A Minor Mistake
A Grumpy Goat “Tail”
by
De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)
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Seeing the condition of my latest client, I invited him into my cave at once. After I had shut the iron door and secured the siege latches, I turned to him, or to be more accurate, what was left of him. Ick. Reminded me of just how lucky I was that I had taken the time to actually talk to the Litch King.
Disregarding the faintly heard hammering on my iron plated cave entrance, I turned to my client. “You seem to actually have a working brain in there, despite the appearances. What can I do for you?”
He gave me a despairing look, a maggot creeping out of one rotting eyeball. He was attempting to speak but due to the condition of his decaying rib cage, he just wheezed.
Being dead myself, I actually had some sympathy for the poor zombie before me. I hoofed over some paper and a writing kit. He took up the pen and wrote, “Can you either restore me to life or end me painlessly? Being like this hurts.”
I observed, “You could only feel pain if you were alive when you were made into a zombie. Same for your intelligence surviving the change.
“Let me guess. You were using the NECRONOMIPONY. Specifically, the Non-Equine University's Edition intended as a text in Abnormal Psychology, 666.”
The pen scratched, “How did you know?”
I gestured with a glamored hoof at my otherwise invisible spirit body and floating skull with its horns, everburning candle between them, glamored glowing snake-like eyes and fangs.
“Would you like three guesses? The first two won't count!”
He nodded sadly, leaking a few bits of rotting flesh as he did. The pen scrawled, “Why would the book have a horrible mistake like that in it? The Non Equine University is Royally Chartered.”
I nodded agreeably. “It is indeed. Luna is its Royal Patron. When she goes to visit NEU, she always goes as Nightmare Moon. It is her little joke.
“However, what happened to both you and I was a simple printer's error. It is covered in the ERRATA sheet in the back of the book. In spite of the Academic Study only warning in the foreword, you did not check the error sheet either, did you?”
His ghastly zombie face manged to look even worse as he recoiled. The frantic pen dashed, “ERROR SHEET! What error sheet?”
I pulled my copy of the Necronomipony from the book case and opened it to the back. I lifted out the several page long error sheet. “This is it, right here. You should NEVER do anything from this book without checking this first!”
While he settled down some, I put the book away. “For Abnormal Psych 666, those mistakes don't really make much difference. If you are going to USE the book, well, we kind of demonstrate just how much difference they do make, don't we?”
He looked about my fairly roomy cave's dimly lit front chamber. The small mob hammering futilely on the front ironwork appeared to make him nervous.
I reassured him, “Don't worry about the mob. It is a small one. The hike up here is steep and the ledge out front is not that big.
“As for altering your condition, I need to know whether you used the spell on page 69 or did you call up the Litch King and try to order him to create an undead monster for some reason.”
He looked blankly at me. The pen in hoof scribbled, “It makes a difference?”
As I nodded, the shadows cast by the sinister light of the ever burning candle between my horns danced about the chamber. “It makes a big difference. If your condition is the result of your own will, I can do something about it. If you were made this way by the Litch King, there is nothing at all that I can do to change it.”
His head hung. He wheezed and then remembered to write, “I guess that I am doomed. I told the Litch King to make me an undead monster to keep some rotten ponies from teasing me so much. He did this to me.”
He started for the door. “I might as well let that mob tear me to pieces. Might not be fast but at least it will be an end.”
I blocked him from leaving. “No, it will not be an end. A zombie like you is already dead. They can tear you apart and it will hurt. They can even burn you to ashes. You WILL come back.
“If some other pony had made you, the damage to you would go to him. If he died of it, so would you. You made yourself the way that you are. And you are ALREADY DEAD. That means that any damage that you take will be on you. Worse, YOU WILL COME BACK and not be changed at all.”
He turned his sad, rotting eyes to me and said, “What can I do? You said that you can't help me.”
I smiled, which should not have showed, my skull being bare bone and fangs, but it does. Good glamor spells can do that and mine are the best.
“You may have heard that I have to have a contract and be paid for my magic to work. That is true. Normally, I charge 100 gold bits as a minimum but the amount is up to me.
“Shall we discuss the contract?”
“Why? You can't help me. Said so yourself.”
“True. My magic CAN put you in touch with someone who can help you. We can cover your teasing issues that drove you to do this, while we are at it.”
He sat, a puddle of corruption spreading out from his rump. “I have no money. Just a losing Royal Lottery Ticket. It was only one number off, if that helps any.”
He held out the crumpled ticket.
Since I do sometimes play the lottery, I keep track of the winning numbers. I smoothed out the paper and smiled sadly.
“If that is what you have, that's what I will take.
“Let's start on the details, shall we?”
The contract was really simple, as my contracts go. When it was all drawn up and signed, I took his lottery ticket as payment without comment.
The back chamber door opened and Clarence, the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, sauntered into the room. The poor zombie nearly jumped out of his skin, a thing that he might have actually done if it was as loose as it appeared to be!
His every bone gleaming and polished, the skeletal Alicorn addressed me. “You called, Grumpy? What is it that you want me to do?”
I gestured to my client. “It appears that this mutual acquaintance of ours is not happy being a zombie. As an undead monster, instead of scaring off those who were teasing him, he got run up here by a mob.”
Clarence nodded with delight. “Do you know, Grumpy, that Spotty here has not even been suspected of being the zombie? When his little plan backfired on him, he actually took the body that he had planned to make into a monster and reburied it!
“He was caught at the disturbed grave and the mob thinks that YOU raised him from that grave! Isn't that hilarious?”
I pointed out in a dry voice, “No. The mob is out there now.”
Clarence paused. “I see. I am sorry, Grumpy. I forgot that you were nearly killed by a mob years ago.”
I gave Clarence a hoof. “It is alright, my friend. Who do they seem to think Spotty is?”
Spotty clomped a hoof for attention. He held out a paper. On it he had written, “They think that I am Wild Card. He was just about my only friend. He gave me that lottery ticket as a gift. I was going to use his body for my monster because Wild Card was a BIG pony.
“When I got turned into a zombie instead, I put him back in his grave where he belonged. They found me as I was finishing up and chased me. I came up here to see if you could do anything to help me. I have heard about the mob that almost killed you. I am sorry that they followed me.”
I grinned in a happily evil way. “I'm not, Spotty. Remember that book that got us both in trouble? I WAS TAKING THAT CLASS. I think that I see a way to help you out.”
I turned to Clarence. “My Lord, Litch King, will you return Spotty to life if I can get rid of the mob?”
Looking totally undignified, Clarence lifted his skeletal right wing, sat and scratched under it with a hind hoof as he thought. “If you face that mob and take care of them, yes, Grumpy, I will return Spotty to life.”
“Done.
“Spotty, come with me. We are going to go talk to some ponies!” I glamored myself as the handsome black, brown and white piebald goat that I used to be before my minor mistake with pentacles killed me. I unlatched the door.
“What do you fatheads want?”
“You made a zombie to terrorize the town!”
“Really!? If I made a zombie to terrorize the town, why are you HERE, instead of running for your lives? Who was the zombie, by the way?”
“It was Wild Card! We saw it rise from the grave!”
“I am afraid that you have made a minor mistake. How big was Wild Card?”
“What do you mean? He was huge! Near as big as a horse!”
“Right. Now, how many of you can remember the size of the zombie that you chased up here?”
That stopped them for seconds. “It was little. How did you shrink it?”
I laughed. “I didn't. You guys made a career out of teasing a little piebald pony. Seen him, lately?”
“Goat Coat? You mean Spotty? Not since Wild Card died.” They sort of trailed off as they started to actually think.
“Right. Wild Card was Spotty's only friend. When he died, you guys teased him right there at the funeral, didn't you? Teased him to death, to be precise.”
“What do you mean? Teased him to death?”
“Exactly that. With the only friend that did not tease him gone, Spotty committed suicide. His rage and desire to rip you all to shreds caused him to come back as a zombie to destroy you all.”
“He come from Wild Card's grave!”
“True. Friendship was stronger than his hate. He went to pay respects to his dead friend. That is when you found him. Lucky for you, too.
He realized that Wild Card would not want him to do to you what he wanted to do. What he wanted so badly that he came back from the dead to do it. Instead of turning on YOU, he came here to me for help.
“You really want to murder him AGAIN? Guess what? You can't. He can murder you. He is trying not to.
“Come out here, Spotty. Let them see what they did to you already.”
As Spotty came out, I laid a gentling hoof on his back. “Easy, Spotty. Remember why you came here instead of what you want to do to them.”
Spotty trembled. The mob, mistaking his fear for rage, fell back. For at least three of them, that was literal. They backed off of my ledge and tumbled down the slope, only to be brought to a harmless (except for a few bruises) stop by the poison oak thickets growing down there.
“That is better. Go home. Be glad that he did go see Wild Card first. And never forget that your mouths can be as deadly as any knife or pitchfork.”
Now totally ashamed of themselves, the mob left.
We went back inside. Clarence met us with a chortle. “Grumpy, you told them lies!”
I nodded serenely. “Not entirely, Lord of the Dead. They did drive him to attempt to create a zombie for revenge. That caused him to die. Swapped pentacles and all of that.”
Clarence held up a hoof. “No, Grumpy, Spotty makes a lot of minor mistakes. One was swapping what the book had. His pentacles were correct as a result.”
That stopped me. “Then, how?”
Clarence's bare, polished bones, that should not have showed an expression did. A grin. “It was his grammar. A minor mistake. He said, and I quote, 'Make ME a monster to terrify the ones that have been teasing me.' I followed his instruction exactly.”
He reached out a friendly hoof and touched the poor zombified Spotty. The change flowed like water over his whole body. The smallish, piebald pony named Spotty stood before us.
I led him to the door and told him, “Be more careful in the future, Spotty. Those minor mistakes can kill you.”
He bit his lip and shuddered. “I will certainly remember that, mister Grumpy. Thank you for everything.”
As we watched him pick his way down the trail from my cave, Clarence said, “You took a worthless Royal Lottery ticket for payment?”
I nodded, “He said it was worthless, but it was all he had. He got it from his friend Wild Card just before he died. Wild Card must have crumpled it some. That ticket was a National sole winner! Spotty read an eight as a three because of a crease messing up the eight. A MINOR MISTAKE!”
~THE END~
Author's Note
My Grumpy Goat tales can be read as an Alternate Universe of MLP or as simply portraying the underside of the pony society that we all know and love.
Every society has a bottom rung that is looked down upon and discriminated against. In my stories, that rung is shared by goats, donkeys and my wandering Rom horses.
I hope that, however you chose to read them, you enjoy my tales.