Valley of the Trolley Dollies

Striplighting, the stench of antiseptic cleaners, the disapproving murmur of the other inhabitants as they shied away from the lumbering troll, and the pounding of Archer’s heart as he pummelled his way through the hospital. Everything else was blank.

The doctors had said, a year ago, that Archer’s son displayed distinct reactions whenever he was read to. Growing up as a troll, Archer had read only whatever the wind blew into the space under the bridge that his family called home. And so Archer had started reading to Oberon. His own childhood favourites had been covered in an evening.

After that, it was a case of reading the Gazette to the immobile child. Headline to Sports Final. Every night.

Which was how Archer discovered the haute monde of the Tri-Kingdom area. The Night Owls column detailed, every evening, the activities of the great and the glamorous of the city. Til that point Archer, having left the dank and dingy surrounds of the underside of the bridge between Onnenhoffen and Offenonnagin, had been exposed, firstly, as a suburban husband, to a world filled with beautifying and belonging, then ultimately, as an impending divorcee, whose life was filled with his employment as a patrol officer, to little but the dark, and the dead of the metropolis.

The few times his world intersected with that of the golden folk was when he had to deal with their neurotic children – Rapunzel Du Toit, for example – or their larcenous relatives – the Stilstkin brother sprang to mind – or the fallout from them allowing their feeble minded relatives to roam freely in an increasingly dangerous world.

The witch of West Wyckham, for example. Which brought him back to Oberon. Which was somewhere he didn’t want to be right now.

Because all that mattered now – all that ever filled Archers mind - was Obie.

His son was cursed. Destroyed by … Fuck it, why did they put the car park so far away from the wards? Every time he came here, Archer, mentally, blighted the designers of this godforsaken hole.

Then, he cursed the Witch of West Wyckham, her insane murderers, the idiots who failed to spot their trail earlier, the Witch of East Dulwich, and the people who were hiding her.

But mostly, whatever he was doing, Archer cursed himself…

previously

The rain had fallen through the branches of the trees, hit the ground, and stirred up the earth. Scents of green and of brown, of new life to come and of dead leaves, the smell of weeds and mulch, and of bark assailed his nostrils as he stood in the clearing, the cobalt moon shining down on him.

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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.

 

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