Something in the Air

by Chera Thompson

The sky is holding its breath. Waiting for a storm to crack it open. For the air to turn a putrid green, grumble and spew out twisters. Twisters whose tails stream over the valley where the river runs between the hills. The hills that a hundred years ago a river boat captain built his house into. The house where I sit rocking my three-week-old newborn, peacefully gazing out the window into the expectant sky.

She begins to grunt. Small spasms push her body against mine. I scan the room for the diaper bag. Retching moans escape the insides of her tiny being. Her legs draw up. Then she roars.

I put her to my shoulder and walk her around, patting her on the back. She’s the best babe. Never cries, sleeps all night, wakes up smiling, playing with her toes. You are so lucky, everyone tells me.

But now she lets out a howl. Her face twists, her eyes bulge. She throws her soft downy head back, purple and raging. She’s howling and kicking and pummeling her tiny fists against my neck. I call my husband at work.

“What the hell do I know?” He shouts above the screaming. “Call the doctor.”

I try to keep the receiver near my mouth, while my baby wraps herself around my neck.

“What’s the problem?” The nurse asks.

“My baby won’t stop crying. And she’s grunting real bad.”

“All newborns cry and grunt, Mrs. T. Does she have a temperature?”

I put my hand to her head. “She feels warm.”  But we don’t have central air. And it’s summer.

A sigh. “Well, Mrs. T. Take it and call me back if it’s over 100. Otherwise just give her some Baby Tylenol.” Her voice is calm, re-assuring. Dismissing.

Her directions reclaim my senses. Muffle the noise in the room, in my ears, in my head. Guidelines to follow. Action to take. Find the thermometer. I search through the drawers and cabinets until I just can’t look anymore.  I put her screaming into the car seat and drive her screaming to the drugstore. Back home I scuffle with her wriggling, pulling, thrashing body. Then I pull it out. 103.

Our cries merge together as my fingers hit all the wrong buttons on the phone. My throat clenches when the nurse answers. I choke out “103.”

There’s a muffled silence as she covers the phone. Then, “Get her to the Emergency Room. Now.”

Oh no. Oh no. I leave a message on my husband’s work phone, screaming above the screams. Flying through the house, gathering my purse, her bottle, my shoes, her diaper bag.  Where the hell are my keys?

The sky rumbles, then bursts open and pours over us as we run to the car. I struggle with the car seat, pulling it from the backseat to the front where I can watch her every move. Because I can’t take my eyes off her face. Scrunched into a purple mass. The bright red rash that covers her neck.

I fumble with the straps and clips and buckle. Then put the key in the ignition and press down on the gas pedal. Racing down our winding hill on auto-pilot. I speed through the yellow lights, slide through the stop signs, swerve around the indecisive, the damn slow-pokes, cut-off everyone. Can’t they see it’s a matter of life or death?

Sirens pierce the air. Not the whirring cop-car, pull over kind. But the long streaming air-raid kind.  Tornado warning.

If we were home I would be running down to the basement with the baby and the cat. Huddled on the old beat-up couch near the cupboard of canned food and bottled water. Blankets and diapers. Listening to reports of the twister’s path on the battery operated radio. Internalizing its speed and size and wake of destruction. Waiting, waiting. For the house to be sucked up. Or—the roof blown off. Or—the steady drone of the all-clear siren.

But now, I’m in a car. Speeding through a kaleidoscope of clouds tumbling through the air, trees stretching horizontal, cars pulling off the road, people huddling in shallow ditches or running to homes of strangers. Pounding on their doors. Let me in. Let me in. All bracing for the knock-out punch. But my baby is sick. My brain says, ‘Don’t stop. Keep moving’.

I shriek-sing with the songs on the radio, forcing my lungs to drown out the sirens, the thunder, her gut-wrenching cries. The song is interrupted by a grainy-voiced bulletin… Take cover. Take cover. Take cover. I force breath inside my hammering heart. I can’t pass out. I can’t crash. I can’t lose it. Or her. Keep moving. Focus on the windshield wipers. Inhale…Exhale… Inhale…Exhale… Keep it together.

I screech up the drive to ER and they meet me. Quick quick, inside. They whisk her away. I’m directed to a room with no glass windows. I sit on the floor against the wall with the others. Waiting. The lights flicker on and off as I fill out the forms. Answer their questions. Listen to the wails coming from behind that door. That cold, metal, windowless door.

The ER doctor comes out.

“Mrs. T?” He sits down next to me. A bad sign.

“We finally got the spinal tap. Had to try three times, she’s so little.”

Tears jump to my eyes. “Spinal tap?”

“Well, we think it’s meningitis. But we won’t know for 24 hours. Until the test comes back.”

“Wha, wha, what’s that?” I breathe in staccato. “Meningitis.”

“Spinal Meningitis. It’s an infection covering the lining of the brain.”

“No!”

“Well, like I said, we won’t know for sure until the tests come back. But we’re going to treat it that way.”

I’m shaking my head, then nodding, then shaking. Tears blur his image into a faceless white lump. “Can I see her?” I ask.

“Yes, um…is your husband here?” He looks around. “Or anyone?”

“He’s on his way,” I say. I think. I hope.

“Ok. Now, I’ve got to warn you.” His metal stethoscope magnetizes my eyes. I can’t look away. I can’t look at him. The lump in white.

“Her veins are so tiny, we had some trouble with the IV. We tried her hands and feet, but the veins all burst… So we had to run it through her head.”

His words suck out my breath. Straps my vision to a medieval torture chamber. Wrings out my hope.

“I had to tell you,” he says gently. “Didn’t want you to be shocked.”

Shocked?  “Thank–you,” I squeak out. One mustn’t forget their manners when one’s first born is being tortured to death.

The all-clear siren sounds. The room is a mass of  movement. The doctor leads me into the ER ward, past the car wrecks, stab wounds and overdoses. Into the room where my newborn lies on her back fastened spread eagle to the bed with Band-Aids and safety pins. With a tube in her head.

I softly stroke her baby body avoiding her bruised and bleeding hands and feet. Momma’s here, darling.

“It doesn’t look pretty, but at least she’s getting the medicine,” the doctor says. “We’ve got to get that fever down. It’s up to 105—”

“Oh dear God!”

“The aides will come and give her a sponge bath every hour. But as you see, we’re real busy tonight, so…”

“I’ll do it,” I say.

“Great. You can breast feed her too. Just be careful not to pull the IV out from her head.”

“Where’s the sponge?”

The hours tick by. I keep calling my husband and keep getting a busy signal. The storm jammed the circuits. The roads. He could be in a ditch somewhere.

My sweet beautiful babe lies asleep. Sedated. The aides un-pin her hands and feet. Every half hour I lift her miniature limbs and sponge down her body with cool water. The perfect baby, never cries. The aides pull up a chair and I carefully lift her to my lap and pull up my t-shirt. I curve my arm around her perfectly shaped, burning head. The IV tube jiggles.

The curtain opens; my husband stands there dripping wet. “Damn madhouse out there. Accidents, trees down, power lines hanging all over the place. Floods.”

His words flip out his frustration, but his eyes hold anxiety when I find myself in them. Watching a scared rabbit of a mother. Doing the most natural thing in the most unnatural position. Condition. Situation.

“If she doesn’t come home,” I say calmly, “you can order two coffins.” And for the first time ever, I see his eyes dampen.

The doctor comes in. He explains, describes, projects.

We ask, “How did this happen?”  We want to know. “Was it something we did? Something we didn’t do?”

“No.” he says. “It’s in the air.”

At two A.M. I crawl into bed with my sleeping daughter. Smell her sweet baby scent. Pet her comatose body. The aides give my husband a blanket and pillow and he stretches out on the floor next to us.

I lie awake in the dark counting my heart beats. I count to sixty, thirty times then sponge. Count then sponge. Count then sponge.

The night moves into morning. Her eyes open. She doesn’t cry. Her fever has broken. The tests come back negative. The IV is pulled out. She is smiling, cooing, playing with her black and blue feet.

“What was it?” We ask the doctor.

He shrugs. “Some kind of twenty-four hour bug. It’s in the air.”

My husband brings my car around. I  buckle my daughter in and drive home. Through the streets littered with debris. Past the people going to work, talking about last night’s storm over coffee.

In the bedroom, I sit on the rocker humming. My daughter snuggles softly against me as I gaze out the window. Over the hills to the river. Where the sun hangs soft in the powdery sky.

◊ ◊ ◊

Chera Thompson
Chera Thompson is a graduate of Ohio University School of Journalism, her short stories have been published in The Los Angeles Review, Roadside Fiction, Queen City Flash, Have A NYC 3, Flash Fiction Press. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s short fiction contest. She has contributed human interest stories to the Buffalo News, travel publications, and spiritual retreat newsletters. www.cherathompson.blogspot.com

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Clyborn Station

by Jerry McGinley

The train ride from Harvard, Illinois to downtown Chicago takes two hours. I’d driven to Harvard from Madison, parked in the public lot, and bought a round trip pass for Metra. It was a one-night stay to attend the funeral of an officer I had known in the sheriff’s department. Lenny Crane had worked twenty years in law enforcement in Wisconsin before returning to Chicago to work for a private security company. Lenny and I had never been close when we worked together. But when a fellow officer dies in the line of duty, it’s a no-brainer you’ll attend his funeral. I’d never met his wife or kids, but I planned to arrive an hour early for the funeral to give me a chance to pay condolences during a scheduled showing before the service.

Lenny’s family was holding the services at a Catholic church on the city’s north side. If Lenny was ever a religious man, I don’t remember him ever mentioning it—but churches provide a comforting closure for families, so I didn’t question the venue. I planned to meet my former partner Bud Wolczyk at a hotel on West Adams where he’d a booked a couple rooms.

Though not an avid reader, I had picked up a paperback novel about an ex-special forces agent turned private detective. I was fifty pages into the book by the time the train reached the race track at Arlington Park. I marked the page because there was a lengthy delay as numerous passengers departed from the car I was in. In fact, only three or four commuters were left in my car. It was at this point that I noticed an attractive young woman looking over the magazine she was holding—looking directly at me. I should have been thrilled to have attracted her attention, and I could have been naïve enough to think she was looking because she found me appealing. But I’m old enough to know that was unlikely, and the ex-cop in me made me suspicious of any action that seemed out of the ordinary. When she noticed my gaze, she dropped her eyes back down behind the magazine. I did the same thing with my book.

Her seat was three rows ahead of mine, and hers faced the rear of the train while mine faced forward. It was impossible not to look up every few minutes to see if she was still eyeing me. Two or three times when I looked, I did catch her gazing directly at me, apparently studying me. After the third eye-contact occurrence, she put on sunglasses, stood up, and switched to a seat that was facing forward. Was she trying to prevent me from recognizing her, or was she innocently and perhaps rightfully concerned about an odd stranger ogling her?

As she stood to move to a different seat, I caught a clear view of her face. She was very pretty, probably late twenties, with pale blue eyes and straight, medium length black hair. She looked familiar, but, of course, I couldn’t make a connection. One problem with police work is you meet a lot of people but often talk to them only a few times and then never see them again. I had thousands of faces accumulated in my mental data base, but often had problems processing that data.

I returned to my reading, but couldn’t stop trying to place her face. Since I’d been retired for a few years, the woman could have been in her late teens or early twenties when I had known her. As my memory scanned through former cases, I became increasingly troubled by a thought I did not want to acknowledge. It was my final case as a sheriff’s detective. A high school senior disappeared and was never found. I’d studied her photographs during the entire time we searched for her—which was several years. I guess her image was imprinted on my brain.

For years I tried to collect the exact piece of evidence I needed to convict the man I was certain abducted and probably killed her. Somehow he always stayed just an arm’s length out of reach. That was until our final confrontation near a small lake in Upper Michigan. I finally closed the case—not necessarily to the approval of my department, the public, and certainly not the press. Could this be the girl who disappeared?

But how could she recognize me? We never met, of course, because she was abducted before I was assigned to the case. True, my face was plastered in the papers and on the nightly news, but that was years ago. I looked different then. And if she was alive, where would she have been all this time? I talked to her parents several times. There is no way they knew she was safe but kept the masquerade alive all these years. Could the whole disappearance have been a hoax? Why?

The voice on the intercom announced, “Next stop Clybourn Station.”

Clybourn was the final stop before we reached the station downtown. If I was going to speak to the woman, it had to be soon. Without really thinking, I stood up and started forward. The woman saw my movement out of the corner of her eye and straightened rigidly in her seat. I stopped, unsure of my next move. If I was wrong, I’d terrify the woman by approaching her. If I was right, I needed to know for sure.

As the train pulled to a halt, the woman stood up, gathered her bags, and moved swiftly toward the exit. Her abrupt departure told me this was not her planned destination. She was leaving the train to get away from me. I followed her and watched her descend the steps. As she pushed through the line of passengers waiting to board, I shouted, “Kelly!” Her head made an instinctive turn to look back, but she checked it and started running down the ramp. I moved ahead, but a burly construction worker intentionally blocked the opening at the bottom of the steps. I wouldn’t catch the woman without going through him. It was a gutsy gesture, and I acknowledged his chivalry with an approving nod. I stepped back to my seat, and the big man followed me, taking a seat just two rows behind mine.

When we arrived downtown, I picked up my bag, departed the train, circled through the lobby, and returned to take the train back to Harvard. I considered getting off at Clybourn and continuing the search, but thought the better of it and headed back to Harvard.

I also thought about calling the parents of the girl who’d disappeared, but I couldn’t think of anything good that would come of that conversation. Why open old wounds? The odds of the woman being the missing teenage girl were a million to one. Probably just an old cop’s imagination playing games. But what if that one chance in a million was true? It was possible. And, just as importantly, what about that man I left lying in a circle of blood near an isolated lake in Upper Michigan?

◊ ◊ ◊

Jerry McGinley
Jerry McGinley is author of three books with stories featuring the character in this story. The books are MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP, LAKE REDEMPTION, and THIS OMINOUS BIRD, all available through Amazon.

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Barkeep

by Barry O’Farrell

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Paddy decided to put on his finest green suit and have a night on the town.

To make a long story short, he ended up in a bar he’d never been to where, sitting down the far end was the most beautiful redheaded girl he had ever seen in his whole life.

He signalled to the barkeep saying to him, “I’d like to buy her one of whatever it is she’s drinking.”

“I can save you time and money,” replied the barman, “She is a well-known lesbian.” With that the barkeep walked away.

Paddy sat quietly for ten minutes thinking over the barkeep’s words of advice before calling him back.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” began Paddy, “And I’d still like to buy her one of whatever it is she’s drinking.”

Resignedly the poor old barkeep began mixing an exotic, expensive cocktail which he then presented to the redhead with a flourish saying, “With the compliments of the man at the other end, in the bright green suit.”

Full of confidence, Paddy swaggered the length of the bar, plopped himself into the seat beside her, turned to face her and said, “Tell me darlin’, what was the name of the little village in Lesbania your family originally immigrated from?”

◊ ◊ ◊

Barry O’Farrell
Barry O’Farrell (@BarryO_Tweet) is an actor who sometimes writes, living in Brisbane, Australia. Barry’s stories have appeared in Cyclamens & Swords,  50 Word Stories, A Story In 100 Words, 101 Words, and of course here at The Flash Fiction Press. One of Barry’s short stories was runner up in the 2015 Arts Alliance competition.

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Storm in a Teacup

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Sometimes, when not talking to herself, Helen attempted her homework. Other times, when talking to herself, Helen completed assignments. She read about contracts, procedure, and torts, and dreamed of the day when she would complete her last final. Meanwhile, there were papers to be written for academic credit and journal articles to be composed for her professors’ books.

She had thought to commit herself to a concentration in health law, but, month by month, that pursuit had lost its sparkle. Helen, consequently, had to decide among intellectual property law, personal and family law, property and estate law, constitutional law, labor and employment law, and corporate law. Sadly, her school allowed no student to declare themselves ‘generalists’.

The young woman picked a strip of color off of the nail of her right hand’s index finger. She had so many options and so little time.

To ease her choice, Helen siphoned a little from her bank account, which her well-to-do parents had designed as her ‘student loan’, and slogged, via a select gear on her new model Lexus GS, to Keene, New Hampshire, where she meant to indulge in a long weekend of leaf peeping and career contemplation. She maintained that girls needed inspiration.

As Helen sipped cappuccino and kicked furiously at the piles of maple and beech leaves that swirled around her patio seat, she thought about why she was a law student and about why she had decided to travel to Keene to muse. Per being a law student, she recalled a childhood event, which had occurred in her hometown of Weston. A neighbor, with whom she had shot hoops and had talked about non-Euclidean geometry, had announced to his parents that he wanted to be a policeman, or, at second best, a garbage collector. The lad was summarily trounced and sent to Helen’s alma mater, Concord Academy.

When that adolescent returned during holidays breaks, he seemed no more astute than he had when attending Weston High, where he had participated on the math team and had been an assistant editor of the French Club’s newsletter. In fact, he had forsaken his commitment to Riemannian space and his love for digital graphic design in exchange for a spot warming the bench on Concord Academy’s junior varsity wrestling team and for his pursuit of all of that school’s credits in dance.

In short, that neighbor had morphed, in Helen’s esteem, into yet another inductee into the mindless New England jet set. He refused to play flag football with her anymore and insisted that any time they shared be spent with her tutoring him in trigonometry. As such, the boy had become her lesson in the dangers institutional uniformity. Helen had had to transfer to Berkshire School senior year because of an incident involving green hair and a belly button piercing.

Per traveling to Keene, the town boasted a surplus of home-grown ultra-conservatives. Those fundamentalists seemed to itch for confrontations with visitors. Whereas Weston had its own surfeit of KKK members and of associates of The Daughters of the American Revolution, those activists, unlike Keene’s locals, stayed mostly hidden from the international media.

In Keene, no outsider doctrines were permitted to survive. ‘Live Free or Die’ was not, to those denizens, about tolerance, but about safeguarding their self-selected mores. The corresponding pejorative attitudes expressed in Keene’s librarians’ rhetoric, in Keene’s hardware managers’ greetings or lack thereof, and in Keene’s baristas’ encoded grunts and snuffs, were stimulating to someone like Helen, who was weighing whether to fight for civil rights or to work to uphold existent affairs.

She had thought that she had had the world figured out when she had refused to learn how to text, rejected wearing digital watches, and declined to chop off her hair. However, all that she had gleaned from those decisions was that it was foolhardy to: place herself outside of the loop of her classmates’ communications, have to daily wind her timepiece, and make her pinned up tresses the subject of gawps from other youths participating in Model UN.

Perhaps there were better ways to protest social indenture to convergent media, to make quick discoveries about time (cell phones were great clocks, but unfortunately had the tendency to link Helen to other mediated devices) and to learn about diplomacy and international relations. There certainly were better ways to cook potatoes than emptying most of the containers in a spice cabinet into a mash. Helen just didn’t know better options for spuds, either.

So, the fledgling law student began to disrobe. She was not a member of Femen or in any other way dedicated to “victory over patriarchy.” Patriarchy kept her well fed, well clothed, and fiduciarily endowed. In balance, extreme behavior, related to issues of sexism, might actually glean enough response for her to figure out just what type of student she wanted to be at the same time as granting her sufficient media notoriety to appropriate a summer clerking spot with one of the Associate Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Helen loosened her scarf, then her parka, her sweater, her blouse, and finally her bra. Goose flesh covered her. She was less Amazon than spectacle. Passers-by sneered or looked away. Some enterprising teens took photos with their smart phones.

An entire forty minutes passed before one of Keene’s lieutenants arrested her for indecent exposure. By then, Helen was suffering from mild hypothermia. That kind police officer did not drive Helen to the station, but to Cheshire Medical Center for evaluation and treatment. Later, his department received a generous donation from a surgeon and his wife, whose home address was Weston, Massachusetts.

In the end, Helen opted for the corporate law track. Her attendance in the Model UN had accustomed her to Western business attire. Her childhood in Weston had accustomed her to life’s finer things. What’s more, a future in corporate law would enable her to buy tickets to watch her neighbor perform in Carnegie Hall.

◊ ◊ ◊

KJ Hannah Greenberg
KJ Hannah Greenberg, who only pretends at being indomitable, tramps across literary genres and giggles in her sleep. As well, she eats oatmeal and keeps company with a prickle of (sometimes rabid) imaginary hedgehogs. She’s been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, once for The Best of the Net, and helps out as an Associate Editor at Bewildering Stories. Her latest fiction collection is Cryptids (Bards & Sages Publishing, 2015).

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Spitfire

by Prospero Dae

Stan Malatesta gazed outside where, along a wrought iron gate, under a giant linden, a man dressed in a flowing white chasuble walked a wolverine. It had a prominent stripe on its back and, despite the expectation of it having a belluine gait, the opposite was true: it pranced daintily, blissfully unaware of its shackles. The pavement, tessellated with turquoise and gold squares, glinted in the probing beacon of Moore’s lighthouse.

Away from the window, in a white wicker chair, Stan felt a tingle at the back of his head, just behind his ears, past the cerebellum, and all the way down the brain stem into a great and unending abyss. A wrinkly plastic bag dropped onto the vitreous tile. Suddenly there was a stir, and Issy—tall, crimson, dressed as fiery Carmen from Bizet’s eponymous opera, wafted down the stairs, her long black hair as sheeny as the rich, glossy coat of storybook steeds. She froze at the bottom of the circular staircase and stood arms akimbo.

The vapor continued to excite and presently, as in the best hallucinations, she spoke in a mellifluous soprano voice: “You work in a bookstore and have no respect for books—just these damned toy airplanes!” She tossed her flowing mane. Her nostrils flared broadly and she added, “Look at these books. Glue all over them. It’s appalling. And the smell. How can you stand it?”

“They’re my books,” said Stan with poorly masked overtones of self-righteousness.

“Oh, of course. You really know the difference…you’re in another world when you play with those worthless toys. Are you a man or a boy? When will you grow up?” She paused, happy to have drawn a tiny gout of blood, but judging by the impact it had on Stan the effect must have been so infinitesimal small as to have existed solely in the rills and rivulets of her agitated mind. “And where’s my copy of Finnegans Cake by H. Copperfield Elms? I can’t find it. I searched everywhere. It’s a rare copy. Did you defile it with your epoxy?” Fire was spewing from her cranberry-red mouth.

And with exaggerated panache Stan stood up and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Open my briefcase.”

“Why?” asked Issy bitterly.

“Do it,” insisted Stan.

Izzy acquiesced and found the book, in pristine condition, lying on top of various blueprints and glossy-covered aircraft magazines. “Ah, here it is.”

“Look inside. The first page,” insisted Stan.

She held the book firmly in her hot little hands and looked inside. “It’s signed! You got it signed,” said Issy, astonished at her good fortune.

“It was a surprise” said Stan. “Just a stupid surprise.”

“But how did you manage to—” began Issy.

“Elms was at the store ahead of a book signing engagement, when at the right moment I barricaded him in the backroom,” said Stan, returning to his chair, his left eye twitching. “I had the swine pinned between the water cooler and a stack of girlie magazines as high as the tower at Babel, and he produced his incomprehensible signature, willingly.”

“And you just happened to have my copy with you at the time,” said Issy.

“Blind luck,” rejoined Stan.

“I feel stupid now,” confessed Issy, toying with the scrumptious folds of her crinoline skirt. “I don’t even need to have my copy signed now, but I’ll go just the same. I must be one of his greatest fans.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll let you know when the prodigal son is due to return.”

Stan Malatesta sat back, snatched a model plane from the small table at his feet, and rotated lovingly a Spitfire Mk II in front of his wide, brimful eyes. “Do you like it? It’s my finest work.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Prospero Dae
Prospero Dae lives in Bermuda, with a dog named Ariel, near the 1609 shipwreck of the Sea Venture, amid a farrago of flowers, which whispers stories in his conch-like ears. He never sought formal training in shipbuilding or blacksmithing—or anything that could be construed as useful, though writing seemed natural.

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What Really Happened

by Gregors the Troll
Hello. My name is Gregors. Yeah, I’m a troll. As a matter of fact, I’m the troll. You know, the one those goat brothers lied about. Sure they crossed my bridge and I was pissed about it, but I never tried to eat them. I don’t eat goats, or any other kind of meat for that matter. I’m a vegetarian. Don’t look at me like that, trolls make choices too, just like you humans do. It’s not like I have a third eye in the middle of my forehead, or some coloured aura hanging around me.

Another thing, everyone thinks that if trolls get caught in the sun, they turn to stone. That’s just something else you’ve been misled about. Okay, some of us do, but not all of us. That’s obviously not something we have a choice about.

There are just different varieties of trolls is all. But that really has nothing to do with my story, except, well, I guess I have to admit that it allowed some of us to be troublemakers. Most of us just wanted to live our lives.

The troublemakers made a bad name for us all. You know how it is.

Anyway, it all started many years ago. I just wanted some peace and quiet and those goats weren’t about to let me have any. Looking back on the bridge incident, I suppose these goats were just doing what goats do. They knew nothing of the hooligans, or maybe they did and wanted revenge. That big brother…but I get ahead of myself.

Fortunately I’m not one of the trolls who turns to stone in sunlight, but nevertheless, like my ancestors, I sleep all day and come out at night. Which is why I got so angry.

Let me get one thing straight—I never asked for that bridge to be built over the stream so close to my cave. Knowing what was likely to happen, I even thought about protesting it. But what voice did a troll have among humans? So the bridge was built. At first I tried ignoring all the trip-traps of those little goaty hooves. Most of the time, I could. I could even ignore the slap of herdsman’s sandals on the wood. But then the bully came along.

The first little goat—he was just a kid—tripped and trapped so long on that bridge, I thought the sound might bore a hole through my head. I had just gone to bed a few minutes before so I was tired and my temper flared. I tore out of the cave in my night clothes, shouting for that goat to stop tap dancing on my bridge and just leave me alone.

Back then I was too tired and angry to notice, but now when I think back on it—the look on that kid’s face. He was scared to death. He’d probably just been playing, but he ran off that bridge as if someone had lit a fire under his tail. But it didn’t stop there. The kid had a brother.

This guy was a little bigger and not quite as scared. He must have thought he was Gregory Hines the way he tapped and danced across that damn bridge. I had barely pulled the covers up when I heard him. Tap-tap-tap. Tappity-tap.

As a younger fellow, I was pretty hot-headed—even for a troll—and remember I was tired and cranky. Not at my best. He argued with me, telling me it wasn’t my bridge and he could do whatever he wanted on it. Yeah, he was right. I know that now. But what annoyed me even more is that there wasn’t a herdsman in sight to make this goat behave himself.

So, I threatened to eat the little brat if he didn’t get off the bridge. That scared him right proper. It works to our advantage that no one knows some of us are vegetarians. I suppose I’m blowing our cover by telling you…but now I’ve strayed off topic. The night, or rather, the day, only got worse: There was a third brother.

I was once again settling in for the day when I heard what I hoped was the last goat. He crossed the bridge and I thought that was it. I could finally get some sleep. But the next thing I know there’s thumping, stamping, shouting. I jumped out of bed and raced onto the bridge, screaming.

I don’t know what his little brothers had told him, but this guy was huge, with long horns and fury in his eyes. This goat didn’t even flinch. He just stood there watching me, eyeing me like I was something he’d passed through his rear end. It was rather disconcerting.

Now, in the stories you’ve heard, aren’t the goats always the good guys and trolls the bad guys? The goat sticks the mean old troll with his horns and tosses him into the river. Has anyone ever thought to ask what happened to the troll—did he drown or climb out of the water down river somewhere? No. I guess no one’s ever cared.

But the fact is the goat never touched me. Oh, he wanted to. He put his head down and aimed like he was going to head-butt me, but I stopped him. I grabbed those horns of his and we struggled. He pushed, I pushed back. He shouted, I yelled. He pulled…and I fell down.

Sitting there on the wooden bridge, big brother eyeing me like the lunatic he thought I was, I put up my hands and told him this had to stop. I said he and his brothers could cross the bridge all they wanted if they’d only do it quietly.

He laughed and argued that I didn’t own the bridge, I wasn’t his herdsman and that he and his brothers could cross in any manner they chose. I told him that trolls sleep all day and couldn’t he respect that? I asked if he would like it if I came to his barn at night and trip-trapped on the roof. I stood up and did a little dance to demonstrate what I meant, my nightdress flapping around my ankles, my toes slapping the wood.

Then the goat started to laugh. It was a horrible sound, but I stood there waiting to see what was so funny. Finally he stopped, looked me up and down and said, “Is that all you want?”

“I would appreciate it.”

He grunted, eyed me one last time then walked away, still chuckling and snorting.

I managed to get some sleep that day, but do you see now? They told their version of it, making us trolls look mean and horrible, and themselves like poor innocent victims. I thought it was time everyone knew the truth.

Thank you for listening.

Kellee Kranendonk
Kellee Kranendonk is a Canadian writer, and an editor for Youth Imagination. She has been published in several magazines as well as Flash Fiction Press, including Rural Delivery, 365 Tomorrows, Voluted Tales and Aurora Wolf.

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