The Knicknackery Issue Three - Monsters - 2015 | Page 9

were perfect and beautiful, all aglow in the darkness. Their light lit the surroundings. They took his hand and led him into a jeweled mine, where other people greeted him, and all were overjoyed to see him.

"You've come at last! You've come at last!" they shouted.

Well the husband spent a week and a day among these people in their fabulous underground mines. His stomach turned rightside in and he tasted their food and he drank their drink and he made merry with them. Then on that last day he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He saw what a radiant man he was, a radiant man indeed, and he thought to himself, "I shall return to the wife and show her what I have become. It's because of her advice, after all, that I ever turned to this well."

The people in the mines begged him not to leave, but he told them he'd return. He told them he just wanted to pop back home and say hello, and then he'd return. They wailed and hollered and clung to his legs, but they were small and he was large, and he shook them off with gentle kicks. He left the mines and found the bucket and rope. Up he climbed.

He hauled himself out of the well and walked through the woods, back to the house he shared with the wife. He knocked on the door. But when h

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