Two knights rushed into the garden from the opposite side of the exiting queen. One of them had a purple blob attached to the side of his face, pulsating and transmitting false feelings of love and adoration to his brain.

This knight saw the black cloud of flies swooping in circles after the Queen and heard her cries of terror. He followed her. He ran as fast as he could—the undulation of the spore falling in time with the pumping of his arms. He hurtled compost heaps and threw himself over broken lawn gnomes and deck chairs decorating the path, desperate to catch up to the Queen he so adored.

The other knight shouted, “Hey! What the bloody fuck is going on out here?”

Victor turned to respond.

Before he could, the knight said, “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before. Get down! On your knees!”

Almost out of habit, Coco started to sink to the ground.

Victor remained on his feet but raised his hands. He stepped toward the guard. “I found this girl threatening our Queen. Glad you’re here, man.”

“I said, on the ground.” The guard reached for his hip holster.

Victor continued to move toward him.

“Not another step,” the guard ordered. He brandished a painted wooden cylinder and held it up to his mouth. “One more step and I’ll do it.”

“There’s no need, man. We’re on the same team.” Victor flashed a weak smile at the guard.

“Victor, get down,” Coco hissed.

“Victor, huh?” the guard scoffed. “Seems you’re awfully familiar with the prisoner. How does she know your name? Why don’t I? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I’m new.” Victor shrugged.

Victor’s audacity caught the guard by surprise. He dropped his hands an inch or so from his face, ready to yell at the intruder. Victor rushed at him like a pro wrestler diving off of a turnbuckle—arms spread wide.

The guard raised the tube to his mouth, and blew a large burst of air into the mouthpiece.

A yellow, oblong item launched from the tube. As soon as it hit the air, it began to expand like a deformed bubble. It grew until it was the size and shape of a large squash. A thick, creamy fluid sloshed inside the jaundiced balloon.

Coco immediately identified the item as a condom. She knelt on the ground, motionless. She didn’t run away so much because she was frozen with fear, more out of a sense of curiosity.

The condom soared through the air, landed with a squish on Victor’s head, and snapped tight around his neck. The rubber contracted around his face, vacuum-sealing him inside. The lack of air caused the semen in the horrible balloon to bubble up around his face and into his nose.

Victor fell to the ground, groping at the condom trap and trying to tear through it. He desperately pulled at the tight seal around his neck. He flopped to the ground, kicking. Victor puked, and vomit puffed into the condom, sloshing around his face with the pearly white goo. He blew puffs of air out of his nose, trying to clear his nasal passages of old clotted semen and puke. He was suffocating. Victor clawed feebly at the ground and rolled onto his back. His arms went rigid. Muffled gurgles splattered the condom soup against the inflated rubber’s walls. Victor’s legs kicked wildly and then went still.

The guard smirked. He stood confidently before Coco, aiming his weird gun at her. Coco knelt in the damp filth, not moving. She had no desire to suffer the same fate as Victor.

Coco was well-versed in the silent language of men. So she played along. She played helpless as he stood over her. She looked up at him feigning fear in her big, doe eyes. She started to ask, “What are you going to do with me?” but when she opened her mouth, the guard shoved his index finger in it. He slid it around and over her tongue, looking down at her, feeling superior and obviously aroused as he unsnapped his tire-tread codpiece, and pulled out his dick.

Coco looked up at him, pretending she didn’t know what he wanted from her. He smiled down at her and stuck his little twitching cock into her mouth. She submitted for a few seconds—letting his small thing push between her lips. She didn’t dare let him enjoy it too much, or get a grip on the back of her hair. Then she’d be stuck.

Coco watched as the guard moaned and let his head fall back. She waited until he was fully immersed in the moment. Then she bit down, hard, at the base of his dick. She could feel her bottom teeth touch the top set and she ground them together, working her jaw muscles back and forth.

He howled in agony and punched her in the side of the head. Coco let go, a mess of blood running down her chin.

The guard collapsed to the ground with his hands grasping his torn crotch. Blood squirted between his fingers. “Oh my God! Oh fucking God! You fucking cunt!” He shrieked and rolled wildly, grasping at the fountain of blood erupting between his legs.

Coco wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up. “Not as good as you hoped?” She spat on him and kicked him in the face. Twice. Then once in the ribs for good measure, before she headed down the path the Queen had taken.

Once Coco was out of the Compost Garden, she needed only to look at the sky to find the Queen. Coco ran through the village toward the cloud. As she approached, she could hear the din of thousands of flies buzzing and the screams of the fleeing Queen.

Coco found the cloud dive-bombing the Queen, who was stuck in a gap in one of the village walls. A knight held the Queen’s ankles. He had one foot against the wall for leverage while he tried to yank her free. She kicked her legs wildly, which made it difficult for the guard to hold onto them. The Queen hoarsely screamed, “Get me out of here!”

Her pleas degenerated into unintelligible sounds of horror. She sounded like she was choking. The Queen sputtered muffled cries and shrill wheezing. Her body convulsed. Her legs scissored out of the guard’s grip, and shit exploded from under her tattered dress. Her legs stopped kicking. The Queen went still. The guard grabbed hold of her ankles again, and pulled back hard.

He spotted Coco in his peripheral vision as he tugged. “The Queen was trying to get away from the flies. She’s terribly frightened of them. They cornered her here, and swarmed. She was screaming about fly shit and maggot eggs. She tried to cram herself through this hole.”

Coco watched the pulsating orb attached to the guard’s face fade from violet to gray. Then it withered and turned brown. The guard continued to talk and pull at the Queen’s legs. Coco found it difficult to pay attention to his words.

The spore on his face turned black and began to crumble. The guard paused in his efforts and stared at the Queen’s ankles in his hands. He dropped them, and took a step back, confused. He looked to Coco for an answer.

Coco reached out and quickly brushed the rest of the flaking black residue from his face.

Together, the guard and Coco managed to pull the Queen out from where she had lodged herself into the wall. They counted to three and each gave a good hard tug at her legs. The Queen popped out of the wall and landed face down, unmoving, as Coco and the guard fell to the ground in a heap. They exchanged looks and examined the prone monarch.

Coco nudged her with the toe of her shoe. She remained motionless. The guard wedged a rubber clad foot under her shoulder and rolled the Queen onto her side. Half of a rat hung from her mouth, bit in two by her sharp metal teeth. The Queen’s one real eye was a meaty socket of pulpy eyeball oozing blood. Her face was frozen into a grotesque expression of agony.

The guard knelt and plucked the grisly remains of the rat from the dead Queen’s mouth. He rolled her onto her back. Another rat popped its head out of her mangled eye-socket, pushing the masticated eyeball onto the Queen’s cheek. Its whiskers were bloody and tiny bits of brain and eye-pulp clung to its snout. The rat twitched its whiskers and climbed from inside her head.

“Delicious,” it said, licking its paws and scurrying away.

The guard asked Coco to help him drag the Queen’s dead body back to the castle. “For ceremony,” he pleaded when she initially refused.

Coco took pity on the bewildered guard and helped him. She felt plenty of closure, having avenged Adrian’s death. She didn’t need any ceremony. But she figured those poor spore-infested knights that were most likely trying to shake off the Queen’s sex-spell all across her vile kingdom, and they would need something to find peace in their situation.

She grabbed an ankle.