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Ego and TechniqueCafé #104 — August 22, 2026

I slapped the goblin in the face, and he thudded to the ground. What was I but the single thing that kept things protruding and moving? How could I allow myself to fall so lowly? Compensate, compensate. Those things that kept me growing. I must cross-enable myself until I become something of a person, something that goes far beyond my initial capabilities. I have to see through it that I know exactly the means whereby I am committed to myself as all-in-all. This bouquet of grandiosity, mythologization, and irrationality can only be a cruciality. There are things worth keeping. This is one of them.

Goblin, oh goblin. Do you see now? The person I’ve become. What I must, I do, and by that authority, self-apotheosis! I righteously act! Wherefrom, only good shall follow. I have to acknowledge those little things as well, but just as much, I will lay down these little self-similar authority copies of me, until all is a cast of my spirituality, that sense-o’-I!

I demanded from the goblin a simple expression of itself so that I may inject myself with the concentrated solution drawn from its essence.

A goblin walked before me.

I laughed.

Tore-so-nor! Don’t you know who I am! That might whereby I act, or have you fucking lost my marbles?

I surged to it, grabbed its head, and tried to [rip] it off, only to realize my grip strength didn’t also mean traction on its sweaty green scalp, so my mind can’t trying [sic] and only at best grabbed skin, with whatever ripping off action I attempted to do amounting only to damage. The head was far too attached for my goal, among other things.

I traded blows with the goblin like we were brothers. By the time we were done, I was heaving and coughing with an itchy throat. The blood soaked my knuckles, but most of it went on my clothes and along my right sleeve. I couldn’t brush it off. The goblin’s body was still alive and crawling. I kept stomping, but nothing I did actually stopped it from being alive. It seemed something more vicious was required, so I grabbed a stick, but even its sharpest point was like poking someone with the end of a training staff. The goblin was still alive, and I was too tired to do anything, but I couldn’t stay here and leave myself vulnerable to the goblin and everything else that might be in this forest. Fuck! The goblin was still groaning and breathing heavily when I picked myself up and scrambled out of sight.

I saw the tower I passed by earlier before coming across the goblin. Recently, random lone tall structures like that have been popping up in the wilderness surrounding my home village. But I didn’t think too much about it for a while, just letting the whispers carry on about some great new shift in the world. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t.

I stepped noisily, the mud displaced by one leg splatting my other leg. I cursed.

My name’s Hovac Sinuses! And I intend to do… Fuck!

After I returned home, the village chief called for a meeting. The elders gathered in a line beside him, forming one side. The families formed two lines perpendicular to theirs. Then the children occupied the last side, parallel to the elders. The meeting was rectangular, the families having the shorter distance.

“Okay, where is he?” Chief Bruno grumbled.

“He’ll be here any minute,” his strongest subordinate said.

“That unruly son of mine.”

My figure came discreetly out from one of the houses, closing the door as surreptitiously as I could. Even with the slightest thud, it was enough to get the whole village’s heads turning. While under all their stares, I crept, head down, toward my father.

“Hovac! Come here! Fucking hell! Can you at least pretend to be troubled! What have you spent the last week doing!”

“I saw a goblin,” came my low voice.

Everyone gasped.

“Just five minutes from here. It’s only going to get worse. I tried to deal with it, but…” I showed them the blood and dirt on me. Even after I’ve changed clothes, some of it still stuck, especially around my hands and arms.

“Damn the fucking shit!’ went my father.

He didn’t even bother hiding it. He was wearing the mana necklace he had a lackey of his extort from the family with the lowest status, the Hickeys.

“Are we leaving?” someone asked.

Chief Bruno’s expression tensed before he switched to a warm smile. “Well, as long as we stay here, we’ll be in danger, so we really have to start packing, if not abandon this place altogether.” The smile grew more and more obviously ironic as everyone began murmuring.

I sighed inwardly. If I can’t even get rid of one greenie, how can I transcend this hellhole? This is below me, I above it.

If only one goblin just went and attacked, then I’d be able to begin the resolution of all that this village is made of. Misery, muck, and the made-up. I can’t pretend and hide these crucial desires of mine, which will fuel my ascension.

One goblin, one level, one more layer of separation between me and my village’s superstructure. If I could just… One step can very well snowball, so a goblin can never be dismissed. So the next one… I need something sharper.

When the families finally got all their bags out in the flattest, most open part of the village, I stood watch, absorbing the goblin event from earlier, processing and prefiguring in my head what I’d become. If I could just… zoomed through my mind, not like a ghost, but as an apparition of my very next step that could just as rapidly explode into an overarching reality.

While marching through the plains, a short monstrous figure appeared on the horizon, having come from a dense, endless wall of sprawling trees.

“That fucking greenie!” the depths of my voice broke out.

Everyone’s heads snapped to the goblin, and, instead of advancing like I did, began taking steps back.

Shit. Of course, these useless pigs.

If death comes, I’ll be fucking ready! Because it won’t be me whose blood’s spurting!

My chest grew hot. My tongue tasted like venom. I want to snatch and bite through the sharpest version of my own self-concept and hope that’s weapon enough! But a blade, where is it? I clutched the blades of grass below me and tore them out, gripping them in closed fists, right as my thoughts turned to moving feet. I sought out the goblin. The world is my making. It has to be! Domain has to be operable. It has to be conductible. I have to be! Because that’s what, what, what I already am!

I pounced on the goblin and drew it from sight, trying to tear it apart under veil of vegetation, but not a single grass blade pierced its skin. I had begged for life to take me on a journey. It can’t end now! Not now! I punched it with all of my might after kicking the wind out of it and winding for long enough time I could very well have had a whole birth, life, and death in that wait. The goblin splurted; its form burst like an egg’s shell. The first of many. It was only a small puncture, but death was a spell one couldn’t uncast. It was dying. I half-giggled then burst in a breathless guffaw. I couldn’t bear it. The joy of proclamation.

The goblin clung to life. Just as breathlessly as I, it grasped onto me, clawing toward something called mundanity. If it could just be with everyone…

I watched it, my lips only shifting and compressing at first before erupting in small wriggles throughout. I saw a creature of conscious capacity, and my empathy, whatever it is, could only be subserved by a better, stronger force, something that could put into actuality its goals, even if it meant the loss of it altogether.

I pressed down. Wherever there was goblin, I moved to crush. The shake of its throat rushed jaggedly and gradually eased before falling still. I knew what I did. I knew I could never take it back. But the fruits of this act for me. It was never anything personal between me and it. It was always between me and myself. My selfish desires craved, and I relinquished to them, because I didn’t know any other drive and thought. I can only regret, but that will never curdle to indecision. I can only accept that my essence as I’ve long decided it is brutal and unforgiving. While my heart aches and trembles, there is no justice beyond that of my own vision.

A goblin with a life. Isn’t that fun?

The world is not cruel. I am. And many of the people who act and decide in the same vein. There was never a structural fault. It was always accountability at the individual level. So. Or, more precisely, I am.

Managing GoblinsCafé #104 — August 23, 2026

Diary #253

Sometimes, I look at the little things, and from them, every now and then, something forms, but not anything truly real and hand-holdable. But rather than just simply visual phenomena, for some strange reason, when the sun’s at its zenith and I feel particularly comfortable, it penetrates some part of me that I never knew existed. That damning sense. It’s like knowing something before it even existed. Something like being but not one that I can reduce just to existence as experience. It feels like a hand going under you and reaching into your soul, somewhere even you can’t even find. Ontology at the curve of that hand motion.

What are goblins? You see them walk down the road, and you know they’re pending corpses. But no, no, there can’t be just that. Must be something else. Something more tantalizing. An idea worth pursuing to its conclusion. What is it? What was it? The ancient tomes should have them? No, no, wait, is it really something we’ve exhausted since the birth of the world? Or is it just my eyes slightly blurred? Making shit up where there’s nothing but the wind and how it itches them enough to make them blink?

If I brought an ax, would I know myself by it? Would I have gone and done it frenziedly and count it under “self-developing creative projects”? Is that really all it is? Compensation filling up [a] hole (ego?) that never needed to exist?

The number of goblins this week? Forty-seven.

The number of times I finished my food this week? Fifteen times out of twenty.

My longest walk this week? Just over an hour.

What I got done this week? Two goblins relocated to my makeshift prison at the Crystal Caves. Three goblins punished for trying to escape. My ax sharpened for the raid next week. And what else? I reunited with a friend whose real name I still don’t know, but they did gift me a sack of rice, saying it would help with feeding the goblins.

What I have planned next week? Besides the raid, making new cages for the thirtieth batch of goblins coming that Sunday and re-planting some of the crops that the storm washed away with the goal of moving it toward the northern edge of the cliff because I noticed the runoff went there much less and whatever rain did fall directly from above could easily be addressed with some cover (though I’m still new to this thing).

The Man’s Lesson Café #118 — September 10, 2026

Sit small, play small, work small, your tiny figure working about in a tiny little motion, waiting for your turn, watching the corner, keeping your eyes low, never moving excessively, watching the corner, seventy-seven times seven, people move, you know, you know, the people that should be there aren’t there, so you glance around to tell someone of authority, but no one’s there, no one’s here, you’re alone in a crowd, the world’s moving, buzzing, and singing asynchronously, cacaphonous steps rumble behind you, your heart leaps, you know, the soul you’ve been keeping safe is now troubled with afflictions and mental problems. what the, what the he—

A man hands you something. “[Do something with it]” he says. “[Do something, do something, do something.]”

You listen, but the words sound formulaic, like you’ve been told the gist of that directive countless times. Where-were-where-were— the thoughts splay like legs and your hands are fidgeting, back and forth, one finger going under another, a third finger going over a fourth. Where-where-where—

Another man hands you something, and this time, it looks crystal clear—a pistol, a revolver specifically. You hold it like you’re trying on a new jacket. “Wow” comes out of your mouth like you’ve been holding it in for years, but this is already the third time you mentally shouted it this morning. “What-what-what happens if I pull on it?”

“It fires,” the man murmurs, practically humming it out.

“No-no, no-no-no-no-no-no, I mean, m-m-mean. I mean it shouldn’t fire ‘cause safety, r-right?”

“Yeah. But it’s not, right now.”

“Huh!? Buht!!”

“Why? You scared?” The man’s voice finally becomes clear, but his words come with growl-like huffs.

“No!” you squeak. “But-but-but, it’s still dangerous—”

“What you say?” The man yanks you by the shirt.

“I-I can’t do it—”

“No, no, you said something else. What was it?”

“It-i-i-i-i-it’s—”

“Speak up.”

You start breathing. Slowly at first, then heavily, then your chest is shooting so far up and dropping back down. You hate, hate, hate. The disgust in your tongue is bitter and you feel like puking. How long… Must you suffer under this kind of treatment? Your throat’s full, and your breaths erupt. You sink to the ground, and your face holds a flood of tears. You bawl babily.

The man takes the pistol off you and drags you away. “Where is she?”

Nothing intelligible spills out of your mouth.

The man barks, yanking harder than ever, “Where is she!”

A guck-like series of words trickles down your lips, staining your neck with saliva. “She’s at home.”

The man grins. His face turns to you. You gasp, and your eyes squeeze shut.

“Do you know why I do the things I do?” The man’s voice softens for the first time today.

When you don’t answer, he repeats, harsher and crankier this time.

“W-why?” you finally reply.

“Because you’re a fucking coward!”

You flinch when he raises his hand as if to hit you.

“See?” He smirks.

Human in a Goblin Land Café #118 — September 13, 2026

Three goblins approached a young man sitting on the ground under a mango tree’s shade.

One of them pointed. “Are you the one they call the human?” it barked.

He smiled softly before speaking, “Yes. That’s right. Who’s asking?”

The one who’d pointed lightened its voice. “The king has sent for the human.”

He hummed. “What about it?”

The goblin paused and glanced at the other two before fixing its gaze on him. “You are to appear before him.” It almost stuttered when the human began dusting himself off and standing up. “He seems to want to see you.”

He planted his hands on his hips. “Well? Let’s be on our way then!”

The three goblins and human soon arrived before the goblin king.

“So?” the human said.

The goblin king’s mouth was agape, but it smiled, cleared its throat, and half-pointed at its own statue on one side of the room. “Uh, h-human, do you have anything to add before we start?”

“Start?” The human’s smile remained.

“Uh, we intend to present our conditions for your being here.” The king almost scratched its forehead.

The human hummed twice. “Ah-ah… No, I don’t get it. What’s up with me being here?”

The king imperceptibly reeled back. “No, I mean, on this land. See, we don’t have any humans where we’re from—which is here just-so-you-know. So, uh-yeah, if you’d gladly help us out here and make things…” A bead of sweat slid down the human’s left temple. “…easier.” It snickered wearily.

The human shot his arms up. “Great! Communication! That’s what I call a healthy workplace! Good, good! Now, what to read? Where to sign?”

The king lowered its voice. “Ha-ha-ha… Wait, what?” It eyed the three goblins and [its] five guards, brows knitting and raising alternately.

The human extended his hand, twitching his brows.