[Writing Prompt] Your roommate looks human, but one day they reveal to you that they are actually half dwarf and half giant. You should have seen the signs sooner.
Good Ole Jerry
“Right under my nose, all along.”
Jerry looked down at his feet abashedly, which didn’t make things better. I followed his gaze and realized his bare feet were gargantuan and covered in hair. How had I not seen this before?
“Four years. Four years you kept it from me.”
Jerry nodded repentantly and looked up. “Well,” he said – his voice, I notice for the first time, oddly baritone for his modest stature – “I figured you knew already.”
I scoffed. “How would I know Jerry. I’m not a mind reader.”
“Yeah but,” Jerry clasped his hands together and fiddled his thumbs. I gave his fingers a real good looking at and kicked myself for not noticing them before, thick as sausages yet deft as fine tweezers. Jerry continued, “we went out drinking all the time. I mean, come on man.”
I had to give it to Jerry on this count, he was a prodigious drinker. Actually, that was an understatement. Jerry drank like a six-stroke engine lived in his belly. Jerry drank like a literal elephant.
I’m serious. He went to Thailand once where there’s this drunkard elephant that drinks beers for tourists and has drinking contests for money. Jerry is the only person who ever beat the elephant – the poor thing passed out cold and Jerry just cracked another.
“Fine,” I had to admit, “but you can’t expect me to draw that conclusion just because you have a drinking problem!”
“Yeah, but, I made those pots, by hand dude.” Jerry pointed to the gorgeous set of custom-made pans lining the wall over the stove. Each gleamed impossibly, all the colors of the rainbow coming through at once. To look upon those pots was to look upon the face of creation itself.
God I love those pots. You haven’t really cooked until you’ve cooked on Mythril. Totally non-stick and with near perfect heat conductivity. Nothing else like it. Not even close. And dishwasher safe!
Jerry made them for my birthday last year – hammered them out in the garage. I admit, it probably should have raised some red flags.
“They are beautiful Jerry.” I said, suddenly feeling a bit of a fool for making such a big deal about this the first place. Who cares if my roommate is half dwarf/half giant – he’s Jerry after all. Still, the same old buddy who can cleave firewood faster than a commercial logsplitter. He’s still the same old friend who once tossed me, a six-foot-tall man, over fifty feet straight up into the air at a Memorial Day BBQ, and then caught me like I was an infant.
“God,” I began my apology, “I’m sorry Jerry, I’m such an insensitive ass, acting this way, as if it really mattered. You know what, giant, dwarf, I don’t care man. You’re my friend and I accept you for what you are, without reservation.”
Jerry’s face lit up and he smiled cheek to cheek. “Thanks, man,” he said. But then he became uncertain and looked at me nervously. “To be honest, I’m kind of glad we had this conversation. I’m in a bit of, uh, trouble.”
I rolled my eyes like a sitcom character before the credits roll, but the credits never came, so I asked Jerry what was up.
Jerry looked abashed again – he loved to look abashed and did so with great effect. “I, uh, dug too deep.”
This was a bit confusing at first, but then I remembered all the time Jerry was spending in the Yurt he built in the backyard. I always wondered what the yurt was for, and why I wasn’t allowed inside. And also why countless truckloads of various colored dirt were regularly being hauled from the backyard.
“The yurt?” I asked.
“The yurt,” Jerry replied.
“How far have you dug down?” I asked.
“Far,” he said.
I thinned my eyes. “How far?”
Jerry swallowed a lump in his throat. “Too far. I, uh, woke something up. Something old. Something big.”
Right then a thin vibration began to shake the house. As the rumbling escalated in severity I walked over to the window, giving a brief glance at Jerry before peering through the blinds – just in time to see the yurt burst into flames. From the cloud of fire and smoke a giant blur, faster and hotter than anything I’d ever seen, exploded outward with an otherworldly shriek and catapulted through the air. I watched as it disappeared far away into the sky, its wings of flame fully extended and flapping.
Turning back to Jerry I frowned. I was ready to be annoyed, but Jerry, don’t you know it, he just shrugged, looked abashed, and gave me that wry smile of his.
Whatever else Jerry is – friend, roommate, giant, dwarf, accidental unleasher of an apocalyptic evil – he’s impossible to stay angry at, that guy.
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