Valley of the Trolley Dollies

                                                                               

At school, Mitch White was the last kid to be picked. For anything. It wasn’t that he wasn’t athletic; in his early teens, Mitch, who had been a short but wiry kid for most of his life, had managed to add a sudden growth spurt to the slim and muscular build he already had. By the end of his freshman year, he was approaching 6’2” and tried out for the school basketball team.

The coach didn’t want him. The team didn’t want him. They picked a dwarf “with really strong thigh muscles” over him.

 

There was just something about the kid, people would mutter as they turned away. Something ‘other’. It creeped them out, and so they shut him out.

Chess club? Nixed. Music club? He had his own lute, a decent voice, an ability to sight read even wolvish notation. They couldn’t turn him down. So they put him on the triangle.

Mitch was overjoyed. Because, you see, all Mitch White had ever wanted, was to belong.

But Mitch the Bitch, as his classmates called him, was sending out all the wrong signals. Nobody can smell desperation to belong like a school full of pubescent boys. And that desperation gave his fellow pupils carte blanche to treat Mitch with a degree of cruelty and disdain that only schoolboys or rabid wolves can ever manage.

So, when the boys created The Dare Club, and actually invited Mitch to join as a founder member, the tall, skinny black kid was overjoyed. At last, he’d be a part of something. Right at the beginning.

The first dare had, obviously, fallen to Mitch, and so it was, whilst playing knock down Ginger at a Troll family home under a bridge near the town of

Onnenhoffen, that Mitch had met the Troll family’s youngest boy Tom, and two young lives had been changed forever.

Tom Archer, as he had eventually become (The Troll version of his surname was unspellable, let alone unpronounceable to all who hadn’t been raised with a clear understanding of the distinction between various guttural noises, growls, farts scratches and snaps), had discovered, through his new friend, a world beyond the dank, smelly bridge, and Mitch White had realised that the only solution to wanting to be part of a world that didn’t want you, was to make your own world; one where you did belong. The troll peoples had done so centuries before, escaping a disdainful and unforgiving world for the company of toads and leeches, and the scent of rotten vegetation and stagnant water.

Tom, eventually, met and married a passing Princess, changing his name to Archer, and leaving the bridge behind for a career in the Woodland Patrol ( ‘betrayals’ for which his family never forgave him), and Mitch, meeting no princesses, but becoming familiar with several wealthy old queens, changed his name to Mitzi Fantastick, embarked on a career as the Three Kingdom’s pre-eminent female impersonator, The Snow Queen, and never looked back on his past.

Unless it was to look back – fondly, and with deep gratitude – on the Troll who pointed the way.

For Archer, the Snow Queen always had time.

A light drizzle was falling as Archer left the station house. By the time he’d made it to the corner of Poppins and Fine, the rain was torrential and the streets deserted. And yet, above the noise of the storm, his keen ears picked out the sound of a thousand tiny bells jangling in unison.

The bells got louder, and, around the corner came the first of three pairs of immaculately groomed, snow white, stallions, their hooves gilded in silver, their reins made of the palest baby blue coloured leather, and their harnesses covered in miniscule silver bells.

The horses were towing a huge, pumpkin shaped coach which, in turn, was covered in mother of pearl panels and silver gilding, and shimmered, even in the faint moon light.

The coach drew up before the detective, and the passenger door opened.

“You look like a tenement’s worth of wet laundry,” came the soft, smoky voice.

Archer bent down to peer into the coach. “Nice, Mitch,” he gestured at the transportation. “Subtle.”

“You like it? Got it cheap off of Ella. Well, she don’t need it any more, and, in my business, it pays to advertise. Get in. Just don’t drip on the upholstery, it’s real Polar Bear. And troll snot’s a bitch to get out.”

Archer heaved his bulk into the coach. “So, what’s this thing turn into at midnight?”

“A getaway car, if the critic’s don’t like this new show.”

The Snow Queen was clearly on his way to work: Mitch was wearing an impossibly tight sheath of iridescent blue silk. A plunging neckline was lined with white netting, which, in turn was plastered with a thousand densely packed mother of pearl sequins. The sequins motif was repeated on the bodice, slowly fading two or three inches from the hem. His bare feet were toying with a pair of nine inch heeled silver stillettoes.

His face was immaculately made up, the cheekbones, lips and eyes subtly but definitively accentuated, the jewelled false eyelashes glued on. All that remained for the the transformation to be complete was for the shoes to be stepped into, and for the tall, lacquered wig to be placed on Mitch’s shaved head. Then – and only then – an eight foot Amazon named Mitzi Fantastic would be ready to transform into the Snow Queen, and the show could begin.

“How’s Pat?” Archer asked after the latest squeeze.

“Great. Still working at the Bank of Toytown. I told him he could walk, but that girl… So independent. Still, I sense you didn’t come here for the making of small talk. Spill, my friend: What can the Snow Queen do for you tonight?”

“What do you know about the Wolf.”

“The wolf?”

“The Big-”

“I know which wolf.” An immaculately manicured hand was held up to silence Archer. “You got stuck with that one, huh? Well, what do I know, other than he’s dead? Shit, Tom, what is there to know? You read the Night Owl column. It’s all in there.”

“Sure, if I want to know what cocktail lounge he was flashing his big teeth at, or what gallery opening he was rolling his big eyes at, or which chorus girl was getting his-”

“Is there any more to know? The guy seemed to live his life in the papers.”

“That’s just it, Mitch; Openings, showgirls, the odd boozed-up brawl. Something’s not ringing a bell.”

“Sweetheart, all’s I can hear is the sound of one hand clapping. Slowly.”

“But if a tree falls in the woods, with nobody to hear it, does it make any noise,” Archer responded cryptically.

Mitzi raised an eyebrow. “Honey, you have totally lost me.”

“See, the woodsman had a reason to be in the woods. He’s a woodsman; that’s where they tend to hang out. But Wolfie don’t strike me as a keen botanist.”

“So what brought him to that neck of the woods? I see your point. What’s old Woodie saying?”

“Same as he did on the day: He’s walking through the woods, minding his own business, and the wolf attacks him. Came charging out of the trees, wild-eyed and snarling.”

“My,” the Snow Queen murmured, “What big teeth you have. So, who cares, Archer? A decent lawyer gets Chopper-Boy off on self-defence. Wolfslaughter, at worst. The wolf’s still deaf. Three kingdoms rejoice. Who really cares?”

“It smells wrong.”

“So does the new Givenchy, but what can Mitzi do about any of this?”

“Find out what the Wolf was up to. The stuff that didn’t make it to the Gazette. I’d like to know just why he was in the woods that day.”

“You don’t think Woodie did him?”

“I’ve got a hatchet and a confession says otherwise. I’d just like… a little more background.”

Mitzi stretched forward, and slid a silver stiletto onto the end of a foot. “Anything else?”

“Rapunzel.”

The foot went home into the shoe, and a groan escaped. “She gone again? Look, leave her alone, and she’ll come home, draggin’ her sorry ass behind her.”

“Been five days, Mitch.”

“Strange. She never goes more than three.” Another foot was pushed painfully into another shoe. “And it’s been a while since the last time she got herself napped. I heard she’d been cured. Some new doctor her old man found for her.” The wig, a silver coloured beehive studded with twinkling jewels, was hoisted out of its box, and plopped unceremoniously onto Mitch’s head. “I’ll see what I can dig up. That it?”

“The – um – other thing.”

The Snow Queen heaved a heavy sigh, the sequins on her chest twinkling like rime on concrete streets, and took Archer’s hand. “You thought I’d forget. Baby, I’ve got every single line out. Wizards, warlocks, anyone whose ever received so much as a “Learn to spell” flier. Nothing. So far. But she’s out there. Somewhere, Archer, she’s out there. And she can’t stay hidden forever. Like a swampgrub, she’s got to surface for air sooner, or later. And when she surfaces…”

Archer cleared his throat, left his hand where it was, and stared out at the passing streets, even their rain-drenched isolation appearing glamorous from this silver twinkling ball. “Time’s running out, Mitch. He might not make it.”

Mitch reached a hand out, took Archer’s chin, and turning the detective to face him, stared into the huge black-brown-green eyes of the only true friend he had ever known. “He’ll make it Archer. Because we’ll find her. Bitch can’t hide forever. Besides, he comes from good stock. Strong. We know that.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then the coach slowly drew to a halt. “Well, my show ain’t gonna do itself,” The Snow Queen announced. “Here’s where you get off, Archer. Give big kisses to Obie and Ania. Tell ‘em Auntie Mitch says ‘Hi’.”

Archer shifted his bulk, and Mitch White caught his arm. “Archer, I’ll be in touch. I promise.”

The Troll grimaced his appreciation, and, a moment later, was standing on the junction of Toto and Lassie, watching the mother of pearl apparition vanish up Toto.

                                                           

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Fiction etc., Once Upon a Murder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.