💾 Archived View for republic.circumlunar.space › users › joneworlds › 2020-12-07-ogre-visit.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 13:51:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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It was more than two years ago by now, but I remember that visit from an ogre like it was yesterday. I was behind the power wagon just returned from a tire scavenge run, working jobs to ease my grief in those days. And I saw the ogre lifting itself down from the retaining wall behind my home and ambling down the embankment, looking evenly at me with its eye as it came towards me. I dropped the tire I was carrying and ran for my door, barely getting there before it did. Slammed the door and leaned, but it already had a hand on it. The hinge metal bent and the door jam splintered as it pushed it in, and I thought I was finished for sure. I went tumbling onto the bench by the stair. I turned towards the door to get up.
"Wait," it said, in a low, even voice. "I have something for you." That surprised me. I did not even know they could talk, let alone in my language. It was so tall that I could not see its face as it stood outside the door. I was frozen with horror, staring at its chest. I could say nothing.
"I am sorry about your children," it continued. "We all do what we must to survive, don't we." A sound that might have been a sigh. "I thought you should have these."
An an enormous hand was suddenly inside my home, and out of it dropped something very small onto the floor. I couldn't quite process this, and I made no reply.
A pause. It moved a toe. "I expect you and the others are planning to come for me soon."
"Yes," I eventually growled shortly, as I glared at its belly button. "Four days from now, at dawn."
"Yes, of course. You will do what you must, as well." A pause. Awkward or sullen, I will never be sure. It moved away from the doorway and I could see outside again.
I was still sitting on the floor. There in front of me where it dropped them, was Tara's bracelet and a pokemon card of Evan's. They were balled up together, bent but not crushed. I stared at them, my heart turning inside out within my chest. Seconds passed, or maybe hours.
A tree-like arm appeared in the ruined doorway again. "Take this also, I have no use for it." It dropped a computer keyboard onto the mat, and it left.
As planned, some of us from the neighbourhood went up the hill and dispatched the ogre later that week, and there was some safety for the rest of that year. But this year another one came to take its place, and now Hat's granddaughter has gone missing. We'll go out on another search this afternoon, like we did yesterday. It goes on and on like this, but I still don't know what it means.