Calla Gold
Editor’s Note: This story deals with domestic violence. Please read with care.
The Troll and the Lump
It was after midnight when I saw the troll. I heard a thump and crack in the hall, and it wasn’t the galumphing pads of Snooper the overweight basset on the carpet runner. Nor was it the clicking of his oversized claws on the bordering hardwood floor. I crept out of my warm bed, the sliver-moon showing me the way to the door.
I eased the door open by an inch, knowing it squeaked at two inches. My ten-year-old heart was beating fast. The next sound was a cat-like mewling—but our cat had disappeared weeks ago. The hallway was dark, and it took me a minute to see a lump lying horizontal and curled in on itself in the hall. I couldn’t breathe. Towering over the lump was the troll. His barely visible face had fangs, deep wrinkles, and eyes that stared at the lump on the ground while his chest expanded with noisy, gasping breaths.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” the lump whispered.
“You’re an ignorant, revolting creature,” the troll hissed.
The troll’s hooves thumped away on the carpet runner, his hairy back bowed. I felt the indistinct vibration of his passage into the kitchen. A distant whine and wood-scratching told me my protector was locked away in the back porch.
Snooper could not nudge and lick the lump’s wounds. He couldn’t sneak into my room and huddle, shivering against me and leaving his canine slobber on my flannel pajamas. I watched, eyes burning, as the lump sat up, head sagging to its chest. A mermaid out of water, a fairy with a broken wing, a rider bereft of her steed.
The sucking sound of the refrigerator door opening made the lump’s head jerk up. Food was power in this house. Food could appease the troll or be used to punish with deliciousness. The troll would say, “I’m a gourmet.” But if he made a mistake in the measurements, someone else would fall into the soup, be pitched off a bridge, or be assigned the role of the stupid one, the one who ruins all that is good in the world.
I felt the roll of cool air from the open fridge crawl down the hall, and my clasped arms goose-bumped. Then the troll’s high-up wooden cupboard door opened—the one that went errrrrt whenever it moved. That was the alarm that told the troll his secret cabinet had been breached. His treasure was colorful, beautifully shaped glass bottles with dark amber fluid inside—the liquid that had made my nose run the time I climbed up and sniffed it.
“Just for parties,” he’d said to the lump. But we didn’t have parties. No one visited except my friends, and that was rare.
The thump of a glass bottle hitting the wooden cutting board made the lump jerk. The amber liquid made the troll stronger, taller, and heavier-handed. The refrigerator door boomed shut. There would be no mood-sweetening food for the troll. Only angry water.
The lump crawled into the troll’s lair, the door closing with a quiet, hopeful click, as if the closed door could protect the lump from paying the toll to live in the pretty Victorian home. I knew that door would be safe, but the lump inside would not. The troll loved pretty things. He had removed the ugly white paint, painstakingly sanded the door’s beautiful molded details, and stained and varnished it to capture and ensnare the wood’s luminous grain.
No one dared run or play in the troll’s house. If the varnish chipped or a mark showed up on the paintwork, the troll would take note and extract his price when those he shared his sanctuary with least expected it.
~
The troll, who rarely let the sun touch his skin, only left the house when he had a mission. Once he returned, usually flourishing an artistic marvel, we were required to expend a Miss-America-Pageant level of enthusiasm. Interwoven with his conquering tale of the acquisition, were sword slashes smiting the ignoramus fools who had failed to recognize the beauty and thus lost forever the chance to own the objects of his desire.
One day, the troll made noisy preparations to go forth into the sunlight. He made me promise not to leave the house and let no one over the threshold. An hour later, I heard a ball bouncing with the echo of proximity. I leaned out my window and called my neighbor friend to come up. She ran up the steps two at a time. Her father smoked and had a hurt back and watched a lot of sports. Her dress was too tight and had a musty smell, like Gramma’s old sheets. The troll had forbidden me from playing with her because “She’s dirty.”
She smelled better than Snooper. We played hide-and-seek, then bounced the ball back and forth in the hall until one of the pictures crashed to the hardwood floor. She left. I picked up glass and bled on the carpet runner. I hoped the troll wouldn’t be the first to come home. But he was. I sat on the carpet, bleeding on my dress, crying.
Being bloody and crying had worked in the past to get me out of trouble with my mother. But that was before she became the lump, before we lived in the house of perfection.
The troll’s face seemed to swell, redden, and his shadow grew longer. The room darkened as if a frightened sun hid behind a cloud.
The front door opened with its arrrt sound. “I’m home,” the lump said.
The troll stomped back to the kitchen. Minutes later, a wooden spoon scraped the side of a pot, and tiny bubble sounds accompanied the scent of tomato. A metal spoon tinged into the porcelain spoon rest.
The lump crouched by my side. “What happened, Lili?”
Heavy tread pressed depressions into the carpet runner. Leather shoe tips prodded my thigh bone. “Your daughter had a friend over.”
“No, I didn’t,” I whined.
“And she lies,” he said.
“Why would you say that?” the lump said.
“I can smell the foul pong of her lazy, good-for-nothing father. That girl will come to no good end.”
The lump looked at me. I looked at my lap.
~
A year earlier, just after their wedding, the lump and I had packed boxes and bags of our belongings so we could move in with the troll. Boxes that the troll opened, discarding most of the objects we’d packed. “This is tired-looking, isn’t it?” And, “I don’t think that suits you.” And, “This is too babyish.” His stiff chest and upright neck told me I didn’t have the power to save my plastic Breyer horses, my Barbie, and my new-to-me baby-doll pajamas.
I wailed, sitting in the front seat of our VW Bug while the lump drove the two of us to the Salvation Army collection box.
“Why can’t I keep my Barbie?” I meant the one whose hair I’d chopped when I’d cut my own hair. Badly. She was ugly and dirty, but we’d had a lot of adventures together, and she was my Brave Barbie.
“We’re going to our wonderful new life with Darrell. You’ll get new toys.”
The lump heaved liquor store cartons and plastic bags filled with pieces of our old life into the dark cavity of the donation box. “It’s for the less fortunate.”
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
“It’ll be so much better for us, sweetie.”
The VW sagged when the lump turned the key off in the troll’s driveway. I looked up at the tall Victorian house. My new home. I’d never been in the troll’s house, but it looked nicer than our apartment. Five minutes later, my arms ached from holding two bulging plastic bags. I knew not to set them down on his soft carpet without being told. My feet ached in the nice shoes my mother made me wear. The shiny patent leather ones I’d begged for back before they pinched my toes.
The troll pointed to the windows he’d stripped and repainted, the crown molding he’d restored, and told the long story of how he’d saved this once mistreated home from “Neglect and filth.” He paused after explaining that he’d replaced the bathroom sink fixtures. His eyes unfocused, his cheeks reddened, and his too-loud voice boomed, “Because some moron thought it was a good idea to install a modern travesty of a faucet.” He waited for the gasps of pleasure and amazement at this latest heroic reveal. The lump oohed and ahhed, but the skin tightened around her eyes.
I’d begged the lump not to marry the troll when she’d sent me to my grandparents for the summer. I’d come home just in time to be her flower girl. I hadn’t wanted to do it. I was afraid that holding flowers in church while they kissed meant I was okay with being near him.
~
At first, my favorite thing was Snooper, the troll’s basset hound. Then I started noticing the nice smells in the kitchen. Even though the eggs and bacon were tasty, there would be no more Captain Crunch or Fruit Loops for me. I missed watching our portable black-and-white TV while eating Swanson’s frozen dinners with the different compartments separating the different-colored foods. I missed frozen pizza. My mother would read a book in a metal stand in the next room while eating a salad.
“This is how dancers eat,” she’d told me. I’d eat nothing before I’d eat like a dancer.
That first night in the troll’s house, he’d set down a nice-smelling plate of food in front of me. He enjoyed talking about food. “This dish is Italian; I’ve bloomed some oregano and thyme to deepen the sauce's flavor.”
The lump nodded and picked at her food. “I love what a wonderful cook you are, Darrell,” she’d said. “But with my performance coming up, I need to eat sparingly.” She wiggled in her chair, cocked her head, and smiled up at him.
“Of course,” the troll said. “You need to preserve your beauty.”
#
The night after I broke the picture in the hall and lied to him, the troll began his campaign to kill me.
First, he decreed that I was only to read books from the library's adult section because I was “smart.” After he tossed my dog-eared copy of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, I pulled it out of the trash can and brushed off the coffee grounds and lemon seeds. I loved to read, but someone telling me what I could and couldn’t read crossed a line.
Then he laid a plate with more food than usual on it, and decreed that skinny, picky-eater me was to “clean my plate” nightly. The troll’s food smelled good, and it tasted good. But it was too much. It didn’t look like torture to the lump. But it was. Her ears couldn’t hear my pleas. Even Snooper, fearful, quivering, and watchful when the night noises came, was braver than the lump who should be my mother. But she was bewitched by the troll.
~
I’d drop bits of food to Snooper, wrap food in a napkin, smoosh it into a pocket, and go to the bathroom and ask the antique plumbing to accept the chunky offerings.
I embarked on a quest to free the lump from the clutches of the troll who collected pretty things. My first gambit — to ask her if we could be just us without the troll — didn’t work.
I vowed to make him hit me in front of her.
I smeared dirt on my clothes, quit using soap in the shower, and pretended I felt sick a few times to avoid eating more than a few bites of dinner. Within days, the troll lost his self-control and struck me with the back of his large hairy hand, cracking my head noisily against the lovely Victorian hallway wainscotting. He spewed spit and growled swear words I’d never heard before. He did this in front of the lump. And bonus points, in front of my new nice-smelling friend, who was spending the night at our house.
With blood in my hair and a blackening eye, we escaped to my new friend’s house. My friend’s mother made tea, wrapped the sobbing lump in a blanket, and gave me ice in a baggie wrapped in a facecloth. I devoured an entire box of Captain Crunch with my friend.
Like walking out of cold water into a sun-warmed towel, I grinned on the inside. I’d broken the spell. Wielding my invisible dragon claw, I’d slashed through the troll’s veil of glamour, revealing his fangs and putrid center. I’d spirited the lump away from the troll’s lair and looked into the eyes of my mother. Even when the bubbly, sharp liquid dribbled over the bloody gash on my head, I didn’t cry. I was victorious. But not for long.
The next morning, sunlight sparkled dewdrops on bright pink fuchsias outside my friend’s family room window. The pretty three-tone song of the doorbell interrupted our blissful morning - curled up under a quilt, watching cartoons. We ran to the front window and peeked out to see the troll, arm resting on the outside wall, leaning in toward the lump. A dark curl had fallen over his eye, and a wheedling smile belied the venom circulating in his veins.
~
Monday reared, sweeping my dreams up like cigarette butts into a street cleaner’s maw. I sat in the high-backed wooden chair with the hand-turned spindles, bumpy details a pain to any spine. The arty chair, smooth undulations bumping into my butt crack, was carved for a larger body. It held my sternum captive to the kitchen table, masticating my dinner at the speed of a sloth. The troll sat sour-faced, tapping his large leather-shoe-clad foot, knife and fork neatly crossed on the cleaned plate in front of him. Since my recent beating had occurred when I refused to clean my plate, the lump sat in mute witness to our silent skirmish: the troll’s compulsion to force-feed me versus my need to eat less.
In the days following, the troll lurked like a temple guard dog, managing to insert himself between the lump and me whenever I tried to talk to her. The food agitated like sour milk in my stomach at dinner times, and still, there was more to shovel down. I couldn’t survive like this.
My scabbed head ached for days, and I lied at school about my shiner. I hated lying for the troll. It was time for me to leave the troll’s hideout and make the lump miss me enough to turn back into my mother. Leaving a note that I was running away, I hid in a charmed and concealed hollow I created in our garage. I nested in the damp among neat, labeled boxes, antique furnishings, and purloined blankets.
When I grew bored and hungry, I snuck up the back steps, toes tentative, seeking to avoid the high-pitched complaints of sun-blasted wood. My heart lurching in my chest, I listened for stirrings from the house. Even the noisy refrigerator door eased open in silence to offer me cheese.
The library was my day haven, offering bathrooms whose flush a troll was powerless to hear and a generous bounty of forbidden children’s books whose pictures gave off the warmth of a fireplace. Those books let me soar to places where kids were heard, and dreams came true.
On the fourth day of my disappearance, a black and white patrol car purred into our driveway. The dank chill of the garage, which no amount of fetal-position leg hugging could overcome, had worn my lips blue. After the policeman left, I rang the bell and stepped into the entryway. I leaned back, fingers chilled, pressing against the cold glass inset in our heavy front door. I looked up the carpeted stairs into the gloom above. Snooper galumphed down the steps, bursting past the descending troll and lump, and hurled his solid, basset-hound body at my legs. I crouched down and let him lick me, whimpering, with kibble-crumb slobber.
The troll towered over me, a bulk with the shadow of claws. The lump’s eyes were wide, hands gripping each other, knuckles white. I tried to parse that sign language and failed. Rage rolled off the troll in waves of icy fog. Snooper steamed with love and protection, heating my chilled heart and radiating fog-melting magic. The troll shook his shaggy head. I clung to Snooper’s warm, wriggling, over-long body, eyes closed against the bumps of his loving, wet nose. Then I stood. Behind concealing lips, I bared my teeth. “I want to live with my dad.”
I didn’t know my father. He’d either never visited me, or if he had, I’d forgotten. I stared at the lump and felt the cold nip from the troll’s barely banked ice fever. I waited for the lump to speak. She angled her face up to the troll.
I didn’t want to live with my dad. I wanted to live with my mother. My plan had failed. The lump didn’t dispute my words. The thin wall of ten-year-old bravery cracked. I cried; that out-of-control, shaking, spit gets tacky, face gets blotchy crying. I thought I could win. I’d lain down my hand of love Queens and was trumped by the troll’s strategic Aces. I slunk to my room.
I could hear the lump on the phone telling the police I was home and everything was fine. It wasn’t fine. That black and white should have squealed a U-turn, sirens breaking the sound of normal, and used a magical rope to still the troll's heavy, hairy hands.
At school, the day after my runaway return, my hand clutched too tight by the lump’s, I took short stopping steps toward the principal’s office. Her finger bones’ pressure said, “Do not speak.” I heard, “Your opinion is irrelevant.”
In his stuffy office, words flew like newly hatched termites: “Unfortunate situation,” “Setting a bad example,” and “Needs more discipline.”
The principal, fingers caressing papers, never met my blazing eyes. He didn’t ask me if I thought I needed more discipline. My little body barely held space in his overheated office. Not that the principal asked, but I hid the words of the troll’s deeds behind my teeth. I feared that speaking the true words would conjure his handsome surface, hiding his foul soul stench. I feared his fangs at my throat if my teeth opened.
~
That night, the troll announced that my grandparents would be the best option for dealing with my wickedness. The lump stood silent and diminished by his side. The next morning, I stuffed my belongings into two plastic bags atop the naked mattress. As if his cloven hooves were wrapped in burlap and sinew, the troll crossed the threshold without sound. The bedroom itself mourned, bereft of a ten-year-old’s dreams, a sacred place profaned by the troll’s dripping rain of hate.
“She’s not coming with you. And from what I’ve heard, your father isn’t any more interested in your appalling behavior than I am.” The troll sneered, his sharp teeth gleaming with the joy of a mad bear holding his lifeless prey aloft.
I refused to speak, to acknowledge his twisting of the truth. The troll wished me to bow, to moan, to beg for his forgiveness. I straightened and looked past his arm at my drawing of a horse. I’d taped it to the wall against his rules. Having no wish to rip the surface of the cocoon that’d welcomed my daydreams, I’d used masking tape.
He’d no doubt peel the tape off with care, crumpling the picture to specks between his bristly knuckles, a substitute for my blood. The troll couldn’t mar the warm, perfect, peach tone of the paint he’d so carefully lain upon the bones of the Victorian wall. The spell would break if he breached the meticulous beauty he’d wrought on the house. The beleaguered shelter would hurl him down the stairs to sink beneath the entry rug, his glamour fading into the gorge's mist from whence he came.
From the corner of my eye, the troll’s surface wavered, his desiccated heart thumping visible and too slow. I heard, “If you tell anyone about what I do to the lump, she’ll stop getting up, and you’ll be alone forever.”
~
Hours later, on the slippery bench seat of my grandpa’s shiny green Impala, I tried to be jolly. My jokey grampa’s sad eyes looked straight ahead; his fingers clenched at the wheel. Back at their trailer, my gramma’s knowing eye and gentle touch loosed my clenched teeth. I started with a whisper, but my white-hot truth was a hydrogen-sulfide gas flare billowing bright from atop an oil rig at midnight. I was heard.
~
Three years later, my mother came for me. At last, the troll slept alone. My wall of resentment, pain, and bewilderment was stacked like sedimentary rock, a boundary between her and me. In a tiny apartment furnished at the Goodwill, sitting on the couch of someone else’s broken dreams, we rescued an abandoned kitten. No pets were allowed in our new lodgings.
We named her Shadow. We lavished her with the love and gentle care we couldn’t give each other.
Calla Gold owned a jewelry design business for thirty-eight years. Her Indie non-fiction book: Design Your Dream Wedding Rings, From Engagement to Eternity, was released on Valentine’s Day 2019. Her recent short stories and novelette have been published in Mobius Blvd, Killer Nashville Magazine, and Confetti Magazine. Calla resides in southern California with her husband and an assortment of mountain bikes.
