Reader, I killed it.

  I’m sure you’re surprised. (Not.)

  Unlike the squirrel, it died in a single blow. Instead of hitting the tree, I slammed the shovel blade down on the whatever-the-hell-it-was.

  I didn’t even scream. Zelda was doing enough screaming for the both of us, although her screaming amounted to hysterical barking of the kind I’d only ever heard from her once before, when a giant black snake slithered across my porch.

  I was panting, though, my breath coming fast and shallow, as if I were halfway through a marathon. Not that I’d ever run a marathon, but I imagined my need for oxygen after thirteen miles would be about the same as it was after being attacked by a… a goblin?

  Hell, was that really what that thing was?

  I would almost prefer to have been attacked by an alligator.

  Dead, with green blood oozing from its smashed skull, it looked like a doll. A seriously creepy doll that only a future serial killer could love, but still a doll. It was about that size, with a humanoid shape and limbs in the right places.

  Okay, the good news was that maybe those seven dead people hadn’t all been killed by our fellow human beings.

  That was good news, right?

  Yeah, no, not so much, because if these little monsters were killing people in numbers, there must be a lot more of them out there.

  I took a slow step back from the body.

  Zelda did, too, tail low, hackles up. She gave a small whuff and then looked at me, clearly asking, Was that it? Are we done?

  We were not done.

  I was still staring down at the dead goblin when I heard a rustling in the undergrowth that definitely wasn’t wind.

  Zelda heard it, too. She gave a low growl that raised every hair on my arms.

  The rustling was coming from more than one direction.

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered as little green bodies popped up from behind trees, from under fallen logs, from bushes I would have sworn were empty.

  Chittering, shrieking, teeth bared. So many teeth.

  One launched itself at me with a dagger in hand. A tiny dagger, sure, but it was still sharp. I brought the shovel up in reflex, not so much trying to hit it as just trying to shield myself, and the moment the dagger made contact, the goblin went flying backward like it had been shot out of a cannon.

  It slammed into a tree trunk with a sickening crunch and slumped to the ground, very, very dead.

  I stared at my shovel.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “That was new.”

  But I didn’t have time to think about it.

  Another goblin shrieked. Zelda lunged, teeth flashing, and caught it mid-leap. She shook it like a chew toy and flung it aside.

  We were surrounded.

  They came in waves—too many claws, too many shrill voices, too much green. Some of them had little knives, one had a stick with a nail in it, one was wielding what looked like a broken bottle. One of them was wearing a backpack, which was honestly kind of cute, if you ignored the murder in its eyes.

  I stopped thinking. I started swinging.

  The shovel came down. Crack. Green blood splattered my clothes.

  Another one leaped at my legs. I kicked, hard, my work boot connecting with another satisfying crunch.

  Swing. Stomp. Swing again. Shovel to the left, boot to the right.

  Zelda snarled and snapped and barked and dove, a white blur beside me.

  I didn’t have time to wonder if I was doing it right. I didn’t have time to feel scared. I didn’t even have time to panic.

  I just hit things.

  And kicked things.

  And killed things.

  A dozen dead goblins later, the clearing was quiet again, except for the wheezing sound of my breath and the low, warning growl still vibrating in Zelda’s throat.

  I stood motionless, gripping the shovel like a baseball bat, waiting.

  And waiting.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Finally, I let out the longest exhale in the history of humankind and said to Z, “I think we’re good. You think we’re good?”

  She curled her lip, baring her front teeth in clear disdain, then trotted off to start sniffing the goblin corpses scattered around us.

  Good was an over-statement.

  I was not good. I’d call myself barely holding on, really.

  Prior to that day, I would have said I had pretty high standards for bad days. Every single one of them—including my previous record holder, the one right before the end, when my dad ran out of pain meds before the cancer ran out of pain and the hospice nurse got a flat tire—paled in comparison to the past…

  My eyes flicked to the countdown timer and I did the math automatically.

  Seventy-one hours, seven minutes left.

  If there had been seventy-one hours and twenty-two minutes when I checked before, and I’d spent a couple minutes dithering, then I’d just killed at least a dozen little creatures—I started to count bodies—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…

  Sixteen.

  Sixteen creatures, in less than fifteen minutes.

  It felt longer.

  I was very, very tempted to check my messages to see if the challenge scenario was gonna give me a prize for that.

  I didn’t. Because the idea was horrifying.

  I did not want to be rewarded for killing things, even things that clearly wanted to kill me first.

  On the other hand, I wanted a prize. Specifically, a vial of blue goo, a canteen full of fresh water, and maybe, if I was honest with myself, something to eat. The dead goblins smelled terrible, but I really was hungry.

  Oh, and a tent would be nice, too. Maybe a firestarter? A tea kettle?

  God, I so wanted a cup of tea. I had to blink back the tears. No crying! Not until I’d found my water supply.

  But first… the backpack goblin had been wearing an actual backpack. A tiny one, sure, but if I was hunting for berries or something equally stupid during the next seventy-one hours, it would come in handy. Plus, it might contain something useful. Like, you know, some blue goo or a water bottle?

  And the goblin I’d thrown into a tree had been carrying a dagger, which would be way handier for blazing my trail than my shovel. No hacking at the bark, just carving a neat line or two to let myself know where I’d been.

  I needed that dagger.

  I swallowed hard. This was going to be disgusting, but it had to be done.

  Zelda pawed at the backpack, then looked up at me. Her tail swished once, clearly suggesting, This one smells interesting.

  I walked over to her, trying not to look too closely at what my boot had done to the goblin’s skull.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, then felt like an idiot for apologizing to something that had been trying to murder me five minutes ago.

  I crouched down and gingerly reached out to touch the strap of the backpack, hoping I could slide it off the goblin’s arms without, you know, having to actually touch the goblin.

  The goblin vanished.

  I mean, it literally disappeared. One second there was a small, dead body with a smashed skull, and the next second there was nothing but forest floor and a small pile of... stuff.

  I screamed and fell backward onto my ass.

  Then I screamed again and leapt to my feet. I’d landed on another dead goblin, felt it squish, then felt it vanish beneath me, my butt landing on the leafy ground.

  “What the hell?!” I shouted at nothing in particular.

  I stared at the spot where the backpack goblin had been. There was no blood, no depression in the moss, no sign anything had ever been there except for two items sitting on the moss: a package of beef jerky, Kirkland brand, and a pair of socks.

  I spun and looked behind me, where I’d fallen.

  No goblin there, either, but a bright red stick lighter, the kind you’d use for a fireplace or a grill.

  No backpack. No tattered goblin clothing. No crude weapons.

  But… stuff?

  Zelda nosed the beef jerky package, then dropped into a sit and looked up at me expectantly. I could almost hear her saying, Treats for me, please!

  Numb, I reached down, picked it up, ripped it open, pulled out a piece, and handed it to her. Belatedly, I remembered our rule—dogs had to earn their treats—but under the circumstances, I kinda felt like offering her paw or showing her tummy was superfluous. She’d earned her treat by killing goblins.

  She gobbled the jerky down and I looked at the rest of the bodies.

  I was gonna have to touch them all, wasn’t I? One after another.

  The dagger goblin yielded a pink insulated water bottle, the kind some other woman might carry with her to a yoga class. The broken-bottle goblin gave me a roll of duct tape. The one with the stick and nail turned into a pair of sunglasses.

  Sunglasses.

  I held them up to the light filtering through the trees. They looked like perfectly ordinary Ray-Ban knockoffs.

  “Seriously?” I asked the universe. “Sunglasses? What am I supposed to do with sunglasses in a forest?”

  But I kept going. Poke, disappear, collect stuff. Poke, disappear, collect stuff.

  By the time I’d worked my way through all sixteen bodies, I had a respectable pile of supplies: the jerky, socks, water bottle, lighter, duct tape, sunglasses, plus a spool of thin rope, a small first aid kit, a folding knife, and a grand total of eight protein bars.

  The vast majority of the goblin dead had been worth a single protein bar. I didn’t want to know what that said about the value of life in this place.

  I sat back on my heels and surveyed my haul. No weapons, really, unless you counted the knife. No armor. No magical books, wands, or crystals.

  But also no hunks of bread or smelly goblin bandanas.

  Whatever intelligence was deciding what to give me from the dead goblins wasn’t basing it on what goblins might carry or even on what the stereotypical video game goblins of my youth might carry. If this was World of Warcraft revisited, I would have expected a glider kit or a rocket pack.

  Instead, it felt like the intelligence behind this scenario was giving me what I wanted.

  Except not the good stuff. Not the stuff I really wanted. Not the blue goo—and hell, probably it was time to start calling it what it was, a health potion.

  Not any serious form of protection, or, for that matter a serious weapon. I was still stuck with my shovel for both offense and defense.

  I should probably read the rest of my messages.

  I did not want to.

  I was starting to feel… well… angry.

  I didn’t do anger much.

  Anger was a dangerous emotion when you were a woman with a history of mental illness.

  People didn’t see righteous rage. They saw crazy.

  Here’s a fun fact: about 40% of incarcerated people are mentally ill. According to the Department of Justice, there are roughly three times as many people with schizophrenia in prison than in hospitals.

  When you’re officially a crazy person, anger is something that you stuff way, way, way down, underneath a Teflon coat of polite.

  Because if you let that anger free? That’s a fast ticket to a locked cell and a guard who thinks he can grope you with impunity.

  (Guess what? He can! Not a goddamn thing you can do about it. And yes, that’s the voice of experience talking.)

  But there were no guards here. No concerned passersby who thought calling the police was a helpful thing to do. No judges who threw up their hands and said ninety days, because that was the law, even if you’d been so lost in your head you had no idea what you were doing.

  What there was, was goblins. And where there’d been sixteen of the little fuckers, there were probably more.

  They wanted to kill, and hell, right now, I wanted to kill them, too.