Where Socks Go

Each night, the small, hairy, green troll that lives in the dingy, basement crawlspace, wanders the house in search of leftover food, small rodents or dust-bunnies to eat. This is very useful, if you think about it for even a little bit.

Unfortunately for the troll, the leftovers are almost always placed in the fridge, which she has no idea how to open. The cat and two dogs keep the rodents away and the floors are swept regularly. So, as you can surmise, the poor, ugly beast has very little to eat most nights.

When her hunger has made her desperate, she creeps into one of the children's rooms, where a helpless little darling is all snug in his or her bed (she loves the pets, who treat her as an equal, and would never consider hurting them). Peeling back the covers, she finds the young, tender body wrapped in pajamas and her stomach begins to growl like a truck engine.

The gastronomic noises, wake the child, or occasionally it's the warm, salty drool dripping from the troll's mouth onto their face. The half-awake child suppresses a scream, so as not to wake their poor, hardworking parents who are exhausted after a day of slaving at the mines.

The wart-covered troll, usually quite placid and harmless, is now frantic with hunger and the excitement of the moment. She begins to reach for the child's neck, in order to quickly wring it and drain their body of life.

Then, she spies the socks. Fluffy, comfortable cotton with thick padding in the heels and snug ribbing around the ankles -- expensive socks that the parents have worked and saved for months to put on the delicate feet of their pampered progeny. The dimwitted creature looks down at her own, cold, bare feet, dirty and scraped from climbing in and out of her basement lair, where she only has network television.

The child, sees the troll's lust for the socks and begins to plead with the brute, quietly, so as not to wake his or her parents, who barely have the energy to cook meals and do laundry after working 14-hour shifts chopping wood and shoveling manure.

"Please, don't take the socks," they whisper in a hoarse voice. "It would be the second pair you've nicked in a week, and my dear mother and father will be heartbroken and have to work longer hours at the glue factory to replace them!" Oddly, the children, who are Americans, always say this with a thick English accent.

The troll is indifferent, and anyway doesn't understand a word the child is blubbering (she doesn't get the Harry Potter movies, either). She snatches them off the child's feet, as they lie there shivering in horror and then cold. She slides them over her toes -- they won't fit all the way on -- and rushes back to the basement.

In the morning, still aching with hunger, the troll eats them quickly.