I guard a laboratory. I think they’re up to something.

I need a second opinion on this one.

By now I’ve worked as a “guard” at a number of different places. What that really means is I have far too much time to read and write, and I’ve developed a bad habit of really overdoing it with the prose. This is different and will have to be simple and fast. Hope that’s okay.

I recently got reassigned to a laboratory I cannot give the name of. Caught sleeping at the last place, whole thing. And I’m surprised I wasn’t straight up fired because they caught me in the middle of one of my crazy dreams and apparently I was mumbling something about goblins.

Anyway at the Laboratory things work a bit different than anywhere else I’ve “worked”. Twelve hour overnight shifts, me and one other guard. We take turns driving a golf cart aimlessly around the parking lot for two hours. I guess they want to look guarded.

On the two hours off, they specifically want us to sleep.

They want the guards to sleep.

Never seen anything like it.

Not in a bed or something like that, because why would it be? There’s a desk, at the receiving area, in a corner. Scientists in white lab coats run past all night speaking mostly various Asian languages. Other workers run past speaking mostly Spanish. They really made sure I was monolingual before posting me here. Again, never seen anything like it.

You’d think I’m supposed to keep an eye on all these scientists and workers, you know, as a “guard”. Nope. The chair behind the desk is so much more comfortable than it looks, and for some reason I’m always so tired when I get there, and, oh yeah, I was specifically instructed to “doze off”.

So there I am, sound asleep, having all my crazy dreams while all these crazy scientists and workers run around.

And if the dreams were crazy before, oh my are they crazy now.

Every dream has become the same.

I’m on a bridge. Behind me the bridge leads to a small, forested island. In front of me is, I guess, the mainland, and there are all these humanoid shadows peaking out of the jungle, all trying to cross the bridge, but as long as I watch them, they won’t.

I call them humanoid shadows, and not shadow people, because they are very much not people, whatever they are.

Something about the dream is always so inexpressibly bleak.

Anyway then they wake me up and send me out on the golf cart again so the other guard can take her nap.

Getting paid to sleep is a great deal so you can’t blame me for doing what I’m told and not thinking too hard about it.

And this all went quite well, until one night by sheer coincidence, listening to an audiobook while driving the stupid golf cart, I learned about the Spanish word, “duende.”

Apparently it can refer to a lot of different, I suppose, elf-like creatures (look it up if you want), and I’m no expert, but for the purposes of this whatever-this-is I’ll call them goblins.

I say that because after driving the golf cart that night, I went back to the sleeping-desk, and could have sworn I kept hearing the workers say that word. Duende.

And I came back the next night armed with an assortment of memorized words that are roughly equivalent to “goblin”, in several Asian languages.

I don’t know any of these languages, and also I was wrong, a lot of them aren’t even Asian so what do I know right?

But I swear I keep hearing these words. I swear, I don’t know why, but all these crazy scientists, and all these crazy workers, seem to be talking on and on about goblins.

Every night.

Why?

Are they just really into fantasy?

And I fucking hate this question, but, does it have anything to do with the dreams?

Because now, every time I have those dreams, of myself on the bridge watching all the humanoid shadows coming out of the jungle, I keep catching myself calling them goblins. Why goblins?

And I’m not stupid.

I remember what they said I was mumbling, when they woke me up at that other post.

And whatever these humanoid shadows are, I swear I keep seeing them out of the corner of my eye, everywhere I go now.

Sleep deprivation, right?

My brain is getting delirious and my pattern recognition is going haywire, right?

This Laboratory doesn’t give a shit about stupid fantasy goblins, right?

But why would my brain make that up?

It’s so damn specific.

And the dreams.

The shadows.

That bleakness.

What do they have in this laboratory?