Office Trolls

The thing I hate most about Fridays at the office are the trolls. I don't think anything can be done about them: no amount of bug spray or steel-sprung traps seem to reduce their number or deter them from coming out into the open.

I cross the hallway from the small office kitchen back toward my work sanctuary. I have a mug filled chock to the brim with an oily, skunky office coffee, and I must navigate slowly to avoid upsetting the brew. One step. Two step. I march down the hall like a North Korean arms-bearer submerged deep in an icy ocean. Left foot. Right foot. And then I see it.

A dark discoloration in the carpeting. A half-liquidy, half-slime puddle of darkish ooze. It has soaked into the flooring and splashed against the baseboard molding. The sickening sweet and musky odor of the substance overpowers the stench of the office java. Troll droppings. Great.

I pick up my pace, sacrificing some coffee drops over the side of my cup for slim hopes to reach my office sans confrontation. But luck be a scorned lady today: the troll is at my door.

Hunched over and exhaling white plumes of dusty disease motes, the troll eyes me up and down with hungered interest. Sour-apple saliva drops from its lips. Whistling sores pucker its face, opening and closing their mouths in a symphony of decay. "The copier needs a new toner cartridge, my pretty..." it groans with a voice like fracturing limestone. It shifts position and flies and cockroaches pour from the flaps and folds of its skin. Mimicking the sound of blended infants, the troll cackles wildly into the expanse of office hallway, and then dashes into the shadows of a nearby office.

A slimy trail of troll-filth remains hanging from the door of my office. I work myself a few feet into my office, but the place already reeks of a corrupted odor. I feel the blood draining from my face, and my stomach begins to clench. I splash the hot coffee in my face to try to settle myself.

TGIF. In God's name we pray.