Cannibal

Gambol had no interest in children. In Bulgaria, he sighed with disgust as a sack-toting bogey limped out of the forest near a sparsely-populated village. It sang to itself softly, and lamented the death of its maker, Baba Yaga. Too many of them had traits he didn’t need. This one was just another child-scaring bogey. None of the adults in the village paid it any mind, and some of the adolescents spit and threw rocks as it passed.

Pathetic.

“Goodbye, Torbalan.” Gambol pulled open a trapdoor in the dirt and dropped through it. He fell into a great wind, one that pulled at his skin flaps. The tunnel opened up and beneath him was the Earth, big and blue and green. He pointed his being toward Poland, and landed in a murky stream near a cobbled bridge. It was faster to travel this way, through trapdoors, though the falling had put him off at first.

A baby began to cry. Gambol pulled his skin up and walked down the stream toward the bridge.

“Hello Bubak.”

The crying stopped. From the shadows under the bridge drifted a form wreathed in rotten burlap. Its skull was painted with old blood, brown and black with time. It lifted an axe, and Gambol stepped forward. He grappled with it, and with the practiced fingers of his free hand he began to tear its skin, stripping the ragged flesh like bark from a tree. Bubak went limp, and Gambol stitched the skin onto his forearm, where it made a sleeve.

He was bits Japanese Namahage, Finnish Groke, and Pugot Mamu from the Phillipines. Mamu had been his favorite, a headless shapeshifter who’d ground men into sausage as it fed them into it’s neck hole. Gambol had stitched them all into himself, trophies and bearers of power. They would start to fear him now, the others - especially those with something to give.

He pulled a trapdoor through the streambottom and dropped in, water following. Below him the Earth turned, and somewhere it would rain for a few seconds. He guided his being toward Texas, and landed in a farmyard. He dragged his skin behind a bale of hay and slept.

Gambol was the first and only American bogey, truth be told.

One genuine, gosh-to-golly, spirits-be-praised, melting pot.

@2 years ago with 5 notes