Not Quite a Treasure-Chest

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they wish. .

With acknowledgement to Joan Opie for providing the prompt this was based on, and to the creators of games with 'funny-sided dice' for inspiration.

Jenny was never good at doing this kind of job. The no-questions-asked kind of job where you had to locate and recover this lost item for your employer or deliver that package safely to so-and-so. Sooner or later her insatiable curiosity would get the better of her and she'd just have to take a peek, and that was when the complications would start. No doubt it would contain some item of world shattering importance. Either that, or it was some treasure of immense significance to some family or secret religious cult. Worse still, it might be human, and you'd have to rescue it from whatever dreadful fate was planned for it. And either your employers would get wind of the fact you knew what it was and want you dead, or whoever your employers didn't want to see would want to get their hands on it (if necessary, with you dead). Or, for some reason, you'd end up wanting to do something with it yourself... or it with you. The frustration this unfolding sequence of events caused was often not worth the thrill of the adventures that unfolded.

The job itself had been anything but pleasant. Deceptively simple-sounding to the point of cliché it might have been – go up into mountains, sneak into cave past dragon, locate and remove chest, deliver to Lord Marcus, claim reward. Something vaguely reminiscent of the sort of thing that group of lads at school playing at being barbarians and wizards whilst rolling funny-sided dice might pretend to do for fun, though they probably would have found the encounter too trivial. Well, they would never have to see the realities of having to deal with a 30-foot-long scaled monstrosity with vicious looking jaws that, confounding the expectations of biologists all across the multiverse, actually breathed fire and frankly didn't stay asleep long enough to simply sneak past. Nor when it was all over would they get to experience having to carry a huge, heavy chest down a steep mountainside when your entire party consisted of two women with just-above-average strength. At the same time, at least having dimension-hopping superpowers did give you one advantage over these pencil-wielding tabletop wannabes. You could nip to the universe next door and, with the proceeds of all those various items of gold jewellery you had about your person to pawn when occasion required it, procure a high powered hunting rifle (semi-automatic for these tense situations, of course) with hide-piercing rounds of suitable calibre. Then all you need do was hope you were good at dodging and finding good enough hiding places to give you cover and a decent shot or three without being roasted. Or mauled. Or chomped to bits.

But somehow, remarkably, they had done it, and managed to carry the prize back to the run-down cottage located just outside the town walls which Lord Marcus had "generously" allowed them the use of for the duration, ready to deliver it to her employer in the morning. Megan had retired to bed, along with some local girl (Melinda, wasn't it?) to whom she had taken a fancy to and no doubt would manage to enjoy a night or two with before the inevitable gut-wrenchingly tearful farewell when it was time to move on. That left Jenny sat alone, downstairs, on a simple wooden stool by the dying embers of the fire, pondering. It was hardly as if the pay his Lordship was offering, though generous by the standards of this backward world for roving adventurers of their "lowly station" (the nerve!) was quite enough, in her reckoning, to justify the hardship. The contents of that chest, whatever they were, would certainly far outstrip the value of such a sum. At the same time, the reputation of Lord Marcus within the town walls was that he was quite fond of doing some petty nasty things to people who failed to complete their contractual obligation or, lest they should get away, to people they cared deeply about. Even if Jenny could shift away and take Megan with her, there would be no consoling the latter if her beloved girl of the week (whatever her name might be) was consigned to some grisly fate on the other side of the dimensional divide. Frankly, Jenny didn't want that stain on her conscience particularly either. Nevertheless, her curiosity was growing moment by moment, and with trembling hands she decided she had to satisfy herself as to the contents of the enormous chest. This was more difficult than it seemed as what looked like a keyhole did not exactly respond to her lock picking kit (how odd!) and the insides of said keyhole felt decidedly... fleshy? Eventually, though she managed to prize open the lid and lift it a few inches but at that moment noticing it was lined round the edges with its insides remarkably wet and mouth-like.