Never, Never Again
by Douglas One-Brick-Shy (second cousin to
by Douglas One-Brick-Shy (second cousin to
Dougie One-Shot)
Rather, the umdrehung must be a transformation of the hierarchical structure itself. Eddie Nelson fumed over his coffee and said to himself that he would never, never again, work at a job he didn’t enjoy. He stuck to that decision and the result was the cause of the events of which I speak.
He became the nanny to four young ladies from a respectable rural Kentish family, name of Spencer. These ladies loved nothing better than to picnic in the sun on the moors and Eddie obliged them. One day, as they sat down chattering, in their gayly coloured frocks and crisp, white pinafores, to open their basket of goodies, supplied by an obliging cook, something, as if right beneath them, surprised them all suddenly into speechlessness. A great splashing and scraping began, loud enough to see them clap hands over their ears. And then, o horrors, a troll, green as seaweed, gnarly and bumpy of visage, fearsome of muscular limb and neck, the very picture of chaos animated, rose gargantuan out of the water under a nearby bridge. Immediately a stench of the most heinous, unbearable foulness, like putrid dog leavings and rotting, gelatinous pike, overwhelmed their senses. The ladies found themselves nearly unable to breathe, gagging and bringing up the bites of sandwich they had just consumed. Languid, unlabored, majestically, the beast peered about it as if taking in the prietty prospect, looked once at Eddie and, without undue haste, effortlessly grasping her with one gigantic hand about the waist, lifted Eileen, the youngest of them, near Its eyes (for trolls, as you must know, suffer everyone from that vision impairment known as degenerative myopia) and then draped her casually about its neck, much as it would have the carcass of a new-killed stag. Glancing once more at Eddie with a look at once ferocious and triumphant it strode off with her into the forest, from whence to their astonishment they heard neither screams nor calls for help, nor any other signs of discomfiture but only the receding thuds of the Being’s footsteps that all too quickly faded in the distance.
Eileen, being 12, had just had initiated her first monthly evidence of entering into the world of women, and the four picnickers concluded that the scent of so powerful a sanguinity had likely attracted the miscreant. “Oh, our poor parents,” the friends wailed, only slowly beginning to feel in their breasts the full weight of the terrible loss! And now what to do became the concern that forcefully bore on them and tore at their hearts, until Emma, 14, offered a solution, which they duly considered, and discussed, and shortly took action upon. They would all follow the kidnapper into the woods, aided in their tracking of it by its lingering stench. Then she, Emma, once they neared its lair, would present herself as attractively as possible, making of her person a bait to catch the troll. Or, troll to bait the catch, if you will. The rest would hie themselves to boulders and trees in the immediate vicinity and then from hiding leap out and wrestle the troll into submission almost as soon as it laid hands on her.
To make a long story short, this they effected, this they attempted, and this they accomplished. When they had got the said troll in their sight, who was sneaking as warily as lumbersome trolls are able through the thickets toward the bait, they whispered to each other for silence. They kept one eye on Emma and one on the monster. They held themselves ready and tightly sprung to leap out and grapple with it. So when this loathsomeness bestrode her there on the ground helpless and alone, intending to lift her as well to its shoulders, they bounded up as one and, rushing as quickly as ever they could, surprised it and caught it in their communal grasp. Unacquainted with resistance or surrender, it was not easily deterred nor incapacitated and struggled mightily. Eventually, nearly exhausted, the valiant company conquered it. After helping Emma to her feet, which event took more time than it should have, they kept a wary vigil, each side distrusting the other still. But in time they induced the captive to tell them where their sister and charge was hidden. The way was difficult and took them three days. So dangerous was the track that the troll preceded them at the front of a long rope to which they all held tightly. They proceeded with many delays and dangers along a path that eventually led them to a sunny clearing in the woods. In this clearing, to their wonder and astonishment, lay a Naugahyde chair and on it lounged the captive maiden, their darling sister. She lay there quite regally, her arms lifted above her head in a gesture of indolence and leisure, and with her feet propped up high against the trunk of an apple tree laden with red fruit.
“Dress yourself at once!” roared Foulness to the young thing. She stretched, she yawned, then did as she was bid, but not with the avidity she might have been expected to show, the warming sun having rendered her somnambulant, and as well the quiet of that nook playing tricks on her sense of shame and forbearance. Eventually, her habiliment properly seen to, she asked that the quartet spare Hideousness its life. And they, not ones to resist such a plea for mercy, invited the scaly substance to join their picnic. It did that. At its suggestion they all soon removed their morning coats (since it had been cool when their journey began), and under a brilliant sky the colour of blooming clover they began the eating and drinking that had initiated their misadventures. Cross-legged and attentive, they told stories, tickling each other’s fancies, and generally regaling the uncultured troll with all the delicate history of the Spencer clan. When they had all eaten their fill, they dallied a little longer doing whatever their hearts decided, and then, after a difficult return journey to the bridge, wandered off home, each to her separate lodgings for the night.
The troll wept when it retired to its lair and throughout the long night, thinking of the new desires for knowledge and taste that these strangers had bestowed on it. How could it ever bridge the differences? How could it possibly live now that erudition had cast its net over it and carried it away for its own, unknowable purposes? How much just now it yearned for the clearing of its cloudy, brutal mind.
Rather, the umdrehung must be a transformation of the hierarchical structure itself. Eddie Nelson fumed over his coffee and said to himself that he would never, never again, work at a job he didn’t enjoy. He stuck to that decision and the result was the cause of the events of which I speak.
He became the nanny to four young ladies from a respectable rural Kentish family, name of Spencer. These ladies loved nothing better than to picnic in the sun on the moors and Eddie obliged them. One day, as they sat down chattering, in their gayly coloured frocks and crisp, white pinafores, to open their basket of goodies, supplied by an obliging cook, something, as if right beneath them, surprised them all suddenly into speechlessness. A great splashing and scraping began, loud enough to see them clap hands over their ears. And then, o horrors, a troll, green as seaweed, gnarly and bumpy of visage, fearsome of muscular limb and neck, the very picture of chaos animated, rose gargantuan out of the water under a nearby bridge. Immediately a stench of the most heinous, unbearable foulness, like putrid dog leavings and rotting, gelatinous pike, overwhelmed their senses. The ladies found themselves nearly unable to breathe, gagging and bringing up the bites of sandwich they had just consumed. Languid, unlabored, majestically, the beast peered about it as if taking in the prietty prospect, looked once at Eddie and, without undue haste, effortlessly grasping her with one gigantic hand about the waist, lifted Eileen, the youngest of them, near Its eyes (for trolls, as you must know, suffer everyone from that vision impairment known as degenerative myopia) and then draped her casually about its neck, much as it would have the carcass of a new-killed stag. Glancing once more at Eddie with a look at once ferocious and triumphant it strode off with her into the forest, from whence to their astonishment they heard neither screams nor calls for help, nor any other signs of discomfiture but only the receding thuds of the Being’s footsteps that all too quickly faded in the distance.
Eileen, being 12, had just had initiated her first monthly evidence of entering into the world of women, and the four picnickers concluded that the scent of so powerful a sanguinity had likely attracted the miscreant. “Oh, our poor parents,” the friends wailed, only slowly beginning to feel in their breasts the full weight of the terrible loss! And now what to do became the concern that forcefully bore on them and tore at their hearts, until Emma, 14, offered a solution, which they duly considered, and discussed, and shortly took action upon. They would all follow the kidnapper into the woods, aided in their tracking of it by its lingering stench. Then she, Emma, once they neared its lair, would present herself as attractively as possible, making of her person a bait to catch the troll. Or, troll to bait the catch, if you will. The rest would hie themselves to boulders and trees in the immediate vicinity and then from hiding leap out and wrestle the troll into submission almost as soon as it laid hands on her.
To make a long story short, this they effected, this they attempted, and this they accomplished. When they had got the said troll in their sight, who was sneaking as warily as lumbersome trolls are able through the thickets toward the bait, they whispered to each other for silence. They kept one eye on Emma and one on the monster. They held themselves ready and tightly sprung to leap out and grapple with it. So when this loathsomeness bestrode her there on the ground helpless and alone, intending to lift her as well to its shoulders, they bounded up as one and, rushing as quickly as ever they could, surprised it and caught it in their communal grasp. Unacquainted with resistance or surrender, it was not easily deterred nor incapacitated and struggled mightily. Eventually, nearly exhausted, the valiant company conquered it. After helping Emma to her feet, which event took more time than it should have, they kept a wary vigil, each side distrusting the other still. But in time they induced the captive to tell them where their sister and charge was hidden. The way was difficult and took them three days. So dangerous was the track that the troll preceded them at the front of a long rope to which they all held tightly. They proceeded with many delays and dangers along a path that eventually led them to a sunny clearing in the woods. In this clearing, to their wonder and astonishment, lay a Naugahyde chair and on it lounged the captive maiden, their darling sister. She lay there quite regally, her arms lifted above her head in a gesture of indolence and leisure, and with her feet propped up high against the trunk of an apple tree laden with red fruit.
“Dress yourself at once!” roared Foulness to the young thing. She stretched, she yawned, then did as she was bid, but not with the avidity she might have been expected to show, the warming sun having rendered her somnambulant, and as well the quiet of that nook playing tricks on her sense of shame and forbearance. Eventually, her habiliment properly seen to, she asked that the quartet spare Hideousness its life. And they, not ones to resist such a plea for mercy, invited the scaly substance to join their picnic. It did that. At its suggestion they all soon removed their morning coats (since it had been cool when their journey began), and under a brilliant sky the colour of blooming clover they began the eating and drinking that had initiated their misadventures. Cross-legged and attentive, they told stories, tickling each other’s fancies, and generally regaling the uncultured troll with all the delicate history of the Spencer clan. When they had all eaten their fill, they dallied a little longer doing whatever their hearts decided, and then, after a difficult return journey to the bridge, wandered off home, each to her separate lodgings for the night.
The troll wept when it retired to its lair and throughout the long night, thinking of the new desires for knowledge and taste that these strangers had bestowed on it. How could it ever bridge the differences? How could it possibly live now that erudition had cast its net over it and carried it away for its own, unknowable purposes? How much just now it yearned for the clearing of its cloudy, brutal mind.
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