“Troll Tale Told Truly” by Samuel Smith
Where it all started, officer, was under a bridge, and my own damn bridge, I might add, my own damn bridge where I’ve lived for going on thirty years now, and you should have seen it when I moved in, all clogged up underneath with weeds and muskrats and now look at it, clean as a whistle, or clean as can be out here anyway, here in the woods, the woods where everybody is alive, alive like my ancestors, who lived on the edge of things, who were real trolls fit for Brothers Grimm, not like today’s trolls, every young buck dripping mustard from his lips and living under airports and stealing cheeseburgers at night, lazy and bloated boogeymen whose fathers were lean and muscled and sharp of tooth, whose mothers cooked caught kids over the campfire and herded bears like cattle, and oh I can remember them, those long nights when the fire was flickering, and the embers were like rubies, like something from deep beneath the earth, and the great squirming sacks stitched together from the skins of animals dead of sickness were emptied into the pot, and I know in the stories your kids always escape, that they always keep the idiot troll busy with riddles till daylight comes and he turns to stone and they turn into good little brats, lesson duly learned, but let me tell you in the real goddamn world kids aren’t that clever and they taste sweet, like onions, when you cook them just right, and yeah I see your eyes bugging out and your tongue swollen in your throat and your cheeks so red with fury, like balloons, balloons ready to pop, but don’t be so sanctimonous you know you’ve done worse and you’re still around, you with your skin that would taste like the resentment that pours out of you in inky white pus, you who would taste exactly like me -
so yes, officer, I did threaten those goats, right here, on this bridge, and yes that last sibling so self-righteous did break my leg in two and crush my horrible claws and stomp on my terrible teeth, but if this were the old days his hide would be hung on my wall right now and you’d be bleeding, bleeding right there on the ground, and begging me to offer you a riddle, and the smoke from the fire would spiral into the night and the hobgoblins would giggle and make the eggs go bad and the milk would be left on the wooden countertop for those goddamn fairies who danced, naked, like the stars fallen to earth.
Samuel Smith is a person from Michigan (the state) attending Michigan (the university). He is a sophomore at the moment.
