The Trolls of Blood Bridge

Jan was laying down on her couch at home with her laptop resting on her abs. She sighed as she scanned the screen, attempting to decide which pictures she wanted to use for her next nature article. The deadline was on Tuesday, and it was already almost ten-o-clock on Saturday morning. She yawned lazily and blinked a few times to clear her blurry vision. After adjusting for what must have been the millionth time since three that morning, she began to narrow her already slim amount of pictures to choose from a bit more. The first runner up was a very neatly captured yellow polka-dotted blue-winged butterfly on a tree stump. She smiled and, as she began to giggle, her laptop rocked back and forth on her belly. She remembered taking the picture as if it had been yesterday. In fact, it had been quite a few years back when she was on a nature picture hunt. She remembered needing to find several of the local wildlife at, or on top of, rather specific places of interest inside the local wood and prove that she found them via photo. After she had collected her share, they had all been judged to see who would win the prize for best photo. Her blue-winged wonder won her first place.

The second runner up was a sparrow dive bombing in the air. A gorgeous sunset, complete with a golden sun and yellow and orange striped light refractions, was behind it and to the left. To the right were dark thunderheads and a squall that had taken place within it. Grains of wheat littered the ground below it and stretched almost to the zenith the sun was about to touch. It had been complete chance, and she hadn't been trying to capture it at all. She remembered it took place last summer and she was trying to capture the clouds and the visual of the outpouring of their overflowing bladders instead. Having not added any stills to her album in a while, she decided the storm clouds were perfect the way they reflected the orange sunset to the left of them over the plains. The sparrow entered the frame at the last second, and she knew when she saw the kamikaze flier after it registered on her display that it was definitely a keeper. She scrolled down the pictures when her phone on the coffee table to her left rang and vibrated suddenly on the thick glass. She grumbled as she picked her computer up and off from her chest, depositing it on the table with the sound of metal on glass. She picked her phone up, flipped it open without looking at the number, and held it to her ear.

"Yeah, what's up?"

A male voice with a light British accent answered her back. "Hey, you wanna go with me to the park? Heard they got a lot of great photo ops for clicky people like you."

"Tom!" she chirped into the phone in a much too high and excited pitch to even pretend to hide her glee. She absolutely loved how he said "park", as it came out like "pahrk".

"Hey Jan! You sound excited to hear from me." He didn't pretend that he didn't hear the sudden crack in her voice when she said his name. She took her hand away from her smiling mouth and giggled as she stood up and moved the flip phone into her other one. She cleared her throat, still all smiles, and started to explain herself.

"Well...umm...you knowz nothings much. But...duh...I wanna go wiz you!" She bit her lip to try to ground herself more, because she was feeling more and more like a butterfly. Or...were those just the ones she felt in her stomach lifting her up? She didn't know - didn't care either. She knew a date with Tom would change everything.

"Okay! I'll be over in a half hour...if that's okay with-"

He didn't even have time to finish his sentence before she blurted into her phone the reply. "That sounds awesome!! Can't wait to seez you! Toodles!!"

Tom laughed and they said their goodbyes, in Jan's case for a second time. After she hung up, she wondered if he had changed at all since that nature picture hunt all those years ago. She almost forgot that was where they met.

(+++---+++)

Jan and Tom had walked for hours in the dark wood. Jan was a far cry from being happy. Aside from getting lost and losing both map and compass alike, Tom had been a competent man. She steamed inside her head.

'I can't believe that effing idiot,' she thought as she stewed over their present reality. 'How the fuck is it possible to be that fucking stupid?'

Tom hadn't merely lost the rather important tools, but managed to drop them when he failed to snap a picture of a certain oak tree and tripped over his own feet. They fell down a ravine and then a hole, the weight of the compass forcing the map down it. She had blew up at him, and didn't regret it at all. It wasn't long before they came across a large stream and gazed in both wonder and confusion as they looked up its bank. At least it stopped her mind from thinking of torturing him nonstop as it had for the past hour. A brown or red stained bridge, easily wide enough to be as a tractor trailer is long, was seemingly dropped from another world over the calming running water. Jan shivered as she thought of turning and running away.

'Dum...what the hell is that doing here?' she thought to herself. She went to open her mouth but realized, with a rather shocked expression, that her supposed guardian had already started towards the accursed thing at an almost full out sprint!

"Tommy, what the hell are y-"

"This is amazing!", he shouted back to her, cutting her off in the process.

She had broken off into a trot after him in order to keep up, stumbling over loose rocks on the path in front of them. Once she recovered, she stopped, realizing he was running at too fast a pace for her to catch up to. She looked around nervously, noting that the sun was high in the sky behind them. Despite easing her comfort in one area, it seemed to grow colder by the moment and the light from the sun didn't seem to brighten her mood. That wasn't all. It wasn't technically lighting up the forest either. Curiously, it instead shone on the bridge alone, as if acting as a spotlight. This fact seemed to amplify a sense of uneasy dread that cried out from her innermost self.

"This is such a beaute! Nevah in me life would I haz thought somethin' like this coulda ben built!"

She shook her head and stared at the presently disturbed man who had once been very hot Thomas Carve. And rather stupid and clumsy Thomas Carve, as fate would have it. She wondered what had suddenly took possession of him as to make his sudden bout of insanity possible. They had just stumbled across a bridge in the middle of bum-fucking nowhere and it was plain that this thing was not natural. She paused her thoughts to think for a second, even though the rational part of her mind had already fully accepted that this was part of the Fey world because -

'Duh! It's just pure logic!'

That meant to her irrational part that she was cuckoo, since the Fey world didn't exist because -

'duh, dummy! - that shit ain't real, girl!'

Her rational brain kicked in again, saying, 'No, it's completely rational that fairies exist, unicorns dance with Grays riding them and leprechauns give gold to everyone they meet. Hip hip...cheerio! Let's all find th' pot o' gold!'

Yep, it was now official. She had bought a one-way ticket to Carrie's cuckoo car in Kansas with Dorothy. She shook her head to clear the parts of it she could and sidestepped a boulder the size of a backpack littered with more of the green moss. When she could think again, she severely doubted the bridge was even of human construction for some latent sense of awareness. But her over stressed rational part kicked in once again.

'It totally makes sense! I mean, why else would a bridge large enough for at least two Tiger Tanks to be rolling down it side by side be in the middle of nowhere?'

Her irrational brain countered, 'Umm...you do realize that...uh...you're kinda really screwed up right now, right? I'm supposed to be the irrational one here, not you.'

"Shut up, shut up, shud up, shudda uppy, shuddy uppity! Gah!" She was going nuts now, as she screamed the last part. An image of faeries was conjured in her mind with life-like realness at the realization that parts of her brain had criss-crossed themselves wrong. Not cute ones with wings and wands, mind you, but of yard high grey and green lanky beings composed of leaves, twigs and pebbles that were covered with the same green moss that draped over the rocks and wrapped around and clung in blotches to the bark of the surrounding trees. They were running about, not making a sound, as they lept from tree to tree and stirred up leaves as they dropped to the ground. She mentally saw, or more hopefully imagined, that they were stalking a man and a woman in the forest as they were walking towards a very large bridge painted with bloo-. She lost it then and snapped.

She screeched in a whiny and very high-pitched voice at Tom, "What in the fucking world are you fucking doing?!"

She stopped suddenly on the makeshift path, yet again, that had been lain down leading up to the bridge. Her legs were now numb and refused to go any further. Before he could answer, she straightened her back as chills wriggled their way up and down her spine and her hairs rose straight on her skin. He had taken out his camera in a single swift motion and began to photograph the damn thing!! Well, he was in even worse shape than she was, she admitted to both parts of her brain. 'Yep, he's cuckoo alright,' they said in unison, finally untangling enough for her to think through her mental fog. An image of a cuckoo clock and the bird inside it going nuts ran through her head as she put her face in her hands and shook it to comfort herself, and to take pity.

'How in the world did that bridge even get here in the first place,' she questioned again, logically this time, as she got the urge to run back into the woods towards the path they had so long strayed from.

"We'll be rich...yesiree! Rich and with all that publicity weez always benz talkin' za bout! Yesireedeebob, yessir!!"

Her mouth opened and shut like a child gumming on the side of a table. This wasn't normal, no. In fact, this couldn't be real. A bridge...in the middle of nowhere? That doesn't happen. Not ever. Only in dreams or in the...Fey world. She gulped and noped her way towards him, walking like a weird and malnourished puppet ordered about by a drunken puppeteer. She really didn't want to be alone right now, and the way he was acting made her want to be with him to make sure he didn't lose it completely and start asking to be in the photos. Although, she thought with hesitancy, that didn't sound like a bad idea. At least they'd have confirmation that it wasn't an illusion of some type. She looked at it again, shivering anew. She closed her eyes and shook her head, clearing her vision before she cautiously opened her right eye first, her left lagging behind by a couple of milliseconds. Nope, not an illusion.

'What could you even mistake that thing for, anyway?' her rational part thought away. She resolved herself to fix him good when she had the chance, and strolled up with suddenly renewed will towards the crazed lunatic who was already beginning to make his way almost a quarter the length across the red-painted bridge. She reached him as his camera flashed and he took another picture of it.

"Hey Tom," she said as she tapped him on his right shoulder. He turned around with a goofy smile glued to his face. She slapped it with glee. He recoiled from the shock and then looked at her, his camera and then his surroundings.

"I...I'm sorry. I don't know what..."

Jan smiled and put her hands to his neck. "It's okay. Don't be sorry." She looked him in the eyes as she fake throttled the life out of him and then talked in a more serious tone. "Just never, ever, do that again." She made sure to put a major emphasis on the word 'ever'.

He didn't say anything, but he nodded in response to her words and eyes, which were burning into his, and then flashed her a weak smile. He rubbed his head and then looked down. He frowned at something he had inspected with his gaze.

"What's that?" he inquired as he moved to her left and bent down. Jan looked at him quizically but followed him down on her knees. On the bridge there were what appeared to be a row of three dents in the red wood. They were each larger than two of her fingers combined in diameter, and she shook her head in puzzlement.

"I don't know. Wait...look!" She grabbed his shoulder and shook it. It wasn't long before he followed her gaze. Similar holes were all over the bridge. It was littered with dents and scrapes. Even parts of the yard high walls on the sides had some. Wait, walls? There hadn't been any walls on the bridge a few seconds ago? Jan cocked her head at a curious mark that caught her attention off to the left of her. She touched it, and quickly wished she hadn't. Her fingers were red from the dents, and now her entire hand was red from the red paint of the bridge. Only thing was...that wasn't paint.

Tom had continued on down the bridge and was now photographing the markings. Jan shivered as if worms were squiggling up and down her back as she ran to catch up to Tom to tell him what she had discovered. She couldn't yell, as she found it impossible to speak now. In fact she couldn't even think. All she heard was, 'That is blood. That's not fake. That's actually really blood. Oh my gawd, oh my gawd! Oh...my...GAWD!!' She swore her vision was shaking from intense pressure as the realization overtook her. That was when another realization seized her and physically shook her body violently, causing her stress headache to spread.

'That's why you haven't seen or heard any animals since walking here! Their blood was used for painting this bridge. Isn't it wonderful!' Needless to say, that train of chaos left her catatonic when it came to all speech and thought. She lumbered forward, oblivious to Tom, as a zombie. They stopped walking when they were about halfway across. Tom was behind her and he paused as he analyzed one specific marking.

"Hey, this one's from a spear! What the bloody hell happened here?"

Something really didn't feel right to Jan anymore and she couldn't help but feel like she was about to be run over by a car, even though she was currently about a hundred miles from one. The sensation was the same though, so she didn't care. Danger was danger. She managed to break her trance and blurted out her innermost thoughts of the situation.

"Hey Tom I need to te-," she turned to look around and she felt as if she was struck by lightning all of a sudden. Except, instead of being fried, she simply turned pale. She did start up curious twitchy movements all over her body though. She had turned around, and saw Thomas to her right about ten yards diagnol. But that wasn't all she saw. Large figures had, quite literally, come from the surrounding woodwork and had followed them onto the bridge. They were tall...at least three times as large as Tom but not quite five times. That wasn't the scary part. They were as green and brown as the surrounding foliage, in fact they seemed to be composed of the surrounding forest. Twigs and rocks and moss and leaves amongst other forest decorations seemed to cling, no...makeup the collosals before the duo.

And their heads! Good god, their heads!! They were like lumpy green and brown mashed potatoes lazily plopped on top of their immense rocky and mud-stained bodies. Some were crescent shaped, others were more oval-shaped but horizontal and not vertical. Yet, others were strangely multi-headed, but flat. Like pancake flat but almost even more two-dimensional, if that was possible. Their whole appearance was just off, and off-putting. And their eyes! It was tough to see them, but they were there. There! She spotted them on one of the creatures with the plate-like horizontal heads. Lumps of black stone they were! Only lumps of stone, set in little carved spaces for sockets! And how quiet they were! The breeze was louder than them, and there wasn't one! Tomas still hadn't noticed the things, but had drifted closer to Jan. He looked up suddenly and saw her pale as a sheet. He began running towards her, closing the distance between them.

"Jan! Jan, what is it? What is-"

Jan pointed at the eight - no, nine! - monstrosities about thirty yards away from him, as he presently stood about three yards ahead of her and to the right. They stood perfectly still, just like living forest statues. So still were they under the tall spruce's around them that she made sure to blink in order to check whether or not her vision was true. It was, and out of the corner of her eye - for she dared not look away from them - she saw Tomas gulp down air and shakily turn around. Tom's face couldn't have been duplicated, not even in Hollywood at that moment. His jaw slackened and he fell into mumblings Jan couldn't quite make out. His camera fell from his limp hand, striking the forest paint on the wood. It shattered into various sized fragments of intricate mechanical parts, becoming useless for any details of the day's events.

"Good lord! What are they?!" He backed up now, touching her right shoulder with his left.

"I don't know," Jan stammered as she stood stupified at the skulking things at the opposite end of the bridge. "Trolls," she found herself muttering under her breath as her heart began to beat inconsistently in her chest. That was when they saw the creepiest part they had seen to date. Nothing even came close on the creep scale as when the things smiled at them. Their heads seemed to bend horizontally in half and a black slit appeared. Various sized jagged rocks became visible, reminding the couple of demon-possessed jack-o'-lanterns carved from stone. They both got that eerie feeling of being prey.

"Come on let's go," Tomas grunted harshly as he turned around to his left, grabbing her right shoulder with his hands in the process. He forcefully shoved her as he began to prance away from the things that were menacingly staring at them, still unmoving besides their open maws, and she didn't have any resistance as he did so. They began a nervous trot, as they were not quite capable of sprinting for fear of leaving either one or the other, but also because it felt like they were already putting in the effort to sprint a ten yard dash. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't seem to get a break from the air that behaved more like a thick sludge. It seemed to prevent them from using the full range of motion from their muscles, as if the two were trying to run under water. The feeling kept shifting in Jan's fear-soaked mind. One second the air behaved as sludge, the next it was like liquid. Jan risked a backwards glance, and let out an ear-piercing scream that reverberated throughout all of the forest for many hundreds or even tens of thousands of feet around them.

The giant things were stepping forward onto the bridge! In only a couple lumbering and clumsy strides they had already made it over ten feet! Thomas was thrown off balance from her high-pitched and piercing scream, but he recovered quickly. He, too, risked a glance over his left shoulder. They both saw the giants more than a quarter of the way across the bridge. They also noticed that they were brandishing stone pitch forks, spears and axes now. Jan and Thomas screamed as if they had been stung by a vast horde of honey bees, whom after giving their final breaths started coating the runners with thick elastic layers of honey. Still they trudged on through the air as it thickened, as if it really was extra thick honey. Jan heard a thud in the wood behind her, and didn't care to look. It sounded like something was thrown and had been embedded in the wood of the bridge. She continued noping her way across to the other side of the bridge and realized they had a serious problem. This was the only way back to the side they needed to go down to get to their cars. They couldn't reach it from the side they would be on, as it opened up and away from the other side to the lake.

She glanced to her right and saw something big and bulky, a form now not unfamiliar to her, rise out from the stream. Another of the trolls had manifested out from it. It stood up to its full height, with water streaming down its body as miniature waterfalls. Each one crisscrossed and bisected each other at just about every angle and curve imaginable, and that was the only sound it made. Just the natural sound of water over rocks. That was all.

The scared and dazed duo continued to make their way across the blood-soaked bridge as they heard multiple thuds behind them, followed shortly after by ripping and splintering sounds as multiple items were ripped out of the bridge by their prospective owners. It wasn't long before they heard a sound that was an altogether different pitch from the forks and the occasional spear burying into the wood. It was the sound of something grinding against stone. It was unmistakeable as to what it was, though it sounded slightly different from what they usually sounded like. It was an axe. Jan was able to gain more control over her bodily functions, and used the opportunity to scream at as high a pitch as she could possibly reach. Tomas cringed at the sound and slowed down in reflex. That was all the opportunity the lumbering horrors needed. A second later, Tomas screamed and intertwined a bass tone to her soprano. This wasn't out of horror though, and wasn't so much a scream as much as it was him expelling all the air his lungs had. He suddenly seized up and fell to the ground after, as something impaled through his chest. He saw a gush of his own blood spray out and put on another coat of paint on the red bridge right before he hit it. Laying down on his left side he stared down at the spear that impaled him in silent horror, his turn for his mouth to open and shut like a fish.

Jan hadn't noticed, partly because of her screaming, and kept running to the other side. A spear was flung over her head, and she freaked even more so, piss staining her pink undies and pants as she lost bladder control, screamed and ran across all the way to the other side. She turned around to stare back across the bridge and put her hands to her mouth in a useless attempt to stifle her screaming. Her eyes bulged out of her head as she saw Thomas on the ground, impaled by the spear as the creatures were upon him. She saw the closest one raise a freakishly large axe in its right hand up above its head. She lost all sanity as she saw it fall down and cleave her Thomas in two. His face was contorting in pain and confusion, anger having no room or use at this point. A second later his eyes spasmed, simple reflex twitches of a dead person's brain undergoing a brutal and fatal final thought process. The message is universal of course. Everyone always thinks 'Oh shit, I'm actually fucking dying."

That was when something hit her hard, quite literally. The next thing she knew, she was flying backwards into the forest. She was able to make out the arm of the other troll that had risen from the water with a quick glance. She landed on her back and realized that it was responsible for knocking her prone. She knew she only had a few seconds before it would reach her. She also knew she would need minutes to regain her strength. She wheezed to reinforce her belief, but the thing didn't go towards her. Instead, it stayed at the edge of the woods, just at the tree line. She blacked out as she felt a rush of pain as she drew in a deep breath. Unknown to her, she had broken at least one of her ribs, possibly two or three in total.

She lay sprawled out on her back until the last rays of the sun went down, which was when she was finally able to recover from unconsciousness and move once again. All of the creatures stood as if they were stone statues instead of living things, joining the other one as they stared with uncaring eyes. Eyes made of coal as black as the night and as dead and empty as anything she had ever seen, as much so as the physical personification of the terms themselves. She tore off into the woods in a wild not-quite sprint, mindless and clueless as to her destination. She did know one thing though. She wasn't going to make it out of there unless she crossed that bridge.

The trolls began to move around again as twilight gave way to night. The one that had cleaved Thomas in half grabbed both of his halves. His blood was pretty much gone, but that didn't stop it from hauling him over to another part of the bridge and depositing him there. It then began its monotonous task of hacking him up to itty bits with its axe. When his body was just a gooey mushy pile, it began scooping it up and plopping it all over the bridge. Bright red spots stood out on it, filling up most of the areas where the dents, holes and gouges littered it. It seemed new now, an almost unblemished red-painted bridge in the middle of the forest. The trolls of Blood Bridge had claimed yet another victim, and they mindlessly droned onwards in a hasty attempt to add a second one to it. They hoped it would be more fresh than the last had. The bridge did not like to be deprived of a meal, after all.