I want to thank my two reviewers! Thanks all around and whatnot.

Now… to warn you guys, the plot I have for this story is rather… sketchy. Regardless, I shall try to pop out good chapters on a regular basis.

This is turning out a good deal darker and creepier than I had intended. The goblins weren't supposed to turn out as… menacing as they seem when I write them. But I've always been fascinated by the darker side of fairy tales, and I suppose that it's leaked into my writing. Then again, I always write in a vaguely creepy, dark fashion, so really it was bound to happen anyway.

The fourth chapter is being worked on, so it should come out sometime relatively soon. Maybe in a few days.

As always, please review!

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Chapter 3

"Hey! Jared!"

A man with golden hair and lean features turned toward the voice that called him, and paused on the street as the caller jogged up to him.

The boy with mismatched eyes had grown up, and was twenty years old. And the stigma that followed him as a child and still made small children worship him and pregnant women and mothers mistrust him was still present. It still made him irritable and dangerous and oh-so mysterious.

Of course, the upside was that, as he grew older, it drew lovely ladies to him like honey draws ants.

Currently, his partner in crime as it were, was grinning at him like a fool and with a gleam in his eye that made the mortal boy Jared smirk and show teeth, a habit his companions called a smile but he insisted was actually far from anything like a smile.

After all, a mouse does not look at a cat's teeth and see an expression of innocent mirth residing there.

Nevertheless, the gleam had to be dealt with.

"What did you do and how much money will it cost me to bail your ass out." he said lowly. His companion laughed and grinned wider.

"No man," he replied. "It's a gig. You'll like it. A club scene, but real classy like you like 'em. Trust me man. Be there at 7 sharp, got it? All you gotta bring is that purty voice of yours and we're set. You get half like always." At that, he slapped a note into Jared's hands. Jared glanced at it and saw the address and name of the place scrawled onto the paper. He nodded once, and the other man was off.

Probably to tune his instruments, Jared thought, and continued on his way to the grocer's. Living by himself in an apartment, he had to make a living. And, on a whim, he had taken up a microphone. According to the people who heard him, his singing was no less than divine. If divinity was a wild thing, just barely contained. It was quite possible, he mused again. He had trouble hearing himself sing. He had once recorded it and played it back later, but had to shut it off halfway through the song.

It had reminded him of something caged, and he hated it.

But, still, you did what you had to, to get by and fill your belly, so he had no real complaints. He had been getting restless for awhile now. Maybe, after tonight, he would pack up and leave again. Find someplace else. He steadfastly ignored the sinking feeling that there was no place on earth he would ever be content in, and quickened his pace.

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He nearly groaned aloud at the place as he stepped into it. Classy? No wonder the other places had seemed so rank and… dare he say it, filthy. If this was what his guitarist had deemed classy, he might as well give up all hope on ever seeing anything above the dives and smoky bars he had thus far been… "introduced" to. He swallowed a scathing remark, having learned long ago that it did him no good to voice these thoughts, and stepped onto the low stage. This was less than a bar or a dive, he marked. It was nearly naught but a poorly constructed basement where people gathered to listen to musicians and dance. His breath condensed into clouds in front of him and he stepped up to the microphone.

He opened his mouth, and by the third note the audience was entranced, as always. His body swayed slightly in time with the beat, but he had never been much of a dancer. Singing suited him much better, he thought.

Song after song was played, and his smooth deep voice lulled and excited the "patrons" of the establishment, until it was very late into the night, and the loosely formed band packed it in, and Jared left, much to the disappointment of the audience.

Especially the ladies, he thought with a smirk as he stepped out into the street and made his way back to the apartment, a rather decent amount of money jammed into the inside pocket of the coat he wore. He preferred keeping bills in his wallet, but walking alone at night, if mugged it was better to toss an empty wallet than one full of your earnings for the day.

He was beat, entirely so. He still managed to walk a straight line, and he retained a pretty clear view of his surroundings. He thought so, anyway, until he spotted a patch of fungus growing on the side of one of the old brick buildings.

The fungus had eyes that followed him.

He jerked back and shook his head, deciding he really should get home, and quickly. If he was that tired to be seeing things, he didn't want to know what else would pop up before he could lose himself in sleep in the relative safety of his own apartment.

He walked faster, still trying to seem as if he weren't in a rush, and was fishing the keys to his door out of a pocket when he saw it.

A short, furred, pointed thing with large yellow eyes was staring at him. Peeking from around the corner of the building even.

It didn't move. He didn't move. They stared for a long moment before he slammed the correct key into the door, twisted it open viciously, rushed in, and slammed it behind him, locking and dead-bolting it before moving swiftly to windows and making sure those were locked and curtains drawn as well.

He fell into a chair in the kitchen, glass of cold water in hand, and he downed it in one go. His heart was hammering away in his ribcage, and he wasn't sure if it was fear or... something else. He shook his head roughly and refilled his glass, sipping slowly this time and trying to collect his thoughts. He was tired. The thing reminded him of the creatures in his old childhood book.

Goblins.

He did groan aloud at that, and set the empty glass in the sink, resolving to sleep like the dead for at least ten hours. When he woke up, it would be daylight. He would be well-rested. He'd think of where to go after this shoddy city, pool his money together, and leave. Everything, he resolved, would look better with sleep.

So he yawned widely, not bothering to cover it since no one was present, and crawled into his bed, only removing his coat and shoes before passing out entirely, and indeed sleeping like the dead.

Multiple pairs of mischievous, glittering eyes gathered around the windows to sneak a peek between the curtain, the giggling and then sudden hushed arguments as they jostled for a better view disturbing the dreams of other tenants nearby.

As for the mortal man they spied on… he did not dream.

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He yawned widely and stretched in his bed, clothes wrinkled and in need of washing, with his eyes still closed.

The childish giggling made them snap open very quickly.

But just as he had heard it, it was gone, and he wrote it off as a child playing outside the window. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and swung his feet over the side of the bed in one smooth gesture, and he sat there with his head in his hands for a few moments, allowing himself the time to get adjusted to the bright morning light. But as he sat there, and thought about which of the few children the apartment complex housed that could have been playing outside his window, it occurred to him that the sound had not come from that direction.

It had come from inside the house.

He looked up blearily from his hands and saw the room empty. He thought for a moment more, confirmed to himself that he may indeed be losing his mind, and went about business as usual.

Standing from his bed and walking into the kitchen, he stopped suddenly.

There, at the table, was breakfast. And not any simple milk-cereal-and-toast breakfast either. No, this was a full blown meal, with cut fruit, eggs and bacon, and some kind of hot pastry that looked like it could be related to waffles or pancakes, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. Glancing at the fruit again, he could pick out a couple that weren't entirely familiar to him as well. Though, strangely enough, he could recall a sort of phantom taste when looking at them, the way one might recall the taste of baby food even if they're a fully grown adult and haven't partaken of it since infancy.

But what was most unsettling were the dishes the meal was served in. Ornate, crystal dishes that caught the light and splashed it in rainbows everywhere, and a metal goblet filled with a red wine, when he sniffed it hesitantly.

He narrowed his eyes at all of this. One of his associates playing a trick on him. Or, maybe some strange psychotic delusional girl had gotten a copy of his key, let herself in, and was now playing housewife.

Maybe ninja assassins had been sent to poison him with delicious foreign food- he didn't know. He cast a suspicious glare over the room, and stalked out of it, still silent, but with an aura of impending doom thrusting out ahead of him and making even the little spiders that hadn't yet retreated at the coming of dawn, retreat and stay in their hidden webs.

"Th-the food is not te His Majesty's liking?" a timid, small voice piped from the hallway. He whirled, staring hard and eyes wide.

Oh, that confirmed it, he thought. He was going completely mad.

A short creature was peeking from around a corner, eyes wide and worried. It was (she, his mind automatically filled in) perhaps the scariest thing he had seen in his scant twenty years. A huge bilious nose, brown wrinkled and wart-freckled skin, maybe two feet tall…

There had to be something deeply, seriously wrong with him.

He bolted for the door, not afraid, but startled beyond bearing. He needed to get out and get some air. Check into a mental hospital perhaps.

But as he unlocked the door and flung it open, a mass of the things poured in on him, clambering and raising a huge fuss, clinging to his legs like children and all the while chattering on and on, "Your Highness! Your Highness!" "Wes so glad you're back!" "Your Majesty! Look what I caught!" and he could only watch helplessly as a few live chickens were loosed into his otherwise tidy apartment, and the first little goblin (he cursed himself, associating them with childhood fantasies so quickly and almost without thinking about it) shrilled loudly in protest as she insisted the King had to eat a proper meal first off, and shouldn't be bothered with such nonsense as they were carrying on with. He stared numbly as various manners of the little goblins inspected every inch of his apartment, finding comment in everything and getting into biting and pinching fits when they disagreed over the way something worked, or whether it was good enough for His Majesty to even have or not.

He staggered backwards, half from shock and half from the force of them pressing against him, and he collapsed heavily into an armchair, a few of them still hugging his legs and chattering their praise "Oh His Highness looks so handsome now!" "Handsome! Oh, kingly indeed!" until his head fairly throbbed and he felt his wearied patience snap.

"SILENCE!"

And to his mild surprise, they obeyed instantly, all turning curious, dull eyes toward him and remaining absolutely silent. He felt a kind of chill rise up his spine at the familiarity of this, and was about to rise up off the chair and kick a few of them aside to reach the door again, when a tiny goblin rushed forward eagerly, knocking over a few of its fellows in the process, and skidded to a halt in front of him, looking up with large hopeful eyes.

"It was me, Your Highness!" it squeaked, nearly jumping up and down in delight. "That… that ball when Your Highness was a wee lad, I put it there I did!" and it quivered in excitement.

He blinked, trying to sort out what the little thing was blabbering about. A ball? What…

Oh.

"You mean," he started slowly, and a few goblins gasped and tittered excitedly, hearing his voice after so long, and not raised in a yelled command, "that rather gnawed wood and leather thing?" He vaguely recalled having discovered the saliva-covered "ball" placed lovingly next to his head when he woke on his birthday many years before, along with various other…. unique items, spanning throughout the years of his young life.

It was then he also recalled that today happened to be his birthday as well. He closed his eyes ad rubbed his temples with both hands.

"What do you want," he said in a monotone, tired voice. The goblins glanced at each other uncertainly. One of the medium sized ones stepped forward warily and began speaking, glancing at the other goblins for reassurance.

"Well…. Your Highness…" it started, until a hard glance from him spurred it into quicker speech. "Ya see, you're… you're old enough now to take the throne again, so we've come to collect, in a manner of speaking."

He ground his teeth together in frustration.

"Explain."

The goblin whimpered, looking as if it expected a solid kick, but continued speaking.

"Your… Your Highness is the Goblin King," and here it glanced warily again at its fellows before swallowing heavily and continuing. "Jareth."

He had to clench his fists to keep from bolting out of the chair at that very instant and throttling something. Likely one of the creatures in front of him. They were mocking him. They were mocking his name, and they were mocking the ill-content childhood he had, the times when he had occupied his idle mind with fantasies of controlling a horde of goblins. Usually though, these fantasies ended with his father suffering a rather painful injury to the eyes, and later it had expanded to include beautiful women draped across his lap while he lounged in his throne.

Regardless of the content, these stupid little creatures were mocking him with their honesty, and he hated them for it. It made him feel ill.

"Find some other person to drive insane." he said with what he hoped was finality. He ignored the feeling in the back of his mind that was deathly afraid of losing these creatures, losing something that felt so right, so familiar in an achingly alien world. It needn't have feared that at all.

"We're sorry, Your Highness," another goblin said, indeed appearing very sorry with its eyes downcast, but not sorry enough, as when it looked up again, its eyes were glittering with hunger and joy.

"You don't have a choice in the matter, my lord."