It's a piece of cake
"I think it all started when I was young."
Jareth lay on the faded brown sofa and stared up at the ceiling, his booted feet crossed at the ankle, hands folded casually on his stomach. His hair was arranged perfectly around him in a fan so that not a single strand would be crumpled.
Across from him an elf sat on a spindly wooden chair, clutching a clipboard and nervously chewing on his pencil.
"Please go on," he squeaked.
Jareth heaved a huge sigh.
"It was one of my many birthday parties, a very important one if I recall correctly, and I had a huge cake. It was twice the size of me and looked absolutely delightful…and do you know what happened?" Jareth cringed and shut his eyes, a pained expression crossing over his face as he muttered in a disgusted voice, "a Goblin jumped out of it." He shuddered, "I'm not even going to go into what it looked like. Suffice to say that it was only wearing a bikini." He opened his eyes. "And it was male."
The elf's face suddenly went ludicrously pale as this image danced across its mind and he actually almost gagged, but managed to suppress it.
"Yes…" he said faintly as a prompt to continue, though he wasn't sure if he wanted this session to go on.
"I then proceeded to erase the sordid memory from my mind by drinking quite heavily. I believe it was while I was in this drunken state that I created the Bog of Eternal Stench…it seemed like a really good idea at the time." The Goblin King moved one of his hands over his face and groaned. "Eternal Stench," he muttered despairingly, "of all the stupid ideas!" He turned to look at the elf. "I could've had anything you know. Any manner of torturous, unsurpassable, horrendous ideas to threaten my quivering subjects with, and I chose Eternal Stench…"
The elf nodded sympathetically.
"Oh," Jareth continued, "and there was this one time when I was in college and I fell asleep so a couple of my fellow classmates thought it would be funny to rub cake into my…" he gulped, "hair." He sat up abruptly. "It took me days to get out. DAYS! My hair has never been the same since. You think I have a mullet by choice? There was just so much of it…" A glazed look came over his face. "So. Much. Cake."
After three painful minutes of silence while Jareth sat in a horrified trance the elf cleared his throat and the King snapped back to the present.
"Needless to say the two jokers paid dearly for their little stunt," he narrowed his eyes and chuckled menacingly. "I wonder how they like their heads being nailed to those doors."
The elf jotted a few things down on his clipboard, namely 'Don't mess up his Majesty's hair.'
"There was also the experience with the Fanged Gateaux."
For the second time in the session the elf paled.
The Fanged Gateaux were strange creatures that to all appearances looked like cakes…until you tried to take a bite and then they promptly bit you with their fangs, which are concealed between their layers of sponge, and sucked your blood. Altogether not particularly pleasant beasts and no one ever forgets an encounter with them, if they came back alive.
It appeared that Jareth wasn't going to go into that particular story though he did add onto the end, "There were three of them. I'm not going to tell you where they bit me."
The elf was highly gratified by this.
"Of course, there's also all the times that I've slipped over on cake…"
Jareth then proceeded to list every extremely boring encounter with a cake that resulted on him lying flat on his back…and even a few instants that had nothing to do with cakes whatsoever that the elf really did not want to hear, concerning the King's private life. In fact the whole time Jareth was talking the poor elf merely nodded sympathetically, whilst desperately trying hard not to fall asleep, and thinking that after this he would probably want his own psychiatrist.
"So?" The elf came out of his trance to see Jareth staring at him expectantly. "What do you suggest I do?"
Now here was the crux of the matter, the elf was not a trained psychiatrist. He was just a random person that Jareth had grabbed off the street and he knew perfectly well what would happen if he gave the King wrong advise. He didn't want to end up banished to the forest like the Fire Gang (but then he wouldn't be telling the King to take off his head as a solution) nor end up in some weird contorted position like the Gatekeepers (of course he didn't plan to give the King contradictory advise). So he had to think of something good and he had to think of it quickly.
"I suggest…that you exile cakes from the kingdom. Erase them from existence and punish anyone who so much as thinks the word."
The elf then sat back and chewed his lip nervously. It wasn't a conventional solution. It mainly involved the King running away from his problem and pretending it didn't exist – mainly because that's what he, the elf, would do. If his Highness had a problem with that then the poor elf knew that he'd probably end up suffering some horrible punishment, like guarding the bridge from the Bog with Sir Didimus who had told the King to confront his fears head on.
Fortunately it seemed that his Highness thoroughly approved of the idea.
"That's excellent! Genius! I shall do just that…and of course I must reward you for your services."
The elf sat up straighter suddenly interested. He hoped it was jewellery, he liked jewellery. He had a nice pile of it at home.
"I shall turn you into a Goblin."
The elf's jaw dropped. "No, no, really that's…" his throat closed up in fear, "…too much…I…"
Jareth waved his hand airily, "Nonsense. You really don't want to stay in that horribly fragile body forever."
And before the elf could protest Jareth turned the poor little thing into a Goblin.
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So it came to pass that Jareth destroyed all cakes and forbid the use of the word throughout his kingdom. As for his former elf psychiatrist, he was more qualified than any of the other Goblin's and so managed to get a job as a gardener and changed his name to Hoggle.
As the years passed he forgot all about his previous life as an elf until all that was left of his past was his pile of jewellery, a deep rooted resentment towards everything in general and fear of the Goblin King.
So life passed in a pretty monotonous way, until one day a girl appeared with a mission to complete the Labyrinth. A girl who had a horrible habit of mentioning the word 'cake'.