By: Gribit "The Bicep" Worm-Eater Category: Opinion & Unsubstantiated Delusions
Editor’s Note: The following piece was submitted to the GNN newsroom written in bat guano on a piece of greasy birch bark. While our editorial board typically prioritizes coverage of mud-tunnel collapse safety and grubs-per-capita distribution, we felt obligated to publish this completely unhinged piece of creative writing. We have no idea who Johnny Bravo is, but we recommend Gribit seek immediate help from the nearest shaman.
Image credit: GoblinLife Vault
Look at me. Just look at me. I am two-and-a-half feet tall. My skin is the exact color of a moldy pickle. When I try to flex my biceps in front of the cave wall, the only sound that echoes through the cavern is the wet, tragic squelch of my own undernourished shoulder joints.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Every night, as I curl up on my bed of damp moss and rotten fern leaves, I close my eyes and dream the ultimate dream. I dream of being a giant, golden-haired, sun-baked human man named Johnny Bravo.
Think about the sheer, unadulterated power. Imagine strutting into the Great Dank Cavern standing six-foot-four, bursting out of a skin-tight black t-shirt that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination regarding my mountain-moving upper body density. Imagine having hair—not the stringy, oily lichen that currently hangs from my scalp, but a massive, gravity-defying yellow pompadour that shines like stolen dwarf gold.
And the sound effects! Oh, by the Great Mud Toad, the audio effects!
In my mind, every single time I pose, the fabric of space-time shatters to produce a deafening, thunderous whip-crack.
Flex the left bicep? CRACK-PSSHH!
Comb the yellow hair back? WHOOSH-SNAP!
Thrust pelvis toward a bog-witch? BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA!
Do you realize what kind of political clout that gives a goblin? Clan Leader Skag couldn’t even order me to clear the manure pits if every time I pivoted on my heel, reality itself generated a high-velocity sonic boom!
I wouldn’t even care about the light levels down here. I would wear dark, black sunglasses indoors, in the dark, deep underground. My fellow clan-mates would say, "Gribit, you can't see, you're going to trip over that stalagmite!" And I would look at them, slick my yellow hair back, and say, "Whoa, mama. Watch the pecs." Then I’d trip, shatter my ankle, and do it with style.
"Man, I'm pretty," I’d whisper into a stagnant puddle.
"Hoo-ha-huh!" I’d shout, executing rapid-fire karate chops at the cave ceiling until the local cave-nymphs throw stale turnips at my head out of sheer, overwhelmed passion. Sure, Johnny gets hit with frying pans and turned down by every woman he talks to, but he gets rejected like a champion. Right now, I get rejected by swamp-hags because I smell like rotten beetle husks. Johnny gets rejected because he’s simply too magnificent for this mortal plane. I crave that frying-pan-to-the-face energy.
Instead, I wake up. My hair is still three strands of wet fungus. My "whip sound effects" are just the popping of my lower back when I bend over to scoop up a earthworm.
Life is unfair. The universe gave us dark-vision and a diet of damp moss when it should have given us 220 pounds of raw, pompadoured beefcake energy. Until magic makes me tall, blonde, and swole, you can find me in Tunnel 4, swinging my tiny green arms, smashing my face into walls, and screaming "HOO-HAH!" into the cold, silent abyss.
