Their food portions were blessed with an addition of a hot cocoa cup, which Richard consumed with warm memories of childhood. It was thick, sweet and filling. Stevie and Johnny were nowhere to be seen in these rare moments Richard didn’t spend with Wendy but dined with everybody else. Richard grew to sense that Wendy started to be tired of him, she was annoyed with his enthusiasm whenever he saw her, irritated with his comments that she looked like a goddess. He sensed that she was over her desperation of being married to Ginger George, but her relationship with Richard started getting weary. As a result, they spent less and less time with each other, Richard being forced to spend time alone or with dwarfs.
Dwarfs also changed. They were more apathetic, they tended to fall asleep in most unusual places, they took part in executions without any wish to oppose (Richard lost count of the number of heads falling from the gallows), were never outraged or critical towards Ginger George’s policy. Richard would swear that there was something strange about them as if some higher power tinkered with their minds, making them indifferent and numb.
One morning, Richard was walking from his room, coming back from a date with Wendy, which ended in another argument, when he noticed little pieces of chocolate lying in various places on the floor. He was utterly grateful for such a gift from fate, he ran from one piece to another and consumed them all within a couple of minutes. These rations made him emaciated, taking into account his size and the effort he made to make Wendy satisfied. Chocolate did him good, it gave him strength and restored positive feelings, which were rare in these moments of dangerous Ginger George’s rule and comatose state of mind of his inferiors.
For one piece, he had to compete with another dwarf. They both found it just at the entrance to the kitchen and couldn’t decide who had the right to eat it.
‘Here you are, it’s yours. You were here first.’
‘No, please,’ said Richard, ‘I ate enough. Wouldn’t you like to have some?’
The dwarf laughed.
‘I’ll tell you a secret. It’s a cyanide for us. We used it in the old dwarf wars, my grandfather told me. We bought it from the Aztecs. One piece of it can kill a couple of dwarfs within a few seconds.’
‘So why do you want it?’
‘Two reasons, Mr. Innocent. In case they are after my family, I can give them pieces of it before the execution for whatever the cause. Very quick death it is. It’s also a weapon against Billy Strong Fist and others of his kind. I heard they are breaking into houses and violating our women.’
‘What do you mean violating?’
‘Raping, that is. These dwarfs are starved. They haven’t got a woman for ages. Their wives look like old tree trunks. They are looking for fresh blood, I heard. I have daughters. I am afraid.’
Richard without a word gave the dwarf a piece of chocolate, regretting that he ate so much himself. If chocolate could kill dwarfs and he ate so many pieces spread trickily around the Kindergarten, he most likely rescued them from accidental death. He didn’t know, however, if quick death by consuming chocolate wasn’t better than the punishments implemented by Ginger George. He also wasn’t sure how many realized about the potential threat of consuming chocolate, as each and every dwarf drank warm cocoa with their every meal and doze slowly into the nap of unawareness.
Eva Mushroom was currently in her house. She tied her jet black hair in a bun, exposing her pale white skin, red lips and black eyes surrounded by the cover of equally black eyelashes. She was preparing rations of dried forest fruit, mushrooms and wood roots in case Ginger George established stricter norms of food consumption. She put all this under the planks of her kitchen floor. She knew she couldn’t rely on the Kindergarten’s catering. She knew that cocoa was poisonous but dwarfs were so hungry that they didn’t pay attention to what she was saying. Stevie was spending days with Johnny Cutie and Debbie Honest, publishing what they could publish about Ginger George to raise some rebellion. Eva was glad that Stevie found some occupation. A dwarf without work was like a fish without water. She heard what happened to Frank First Aid Kit. Apparently, he had gone crazy.
Eva Mushroom remembered with sentiment the years of late Highest Dwarf’s reign. There were feasts to attend, as much food as they could consume, they didn’t fear toe amputation, as Stevie and Eve were so purely in love and for their first night together they waited till the day of their wedding. He was the only dwarf she ever loved and the only dwarf she was ever physical with.
It was the middle of the night when she was woken by knocking at the door. She knew that Stevie would have peacefully entered the room and lied quietly by her side. Maybe something happened? Maybe something happened to Stevie, to Out of the Box team, maybe they were going to be beheaded?
She stood up and opened the door. Behind it, stood Billy Strong Fist, he put his foot in the door, making it impossible for Eva to close it. He smiled, but Eva knew that it was a smile she was supposed to be afraid of.
Stevie was finishing another article on Ginger George. It was getting tricky to write a decent material in a language no one had used for centuries. They first had to distribute dictionary of ancient dwarfs’ language, making sure dwarfs understood its content. Dictionaries were attached to the bottom of plates that came with meals, to which neither Ginger George nor his closest employees attended, so Stevie and Johnny were sure that none of them would get access to booklets. Then, their task was to publish as many articles as possible, to make dwarfs aware what was going on in the Kindergarten and to wish that Ginger George wouldn’t make a rule of a total press abolition. This would leave them all helpless.
Suddenly, Johnny ran into their secret publishing place, his hair messy, his eyes red from the lack of sleep.
‘Stevie, they heard screams coming from your house. Neighbors said that Billy Strong Fist was there. Your wife! She was there alone!’
Stevie felt fear. He left all his articles, looked at Johnny in despair and ran as fast as possible back to his home.
‘I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him! If he did something to her, I’ll just kill him!’
As a matter of fact, he knew that if something happened to his wife, he wouldn’t have any wish to live himself. He wouldn’t forgive himself. He would never find peace. When he finally arrived at the place, nothing was heard behind the door. There was a deafening silence which turned Stevie’s stomach upside down. Stevie opened the door and entered his house. There was someone sitting at the desk, writing something on a piece of paper.
‘Eva? Are you well? Has he done anything to you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it with you. It was a tough night. He’s in the kitchen.’
Stevie slowly walked to the kitchen. The dim light of the moon coming from a tiny kitchen window lit a big dark shape. It was some sort of a mass lying like a log in the center on the floor. Stevie turned on the light. The body was folded in two and the head was placed on the top, separate from its body.
‘His penis is in his pocket!’, Eve explained, ‘I didn’t know where to put it. First, I cut his penis, then, his head.’
‘You did it all by yourself?’, Stevie was shocked, looking at the dead body of Billy Strong Fist, taking a big part of his kitchen.
‘I did what every dwarf woman would do. He tried to rape me. Nasty, stupid giant! I couldn’t allow for that. You know Stevie, I remember Billy Strong Fist from when he was little. He’s younger than me. I used to give him honey, I babysat him when he was a little dwarf boy. It’s beyond me that dwarf women sacrifice so much for their children, they raise you, men, it’s thanks to us that you are even alive, and still you have no respect for us. You are weak, Stevie. You are not as strong as dwarf women. Billy just proved what I’m saying.’
Stevie always listened to his wife. He knew that without her, he would be no one. But now only one thing occupied his mind: how to get rid of the head and the body of Billy Strong Fist, not raising anyone suspicions?
In the evening, there was a group of dwarfs, paying them a visit. They were looking for Billy Strong Fist, who disappeared the previous night.
‘So you say that he came here and went away?’
‘Yes, officer,’ Eve was playing her part well, ‘He said that he would come back. He looked at me in a strange way, as if he was hungry. I told him that I’m married.’
Dwarfs laughed under their noses.
‘And then he walked somewhere? Did he say where?’
‘He didn’t tell me. I was afraid of him. He’s a big dwarf, you have to admit it. I’m a fragile dwarf woman.’
They all agreed that Eve Mushroom was a weak, fragile dwarf woman suitable only for cooking and child play.
‘What are you cooking there?’, one of the dwarfs was intrigued by the smell coming from the kitchen.
‘A stew, officer. My husband brought me a wild boar which he hunted in the forest. Rations are so small we have to look for other sources of nutrition.’
‘You’re a small woman, you don’t need to eat as much as we do. Give us this stew!’
Eve politely put plates on the table and watched dwarfs consume the first, second and third serving of the stew, which made any traces of Billy Strong Fist disappear from the earth, accompanied by compliments of good taste and a whole lot of smacks and slurps.
