‘Richard, it really isn’t such a big deal,’ Stevie Mushroom and Johnny Cutie were sitting in Richard’s room, having brought him some recovery gifts and food, ‘Johnny, show him your feet!’
Johnny took off his socks and showed him one foot, where there was one toe missing, and another one where there were as many as three toes missing from the bunch of five.
‘It was getting difficult to walk,’ Johnny explained ‘I didn’t think it through. Now when I meet a new girlfriend I immediately get married. It saves you so much fear of being caught. If the relationship breaks up, I can get divorced and after a while, I can get married again to someone else.’
‘And you, Stevie? Do you change your wives like gloves?’, Richard didn’t feel better after looking at Johnny’s toes. Or rather those absent ones.
Stevie shook his head.
‘No, I got married to my high-school sweetheart. I have all my toes in place. You have to understand, Richard, we don’t approve these laws. They are outdated. Body reduction for extramarital intercourse, whipping for following human Gods...’
‘You get whipped for following the religion?’
‘You see, we get easily lured by jewels. For years, your churches and temples seduced our hearts and made some dwarfs abandon their profession and choose the life of seclusion and meditation. It was even worse than human women. They were besotted with your cathedrals. Once they laid their eyes on the shiny golden chandeliers, which were glittering in the rays of the sun, they forgot about our beautiful chambers and chapels. We have different gods. Our gods are about work, your gods are about a bargain.’
Richard was still staring at his missing toe. He didn’t feel the pain. Frank First Aid Kit drugged him to make him forget about the whole incident but now the lack of the toe was making itself noticeable, especially when he tried to walk and he lost the balance every second step.
‘How come our gods are about a bargain?’
‘Well, isn’t that so? You have a set of rules that you have to follow and, if you follow these rules, you are granted eternal life. Normally, you would have to pay a lot of rubies and sapphires for such a thing but in your case, you just play a game.’
‘I think you mean that we don’t have to be rich to gain life after death. Stevie, the afterlife is available for all, rich and poor equally.’
‘Yes, definitely something along those lines. And some of our dwarfs fell for that. We don’t really believe in the afterlife. We believe in hard work, we believe in laws and we believe that you get in life exactly what you worked for. No bargains, I’m afraid.’
‘If you believe that for human-dwarf interaction you need to have your toe cut, there’s something really wrong with you!’
‘But Richard, you get body reduction for an extramarital affair. For dwarf-human interaction, there’s a different punishment...’
‘You mean a month in a dungeon without sun and fresh air?’
‘Well, this is the punishment for a dwarf. For human, there’s something different.’
‘What then?’
Johnny looked at Stevie, Stevie looked at Johnny.
‘If you really want to know... Well, for a human it is death. It has always been this way. It granted the protection of our species without the fear of being exposed. Dwarfs weren’t fond of any human-dwarf relationship, even the happiest ones. The majority of dwarfs weren’t abandoned by humans. They happily coexisted with each other. But no one allowed for such a thing. Even if the woman miraculously survived the childbirth, the dwarf-human child was taken away from her and raised in some distant depopulated village. The human was killed. Occasionally, human females were supposed to find themselves a human husband and forget about the whole affair. They were given jewels to silence them. If they insisted on the relationship, you know... They were killed as well. We don’t want to praise Frank, we really don’t like this bureaucratic pig, but if he hadn’t whispered a word or two to our judges, they wouldn’t have been so merciful. You just have to be careful, Richard. If they set an official rule, there’s no way of ducking from the punishment. We force ourselves to be up-to-date. We need to beat the system to be able to live here.’
‘You live in hell!’
‘Yes, Richard, but don’t we all?’ Johnny managed to put on his socks, ‘We heard stories about your rules and laws. They don’t seem to be much better than ours. We heard that in some places you cannot say what you want, that some of you are killed for even the slightest criticism of the rulers. We heard that some families kill their own family members for committing adultery or marrying outside the class. And this is even among your own species! We heard that some jealous men throw acid on their women to make them disfigured or that they are able to kill them. The news came to us that some men force children to have sex with them and they kill them afterward. We heard about people who steal from other people things which they didn’t work for and didn’t pay for. We heard that you are able to kill millions of you with bullets, bombs, and poison because you are greedy. You want more land, more food, more gold and you don’t appreciate what you already have. We didn’t want to integrate with your kind for various reasons, for years we have been living underground. We were discouraged. You are terrible species. You are worse than pigs.’
Richard wanted to say something in defense, but he didn’t. He used to like his plumbing work for the fact that he didn’t have to integrate with people. Pipes and taps had nothing to do with what Johnny was telling him about.
‘If I were you, I’d just look out for these horny dwarfs who want to impress their friends. Silia Lovely Bottom seduced even our Highest Dwarf. She was crazy about power. She pretty early on developed her tastes in the elite. And, as you can imagine, our Highest Dwarf also has one toe missing. It is difficult to resist her. No one is really that innocent, Richard.’
‘If you are desperate,’ Stevie sounded consoling ‘We can call these human hookers for you. They are excellent at their job. Frank always checks job applications pretty thoroughly. If you’re in a mood, we can organize some get-together.’
Richard thanked in advance, but the last thing he wanted from life was any sexual experience. Still in shock after losing a body part, he didn’t want to participate in anything which was connected with any body part, be it human-dwarf interaction or any interaction at all.
Days passed uneventfully, possibly because Richard avoided these events as much as he could. He wined and dined with Stevie and Johnny, occasionally he even participated in Johnny’s fitness classes to get back in shape. Female dwarfs accepted him in the group and assured that they wouldn’t do such a thing as to seduce him or even initiate any intimacy between them, for which he was glad. From time to time, he repaired something, be it a garden hose which was leaking or a little fountain which gave dwarfs so much pleasure in times of heat. He learned some dwarfs’ names, started to recognize more and more of them and, slowly, he fitted in this peculiar world of small shoe sizes and little chairs. Once, he even passed the Highest Dwarf in the corridor. It was a bearded grandpa, wearing dungarees, a stripped pink T-shirt, and flip-flops, exposing the fact that the man also had one toe missing. They even smiled to each other, as news spread fast enough, both being aware that they were victims of the same woman, who now was imprisoned in the dungeon, waiting for better days.
The Highest Dwarf was probably one of the oldest dwarfs, as he really looked old. His skin was almost transparent, his hair white as snow and wrinkles all over his body reminded everyone that he was not a child. The Highest Dwarf wasn’t in the Kindergarten during the control. It would be difficult to pretend that he wasn’t a dwarf. But in his old days, he liked to abandon the mines and sit outside the building of the Kindergarten to warm his bones in the sun.
It was when Richard was recovering from amputation and enjoying his meal with Stevie and Johnny, the Highest Dwarf stood up from the bench, produced some unrecognizable cry, sat back again and a second later fell stiff on the bench. In a matter of seconds, one small dwarf separated from his dining table, sprang to him with speed that suggested that he had been waiting for this day since his birth and announced triumphantly.
‘The Highest Dwarf is dead! I was the first person who was by him in the moment of his passing, thus I am the new Highest Dwarf!’
It took dwarfs some time to come to their senses.
Stevie slapped himself in the face.
‘For the love of dwarfs! Not Ginger George!’
Richard looked at other dwarfs’ reactions and they were more or less similar to that of Stevie.
Ginger George took the dead hand of the Highest Dwarf, pulled it high into the air and smiled triumphantly. That was a mischievous smile.
