The Fortune of Goblins: Mesa-Tulsa by Joshua Cox-Steib Page A

his new neighbors a favor with this little bit of deception. He was saving them from all the fuss and trouble that would have ensued had they known his true background. Wasters just weren’t acceptable company. Sure, it was okay to take what meager money they had, in exchange for overpriced goods and poor service, but when it came to every other social arena they were taboo. All sorts of creatures lived within the wastes, and they were all treated with persecution.
                  Gurgle figured he had it double bad – being a waster goblin.
                  A snarl interrupted his thoughts. From memory he located a thin, dangling chain and pulled it. Light flooded the warehouse. Cages lined the walls on either side, forming a dark, drain-filled alley of concrete down the center. Gurgle whistled quietly as he walked softly towards the far end of the warehouse, where a large dog sat growling. As the goblin drew closer, growls turned to death promising snarls. The dog began a tense stalk forward – closing the gap. It pounced.
                  Gurgle hit the floor hard, the weight of the dog pinning him down. He struggled to throw the beast off, but no matter how he wiggled escape was an impossibility. Finally, the assault was too much for him, and he struggled to speak past the large tongue plastering his face. The dog, whom Gurgle had named “Kisses”, gave forth a high pitched whine, but finally settled back onto its haunches – freeing the goblin.
                  “Time to feed the pets.”
    Gurgle went to a large refrigerator along the back wall, and with only a slight grunt of effort, pulled it open. The goblin dug about within the large, steel rectangle, before emerging with an armful of packages, each wrapped in stiff, white paper. Still whistling, he began walking back down the center, tossing packages into cages as he went. He ran out of packages before he ran out of cages, but it was no accident – not everything in there eats.
                  A myriad of growls, snarls, chomps, and other beatific sounds greeted the feeding. Gurgle’s pets were the heart, as well as the guardians of his sanctuary. There was quite an assortment within the warehouse. Some though, he’d had to leave back in the southern wastes – the ones that couldn’t be contained.
    The city didn’t approve of such things. Like the humans that had driven them to live in this condensed caricature of reality, the people of Mesa-Tulsa didn’t consider anything bigger, or more dangerous than a dog to be acceptable. The Lich that had founded this particular municipality had been born a human, and was reputed to have had an inordinate fondness for the favored pets of that species.
                  Gurgle liked dogs, those that remembered their roots. Domestication had ruined most of the poor creatures. A sad thing, that. Why’d people, fey and human alike, have to go around teaching animals how not to act like themselves? It was bad enough that they all did it to their own young.
    He figured that was their business, but it hadn’t stopped him from doing everything he could to unlearn all he could about how to be a goblin. It seemed to be going well. There was the occasional slipup, and some few things that were just too ingrained – things he didn’t even notice. For the most part though, he was having a far easier time getting settled into the city than he’d expected.
                  Growls followed the goblin as he went back through the warehouse, checking on each of his pets before wrestling open the oversized steel doors, and leaving the warehouse behind – doors open wide, and lights on. A few minutes after the goblin drove off a large dog padded silently out into the dusk-lit city. After a brief pause to sniff the air the dog disappeared into the city’s perpetual shadows.
                  Impertinent hours passed, and the city life went