into his hands, but he was scarcely aware of these sensations. His full focus was squarely on the menacing looking beast in front of him.

            The dragon let out a tinny puff of smoke from its flared nostrils before giving the peasant a long slobbery lick from his chin to his forehead causing his hair to stick straight up from the moist caress.

            The peasant opened his mouth to yell but found it replaced by the high-pitched scream of a thirteen-year-old girl. The dragon startled by the sudden noise beat a frantic retreat back into the cavern, and the peasant returning to his senses turned without hesitation to make a hasty flight for the exit. He exploded through the gate with a speed he had never known. The shrubbery and leaves were only a blur in his periphery as he hurtled past Dark Francis and Hump and on into the forest screaming hysterically the entire way.

            The peasant began to fade from sight amongst the foliage, and his scream became faint by the time Dark Francis yelled after him “Are you coming back?!”

            There was no reply.

            “That’s unfortunate. I thought he was the one,” Dark Francis said sullenly. The dragon now out of confinement rested its head on Dark Francis’s shoulder and began nuzzling him affectionately while propagating a deep rumbling purr. “I wonder what spooked him.”

            Hump just shrugged his massive shoulders and began to stroke the dragon’s long neck.