Once upon a time there was a goat named Larry. He wasn’t like any other ordinary goat, he was a special goat. Not so much special as in joyful and heroic, but he was different and strange. He didn’t eat EVERYTHING like the other goats did. He loved to eat mice. His favorite food were owls, but those were rare and hard to catch. Most goats don’t eat meat. They’re herbivores, even if they eat random things like cans. So, Larry was an outcast, and he lurked around on his own, coming up with ways to catch his favorite meals.
Larry also looked different from the other goats: he had dark and wiry hair, with bare pinkish red patches all over his body, like some sort of skin disease. His teeth were long, chipped, crooked and stuck out of his mouth in a nasty underbite. His eyes were entirely uneven; the left one was giant, bulbous and sticking out of his head. The right one was small and beady. It looked permanently to the right, so you couldn’t tell if he was looking at you or not. His horns were gnarly and abnormal, as was everything else. They both twisted and zigzagged and were nothing close to symmetrical. His hooves were extremely overgrown and as he grew up it had caused his legs to grow bent in weird directions. He walked with a hobble because of that. He had an awful odor as well. He smelled like green, rotted cheese and putrid sulfur, how, no one knew.
Most goats aren’t extremely judgmental. They get along with most everyone and everything. But Larry was an exception to that friendliness. He was just so different and strange, no goat would ever purposely approach or be around Larry in fear something weird would happen. Every goat knew he ate mice and owls. Rumors went around that Larry ate goats as well, so everyone feared him but never said anything.
Soon after the rumors had spread throughout all the herd, goats began disappearing. This fear expanded like wildfire. Goats began trying their hardest to stay as far as they could from Larry.
A young goat brave enough to approach Larry came up to him and looked him up and down. He was the brother to one of the goats that had disappeared, and he wanted answers.
They stood there for a while looking at each other. The brother goat, Jordan, had a hard time not feeling uneasy. Larry’s stare was so unwavering, he looked like a statue. His long blackish tongue hung out of his mouth, hanging off the side of his majorly crooked underbite. The bulbous eye stared directly into Jordan’s face, while the beady one looked off seemingly into the distance. Jordan looked down at the ground to gather the courage to talk to this creature. He glanced up and Larry’s hideousness had moved right up into his face. Jordan jumped and bellowed.
The only reaction from Larry was that he opened his mouth, and pretty wide. Jordan flinched at the sight and smell. There were bones and hair between his molars… His throat was a huge black cavern. Jordan backed away.
“What are you doing Larry? You really are strange, do you know that? Most goats don’t act like you do, and not most, but ALL goats think you’re the reason that there’s goats disappearing.” Jordan blurted out, finally having the guts to tell the unresponsive creature.
With his mouth open, Larry began to tilt his head slowly to the side while his bulbous eye was still fixed on Jordan. His neck would occasionally crack and pop until he had tilted his head completely sideways, and his beady eye was looking up into the sky.
Jordan began to shake. This was extremely creepy. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was thoroughly freaked out and ran away at a full blown gallop; the most that a goat could muster. Larry stayed frozen right where he was, head tilted, mouth open.
Jordan never stopped or looked back. He didn’t want anything to do with that goat. What had happened to Larry to make him so odd and creepy? Surely being a little different wouldn’t make some goat THAT weird.
Jordan reached the main part of the herd and came to a screeching halt. All the goats picked their heads up from grazing, noticing his urgency.
“Jordan… what’s wrong?” One goat asked curiously, even though they all knew good and well what had frightened the young goat.
“Larry is so… creepy!” Jordan exclaimed, out of breath. “I tried to talk to him, to get some answers, but he never said a word, but did some really abnormal stuff.”
The whole herd began to clamor with worried whispers amongst each other.
“What should we do?”
“This has been outrageously too much!”
“I’m scared of Larry!” Random goats began to shout. Then, one goat out spoke the others.
“Hey everyone, what if Larry has a social incapability? We would only be making it worse by leaving him out, and rumors of him eating those missing goats could very well be coincidence. Maybe if we tried to be kind to him and show him how to be a normal goat, we could stop all this nonsense.” This middle aged goat bah’d and stamped his hooves. This goats name was Wes, and he had been an important part of the herd for some time, so the goats began to slowly calm and think things through. But questions still shined in their eyes.
“Then where did the missing goats go? Hmm?!” An older female goat demanded viciously. She was a mate of one of the goats that went missing. She was normally a sour goat, but ever since her mate went missing it was so much worse.
“That I don’t know.” Wes admitted in defeat. “But it wouldn’t hurt to try and find out.”
Jordan stood tall. “I’ll help. This needs to end. I don’t want to shun Larry if it isn’t his fault. No matter how much the evidence points to him. Just because he’s extremely creepy doesn’t mean he’s to blame.”
“Then who should we blame?” The old widow goat exclaimed.
“No one yet,” Jordan tried to reply calmly. He didn’t want to lose his cool on this grouchy old goat.
Many goats after that stood up bravely to go on the hunt to find the reason for the missing goats. After they had all their volunteers, all the other goats left them to their planning business.
The sky grew darker and they still planned. It turned into night and they still planned away. They made sure they were prepared for anything to figure this out. Goats are very low key animals, and they wanted to fix the problem so they could live in peace again.
“So, at daylight, Jordan will find Larry and watch him from afar. Don’t get caught either.” Wes stated sternly. “Other goats will stand perimeter guards for any signs of weird activity, we never know if Larry has accomplices. And I’ll stand watch for Jordan’s signal to tell you all. Break!”
All the goats took off in their own directions. They hadn’t gotten any sleep, but with the excitement of turning up the kidnapper, they blinked the sleep away.
Jordan nodded to Wes and took off to where Larry normally hung about an old craggy tree. He slowly took a place behind some bushes on a hill above the tree spot, and looked down on the area for Larry. It was still pretty dark, just early morning, so he couldn’t really see much, especially with Larry’s darker color.
He waited and watched as sunlight slowly turned the land from black to navy blue, to a soft golden. There was still no sign of Larry or any abnormal activity.
Jordan began to doze off on his post on top of the hill. The sunlight was warming his back, and the birds sang a sweet song. His eyes blinked slowly and his vision blurred until he saw some movement. His eyes immediately snapped open and he stood erect. Looking down on Larry’s spot, he saw a misshapen black figure seeming to come out of the ground…
The young goat rubbed his eyes with his leg in disbelief. There was Larry, who came out of the ground.
Jordan finally remembered he needed to give the signal. He began jumping up and down and howling softly. He sat and waited. And waited. But he never saw Wes or any of the other goats.
“If we don’t do something now, Larry will get away.” Jordan said to himself, anger building up inside that the other goats weren’t doing what they were supposed to.
So, Jordan puffed up his chest and mustered all the courage he could. He bounded down that hill straight toward Larry. He had no idea what he was about to witness next.
He came onto the site where Larry was and stopped dead in his tracks. There, on the ground, were the pelts of goats. Jordan was so confused and scared… where was the blood? The bones?
Larry’s mangled head shot up and looked Jordan over. Jordan jumped and held his breath. What would happen to him?

Larry’s crusty lips stretched out and peeled back to reveal his twisted gnarly teeth in a malicious smile. “Yordin…” Larry coughed out in a hoarse, obviously barely used voice.

“Ju fell fo evertin. Juz like dem owdeers. I take teh furs of teh braaaaavest gorts. And take dem to me laaaaaaair.”

Jordan’s legs quivered. After all this planning, they thought they had everything figured out. He was beginning to realize how much bigger of a danger this goat really was. His mouth dropped open and he shook his head. “No, Larry… please.”

“Nur Yordin. I haf already tooked yur fire ends. Yuh shee, Yordin, ya’ll gorts was right. I ain’t nur nowmal gort. I come from teh unders ground.” Larry cackled an airy, dry, sarcastic cackle.

This confused Jordan… the underground? What was this becoming? This was definitely beyond his knowledge. At the moment, he didn’t care. He was facing his doom.

Larry stomped his hooves and continued smiling his creepy, malicious smile while staring at the young goat with his bulbous eye. The ground shook, and before Jordan could even think about leaping away, he fell through the ground. Not into a hole, but the ground seemed to evaporate in texture but looked like solid ground. He fell into a dark deep pit and hit the ground with a loud echoing thud.

Jordan looked up to where he fell from. There was still soft daylight coming into the pit, but it wasn’t straight sunlight from a hole. It was like it was filtered. He could see the sky, and the tree. Through the ground… what sort of sorcery was this? What WAS this thing he was dealing with? The questions and fear in his mind were driving him mad. He began to shake violently, both from fear and from the cold dampness of the pit.

“Hullo, Yordin. Welcome home, yung berave wun.” Larry cackled somewhere in the darkness.

“Where are you?! Show yourself!!” Jordan demanded, his voice cracking and wavering.

“If yuh inseest. Hehehehe.” Larry replied sadistically.

Everything went silent. Seconds ticked by and then…

A loud immortal-like growl rang through the pit and Jordan looked up quickly. A flash out of the darkness, Larry’s mangled head appeared, this time with fur falling off and skin peeling away. His mouth open wider than anything in front of Jordan’s face, with still an extremely creepy grin. His bulbous eye looked down on Jordan as he stood above him.

“Goo nite.”

Larry’s gaping jaws lunged at Jordan and everything went black.