“Bog man!” yelled Rummy.
“With incredible timing,” I muttered.
“What do we do?” squeaked Rummy as the creature bore down on him.
Borg stepped in front of our diminutive companion and thrust his hand out, striking the monster in the chest. It toppled backward and splashed into the brackish water, uttering what sounded like a long, drawn-out “Ooooowwwwwww!”
Nadi drew her sword, Whiska brought her staff to bear, and I pulled out my dagger. We waited, tense, expecting an army of shambling bog men to descend upon us. Local legends suggested that bog men traveled in packs, and that they were as deadly a creature as could be found in the swampland.
Turns out local legends are sometimes full of it.
The bog man stayed down, and, after five minutes of waiting, I sheathed my dagger and shrugged. “Wasn’t such a chore now, was it?”
“No,” said Nadi, shaking her head. “No. It has to be a trick. That was too easy.”
We waited for a few more minutes, but didn’t see or hear anything.
“So,” said Rummy slowly as his head continued to swivel in search of a threat, “are there no bog women?”
“What?” replied Nadi, turning a stern gaze on him.
“You always hear about shambling bog men, but you never hear about shambling bog women. There must be women, right? Or else how would they make new bog men? Bog people. Whatever the proper term is.”
“How do you know that wasn’t a bog woman that we just saw?” I said.
“Because it…well, huh. Fair point, Heloise,” replied Rummy. “I don’t, really. I don’t know much about bog person anatomy.”
“So maybe they’re all women and we’ve been wrong this whole time,” I continued. “Maybe there’s not a single bog man.”
“But then why call them ‘bog men’?”
I shrugged. “Because people are idiots. And we live in a patriarchal society.”
“It had…a penis,” interjected Borg.
“What?” asked Nadi, incredulous.
We waited for two minutes before Borg spoke again. “It flopped around…when I pushed…it.”
“You pushed his penis?” I asked. “Geez, buy a bog man dinner first, Borg. Or at least a drink.”
“I don’t think he did that,” said Rummy. “I hope he didn’t, anyway. Because Borg didn’t ask, and it’s not okay to touch a bog man’s penis if he doesn’t say it’s okay.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not okay to touch anyone’s penis without consent,” I said.
Rummy tilted his head to concede the point. “I think that’s a good general rule. Or maybe just a good genital rule.” He paused expectantly.
No one laughed, though Whiska did mutter something to the effect of “rather cut them off than touch them.”
Rummy cleared his throat. “Well, at least we’ve established that.”
“I meant…that I pushed…the bog man. And then…his penis flopped…when he fell.”
“That makes more sense,” said Rummy, looking relieved. “I knew you weren’t that kind of rock giant.”
“So, we still don’t know whether there are bog women,” I said.
“Oh, come on!” roared Nadi. “Shut up! All of you, shut up! Just stop talking! We’re in the middle of a swamp. We were just attacked by a shambling bog man, and—”
“I’d really call it more of a saunter than a shamble, truth be told,” said Rummy.
“Can we call them bog people? I’m just really sensitive to gender issues,” I added.
Nadi buried her head in her hands. It was another two hours before she said anything.
Over the next three days, we were attacked by shambling bog men—we made it a point to identify their penises to confirm (though Whiska, displaying a rare and irritating maturity of thought, opined that bog man (person) anatomy might not necessarily mirror our own and, consequently, what we thought were penises (peni?) might, in fact, serve some other purpose, such as allowing them to breathe while submerged, obtaining nutrients from the swamp, or just being something to swing around when they were bored, like a biological toy (though, let’s face it, that’s basically what a penis is)).
Every single time, a quick shove from Borg sent the creatures sprawling, and not a single one got back up and resumed its assault (or what we assumed would be an assault—in the absence of any of them actually striking any member of the party, I wasn’t entirely sure they were really trying to attack us). So, it turns out that the threat posed by shambling bog men is vastly overrated, though I’d have no problem turning them into fierce and deadly killers when I composed my epic song about the quest. I did, however, omit any mention of their peni.
A considerably greater threat was the numerous alligators that lived in the swamp. I mentioned that Rummy almost got eaten by one (and badly bitten in the process), but that wasn’t the only instance where we almost met death at the hands of toothy jaws.
Deep into our trek across the swamp, Nadi, leading the party and carefully testing each step with the tip of her sword, stepped onto what, by visual inspection and with the probing of a sword tip, appeared to be solid ground. A second later, she went hurtling through the air, landing face first in deep muck and alerting the rest of us that we might need to watch out.
Rummy was next in line, his right arm in a sling from the previous gator encounter, making him even more ineffectual with his mace (though he spent far more time worrying about how the injury might affect his prestidigitation skills). He stumbled backward into Borg, who propped him up and stepped forward, assuming, perhaps, that it was another shambling bog man (person) that had caused the disturbance.
Not so much. The creature that exploded out of the brackish water was fully fifteen feet long and had jaws the size of a hearty dwarf’s legs (and just as strong, too, by the looks of it, and believe me—dwarf legs can do some things). It looked mostly like an alligator, except for the fact that it was missing all of its flesh. In other words, it was a gigantic undead skeleton alligator, because a regular gigantic alligator attacking you in a swamp isn’t terrifying enough.
Fortunately, if any member of our party was going to get bitten by a gigantic undead skeleton alligator and survive, Borg had the best chance. The beast locked its jaws on Borg’s arm, and though its teeth had a hard time penetrating the rock giant’s craggy skin, it was heavy enough to pull him off balance, and both Borg and the beast fell down into the water. It was hard to tell who was winning the fight as they thrashed and struggled beneath the surface, churning water and muck high into the air (and covering all of us with stinky swamp goo in the process).
“Borg!” cried Rummy, helplessly (and ineffectually) brandishing his mace.
“Move, you useless coin diddler!” yelled Whiska, elbowing Rummy aside. She pointed her staff at the roiling water and muttered an incantation. The end of her staff glowed purple, and what appeared to be a lightning bolt sizzled into the water.
“What are you doing?” screamed Nadi, horrified. “Bones don’t electrify, but rock giant flesh does!”
“Oh, shut up, you golden-haired goody-goody—it’s not a lightning spell,” replied Whiska. “Just watch.”