The ostrich racing balloon sat deflated, smoldering and sad. Bereaved gamblers were betting with eachother over whether the balloon would be reconstructed or if they would instead construct a long rumored ostrich racing dodecahedron in its place.

Dorma and her cloaked goons walked through the sorry streets. Dorma, her singular eye poking out from under her hood, glaring like that of a rabid cyclops. Thurmsabold, his sad, defeated gate radiating awareness of his being shorter, weaker and in every way inferior to Dorma, along with the recent discovery that she had, either mistakenly or on purpose, given him two right legs when she performed emergency surgery on him. The barkeep who felt great agony that no one knew their name, or even cared to refer to them in any way other than as ‘barkeep,’ as if there were not enough unnamed barkeeps in the story already. Jeffrey with a G, forever stuck in his hulking, comically absurd warlock transformation that required a specially tailored black cloack to conceal, appearing as a result not dissimilar to two large gorillas stacked on top of eachother (they had to tuck his pink fuzzy tale to his back in order to have some sort of inconspicuousness, but made sure not to refer to it as ‘tucking’ to his face).

“You lot! Please! Over here!”

Dorma turned on hearing the crackling voice of an emaciated person in tattered rags sitting on the street. She turned her burning pupil in their direction.

“What do you want?” she growled.

“P-please, s-s-sirrah, if y-you could only s-spare a c-couple of coins, I-I am h-hungry a-and—”

“Did you just call me sirrah?” Dorma turned to her cloaked companions. “Did this cretin just call me sirrah?”

They all shrugged, mumbling discordantly about how they weren’t really sure or couldn’t really hear.

Dorma uncovered a huge claw, reached forward, and squeezed tightly on the person’s neck, lifting them up into the air and up to her scarred, bloody face.

“Do I look like a sirrah to you?”

“I-I’m s-sorry I j-just meant to—”

“Cluck your apology!” Dorma tossed them against a row of trash cans, which tumbled over and spewed over them. “How dare you incorrectly assume my gender! You are scum! You are nothing to me!”

The goons shrugged, mumbling discordantly about how they thought it was a little bit of a overreaction or that maybe Dorma should just let it go.

She swung around to glare her eye at them. “Did I just hear someone say I should let it go?”

Silence. Then, from over in the garbage, a feeble voice crackled.

“Yes,” the person then collapsed in a pile of moldy fruit as old newspapers spilled over top of them.

“Let it go? Let it clucking go? Who the cluck do you people think you are? Who the cluck do you think I am? Let it go! Clucking disgrossting. You disgrosst me!

“When I was almost mauled to death in the Wayword Woods, did I then just…let it go?

“Thurmsabold, when you were interrupted from clucking that hairy bartender and nearly killed, did you then just let it go?”

Thurmsabold shook his head.

“Random bartender who has not yet clucked Thurmsabold to my knowledge, when you gave your most expensive liquor away for what amounted to a worthless piles of muck, did you just decide to…hold it all back?”

The bartneder shook his head.

“Jeffrey with a G, when you were reduced to a gargantuan laughing stock that will never be taken seriously by anyone ever again due to your own hubris, did you turn away from your pain and fury and slam the door?”

Jeffrey with a G shook his head.

“Well you know what, you sorry mothercluckers? I don’t care what you say! The storm of our fury and anger must live on! I mean do you think that the way to succeed is to simply let go of your past, focus on the present and embrace life’s endless possibilites, forgiving and forgetting and pushing past the gnawing pain and agony of personal growth?!

“Because it’s not! It’s not at all! The only endless possibilites are the ones in which someone else is looking to cluck you over! You have to latch on impossibly to everything your care about with an iron vice, and chains, and ropes, and hot wax, and needled tongs and…you get the point. I had medals, you filthy cluckers, a whole clucking lot of medals! You can’t just re-earn a medal. I will never get those medals back, they were eaten! Just like half of my hamned body!”

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

Dorma froze, then turned around to face the clapping sound. From the shadowy alleyway behind the dumpsters trudged a portly, bloblike figure dressed in charred metal armor, with a golden chainmail head covering.

“Ehbravo, ehbravo. Ehtruly an ehtouching ehspeech.”

“I’ve got to be honest. I don’t think I’d like to touch you, even with a speech,” Dorma grumbled.

“Ehtouche,” chuckled the blob, sauntering up to Dorma, trampling the emaciated person in the process.

CRIK CRAK

“My bones!” warbled the weakling.

“Ehget ehover ehit. I ehdon’t eheven ehhave ehbones.”

“That explains…a lot,” Dorma said matter of factly. “Now, shall I disembowel you, or what?”

“Ehno, ehplease, ehthough ehtruly I ehhave ehno ehbowels to ehdisem. Ehrather, I ehthink ehwe ehmay ehhave ehsome ehshared ehinterest. Ehnamely, ehrevenge.”

“Ehrevenge—ehrm, revenge, you say?” Dorma asked, getting excited. “So I’m assuming someone has wronged you recently.”

“Ehyes. Or ehshall we ehsay, ehsomeones. Ehthree ehwomen. Ehnastiest ehvitches I’ve ehever ehmet.”

“Interesting. Very interesting. Do elaborate.”

“Waheyt waheytt waheyt ah seyuhkund wahyett fah meyay!” ejaculated a gruff voice from the alleyway. A tall, lankey man in a half burnt, pink ostrich jockey uniform sashayed out of the shadows, once again trampled the street urchin and broke more of their bones, and stood beside the blob man.

“Ehexcrete ehme, ehwhy ehhave ehyou ehinterrupted ehme?”

“Ah hurd thuh howul thahng, an’ ah wawunt rahvange too. Ah ahlmost gawt burned ahlahve!”

“Excellent,” cackled Dorma, rubbing her claws together, “Excellent.”

“Iyut wahs nawt exshahleyunt iyut wahs verahy pahynfuwel!”