Marvelous Tales #12 - [Woods and Rumors]

In a kingdom of fair standing, many people chase around towards certain desires. If you're a royal and you're a male human, you might pursue politics, fame or power. If you're a female, but also a royal, you may want a husband of good looks and position.

Rather, you're a farmer or someone in the lower society, someone in such bracket always aims for a better or comfortable life, but not Catalpy.

Catalpy is a 17 year old boy with a radical sense of imagination. He tends to see things in a further scope than anyone else. He is a kind of kid that fishes with a spoon, goes to mountains with ice skates and eats kimchi with wasabi. With all that descriptions said, we can now conclude that Catalpy is a weirdo.

One day, a really disturbing rumor spreads to the kingdom. The forest nearby the kingdom is said to be cursed by an unknown super natural force.

The rumors has been circulating for a week already, but it seems that rumor is not just a typical rumor. It's a destructive one and it is really affecting everyone.

The rumor says that anyone who enters the woods will suffer from indespicable fortune and tragedy leading anyone who attempts to even just visit the said forest to either get lost, be sick, get insane or die.

With the situation affecting the economy and the people of the kingdom, the king has sent some of his me to solve the damaging gossip.

After three days, the men who was sent to do some investigation in the woods didn't came back.

The king sent two more platoons of fine combat ready men. And still, same thing happened.

With desperation in king's side, the king offers a reward to anyone who could find the lost men and solve the mystery of the forest.

Along the reward of money, the king offers one of her daughters to anyone who could do his request.

After hearing the news about the king's request, Catalpy rushed to the palace to report for attempt in the said request.

"Hahahahaha", everyone in the palace laughs at Catalpy for his report of attempting the request. Catalpy is known all over the kingdom for his unusual antics and the people brand him as "crazy".

"A crazy punk will find those men in their battle suits in this very atrocious woods?", one of the men in the palace mocks Catalpy.

Catalpy scatches his head, it really feels frutrating for anyone who gets into such a situation like this. But Catalpy didn't feel even a little bit of irritation or shame inside him, instead he was thinking about the prizes offered for the job.

"Your highness, forgive me for such this honor but I think thee does not see the intensity of such job.

"Huh", everyone was surprised with Catalpy's words.
"Is the kid really broken?", one of the royals that is accompanying the king said. "Shall we call the guards?"

"Hahahaha, no, no, the kid just wants to be funny, let's jsut play along", the king declines the suggestion.

"Heh, okay son, for being able to make me laugh, I'll listen to you" the king gives Catalpy a space to speak further.

"First, I want the reward money to be doubled", Catalpy says.

"Okay, I think, that is fair and logical, I'll even make it triple for you, hahahaha", the king answers as if everything are just a part of a sitcom. Everyone laughs as well, except for Catalpy.

"And... I don't want just one daughter, I want three", Catalpy finishes his greedy requests with a much more absurd request.

"WHat, wait, you're really serious right? That is not funny anymore", the king changes his tone to a serious one.

Catalpy nods and this time, no one laughs.

"Kid, you know who am I right?", the king asks.

"Yes your majesty, you are the king oof this kingdome, the king of this kingdom's people and also my one and only king", Catalpy replies like he was praising the king.

"Okay, I'll triple the reward and give you five of my daughters if you are able to complete this job", the king states to Catalapy. Noises of murmurs started to be heard.

"But... but if you fail or decline now, we will kill you and your family", the king looks at Catalpy in a really dreadful look.

"That's fair", Catalpy answers with no signs of being threated.

The king felt a little insulted with Catalpy's request, in exchange to that, the king tried to threat Catalpy but it didn't worked.

As soon as Catalpy says 'yes' to the king, he walks out of the room to go home and prepare his self for the job.

"The guy is serious right?"

"I don't know, but father and him made an agreement"

"So if the guy saves the kingdom, he will marry five of us. are you okay with that?"

"I like him"

"There is no way I'm agreeing to that"

A group of women are talking in the corridor when Catalpy went out of the room.

These women are the king's daughters. The king have 20 children in total, five of them are men and 15 of them are women.

Catalpy stops walking when he heard these conversations. He looks at the women and smiles at them.

"Yuck!", one of the women said.

"You're so rude sis" one of the women said and waves to Catalpy.

"I can't believe you're okay with us all being married to a single guy"

"I didn't say that"

The conversations kept on going and Catalpy walked again to go home.

After going home to pack up and ready for this task, he goes straight to the said woods in the rumors.

Catalpy knows this woods, he used to go and play here when he was still jsut a child. Now, somehow the woods does really feel funny.

Somehow, the forest's atmosphere is quite darker than usual and a thin film of fog is visible everywhere.

"Graaak, graaak", an unusual sound comes out of nowhere. Catalpy searches for the source of the sound.

It was a bear in a tuxedo and it's sleeping in the middle of the way.

Catalpy approaches the sleeping bear and right away he smells the scent of the liquor.

Just nearby, Catalpy also saw the pile of empty liquor bottles. A bear, a tuxedo and bottles of liquor. What could this mean?

"Mr. bear, Mr. bear", Catalpy tries to wake the bear by throwing stones at it and calling it from a distance.

"Wha...wait, what? Where am I?", the bear wakes up and this time we learned that it can talk.

Catalpy scratches his head, this is way more ridiculous than he imagined. For him and us, all of these just makes no sense.

"He... hey kid", the bear calls Catalpy "could you please pass me that bottle over there?"

The bear points at another bottle of liquor but this one is unopened.

Catalpy passes a bottle to the, bear" here you go Mr. bear"

The bear opens the bottle and drinks some of it's contents.

"Pweeeeeh", what is this? This isn't liqour", the bear notices. Catalpy didn't passed the said bottle, instead, he took an empty one and putted water into it.

"You're already drunk, no more alchohol for you"

"What? Who are you to tell me if I'm drunk? Are you my father?!", the bear became outrageous of what Catalphy did.

"Come on, why are you doing this, go home already", Catalpy says to the bear.

"Go home? How could I if I look like this?" the bear sits and looks at it's hand.

"Why? What happened?", Catalpy asks.

"I'm just a merchant who sells liquors, I got stranded to this forest and the next thing I know I'm already like this", the bear starts crying.

"Hmm", Catalpy thinks and somehow realises what has been happening.

"Are there any other animals here that can talk like you?" Catalpy interogates again.

"Yeah, just this morning, I saw a group of racoon wearing boots and gloves. One of them passed me a bottle of my liquor", the bear replies.

With all that said, somehow we got some answers, but with that details being revealed, new questions appears. "Why and how?"

Catalpy leaves the bear and continues his investigation.

Catalpy walked some more deeper in the forest then he realises that he is already lost. On the top of that, this aprt of the forest already got way darker.

Catalpy hears some noises of feets. He quickly then climbs a tree and hides.

At the top of the tree, Catalpy saw a parade of animals in clothes, suspecting that they were once humans.

Catalpy decides to avoid interaction with the parade of animals. But also thanks to the animals , Catalpy knew where to go. Catalpy saw the foot prints left by the parade of animals and followed it back to it's trail.

By following the trail back, Catalpy was then got surprised on what he saw, it was a mansion in the middle of the forest.

The mansion is white in finish and is covered with a mysterious glow that no one can explain where is coming from. Even me.

Catalpy slowly and carefully gets closer to the mansion to investigate. At the gate he saw a large man around 8 feet in height, wearing no tops, has no any foot wear, has a pair of ragged pants and wears a contraption made out of metal.

The metal contraption covers the man's nose and mouth and is snapped around his neck to his nape.

"Don't come near him", a young woman suddenly appears from Catalpy's behind.

"What? WHo are you?"

I'm the with of this forest, i was supposed to be the highest and only ruler of this woods. But this 'terror' came here and pushed me away from my throne", the witch said to Catalpy.

"A 'terror'?"

After the long statement of the witch, she vanished. Catalpy thought that he will receive some help from the witch but instead, the witch just gave him more things to work with in his mind.

Catalpy sneaks into the mansion. Inside the mansion he saw so many bizarre things. More of that big man with a contraption on his head, more anthropomorpic characters and this guy.

This guy is the most noticeable among all these bizarre creatures.

This guy wears a sparkling coat and a sparkling pair of slacks, have horns on his forehead and behind his head and his big nose is located to his chest. Okay, now I made this guy noticeably ridiculous.

"So waht should I do?", Catalpy says to his self.

Out of the blue Catalpy gets his self in the middle of these bizarre creatures. With everyone not knowing what had happened and what is happening the monsters now is about to get him.

It's the witches doing, she just teleports Catalpy in the middle of the creatures.
"Poof", the witch suddenly appears next to noticeable guy.

"Go out with me, I like you!", the witch suddenly said to the noticeable guy.

"Huh", everyone suddenly gets more surprised of what is happening. Man, even I myself is getting confused of what I'm writing.

"What? Wait? You like me?", the noticeable guy said.

"Yes, why wouldn't I, you're really an attractive and smart guy"

Now this story just became like one of those stories that I just don't know how to end and just ends up being painful to read.

---

After some time of thinking and some episodes of Rick and Morty, i finally know how to end this story that suddenly gets out of track.

This guy in the sparkling coat just broke up with her girlfriend, cause of that he felt so much pain and sadness. With all of that pain, he terrorised the forest. Oh yeah, I forgot, this guys is supposed to be the 'terror' that they were talking about.

And here is the witch, someone that secretly loves this 'terror' for a long time already and just saw an opportunity when she knew that the 'terror' broke up with her girlfriend.

When the witch saw Catalpy hiding in the bushes, she then used Catalpy as an diversion so she could get near the 'terror'.

After the witch's confesses her love to the 'terror' the 'terror' suddenly forgets her 'ex' and dates out with the witch. Phew, now I made it right.

Since the 'terror'got all his pains gone, the 'terror' returns all those people who turned to animals people again.

Cause of that, Catalpy got successful to his mission. He went back home to the kingdom with the missing men and reported that everything was back to normal.

With Catalpy successfuly doing his mission, Catalpy receives the prize money and marries five princeses. What a lucky guy.

---

picture is from pixabay
any name or events that might be connected to actual people or events are just all coincidence, this a work of non fiction, don't take it seriously