Chapter 17. Schmatzenbladder and the Canine Menace
Schmatzenbladder was the first to come face to face with some of the more horrible aspects of this new reality. At first, he walked down a wide avenue, but as he looked upon the sleeping houses, he began to feel horribly exposed. He was the first of the trolls to discover the pleasures of alleys. When he saw one opening up off the street, he ducked into it, and immediately felt better. He didn’t know what fences were, but he could certainly see them rising on either side of him, much like the comforting walls of a well-ordered cave. Once there, he relaxed his shoulders and slowed his pace.
With his newfound sense of safety, his mind turned to more basic matters. He sniffed the night air for something that might interest his gurgling belly. There was quite a mélange of odors in this new world. The alley harbored garbage cans every 30 or 40 yards, each of which held some rank, interesting smell. He would remember those, he thought, for later. Those garbage cans held great promise, but they didn’t hold what he was looking for now. Right now, some fresh meat would suit just fine.
Another few yards down the alley, a waft of breeze brought with it just what he was searching for: the smell of some sort of creature. Some sort of dinner. He stopped and got a nose full of the smell: it was coming from still further ahead.
The odor led him halfway down the long alley. There, he found a yard with a wooden fence that was so high that even he, no small troll, couldn’t see over it. His nose, however, was acute. He knew that the creature was there. Several creatures, in fact. He rested his hand against the fence and took a deep, quiet inhalation. He picked up four, then five, then six distinct odors: small animals, he now knew, small and furry. Warm-blooded, more like mastodons than dinosaur fish. He could hear their quick, light breath as they inhaled and exhaled in their easy, contented sleep. Any one of them, surely, wouldn’t be enough to fill a troll’s belly, but he was betting that the six of them together might make a nice appetizer.
How to get to them? He tested the strength of the fence with his hand. It bent against his weight, but only slightly. He was sure he could put his muscle to it and push it over, but should he? Probably, that would lead the little animals to panic. If he scared them, he might lose them. They were likely to be faster than he was. He took a few quiet steps further down the fence line, his fingers slightly touching each wooden panel as he went by it. These wooden panels were interesting. Each slat of the fence was like a club, really, that had been shaved down on two sides, and then connected with other clubs. This was a use for clubs that he hadn’t considered: you could entrap animals with them. Keep them alive and penned up, ready for one’s dining pleasure. He’d have to remember that. Explain it to the others.
Then he saw it. One of the slats was broken along the bottom fence-line. The missing piece left a nose-sized hole. Schmatzenbladder peered into the dark around him, and, thinking himself alone, stealthily lowered himself to his knees, and put his nose right near that hole.
Oh, yes. The smell was intoxicating. Uninterrupted by the fence itself, particles of scent rose and swirled about the yard. They were deep smells, and rank ones. They made his mouth water. He could smell the breath of the little creatures, breath that was soured with their recent meal. Further odors came from deep within their fur. There were the bright, tangy scents of their pee, and the dark and humid scents of their poop. It was glorious. This first smell of fresh food since he had wakened…how many hours ago now?...made him weak in the knees. His heart raced. He swallowed down the juices that flowed into his mouth. Slowly and quietly, so as not to awaken his dinner, he exhaled, and breathed in those scents once again.
What Schmatzenbladder couldn’t know, and what I feel dutybound to tell the reader, is that the troll had homed in on perhaps the best guarded, most sensitive installation in town. It was Victoria Moon King’s Poodle Emporium, a kennel of sorts that housed only poodles of pure breeding. Pets could stay overnight while their families were away, or come for an afternoon of combing and grooming, replete with hair-ribbons and fingernail painting. It was open to the public, were any member of the public to own a poodle of sufficient heritage, which none did. Victoria Moon King had found that only her own six poodles were of suitable parentage to live in her Poodle Emporium. The emporium was a summer home for doggies, with lace curtains and air conditioning and indoor-outdoor carpeting and six small upholstered couches, one per poodle, upon which the dogs could put up their feet at the end of a trying day.
The poodles enjoyed their Emporium. They liked stretching out next to their poodle-sized pool. They regaled in stalking the perimeter of their fenced compound, keeping the neighbors in line with their sharp voices. Now, they slept the sleep of the truly pampered, each with their painted toenails tucked daintily into the corner of a poodle-sized davenport.
Had Schmatzenbladder known this, perhaps he would have passed by that one yard. Surely it wasn’t worth the trouble that it would cause him. But Schmatzenbladder was a troll. His stomach spoke before his brain, and more loudly. When he smelled something that might be dinner, it short-circuited any thoughts of caution.
Unfortunately for Schmatzenbladder, there on his knees with his nose to the ground and his butt up in the air, he wasn’t the only one interested in the smells emanating from the Poodle Emporium. Also intoxicated by the smells was Bomber, a local Rottweiler mix who had an erotic interest in the dogs behind this fence. He was sure that he could make a fine breed of puppy with one of the poodles who lived there. Any one of them. Or possibly all of them. This was an interest that, in fact, had spawned the tall, tall fence itself: in prior months, Bomber had regularly visited these poodles. In the dark of night, he had more than once jumped over the then-shorter fence and made his intentions known.
Victoria Moon King, of course, was horrified by such a prospect, given that Bomber was on the order of seventeen times larger than her precious poodles, and also of course just a dog of ill breeding.
Bomber, however, on this night had been distracted from the charms of poodle scent by a new scent. And, he noticed, the owner of the new scent was bent over in a somewhat delicate position. A position that exposed a part of the anatomy that, truth be told, no creature wants to be visited by anything either as wet or as cold as a healthy Rottweiler’s nose.
In some distant part of his brain, Bomber knew this. But Bomber’s instincts were more keen than any civilizing voice within him could shout down. This new creature, with its host of tantalizing scents, was too much for Bomber, and he knew just how to satisfy those instincts.
Schmatzenbladder, of course, couldn’t know what it was that was sniffing at his nether regions, but the effect of that cold nose was immediate. Schmatzenbladder grunted in surprise even as he jerked forward in a motion of panic. In his wake, he left a trollsized hole in the fence surrounding Victoria Moon King’s Poodle Emporium.
What happened next was too much for Schmatzenbladder, with his slow-witted brain, to fathom. Suddenly, he was halfway through the fence that held the small animals. Immediately upon his entry, a battery of flood lights near the house turned on. Just as immediately, the animals were roused from their sleep, and were animated into a raucous bouncing chorus of yelps and yips and yaps and the skittering of claws upon the boards of their kennel. The six small creatures surrounded him, yipping and barking and baring their small sharp teeth. Schmatzenbladder had an urge toward retreat, but then again there was some unknown creature behind him, a creature with a large snout and an unknown agenda. He couldn’t very well back up, with who knew what destiny awaiting him there. If he was going to be eaten, he didn’t want to lose his most tender parts first. Schmatzenbladder didn’t want to move forward, and he didn’t want to move backward. He was immobilized by his confusion and fear.
Unbeknownst to Schmatzenbladder, with the advent of the lights also came the ringing of an alarm deep in the Mayor’s house. Upon hearing the alarm, Victoria Moon King went to the sliding glass door and pulled aside the drapes to see what was troubling her babies.
Victoria Moon King saw the entire tableau laid out in front of her in sharp relief. It was a scene of mayhem. In her shocked forebrain, Victoria Moon King saw everything as if it were caught in mid-motion. There were her dogs: Tippy and Tuppy, Fluffy and Froofie, and Buffy and Boopsie, each caught in mid-yap. There was the Emporium, laid out perfectly according to the plans that she had delivered to the architect as soon as her husband had won the mayoral race. Except now the perfect layout was marred by a huge hole in the fence. And poking halfway through that hole was one of those…one of those…those beasts. Those beasts that came from.... But for the third time that day, Victoria Moon King screamed and passed out, pulling down the drapes that she still clutched in her hands.
Mayor King, not unused to his wife’s little screams, spoke from the next room, where he was reading the paper. “Yes, dear? What is it now?” In answer, of course, he heard only the sound of the drapes being pulled from their rod, and his wife crumpling to the floor. This was something else that Mayor King was used to, but the muffled sounds of her fainting incited more panic within him than did her screams. She always returned to consciousness in a foul mood, and with the notion that Mayor King had failed her again in some way that he couldn’t fathom.
He appeared in the room with his newspaper in hand, a finger keeping his page. He saw his wife on the floor, and heard the dogs yipping and yapping and yiping in the back yard. This, too, was not atypical; local boys loved to hang out in the alley and torture his wife’s helpless dogs with their taunts.
Mayor King, being the man of action that he was, stepped over the body of his wife and opened the sliding door. “Get away, you juvenile brigands!” he shouted. “You shameless desperados!” This was intended to tell those kids what for, of course, but its larger purpose was to placate Victoria Moon King, were she to wake up. Better to be taking belated action than none at all.
But Mayor King’s words were heard by no one. In fact, all he saw was an empty back yard with a section of fence missing. Schmatzenbladder was gone. From his position halfway through the fence, he had frozen as the bank of lights had come on, but he wasn’t about to stick around after Victoria Moon King’s scream. He had never experienced such a thing. He didn’t know what the light was, but in his imagination it was not unlike the eye of a huge creature opening upon the night. A creature, say, such as the Dark Water Horror. The scream—the piercing cry of a creature about to descend upon its prey?—was a catalyst that solidified fear into action. He stood straight up, further splintering the fence. He ducked back down the alley, followed by the poodles, which yapped and jumped about his feet like a cloud of pesky mosquitoes.
Bomber, proud of his reputation as the largest dog on the block, found himself too faint-hearted to deal with Schmatzenbladder, once the troll stood and towered above him. He backed away with his shoulders hunched and his bobbed tail tucked as far as possible between his legs.
Schmatzenbladder scooted away from the scene of the crime as quietly as he could. He stuck to the shadows, tiptoeing with exaggerated steps. But there was no quietude in an alley with Tippy and Tuppy and Fluffy and Froofy and Buffy and Boopsie in it, growling and yapping their displeasure and righteousness. Looking at the little buggers now, Schmatzenbladder couldn’t believe that he had once found their odor to be appetizing. They were nasty little creatures, all mouth and no brains. Give him a fish any day: fish, at least, remained quiet and stoic as you ate them.
Though he could see that the poodles were creatures of very little brain, he nevertheless tried to reason with them. First, he glared at them, as he had seen Brumvack do to quiet his cavemates. If that had any effect at all, it was only to animate them further. Next, he implored them (still padding down the alley as fast as possible) with a finger to his lips, and as quiet a “shhh” sound as he could make. This, too, didn’t show any signs of quelling their behavior. Schmatzenbladder stole a look behind him to see what might be following. Nothing yet, thankfully, but the yapping of the dogs was sure to alert the mighty huntress to their location.
Having failed at diplomacy with the poodles, Schmatzenbladder decided to take stronger measures. On his next step forward, he tried to step on one of the dogs with his large foot. The poodle skipped away, heedless. He tried to stomp another, as if it were a little bug, which as far as he was concerned wasn’t far from the truth. But it got away too. The little blighters were fast on their feet, Schmatzenbladder had to give them that. He stomped a third time, but again the poodle squirted out from under his foot, and took a bite at his ankle.
Schmatzenbladder took a different tactic: he swooped his long arm down to catch a poodle. This was easier, because rather than trying to escape his grasping hand, the dogs leapt forward and took a nip at his fingers. Schmatzenbladder missed his grab, but nonetheless came back with a poodle firmly affixed to his forefinger. He tried to shake it loose, but the poodle hung on for dear life. Finally, he grabbed the scruff of its neck with his other hand. This improved nothing at all, because while the poodle was biting him, at least it was relatively quiet. Now, Schmatzenbladder found himself with a yapping, squirming poodle in his hand. His first impulse was to throw it, but he sensed that it was a boomerang poodle: wherever he threw it, it was likely to come back.
He pondered for another moment how to get rid of the poodle, and how to quiet it. But he had little time to think, because unexpectedly a yellow stream of liquid arced from the fuzzy creature, spilling down Schmatzenbladder’s front. Had he stopped to think about it, he would have considered that it was not that big of deal to have a dog peeing on him. But he didn’t stop to think. Rather, with this new sensation of warm liquid guttering down his front, he panicked. He tossed the creature in his mouth and swallowed it whole.
The poodle did not go down easily. Its coarse, dry fur stuck in his throat, threatening to keep the poodle from going down. That would be a pathetic end to a troll, wouldn’t it? Choked to death on a meal smaller even than a mudfish. On the other hand, mudfish at least slithered into one’s gullet in a satisfying way. There was no slithering, Schmatzenbladder learned, with poodles. It stuck in his throat like a bale of cotton.
Finally, though, he choked it down. It was a relief, not having a dog in his hand any longer, or holding fiercely to his finger with its fangs. It was also a mild relief to have reduced the noise level by one sixth. In a moment of no-thought, Schmatzenbladder scooped up poodle after poodle, accomplishing the same reduction in noise with each heavy swallow.
There were four poodles, then three, then two. Finally, there was a single poodle dancing around his ankles. That poodle gave a final yap, then, not hearing any yips or yipes in response, discovered that it was alone. That last poodle looked around for just a moment, and, catching not a single glance of its brothers and sisters, decided better than to continue its current plan of action, and scooted back to the Emporium.
Schmatzenbladder, relieved to have quieted the throng around him, tiptoed quickly to the end of the alley. When he arrived at the street, he had the choice of turning left or right: further into the city or back toward the cave. He didn’t even think about the choice. He was in no way ready to move forward. There was little room in his mind for any thoughts other than returning home. He had had enough of this new world. He slipped down the street as quickly as he could, belching up occasional balls of wiry fur.