Troll Bacon • A Halloween Short Story

No actual trolls were harmed in the production of these events.

“Is that mine?” Kells asked, leaning over the meat counter at the supermarket. He pointed at a tightly wrapped package, slapped with a sticker, and tied tightly with brown string. “ The pork belly?”

The butcher didn’t glance up, shoving a hefty ham shoulder onto the slicer. The blade was already humming under the cover. 

Kells shrugged. Guess he couldn’t hear him. He tipped the package over. It squished properly under the paper. The sticker stated the weight, but the name was smeared, like it was pulled from the printer too fast. It seemed like a block of bacony pork.

Exactly what he’d asked for.

“Thank you!” He yelled, tossing it into his basket with the cloves of garlic and brown sugar. 

The butcher half looked over at him, but obviously didn’t see him.He was already busy running the slider back and forth, pale pink ribbons of salted lunch meat slipping out into a pile. 

Kells shrugged. So much for service these days. He hurried to the front of the store, weaving between Halloween dinner shoppers. This weekend would be a crazy event, and bacon was always the first to go. Gramps had slipped him a fiver to bike down to the local Joe Wellingtons Inc 1998, grab the biggest piece of pork belly they had, and get home with it. 

He hopped up onto his prized possession, a Trek 1420 bike, passed down with a hug and handshake when his older brother enlisted in the Oregon Forester Professionals. His legs reached the pedals, as long as he didn’t sit on the seat. He didn’t mind. Up and down these hills meant awesome abs by the time he’d turn fourteen. 

The sky rumbled, flexed like a rolled up blanket, and relaxed with a growl.

The bacon, fat white cloves of garlic, and crinkly bag of brown sugar went into the basket he’d welded under the seat. That was better than a basket on the front. That would look like a kid’s bike. As he closed the lid, he realized someone had tied the string really tight around the package. Not like hold-it-together well kind of tight, but like this-could-escape-so-take-care kind of tight. 

He snorted and checked the sky. His imagination. He had a lot of it. Good thing he had a helmet to clip on. Probably kept his tousled head together. 

It was already getting dark, and the clouds were thick and heavy. Ten minutes. He had ten minutes before the rain. He could make it in eight, if he cut through the graveyard, and shaved off thirty seconds around the garden center.

Plus, this meat needed to stay cold. Gramps always cooked this block of  pork belly in the oven, slathered it with fresh grated ginger, salty soy sauce, pungent anise, and other stuff that made it incredible and dark and golden, then ladled it over steaming rice, and sprinkled sesame seeds and a handful of bright green onion. His stomach grumbled at the thought, and he swallowed.

Halloween at Gramps was always the best. 

Kells made it home in eight point six minutes. Not terrible. But longer than he planned. Got to work on that.

He whipped down the driveway to the condo buildings, leaned into the corner and slowed down in the shadow of the stairs. Gramps was on the top floor, 4 floors up. A dumb decision, on any account. No elevator, and he had bad knees. That’s what comes from sticking with a decision you made ten years ago. 

Kells heaved the bike up vertically off the ground and onto the hook on the wall. This was special just for him, because he mowed Mrs. Hemingway’s lawn for free every weekend, and biked over a bag of fresh, fragrant black mulch for her.

Tucking the items under his arm, he took to the stairs three at a time. Gotta pace himself. Four steps would wear you out, and two was just average.

The air was suddenly feeling heavy and prickly, like a storm was about to break.

He heard a jangling bike bell. Someone yelled. He rounded a corner and glanced over the stairwell wall. Someone had pulled up on a bike, churned straight through Mrs H’s carefully mulched flowers. Left the bike lying on that manicured lawn. Kells sucked in through his teeth. Grand kids these days. She would have a fit about that. 

Someone yelled again. 

He shrugged. He didn’t know anyone his age here. He usually spent weekends with Gramps, and then biked back across town to his dad’s for school. Mostly old people lived here. 

He headed up the stairs and into the covered gallery that overlooked the parking lot. 

Gramps was 105. Three doors down. He tucked it all under one arm, and reached for the handle. But the door was open. Weird. He pushed through the door and kicked off his shoes. “Gramps?” He called. 

No response.

He must have gone to Old Man Mick’s down the hall for something. 

Kells unclipped his helmet, slung it on the coat rack, and padded down the herringbone hallway. It smelled of old tobacco, wicker furniture, and those woven baskets stuffed with Boston ferns, that smell like an antique store. Gramps had them hanging everywhere. 

He pulled open the fridge and slipped everything inside. 

Then he realized brown sugar didn’t need to go in the fridge. He pulled the door open, and pulled out the back. 

That’s when he saw the block of pork belly wiggle. 

Or something. He stared at it. 

It was still. 

Probably just jiggled when he moved the door. 

He glanced over at the Breville smart oven. 

What if he cut off a piece, salted and sugared it, and roasted it for about ten minutes? 

Probably would be delicious. 

He pulled out the cutting board, slid out a knife from the cutting block, and in a second, sliced open the string. The paper fell away from the chunk of pork belly. It had a thick cap of fat, pale pink and ribboned with meat and more fat. The skin side, or the hide, had streaks of grey, though. He frowned. That didn’t look normal. But maybe it was an older pig. A big hog. 

He worked the knife through a corner. Gramps always kept his blades razor sharp. Something about a lesson you learned in the army. Plus, you could never tell with the hooligans down the hill, these days, he’d rasp every time a jalopy backfired. 

He twisted the knob to 425 degrees, tore a piece of parchment paper, and set the hunk of bacon in the middle. Then wrapped up the rest and washed his hands carefully. He sprinkled it with salt, and a hefty dash of the brown sugar. And into the smart oven it went. 

Someone slammed a fist on the door. 

Again. Someone was yelling. 

“What is it?” He yelled back. He hurried back through the living room and into the corridor to the front door.

The noise was deafening.

He yanked it open. 

A girl stood there, long black hair braided away from her ear piercings, tattoos poking up from the yellow scarf around her neck, eyes wide with anxiety. She was Asian, maybe? Or Arabic? 

She was panting hard. “I… think this is yours,” she managed. 

“What?”

“This. Your order.”

She was slightly taller than him, and under that rust-red jacket, he sensed strong arms and a strong frame. She wore military boots. 

“Who are you?”

“From the super… market. You ordered pork belly. Wrong order,” she gulped. “You took the wrong order. Look, see? This is yours.” She stabbed a finger at the label. 

He glanced down. She was right. His name, Kellz — mispelled as always — and three and a half pounds of pork belly. 

“But I already grabbed one. You can keep that,” he said. 

She shook her head furiously. “No, you picked up the wrong order. That was my package.” She shoved the squishy block of wrapped pork into his hands, and then shoved right past him, crashing the door open against him and knocking him against the wall.

“Wha… hey! You can’t come in! Get out!” He yelled, pushing back on the door and pulling his helmet off the rack with a handful of Gramps’ coats. 

“Where is it? Is it in the fridge? You didn’t cook it, did you?”

“Get your shoes off in here!” Kells yelled, staggering back to his feet and throwing the coats on the ground. “No, I mean, get out!”

She stopped and sniffed the air. “Did you turn the light on in your oven?” She said, her voice suddenly level. 

“Why?” 

He sniffed. He could smell the distinct smell of hot, burnt sugar. Darn. 425 degrees was probably too hot. 

“You put it in the oven?” She shrieked, and the blood drained from her face. 

“Just a piece!” He managed. What was her problem? What was it with this whole thing? 

“Get down!” She yelled. 

Something in the kitchen burst like a grenade, and tiles and herringbone wood went blasting out through the glass window. An explosion tore a hole in the corridor wall. 

She threw herself against him and they both crashed backward into the pile of coats. 

Mugs and plates and bits of Breville smart oven clattered across the floor. The air filled with starchy dust from the drywall.

Bits of pink insulation poked out. 

Kell’s ears were stinging, and ringing. And the smoke alarm went off. 

He carefully picked his head up. 

She wasn’t moving.

“Hello?” He said, and then coughed. 

What had caused that? 

He shook her. 

Nothing. 

Was she dead?

Then the power went out. Everything went silent. And dark.

The wind howled, and it now sounded weird and wrong, because it howled across the opening in the kitchen wall, sweeping chill, damp, rainy air into the condo.

The fridge beeped for a second. Then stopped.

“Hey, you! Are you alive?” He tapped her cheek, and shook her shoulder. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere. Maybe the shockwave knocked her out. 

She blinked, and rolled over, dazed. Then clapped her hand to her head, and sat up. “You baked it,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to get here…”

“What are you talking about?” Kells hopped up to a crouch. “What’s wrong with the pork?”

She glared at him. “Next time,” She grated, “Wait for your own order, dumbhead. That… pork was not… normal.”

He snorted. “You could say that again.” He leaned up and looked into the kitchen, through the new hole in the hallway wall. The smart oven was shaped like a blast charge, or a shaped charge grenade. Gramps was going to go insane over this mess.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I only put a small piece in.”

“It’s about to get worse,” She growled. 

“What is?”

“Smell that?”

“What? The burnt sugar?”

“That’s not sugar. Well, what did you put on it?”

“Salt and brown sugar.”

“Yeah… no. You’re smelling the bacon. It’s… something else. And they can smell it too now.”

“Who can?”

She got up gingerly, brushing the bits of drywall off her hair and jacket. Then she sighed. “Well, you’re in it now.”

“What? In what?”

“I wish I had one of those light-flash thingies that could wipe your memory, but that’s only in scifi. So ok…” She knuckled her temples. “What’s the best way to say this...”

“What the hell did I put in my Gramps oven? If it’s not bacon? It looked like pork belly. Or bacon.”

“Oh, it’s bacon. But it’s not from a pig.”

“Then… what?” He stared at her. “What else makes bacon?”

She visibly swallowed, and stared at him. “Trolls.”

He blinked. “What?”

“And now it’s about to get worse. Do you have a flashlight?”

“What do you mean… trolls?”

“Flashlight? And a baseball bat? Or a stick?” She started rummaging through the drawers, shoving her fingers blindly through piles of batteries, lighters, and old warranties. 

“How do you get bacon from a troll? What’s a troll?” He said again.

“It’s almost here!” She yelled. “Got a flashlight?”

“What is almost here?”

“How much of it did you cook?” She snapped.

“What? Just a corner. Just a little bit–”

Something feathery whumped in the kitchen. 

She dropped to the ground. “Shut up… get down.” She hissed. 

“What are you–” He started. He felt like he was going insane.

She reached up and hauled on his sleeve, crashing him to the floor. She clamped a hand over his mouth. Her eyes were white all the way around her iris. She tapped her nose. “They can smell it.” 

She edged up toward the hole in the wall to look in the kitchen. 

Something huge and heavy was shuffling around. Sniffing. 

A nose like that was a long nose. 

The blood in Kell’s heart chilled. “What is that?” He mouthed. 

Feet… no, something with claws, was walking around. Like a dog that needed its nails trimmed. Maybe it was a dog. It sounded about the size of one. And it was bumping into things. 

She reached over for a lamp lying on the floor. “Is that plugged in?” She hissed. 

He nodded. 

She picked it up, and held it like a torch in front of her. “Grab that.”

“What?” 

She pointed at the coat rack. 

Flattened against the wall, he glanced over. One of Gramps’ walking sticks. Oh yeah, that could be a club. 

“Get it.”

Wait… that meant… “You want me to hit the thing?” 

She nodded furiously. 

He swallowed. He’d once thrown a stick at a dog that had chased him on his bike. It had bounced off its head. Made it madder. And it chased him for a half mile. 

He didn’t have anywhere to run in here. 

He grabbed it, choking it like a baseball bat so that his knuckles went white. “What is it?” He hissed.

“Gargoyle,” she growled.

His ears felt like they needed to reboot. “What?”

And then the power came back on. 

The lights went on overhead. Things around the house beeped. The microwave hummed for a second. Amazing how that thing still worked.

The thing in the kitchen scrabbled for a second, and froze. 

Then a flutter of feathers. 

The girl leapt up and stared through the hole. “Now!” She yelled. 

He scrambled up. Now what? 

“Don’t take your eyes off it!” She barked, her eyes wide and white and hard.

What was she looking at? What did a gargoyle look like?

She waved at him, stabbing with feverish fingers, to go round the hallway. “Make it go away with that,” she said, without turning to look at him. “Threaten it.”

He gulped. 

This was utterly… head-numbingly… nuts. Troll bacon? Blew up the kitchen. Now a gargoyle? And this girl? 

He hurried around the corner and into the kitchen. The hanging light over the stove was miraculously intact, swaying back and forth a little. And sitting on the table, against the blown out kitchen window, was an owl. A huge, gray owl with barred feathers, black eyes, and yellow ringed pupils. It was positively shaggy, and the size of a dog.

“That’s… not a gargoyle.” He said.

“When the light’s on, it isn’t,” She snapped. 

“Hey!” He barked, smacking the wall with the cane. “Get out of here!”

It glanced up at the light with that weird, jerky motion owls have. It glanced at him, then her ,and then rotated its head backwards to look out the window again. 

“Make it go!” She yelled. 

His gut was knotted tight. What if it flew at him? He’d seen these things sweep up mice off the forest floor on National Geographic, like a train with talons hit them. Talons right through their lungs. Bye bye mouse.

It swiveled and looked back at him. Then its head hunched. 

He knew that look. The wings were about to pop out. It leaned forward at him.

And then the power flickered. 

For just a second. 

And that’s when he saw…

A creature about the same size, but with a body of flint and granite, chipped and old, like a hungry demon from a church corner. Wings like a bat, claws like a cat, little horned head, black eyes with yellow irids. 

His gut went cold as ice. Every bone froze stiff in his limbs. 

Then the light flicked back on. 

It was a gray owl again. 

Kells heard a hoarse screaming and felt his arms and legs waving and whacking and kicking everything like a madman, thrashing the door and floor and ramming the steel head against the blunt hollow metal of the fridge door. Panic attack. Everything goes. No way it can get through him and to the girl. Be crazier than a crazed bear. Nothing in nature attacks something insane. 

Be a worse demon. 

Its owly eyes widened. Then it launched itself straight backwards through the hole in the kitchen wall, spread its wings, caught a draft backward over the balcony, and faded back into the night. 

A hand patted him on the shoulder, and pushed the cane down from his attack position. 

Kells came back to his body. He realized he was still trembling everywhere, his fingers sore from being clamped round the wood shaft. 

She chuckled and shook her head, leaning on the door post. “Well, now you’re in.”

“In?” He managed. Swallowed, and cleared his throat. “In what?”

“You have to keep the secret now. Like me.”

“Will you just tell me the hell about all this stupid bacon idiot stuff?” He yelled. “What’s going on?” 

She opened the fridge, reached in, and hefted the parcel of… pork belly? Troll bacon? Kells didn’t know what to think.

She sighed a huge sigh. “This isn’t the pork belly you ordered. They put up mine early. I was supposed to get this. It should never have been on top of the counter. They slipped yours in the covert shelf by accident, and put mine up on top.”

“And it’s from–”

“A troll. Yes.”
“I’ve never seen… trolls don’t exist.”

She pointed at the hole. “And neither do gargoyles.” 

He fell silent. “What is a troll?”

“It’s like a mini cow. We raise them, and they make great stir fry. You can cook it just like pork belly… except you have to keep the light on in the oven. In the dark, they turn into a grenade.”

He sat down on the edge of the chair. “I… I don’t believe this.”

She nodded. “Yeah, me too. Up till a year ago, I didn’t know anything about this. I work at the nursery down the road. The plant one, not the people one. I got to work too early, and saw the trolls apparating in the mulch piles. Like little cows. Very fat, little gray cows.”

“Mulch?”

“Yeah, who’da thunk?” She chuckled. “Turns out trolls are how we get mulch.”

“Wha…”

“Yeah. Trolls chew through the gunk and garbage, create that heat, and make it… mulchy. That’s why they’re delicious.” 

“They are?”

“Yep.” She folded the paper tightly around the block so that nothing was visible. “There’s a black market for troll bacon. It’s got a really sweet flavor. Much better than pigs. Gargoyles love it.”

“Oh… so they smell it when you cook it?”

She headed out of the kitchen toward the hallway. “Yeah, that’s why you have to smoke it, or slow cook it, or seal it up. After it’s cooked, not a problem. Gargoyle gave me this,” and she pulled up sleeve to show a long, ribbony scar under a sweep of colored tattoos. 

“So what about  me now?”

She turned around fiercely. “You stumbled into something big. So you need to shut up, keep a secret. And from now on, I’ll be watching you.”

“You will?”

She nodded. “I have my rounds.”

“Wait, what if I want in?”

She paused. “In?”

“Yeah, maybe I can help. You have to give me something. I mean,” he waved his hand at the kitchen. His heart sank all over again. Gramps was going to kill him. 

She turned in the doorway. “I’ll think about it. You were pretty brave going straight at thing. Maybe you’ll make a good Trollantis yet.” She tossed him the parcel of actual pork belly.

He caught it. 

She was gone. 

He stared around at the chaos of the condo. How the hell was he going to explain this? 

“Hey!” He yelled.

Her face appeared in the hole in the kitchen wall. 

“How do I explain this?” He waved at everything. 

She pointed at the smart oven. “Got a warranty on that thing? Say it had a bad accident in the storm. And don’t forget. I know where you live. Shhh…” She pressed her finger to her mouth. Then she disappeared.   

He slid down against the wall, his head reeling. This world today was not the same world as yesterday. It had trolls and gargoyles. Real life stuff. And there was no way dad was letting him come back to stay at Gramps again. Not after this. He’d have to trust to high hell that he could explain it away. His account was all of thirty-four dollars and six cents. Wouldn’t even scratch replacing that backsplash. 

“And happy Halloween,” she called. 

“I’m so dead,” he groaned. 

Then he thought for a second. He got up, checked in the smart oven. 

Plastered against the back was a piece of the bacon. That troll bacon.

It was caramelized. Crispy. Kinda burned. He scraped off a piece with his nail, and stared at it. Looked like normal pork crackling. He poked at it with his tongue. 

It was… delicious.