Lost and Found: A Thing of Terror
By guest writer Meagan O’Connell
Discarded fragment of a once loved toy? Or the spirit of a mischievous troll awaiting an unsuspecting victim? His plastic eye peered out from under a layer of dust and blades of grass in the middle of a green meadow in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park as my dog’s dirt-covered tennis ball rolled in its direction. I couldn’t help but pick it up, both disgusted and intrigued at the same time. It called to me.
What was this fragmented troll head all about? The theory of a once loved toy of a child is easily dismissed by that eery smile and the glance out of the corner of his eye. The chipped nose, uneven ears and matted hair help tell his story….
Perhaps he was a real troll once. You know, like the house gnomes that steal your socks from the laundry, only uglier. However, he had slowly turned disgruntled and bitter at his fellow trolls’ lack of intelligence. He was incensed by their pitiful existence of stealing socks and playing mischievious jokes on unsuspecting humans. Even humans enraged him, with their seeming deeper lack of intelligence. He compared humans to garden gnomes – not smart enough to steal socks, but only clever enough to stand motionless amongst flowers and move every once in a while just to see a startled or confused reaction from others.
As he grew angrier and more bitter, he was deemed a disgrace to the world of trolls by a committee of his elders and sentenced to death by explosion. Not to kill him, of course…. but to scatter his still living remains (because trolls can’t really die, you see) around the world and curse him to an eternity of being peered at like an oddity, to disgust and disturb onlookers. (Note: In restrospect, the commitee of elders realized that this sentence may have been a bit harsh. Perhaps it was the several cases of fairy-made grain alcohol that affected their final judgement.)
Even though disgruntled and deformed, the troll (or remnants thereof), still embittered, plots against those trolls, humans and other living beings that flaunt their ignorance so carelessly. He smiles, seemingly innocent, with a hint of contempt – waiting for someone to pay enough attention so that he might manipulate and plot his re-embodiment and revenge.
So, he sits in a display case in the living room. Perhaps one day his severed little head will mysteriously disappear – a sign that he finally discovered the remedy for his dismembered condition and has moved on to spread this self-made campaign of anti-ignorance and anger.
Or maybe he’s just a freaky, broken, dirty troll toy that fell out of a garbage truck and freaks people out enough to make them think there may be something wrong with me to have brought him home…..
I’m OK with either.
