The Day After the Funeral – Midday in the Stoor Village
They buried his family in shallow graves beneath the willows.
They didn't sing.
They didn't speak much.
Just watched him dig, arms trembling, breath stuttering, cheeks streaked with dirt and dried blood. The others whispered in clusters. The women averted their eyes. The children peeked between their mothers' skirts, eyes wide, mouths silent.
No one helped him.
Not even Déagol.
Especially not Déagol.
The sun hung high the next day, heavy and uncaring. The sky was clean and blue, the kind that made the river sparkle like a dream. The tribe had gathered near the shallows again. Fishing, washing, playing. Life rolled on, as if nothing had happened.
As if Smeagol's world hadn't ended.
Déagol stood at the river's edge, fishing pole in hand, shirt off, skin gleaming. A girl sat on either side of him, laughing at something he said.
"Did you hear?" someone muttered. "He says it was food sickness." "He says Smeagol's just... confused. Unstable." "Poor thing. He always was a little touched."
Smeagol stood far down the path, behind a tree, watching.
He hadn't slept.
Not really.
His eyes twitched. His mouth moved constantly, muttering. "Gollum… gollum… we didn't mean to… didn't mean to…"
But the Ring inside him—it was waking up.
It had been silent after the funeral. Cold.
But this morning… it burned.
A slow, creeping heat. It began in his stomach, behind the navel. Then it moved to his chest. It sat like molten metal under his ribs.
His blood felt thicker. Hotter. Like syrup instead of water.
His vision pulsed at the edges. His skin trembled. His fingers twitched.
Déagol laughed again. Threw his head back. One of the girls leaned against him.
Smeagol's hand clenched.
He didn't know why his feet started moving.
He didn't remember deciding to walk forward.
He just walked.
Down the slope.
Across the grass.
Into the camp.
People began to turn as he passed. Their chatter died. The air grew tight.
Children stopped playing. A man lowered his mug.
Smeagol's face was empty.
His body radiated heat. Steam curled faintly from his shoulders. His eyes were wide and unfocused. His breath came out in short huffs.
The Ring, inside him, was melting—slowly, painfully. Its ancient power leaking into his blood, into his bones. His heart beat like a drum, pounding war into his ears.
Déagol noticed him last.
He looked up from his fishing line, eyes squinting against the sun. "Smeagol? What are you—"
---
Smeagol didn't speak.
His mouth hung half open, eyes blank, ringed with shadows, his chest rising and falling like a drumbeat.
He reached forward.
And took Déagol's fishing pole from his hands—slowly, wordlessly.
No one stopped him.
Déagol blinked, confused. "Hey—what the hell are you doing, cousin? Give that back—"
Smeagol turned it in his hands.
The pole creaked under the tension of his grip.
His knuckles cracked, sharp and unnatural, like wood splitting. Steam rose from his shoulders. A tremor ran through his back.
The crowd murmured.
Smeagol turned to face Déagol fully.
His eyes were unblinking, glowing faintly with a glassy blue gleam, like shallow water under moonlight. His body tensed—every inch of muscle coiled like a spring.
Déagol opened his mouth to speak.
And then—
Smeagol struck.
He rammed the pole upward, with a sound like a shovel hitting meat.
Straight into Déagol's anus.
There was a wet, splitting sound as the sharpened end tore through soft tissue, up through the intestines, the stomach, the lungs—
The tip burst out through his mouth, splintering his teeth in a spray of shattered enamel and dark, frothing blood.
The sound that came from Déagol wasn't a scream—it was a gargling shriek, like a pig choking on its own tongue.
Blood sprayed in thick jets across the grass.
A tooth bounced off Smeagol's chest. The girls screamed—high and feral. One of them stumbled back and fell, vomiting onto the ground. A boy fainted where he stood.
Déagol's body arched backward, skewered from groin to skull, his limbs twitching wildly.
His eyes rolled back. His bowels emptied.
He spasmed once more—then went still.
Pinned to the riverbank like a sacrificial doll, his jaw pried open around the jagged pole, tongue shredded and dangling, blood streaming from every hole in his face.
---
Silence.
Shock.
Then—
"MURDERER!"
"HE'S LOST HIS FUCKING MIND!"
"GET THE CHILDREN INSIDE—NOW!"
"HE KILLED DÉAGOL! HE KILLED DÉAGOL!!"
The silence shattered like glass, as if the whole world had been holding its breath and now screamed it out at once.
Smeagol stood there, trembling, blinking as if waking from a dream.
Déagol's body was still twitching, impaled grotesquely, crimson pooling in the grass beneath him.
But Smeagol didn't smile.
He didn't laugh.
He just stood, staring—not at Déagol's corpse, but at the faces turned toward him.
Dozens of them. All at once.
Mouths agape in horror.
Eyes wide with fear.
And hate.
---
> But I didn't do wrong, he thought.
It was fair. An eye for an eye. He poisoned my family. He tried to cut me open. He tried to gut me like a fish. I didn't mean to do it that way. But it was justice. Justice. Right?
He opened his mouth to speak.
But no words came. Just a wet croak, thick with emotion. "Gollum… Gollum…"
He looked down at his red-stained hands. At the blood dripping onto his feet.
He looked up again.
And saw nothing but horror reflected back at him.
The people he had worked beside. Carried grain for. Dug trenches for.
Laughed at him, yes—but also fed him scraps. Tolerated him.
They were all screaming now.
Calling him killer.
Monster.
---
> No, no… not you…
I didn't want to hurt you… just him. Just Déagol…
"HE'S A DEMON!"
"STONE HIM! STONE THE BEAST!"
"HE'S NOT ONE OF US!"
---
A rock slammed into his side.
Another struck his shoulder, hard enough to bruise.
He flinched, yelped—not in rage, but in shock. He didn't understand. He didn't want this.
"I'm not bad…" he whimpered. "I'm not bad…"
Another rock hit his leg.
Then—
he ran.
---
He bolted like a deer beneath flame, legs pumping, arms swinging, his breath ragged and wheezing.
Through the tall grass.
Past the river's bend.
Into the trees.
---
Arrows flew past his ears, one grazing his arm and leaving a trail of blood.
"AFTER HIM!"
"DON'T LET HIM ESCAPE!"
"THE BEAST IS LOOSE!"
The shouts roared behind him, voices he once knew twisted into hunt cries.
His people—his own kin—were chasing him like a dog.
---
Smeagol didn't look back.
But he could hear them—bare feet pounding the earth, boots crunching twigs, blades hissing from their scabbards. The entire village behind him now, in one united scream of fear and hatred.
> Why? I only hurt one… just one… I didn't want to hurt the rest…
His legs carried him, as if moved by a will not his own.
The forest grew thicker. The air cooler. The light dimmed.
Birds fled.
Rabbits dove into their burrows.
Even the wind seemed to hush, cowering from the madness in his trail.
---
He came to the river.
The river.
The one that led north, climbing along the hills, winding toward the Mirrormere—the sacred lake spoken of in songs he barely remembered.
He dropped to his knees by the muddy bank, gasping for air, shoulders heaving.
He couldn't keep running. Not forever.
---
> They'll stop. They'll see. They'll remember who I am. They'll understand. It was justice… right? I'm not bad… not a monster…
He reached down and smeared mud across his face, caking it along his cheeks, his neck, his chest.
Then he crawled—into the reeds, into the shallows—and lay flat beneath the willow roots and tall grass. He curled into a ball.
The mud stung in his eyes. It tasted bitter on his lips.
He held his breath and listened.
---
The river gurgled.
His heart beat like a drum.
Footsteps passed nearby.
Shouts in the distance.
Closer. Closer.
> Please… don't find me. Please… just go away. I won't hurt anyone else. I swear. I swear…
He shut his eyes tight.
The Ring pulsed hot inside him—burning low now, not as fierce as before, but still alive.
A tiny sun in his belly.
A molten promise that he would not die here.
---
He stayed hidden.
Mud drying on his skin.
Tears soaking into the dirt.
And in the stillness of the reeds, as the tribe combed the woods for him, as his former kin howled his name like a curse—
Smeagol whispered to himself, over and over, like a prayer or a wound:
> "Gollum… Gollum… Gollum…"
---