FELLERS

The Queen of the Fairies broke all the rules when she walked into town.

After an age of secretly assisting the townsfolk she donned her finest raiment and assumed human form, a desire of hers that stretched back eons.

The Queen was a petite, beautiful, vibrant creature from another realm, fine and majestic, yet strangely innocent and exuding warm alluring youth. She was now also mortal for a time.

She skipped into the bakery, her long velvet cape fluttering behind her as she took in the full sweet aroma of the assembled loaves and pastries. Icing sugar motes and dead flies wafted up into the air as she darted through the door into the sunshine of the High Street.

On she danced past the empty cobblers, the boarded-up bank, the crumbling Post Office and the Vape shop, where she stopped to inhale the clouds of fruity smoke billowing from inside. Gruff men stared at her.

On and on down the dog-shit littered street she skipped. The queue of sick, hunched patients snarled like jackals as she floated by.

The Queen was lost in her reverie. Being human was much more of a joy than she had ever imagined and she forgot her fairy self completely as her ecstasy mushroomed. In a swirl of velvet and sweet woodruff  she pirouetted into a dilapidated bar, where grating music was blaring from the sound-system. Wary old men at the door hawked loudly as she blew in.

Inside the Queen twirled to the thrump of the ascending beat and ten figures emerged from the shadows by the pool table. They stared at her growling like dogs as they slurped into their frothy pints, edging closer, ever closer.

The grizzled gang of blokes were entranced by the rude beauty and irresistible vigour of the lithe apparition cavorting in the gloom of the stinking bar. They encircled the Queen and corralled her through the back into the dark snicket outside. 

"C'mon fellas!" cheered the heinous ringleader, vile malfeasance glinting in his bleary eyes.

The Queen continued to revel in the rapture of her mortal form, her hair and cape fluttering as she spun on piss-drenched cobbles.

One of the dog-men grabbed the Queen and flung her to the ground. She had no idea what was going on. The ringleader ripped open her velvet dress and was the first to violently take her. The other 9 followed. They took their time with her. One of them filmed the brutality on his phone.

"This'll go down a fuckin' storm on the web fellers!" 

They all laughed and walked away.

The Queen had been ravaged by the savages of the bar. She lay bruised, bleeding, injured and curled on her side in the filth of the alley. In a state of deep shock, her mortality gratuitously offended and reverie crushed, she whispered the name of her King before she died in the blood-splashed gutter.

"Oberon!".

The King of the Fairies heard.

"Titania"

The next night a new player was winning at the bar's pool table. Small for a man, no-one could stop him and eventually he got to playing the gang from the back. As their leader took his cue the others howled like wolves. He swaggered to the table and confidently shot the pack. But it was no use, the newcomer was on fire and with a blistering display of skill and finesse cleared the table in minutes, ending with a lengthy and showy twirl of his cue-stick and a big smile.

The gang-leader nodded to his goons. They all took a stick from the rack and once again bustled a hapless victim into the back alley, where they planned to teach the stranger some rules of the game. Their rules, the ones where they always win.

Encircling the man the gang began to bay like hounds as they slapped their cues. The leader stepped forward and spoke.

"What's yer name fella?"

"My name is Oberon," the stranger said.

"What kind of fuckin name is Oberon? You a pansy or somethin' ?" he laughed turning to his mates for approval. They grinned and gurneyed.

"It is my name. Mine alone, For I am Oberon, the King of the Fairies."

"Fairies? I knew it! You're a god-damn bender!".

The assembled dog-men screeched with laughter.

"Do you mortals know who you raped and killed this night past?"

At this the assembly shuffled and looked slightly less bullish but it was when the stranger slowly drew a huge sword from out of the cape on his back. It was colossal and nearly the length of his entire body. It sparkled in the lamplight as he rested it with both hands on the silver hilt.

"This is Torsos, the limb-taker. Last night you murdered my wife and only love, Titania, Queen of all Fairydom."

"What the fuc..."

The gang of goons didn't have time to think about what was about to happen before the mesmeric hands of the Fairy King wielded Torsos in a blur of glistening swings and arcs.

The ringleader gawped in horror at the atrocity around him. All his mates were limbless things writhing around in the dirt of the yard, their arms and legs strewn in a bloody circle around the remaining two figures.

The dwarf-men screamed and jerked like clubbed pups.

"Torsos has done well and honoured Titania's majestic name. But the final tithe is to be yours, leader of the pack. You shall suffer the worst fate of all".

It seemed like only seconds as Oberon gathered the severed limbs and bodies in a huge sack, sweeping them up along with the stunned gang-boss in his vast cape before flying into the sky towards the Forest. The sack wriggled and jolted as the bodies groaned and moved.

A colossal pyre of mast and brush was made for the purpose. The severed arms and legs were placed between the sticks. The limbless men were arranged in a ring in the middle, each having a large candle wedged into their mouths.

"But you my friend shall hold it all together, the centre-piece of our bonfire and the fulcrum of our hatred for all men," Oberon hissed at the ringleader.

"First I will sever your manhood".

The man, naked, was trussed up facing the forest canopy by small figures. His penis was stretched with vines and rocks.

"I don't need my sword for this. I shall use my pet rat, Grater."

Grater, a large belligerent rodent, began to gnaw through the soft phallic flesh and started to spurt in all directions. The man screamed in agony as the rat chewed slowly taking its time to slice through the main artery and nerve bundle. At the end Grater stared at Oberon, who nodded. Grater took the severed penis and swallowed it whole, licking its lips as it slid down its throat.

"Thank you Grater. Now my friend I shall personally take care of the rest of you," warned Oberon.

"For that I will need Torsos once again".

The man, writhing in pain on forest floor, begged for mercy but to no avail.

Oberon sharpened his axe with a wet stone and took up his master stroke stance.

"I shall take my time as you did with Queen Titania!" he grimaced.

First his blade took the man's feet. Then his calves. Then his thighs. There was so much blood flooding the ground now that Oberon adjusted his position and flicked the steel clean.

Torsos then sliced through the man's waist and he yelled as the pains of Hell stalked him. He stared down at his ever-reducing body and knew the end was near.

Oberon stopped and instructed his guards.

"Drag him to the pyre. Let him feel the sweetness of the flames!"

The guards obeyed and the man was placed on the mound. His entrails extended out beyond him and were draped down the side of the brash. His nine friends stared at him, unable to speak. They wriggled as the candles in their mouths were lit.

Oberon lit the vengeance fire and watched as the tinder caught. The scarlet flames fingered the man's innards making them sizzle. The fire grew and the man screamed and screamed as his flesh cooked. The other nine squirmed like maggots as the heat rose and roasted their stumps and gradually the flames began to take them all.

When the ten men were fully consumed and ash was all that remained, Oberon took a handful and marked the faces of the whole assembly with a T. Two swift strokes of his finger and each was so marked to honour the name of the departed Queen.

"Farewell Titania my beautiful Lady!" whispered Oberon, his head bowed.

The company bowed too, then slowly wandered away into the woods and left the scene where they had all witnessed the Fairy Master's felling strokes.