A Hobby Lobby and a Cabela’s Had a Baby

After half an hour of stumbling through the dark after Grendel, Hansel didn’t think he was any better off than following the far flung food in the forest. The monster was so tall that each of his steps was several of Hansel’s. When Grendel finally stopped, Hansel was huffing and puffing. He bent over, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. He felt Grendel looking at him and stood up quickly in a karate stance. Since he didn’t know karate, he wasn’t sure why, but Grendel didn’t know he didn’t know karate, right?

Grendel chuffed an amused snort and Hansel tried to make it look like he was just putting his hands in his hoody pocket. His security beans were still there. Throwing the can would be a better defense than his imaginary karate skills, so he decided to keep…

Musicals Aren’t For Everyone, It Seems

“A woodsman’s daughter with a simple life, a happy family ‘til he lost his wife,” Gretel sang in a trembling soprano. She was surprisingly on-key for someone so unpleasant.

Hansel was resigned to listening to the whole thing, which would probably take at least seven or eight minutes. Once Gretel got going, she was hard to stop. He did walk a few paces away to avoid being sucked into the chorus and heard another sound. An inharmonious sound. It sounded like growling, but much, much larger.

Gretel was winding herself up to launch into the meat of her song, which seemed to be an improvised lament about being abandoned in the woods and losing a ham. It was okay, except for the one line refrain, “…and Hansel was no help at all.”

Hansel heard the basso growl again, closer, and realized it was coming…

Grendel Explains Himself Before the Musical Number

Hansel turned to behold the bearer of the voice, a sevenish-foot-tall, very hairy, brown, humanish creature snacking on the remains of the ham in his right palm. He was dressed in some furry shorts of a slightly lighter brown fur than his own fur, and nothing else. With Gretel already on the ground, Hansel could run and be pretty certain of getting away, but the creature’s words had thrown him.

“What?” he said.

“Bigfoot is an attention junkie. Always leaving footprints around and posing, and pretending like he doesn’t want his picture taken. Like when some knight comes riding in to save the day talking about his noble quest, and really all he wants to do is lop off your head so the girls will throw themselves at him. Just in it for himself.” The creature took another large bite of ham, showing…