It was around 2am in the morning
when the Yarn Lady was awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of pots and
pans falling on the kitchen floor. She
struggled out of bed, staggered to the kitchen and saw a bizarre sight. There
was a very short ugly man standing on her step stool with a pie pan in his
hand. She’d used it to make an egg pie, and it was sitting on the counter
waiting to be washed. His eyes went wide when he saw her and still holding the
pie pan, he jumped off the stool, threw two bright baubles at her and fled into
the living room and out the front door.
The yarn lady blinked groggily
at the objects she’d reflexively caught. The were Lindoor Truffles, a favorite
of both she and her daughter. She put them on the counter, locked the front
door securely and went back to bed, quickly falling back asleep.
Clementine and Ursula had seen
the troll come in from their dark position under the table in the dining room.
He’d ignored the shoes placed on the table by the front window on his way in
and obviously didn’t stop to look for shoes on the way out. The cats looked at
each other, shrugged and decided that tonight was a bust.
The troll, Stufur, stood out in front of the condo panting for breath. He didn’t usually run like that. Damn, his first night out and he’d been seen by one of the Manneskjur. This was not good. There were more houses to visit, he’d have to be more careful at those.
-----------------------------
About an hour later BC felt a
draft and saw the door to the deck swing open. A short squat fellow tiptoed in,
looking around to make sure he was alone.
BC ducked his head until he’d moved into the kitchen. The intruder had to be one of those trolls,
he decided. Nobody around here would dress that badly (or smell that bad).
He jumped down and padded into
the kitchen quietly and saw the troll climb onto one of the chairs at the table
and carefully take the square pan a frozen lasagna had come in. It was one of those cheap foil ones. One of
his clients had given him homemade lasagna as a holiday thank you gift. BC had enjoyed some of it, as had
Sparky. All that was left in it now were
a few dried up noodles and sauce and maybe some crusty cheese around the
edges. The troll put the edge of the pan
in his mouth and gnawed off some of the cheese residue. He made a satisfied noise and headed back to
the living room, carrying the pan. BC
had just enough time to scoot under the coffee table before the troll came in.
Humming happily, the troll dropped a small foil wrapped ball in each sneaker
and let himself out.
BC checked out the balls once he
was sure the troll had gone. It wasn’t
foil, but plastic they were wrapped in and it smelled like chocolate. Didn’t trolls know that chocolate was bad for
cats (and dogs)? BC carefully removed the balls from the sneakers and placed
them on the dining room table where the lasagna pan had been. That would be a pleasant surprise for the
Daddy when he woke up. BC yawned and
headed into the bedroom.
When the yarn lady awakened that
morning she recalled a dream about a troll in the kitchen and shook her
head. As if. She must have been thinking
about the Jólasveinar story she’d written for Dotsie a bunch of years ago. Wasn’t there a Jól troll who stole the pots
from houses and ate the crusts off? She
laughed as she wandered into the kitchen to get a Diet Coke. As she was walking back into the dining room
she noticed two wrapped truffles on the counter. She knew they hadn’t been
there when she went to sleep, but maybe Pam had put them there overnight. She shook her head and thought, “that’s my
story and I’m sticking to it” and went to listen to the morning news.
The Daddy got up and started a
pot of coffee and when he sat down for his first cup at the table he noticed
the two wrapped candies. He picked them
up, noticing that they each bore tooth marks on the plastic twisted at the ends
to keep the wrapper tight. Sparky was
sitting on the table waiting for him to get his cereal in hopes of drinking the
milk left when he was finished. He shook
one at her saying, “Well, at least you gave me a present after stealing my
milk.” He shook his head thinking that either he or the cats were a little
crazy. Perhaps it was both.
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