It’s been six months since The Elder was exiled and control of the village was put back into capable and trustworthy hands. And yet the haunted swamp at the outskirts of the village remains as dark and impenetrable as ever. As a concerned villager, I can’t help but wonder if Grundle the Swamp Monster may never drain the swamp like he promised us he would.
When Grundle first approached the village with his plan to drain the swamp in exchange for complete and total rule over the villagers, I couldn’t have been more excited. Sure, I was a little surprised, given that Grundle frequently cavorted with all of the foulest creatures in the swamp, including the notorious Bog-Fiend. If anything, when I thought “swamp,” I thought “Grundle.”
But Grundle insisted that he wasn’t like those other swamp creatures—he was a monster of the people—and when he promised to build a wall around the village, and lock up The Crone (whose husband everyone was pretty sure was secretly friends with the Bog-Fiend), I immediately got on board.
“Who better to protect the village from swamp monsters than a swamp monster?” I reasoned. After all, it was Grundle who warned us that children were being kidnapped and taken to the swamp through a secret tunnel in the basement of the village bakery. Even though that turned out not to be correct, his concern for our kids was proof enough that we could trust him. Though, in hindsight, we should have checked to make sure the tunnel was actually there before we impaled the baker with a pitchfork and left his corpse to rot in the middle of the town square.
Now, Grundle is back in charge (his exile was a total sham) but the swamp still hasn’t been drained. Even worse, he and his trusted advisor, the Marsh Witch, won’t even drain Bog-Fiend Bayou, where the most malevolent of the late Bog-Fiend’s associates are thought to be holed up.
I hate to say it, but part of me thinks that Grundle might be hiding something behind those kind, bright yellow, vertical-pupiled eyes that he’s so fond of licking.
I’ll admit that, during Grundle’s first reign, there were things he could have done better. After all, no slime-covered, fourteen-foot swamp-thing is perfect. He never built the wall, or locked up the crone. And when he led the Bog Upsiring that nearly caused the entire village to burn to the ground, I felt he’d maybe gone a step too far.
But I was sure that, as soon as he came back into power, he would expose the cabal of cryptids and bring peace to the village. Now I’m beginning to suspect that Grundle has no interest in converting that marshland into farmland, which has me thinking the unthinkable: What if Grundle only wants to rule over the village so that we’ll continue supplicating him by tossing baby goats directly into his gaping maw? What if all of his gleeful howls have been nothing more than empty promises?
Grundle’s deafening silence on the Bog-Fiend’s mysterious death (The Bog-Fiend drowning? In his own swamp? Give me a break) is making me question everything. And for the first time in my life, I’m not convinced The Crone and The Elder are exclusively to blame.
When the blacksmith was found slashed to pieces, and we had to start buying our horseshoes from the next village over, I blamed The Crone and The Elder for not keeping him safe from what, by the looks of the claw marks, was a roughly fourteen-foot tall swamp thing.
When the village’s cistern was destroyed by some large, slimy creature smashing it apart, I blamed The Crone and The Elder for proposing needlessly expensive resiliency measures designed to prevent it from happening again.
And when the baker’s wife refused to sell us bread until everyone apologized for impaling her husband with a pitchfork and leaving his corpse to rot in the middle of the town square, I blamed The Crone and The Elder for teaching a woman it was okay to speak her mind.
But now I’m not so sure it’s all their fault. Maybe they’re right that draining the swamp won’t magically solve all our problems. Maybe they’re right when they say that, while the swamp is smelly and awful, it’s also a vital ecosystem. And that, if we all work together, we can drive out the monsters and have a swamp that works for everyone.
Then again, The Elder could’ve easily drained Bog-Fiend Bayou himself. Clearly there’s something shady going on.
