Chapter One - While He Was Sleeping

It was just another ordinary night, but Eric, for one, didn’t like the look of things at all.

"I'll have that ... and I'll have that ... and I'll, um, maybe not have that one actually," he muttered to himself, as he lobbed a shifty-looking yellow-stained sock into the far corner of the darkened bedroom.

Looking at the other socks he held in his hand – a whiffy white sports sock and a slightly grimy black dress sock – he figured they’d do just nicely and shoved them into the large sack that he held in his other hand. The sack was beginning to get quite heavy; heavy even for a pretty strong elf like him.

"Eric," said a voice behind him, a voice that was almost too posh-sounding to be genuine but, genuinely enough, really was that posh.

Eric glanced over his shoulder and cast a quizzical look at the green-skinned goblin standing behind him, smartly-dressed in a freshly-pressed suit and cream silk cravat.

"Yes, Flik-Flak."

In the near-darkness of the room, Eric could only just make out the silhouette of his team captain. He was lucky to have even managed that what with his dodgy eyes and all. He really could do with getting himself a pair of spectacles at some point before too long. Maybe a nice pair with tinted lenses like he had seen in the market in...

Flik-Flak cleared his throat with a little cough.

"Yes, I was wondering if you would like any assistance tonight? I'm at a bit of a loose end this evening once again. It seems that this poor boy doesn't really require my services, so to speak. His hair is so messy, anyway, I rather doubt if he'd notice if I ruffled it for him," he explained with a hint of dejection in his voice.

Eric shook his head and smiled apologetically.

"Sorry, boss. I'm having a bit of a tough night myself. I don't know what it is about these students, but they never seem to have anything but mismatched socks. There doesn't seem much point in me taking any, since, like you said, I'd doubt they'd notice anyway." Flik-Flak nodded his head in resignation. Eric had a thought. "Maybe you could give Chuckles a hand, boss. It’s a pretty safe bet that the human, being a student and all, deserves having one heck of a hangover in the morning, so I think Chuckles has really been taking his time over this one so that the mark wakes up with an absolute stinker. Chuckles has had the measuring stick out twice already getting everything lined up just perfectly."

Flik-Flak turned towards where Eric was pointing. With his near-perfect night vision, he could clearly see their stocky dwarf friend clutching a measuring stick in one hand and carefully tiptoeing around the boy's head as it lay embedded in the pillow. Resting against the side of the bed was a brilliantly polished ornate iron warhammer. Flik-Flak strolled towards the bed.

"Chuckles," he whispered, but just loud enough to catch the dwarf's attention.

"Uh-huh," said Chuckles, the gruffly uttered syllables struggling to escape past his thick beard and, well, just his disinterest in general.

"I'm at a bit of a loose end tonight and Eric suggested that perhaps you could use a hand. Would this be true, perchance?"

Chuckles walked over to the side of the bed and retrieved his warhammer. His eyes lit up with happiness and, turning away from Flik-Flak, he moved towards the boy once again, giving the warhammer a quick swing as he did so.

"Chuckles?"

Chuckles glanced over his shoulder, casting a dark glower at his team captain.

"No," he said flatly.

Flik-Flak's shoulders slumped and he turned round to see if any of the other members of his team needed assistance. A muffled groan from the kitchen next door attracted his attention and he set off to investigate. As he reached the bedroom door, however, he happened to look back and saw Eric watching with fascination as Chuckles hovered the flat surface of the warhammer above the boy's head and slowly began to lift it high into the air. Flik-Flak opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. A shiver ran down his spine as he heard the familiar THUD of a headache being applied.

"Always sounds so painful, doesn't it? You wonder sometimes how no one ever gets woken up by it."


Flik-Flak looked down the dimly lit hallway and saw the plump figure of his team’s fairy, Tracy, hovering slowly towards him. With her bizarre white and black make-up and her flowing black dress, she was the very image of the modern-day Goth fairy. It was hard to believe she used to be a tooth fairy. In her hand, she was clutching a set of house keys.

"Any suggestions, Flicky?" she asked, looking around for a good hiding place to put the keys.

Flik-Flak bristled slightly at the lack of formality in the tone of her voice. Nonetheless, he had a quick glance about.

"Ooh, I don't know, Tracy. Maybe over by –"

He cut himself short as Tracy beat him to the punch and hid the keys in a tattered trainer lying in the corner next to the front door.

"Sorted," she said. "Not overly original, I know, but a classic hiding place nonetheless. Time for a quick break, I think."

Flik-Flak watched as Tracy took a battered wand out of her little black purse, tapped it once on her other hand, then instantaneously shrank to the size of a fly (albeit one that was glowing brightly). She quickly buzzed off through the keyhole in the front door.

Just as Flik-Flak looked away, there was an almighty CRASH in the room directly opposite, which was quickly followed by a flurry of cursing and muttered threats. Flik-Flak shook his head and pushed the door open. He stopped dead in his tracks, appalled at the scene in front of him. The room was supposed to be a kitchen, but now it looked more like a bombsite. This would never do.

"What in blazes has been going on in here?" he demanded to know.

A messy-looking orc pulled its pig-like head out of the bin, taking a half-eaten chicken with it and spilling an almost full tin of beans onto the floor. Its mouth, still full of thrown-away food, contorted into an uneasy smile.

"It wasn't me," it muttered, then stuffed a handful of cold brussel sprouts into its mouth, swallowing them whole. "Whatever you're talking about, it wasn't me. I swear it."

Flik-Flak put his hands on his hips and shook his head slowly.

"Rodney, there's no one else in here," he said. "What have I told you before about lying?"

The bemused orc scratched the side of his muck-covered head for a second.

"Let sleeping dogs do it?" he suggested hopefully.

Flik-Flak took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head.

"No, not quite. I told you that at the end of the day the only person you will ever hurt by lying is yourself. Honesty is always the best policy."

Rodney nodded momentarily, then stopped, thought for a moment and scratched his head again.

"But … but I thought you said last week that life insurance was the best policy."

Flik-Flak closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. He bypassed ten and kept counting until he reached fifty. Just as he finished counting, suddenly there was another loud CRASH. It came from inside one of the cupboards at the far end of the kitchen. Beginning to suspect the true cause of all the racket, Flik-Flak walked over to the cupboard and quickly pulled the door open. An ugly looking troll was sitting inside the cupboard, with its hairy legs pushed up into its hairy chest and a frying pan in one hand and a bag of rotten eggs in the other. Next to it was a pile of dented pots and pans and broken crockery.

"Hello, Peter," Flik-Flak said wearily. "I might have known it was you making that racket."

Peter smiled sheepishly and put the frying pan down.

"This looks bad, doesn't it?" he said. "I … I can explain."

Flik-Flak rather doubted it.

"Care to explain standing out here, or do you want to stay in the cupboard?"

Peter thought for a moment.

"Can I explain from here?"

Flik-Flak shook his head disapprovingly. Peter quickly climbed out of the cupboard.

"That's two nights in a row where you've caused a disturbance while we've been working," Flik-Flak said flatly. "I let you off lightly yesterday, but I want a better explanation today."

"I do apologise," Peter said softly. He quickly looked around the kitchen. "But it wasn't my fault. Honestly. I don't want to get Pigkiller in trouble or anything, though."

"Pigkiller? What's Pigkiller got to do with you crashing about in the kitchen cupboards?"

Just then, as if by magic, the kitchen door swung open.

"Aye, min. What've I got to do with you no doing your job right, like?"

Flik-Flak looked round. And then down. The impressively muscular figure of Pigkiller strode purposefully into the kitchen. All two foot tall of him. The war-painted pygmy glowered up at Peter. If looks could kill...

"Aye, well?”

Peter swallowed hard and wiped some sweat from his brow with his hairy hand.

"Pigkiller?" he said quickly. "I don't recall saying Pigkiller." He looked in the direction of Rodney. "Did you hear me say Pigkiller?" Rodney's head was back inside the bin and totally oblivious to what was going on. "I think you all must have misheard me or something."

Flik-Flak and Pigkiller weren't impressed by Peter's stalling. Peter wiped some more sweat from his brow and laughed nervously.

"Okay, the truth then,” he muttered. “If you must know, I was hiding from Pigkiller.” Flik-Flak glanced down at Pigkiller in surprise. Pigkiller just kept glowering up at Peter. If looks had never killed anyone before, then this look – the mother of all nasty looks – was coming mighty close. “He's been giving me a hard time these last couple of nights,” Peter continued nervously. “I was busy looking for somewhere to hide my bag of rotten eggs when I thought I heard him coming into the kitchen, so I quickly hid in the nearest cupboard. Unfortunately, it was one that was full of crockery and pots and pans. I'm afraid I may have, um, accidentally knocked a few about and broken one or two things."

They all looked into the cupboard. Everything was either broken or dented.

"Why were you holding the frying pan?" Flik-Flak asked. "You weren't planning to hit Pigkiller, were you?"

Peter looked down at Pigkiller, whose hands were inching closer to the array of daggers on the leather belt around his waist.

"No, no, I wasn't,” he answered quickly. “It was the only pan I managed to avoid breaking so I was just holding it for safe-keeping."

"Aye, likely," Pigkiller muttered.

Flik-Flak thought it sounded plausible enough, though. But why Pigkiller was giving Peter such a hard time was a different matter altogether. He drew his silver pocket watch from his waistcoat and looked at the largest of the three dials on its face. Seventy minutes past thirty. He tapped the face once and the dial quickly re-arranged itself to reveal the time in the Overworld (or Earth, as the humans strangely seemed to call it).

Hmm, five past four in the morning, Flik-Flak thought to himself. There wasn't enough time to get to the bottom of the problem just now. They had to leave in five minutes.

"I think we'll have to discuss this fully at another time," he said, putting his watch away again. "In the meantime, gentle-people, I suggest you two stay out of each other's way." He looked down at Pigkiller. "Pigkiller, you go back through to the bedroom and tell the others to finish up."

"Aye, I suppose I can do that," Pigkiller said.

With one last glower at Peter - and a scarcely audible muttered threat to boot - he turned around and headed back out of the kitchen. As the door swung shut again, Flik-Flak turned back to Peter.

"I don't know what's going on here, but I do know that there's an almighty mess in that cupboard." Peter bowed his head in shame. "We're going to have to make it look like the human made the mess himself. You go and hide your bag of rotten eggs somewhere and I'll see if I can cover our tracks a little. Okay?"

Peter nodded and sloped off to the far end of the kitchen to find a suitable place to hide the bag. Flik-Flak shook his head in exasperation and then turned his attention back onto the broken contents of the cupboard. His eyes wandered over to the next cupboard, which was also open, and he spotted a tray of eggs and some flour. He smiled as a cunning plan started to form in his head.

*

Eric tightly pulled the drawstring on his sack and finished it off with his favourite triple-finger-nipper elf knot. Anyone who attempted to open the sack without knowing what they were doing would find the bizarre-looking knot suddenly baring teeth and trying to bite their fingers. It had taken years of extremely painful practice to perfect. Old Four Fingers McDowell had taught him the technique.

With his work done, Eric heaved the sack onto his shoulder and made his way towards the bedroom door.

"You coming, Chuckles?"

The stocky dwarf was polishing his beloved warhammer as he sat perched on the edge of the human's bed.

He paid absolutely no attention to Eric's question, whatsoever.

"Chuckles?"

Again there was no response. Chuckles dabbed the cloth into the tin at his side and applied some more polish lovingly to his warhammer.

"Chuckles!" Eric said, as loudly as he dare.

The human stirred in their sleep. Chuckles glanced at the human momentarily, then slowly turned his gaze onto Eric.

"What?"

"Are you coming?" Eric asked again.

Chuckles seemed to think about it for a moment, albeit grudgingly, then slowly his eyes lowered onto his warhammer once again. He smiled. Eric shook his head and tried again.

"Chuckles?"

Chuckles quickly looked up, then dropped off the bed onto the floor.

"I'm coming," he muttered grumpily.

Just as he took his first step towards the door, the human stirred in their sleep once again. In a flash of metal, Chuckles gripped his warhammer, swung it at the human, and crashed its flat surface down onto the side of their head. Seconds later, the human was snoring heavily.

"I'm coming," Chuckles repeated.

Eric took one last look round the darkened room and, satisfied that everything was as it should be, turned and reached for the door handle. As he pulled the door open, Pigkiller appeared in the doorway.

"Aye, aye, lads. You lot done in here, like?"

"Everything's been done," Eric said. "What about the others?"

Pigkiller glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen.

"Aye, they're coming," he said, then lowered his voice, "but Peter's been farking about as usual. What a loser that ugly troll can be sometimes."

Just then there was another loud CRASH in the kitchen, quickly followed by the sound of Peter apologising profusely to Flik-Flak. They all looked towards the kitchen.

"What's going on?" a sleepy voice asked.

Eric shrugged his shoulders. Pigkiller nodded his head knowingly. Chuckles gazed lovingly at his warhammer. Suddenly realising that he didn’t recognise the voice that had come from behind him, Eric looked round. The bedraggled human was sitting up in his bed, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes. Farking frack. Rule number one of the Overworld Chaos-makers code of conduct had been broken. The human had been woken!

"Aye, out my way, like," Pigkiller said, springing into action and charging past Eric in a flash, waving for Chuckles to follow him too.

Eric watched as Pigkiller grabbed the duvet, quickly pulled himself up onto the bed and positioned himself little more than six inches from the human's yawning face. Pigkiller pointed Chuckles round the other side of the bed. Finally the human stopped yawning and slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a demented looking war-painted pygmy, leering threateningly into his eyes. The human gasped in shock.

"Aye, you ain't seeing any of this, right? Say night night, now."

There was an almighty THWACK and seconds later the human was again snoring heavily. Chuckles ambled round from the far side of the bed, carefully replacing his beloved warhammer in its sheath on his back. Pigkiller clambered down off the bed, gently dropping down onto the floor. He didn't look happy.

"Aye, that was a close one, like," he said. "That Peter's got a lot to answer for. There'll be hell to pay tomorrow, like."

Eric held the door open for Pigkiller and Chuckles, then followed them out into the hallway where they were joined by Flik-Flak, Tracy, a food-stained Rodney, and an embarrassed-looking Peter. Their work, wrecking a human’s home and causing utter chaos, was done for another night. It was time to go home. It was time to go back to the Underworld.

*

Somewhere in the dense fog of his brain, the young male student finally managed to make out the sound of his telephone ringing. He slowly opened his eyes. The light from the sun, streaking through the gap in the curtains, nearly blinded him. He shut his eyes again. The ringing, thankfully, soon stopped.

Tentatively, a moment later, he eased his legs over to the side of the bed and then lowered first one foot and then the next to the floor, swinging his upper body into a sitting position in the process. His head was pounding terribly. Worse than any hangover he had ever suffered before.

Shielding the side of his face with his hand, he opened his eyes once again. His vision was all blurry. He rubbed his eyes briskly. Still blurry. Gingerly, he pushed himself onto his feet. The room seemed to spin around him, but he managed to stagger over to the bedroom door, quickly pulling it open, and leaned against the door-frame for support. He still felt awful. He’d had far too much drink the night before. He needed aspirin. Supporting himself with a hand against the wall, he staggered over to the kitchen door and slowly pushed it open. He made his way over to the sink and turned the cold-water tap on. As the water ran out of the tap, his brain suddenly clicked that something hadn't looked quite right. He turned round and looked just to make sure. His jaw just about fell out of its socket.

"Oh, my God!"

He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. As he walked back across the kitchen floor, he took it all in. The fridge door was open and it looked like most of the food it had contained was now lying in various states of mess on the kitchen floor. Likewise, a pile of broken crockery and battered pots and pans lay on the floor outside an open cupboard. On top of the cooker was a frying pan with what looked like a very poor attempt at an omelette burned to it. On the kitchen table was a bottle of maple syrup and the remains of some pancakes on a plate. Next to the plate was a pouch of tobacco, some cigarette papers, and a small camera film case rather bizarrely containing a small amount of what appeared to be …um, dried leaves?

It slowly began to dawn on him what had happened. When he saw the contents of the ashtray, half-hidden beneath an empty packet of crisps, it all fell into place. Midnight munchies. He couldn't remember making any of the mess when he came back from his night out on the town, but then a combination of alcohol and funny-smoke can play tricks on any mind. It kind of made sense. It accounted for his thumping headache. And it kind of accounted for the weird dream about the tiny man standing on his bed.

That said, it didn't quite account for the rotten smell that seemed to be lurking about somewhere in the kitchen... Yeuch!