1.

It was an absolutely exquisite day.

The sky was almost cloudless, save for a few thin, streaky wisps – the kind to make vapour trail conspiracy theorists narrow their eyes and reach for their laptops.

On the horizon, perfect green mountain hills trembled in the warm air, pleasantly mirage-like, as though reality itself had briefly mislaid its lenses.

Nearby, small bristle bushes rustled whenever a warm breeze wandered through, giving him the curious impression of cheerleaders’ pom-poms.

He stood knee-deep in water that was technically cold, but yet nothing enough to complain about. He wore heavy rubber waders. The small grey-bearded man who'd sold them to him at a car boot sale the previous November claimed they had been handed down through generations. Maybe they had. To him, though, last November felt no more ancient as last Tuesday's takeaway pizza.

He tried to remain perfectly still; the occasional ripple from his slight shuffling disturbed the glassy skin of the water mildly irritated him. Still, by any reasonable metric – and by maybe even a couple of unreasonable ones – he was having an absolutely brilliant day. It was beautiful. The whole experience was pure bliss.

He snapped his fishing rod back with an elbow flick and twisted wrist, then let it float forward. The line streaked out, the fly landing with a satisfying plop. Mild ripples spread on the water before finally settling. Then, calm and quiet, folded back over the scene.

He didn’t care if he caught a single fish. Not one bit. There was a cheese and ham sandwich waiting in the blue cool box on the grassy bank made lovingly by his wife back home. Alongside sat a flask of tea – because even in the middle of nowhere, some things require a little ceremony. A frozen beer too sat in shallow water on the bank for if he decided that standing in water all day with a stick warranted something a bit more celebratory.

He closed his eyes and let the breeze drifting off the water’s surface to brush kindly over his nose and ears, rustling his hair like his old mother giving a soothing pat on the head. He was aware of a slight wobble – his equilibrium somewhat unsettled by standing knee-deep in water – but he didn’t mind. At that moment, he had no cares at all. Everything was serene, beautiful, and he felt in tune with a world that, all things considered, had been relatively kind to him over the years.

Then he thought he heard a sneeze – impossible, of course – but it came with a sudden, foul breath on the air; like the final, ragged exhale of something long dead – and the world held its breath and the silence swallowed everything.

2.

He opened his eyes, and nothing looked serene anymore – far from it, he thought. Panic bubbled up from his mouth in shimmering mirages past his pupils, mingling with others stirred up by the violent dunking of his own cranium. He thought he could see the faint faces inside the bubbles of people he sort of recognised.

Scabby bits of disrupted pondweed drifted past in slow motion, and then, with cruel irony, a smug shining purple trout floated slowly by as if to say, Better luck next time.

He tried to pry the unwelcome hand off the back of his head. He couldn’t, for the life of him, imagine why it was there in the first place. Ideally, he wanted to take a breath. Failing that, he’d settle simply for postponing death. If time allowed, he might even ask – politely – “Excuse me, sir,” presuming it was a sir, “But what the fuck are you doing!?”

By now, he was swallowing algae water by the gallon, his lungs stubbornly filling with what they should have been rejecting. He pissed himself – no matter now.

The grip was unbreakable, brutal, merciless. He couldn’t budge it, not with the leverage the stranger had at this point. Resigned to death, he sank to his knees, surrendering to whatever twisted intent the murderous doer had. They’d probably eat his sandwich too, as his limp corpse floated atop of the water like a plastic carrier bag, they'd eat his sandwich. That was the last thing he thought before the darkness washed over his retinas and he felt his tongue tingle.

Then something peculiar happened – he found himself silently conversing with what felt like nature itself. Not in words, but in sharp impressions about fairness via beams light. His attempts to reply were like reflections on a dirty window – fragmented and half-heard, as if transmissions from a long lost signal via the far reaches of somewhere not thought of. When his mind woke again, the details slipped away like smoke, leaving only a strange, lingering feeling deep in his chest, not quite at the heart, but where the soul's conversations happen.

3.

When he finally came to, he was sitting on the cold metal floor of what looked like the back of an old Transit van. The motion beneath him, coupled with the jittery bounce against the suspension, told him it was hurtling along at a frantic pace. He could hear the sound of an alarming, screeching engine, one running quickly on a low gear continuously.

Suddenly overwhelmed by a rising pressure beneath his ribcage, he vomited up a couple of pints of greenish pond water with bits in – an ordeal that went on for far longer than anything inside a human being should be allowed to last. His diaphragm ached, his throat raw, his head throbbed with the steady insistence of a brutal all-nighter nine pints of beer headache.

He looked down at the green, murky broth beside him on the rusting metal floor and watched it slosh in time with the van as it hurtled along what felt like must have been pothole-riddled country roads. The chunks suspended within the sick moved at different speeds, creating a nauseating, almost Magic Eye effect to the whole miserable affair, and he thought he could see hands and flowers. It was then, still dazed and half-lost in grey thought, that he realised he wasn’t alone.

4.

On the other side of the Transit’s rear, seated on the floor much like himself, was an enormous shining black creature staring back at him. It looked human, broadly speaking – but scaled up to twice the size of any bloke you’d find outside any pub on any given Saturday night, even the bouncers.

It was completely naked, and entirely unapologetic about it with his body language. Legs splayed, his massive flaccid penis fully on display. Its body looked as though it had been sculpted from sausage meat, left out in the sun for far, far too long. And then cooked, and then varnished.

'What in the fucking hell are you?' the wet man said, staring at the sausage-meat behemoth, whom stared back with squinty, beady red eyes set in chunky, high-boned cheeks. The creature didn't have pupils, at least not in the way humans have pupils.

'What d’you mean?' the big bastard replied, its voice as deep and chalky as you’d expect. Unblinking. Like it didn't blink. Like it couldn't blink.

'You’re obviously not a man,' he said. 'You’re – bloody massive.'

‘Not a man,’ the bloody massive echoed, lifting a spade-sized hand and thumbing his thick-hided chest, which stubbornly refused to dent. ‘I’m a troll.’

'Right, course you are.' He paused, then added, 'And I’m a monkey’s uncle.'
The troll’s eyes narrowed.

'Then who’s the monkey’s aunt?'

An almost beautiful serene silence cast over the inside of the back of that van for a very short period of time. Even the engine went quiet.
'Good question.' The man smiled thinly. 'She ended up leaving with all the canapés.'

The supposed troll looked confused by the comment and chose silence over a retort. They quietly agreed the conversation was going nowhere – fast. Much like the van they were trapped in, hurtling toward somewhere neither of them had the faintest idea about, or any idea why. Nor, for that matter, why they’d been chucked into the back of it in the first place, now sitting amid the remnants of earlier vomit spread across the floor like a particularly minor sewage leak.

‘What’s your name?’ the troll asked, rather blasé, during the quiet consolidation of what was actually happening.

‘Colin,’ the man said, pulling his foot away from a snaking puddle of his own bile that was tracking toward him along the ridges of the metal floor.

‘Wife left you, then Colin'd?’ the troll said with a matter-of-factness that bewildered Colin, especially given he was coming to terms with the fact he was talking to a creature straight out of a fairy tale.

'Just Colin. What?'

'Left with the canapés. That's a euphemism for divorce I thinked.'

'No.' Colin replied dryly and quick. 'She died, actually. Not sure why I said anything about canapés to be honest with you. Bit of a weird situation.'

'What is?'

'This.'

Then he remembered the cheese and ham sandwich.

‘Ah. I see,’ the troll said, its voice carrying a faintly Slavic cadence. ‘true. So, sorry.’

'What about? Oh.'

He thought about the sandwich again.

‘About the wife? Nothing for you to be sorry about. Yes – cancer. About five days ago. Started in the tit, then spread about a bit. Took a good five years, all told, before, y'know, the end. Tough old broad she was.’

Colin paused, realising he was reciting his recent life history to what was potentially a fever dream – or else he was in some kind of post-death holding area, and this Transit van was a hastily assembled purgatory for people, or trolls, who’d been unexpectedly murdered. Whilst also fishing, presumably.

‘Tit,’ was all the troll managed in reply.

'Any idea why we're in here?' Colin quipped, keen to move the conversation along.

The troll shook its head, then shifted to one side, leaning on an arm to reveal a massive undercarriage – ribs the size of wrists and muscles where Colin didn’t even know muscles existed. A dagger with a purple handle was stuck in its side, it had some sort of language transcribed on it in gold leaf, but Colin couldn't make out what is said. It looked rather pathetic against such a colossal troll carcass, but it was still a knife.

'Crikey. Does it hurt?' Colin asked.

'Yes. Like a bitch.'

'Want me to pull it out?'

The troll pondered for a moment.

'Probably not for best'd.'

'Fair enough.'

Colin inspected the wound until the troll lowered its arm of its own accord.

'Any idea who did it?' he said, shifting back to his side of the back of the van, getting a little bit of sick on his hand in the process.

'None idea. I minding my own business, collecting toll for bridge, like proper troll do, yes, when I get assaulted. Then stabbed. In back. Like pussies.'

'But you'd presume it's the same people driving this van, wouldn't you?' said Colin, wiping his hand on his trouser leg.

'Yes. Wun't you.'

'And you'd presume whoever put me in here and the same people who also tried to shank you.”

'Shank'd.'

'Indeed, post tense.'

'Tense'd.'

'What? No. That doesn't work.'

They stared at each other for a few more seconds, in silence, which to Colin felt closer to ten minutes. This big bastard could grind me into rock salt if he fancied, he thought. Use me as seasoning on a decent steak. Or whatever trolls ate.

'Why you so wet?' the troll asked.

‘Well, yes,’ Colin replied, pleased to keep things ticking along at a civilised pace. ‘They tried to drown me. Or in fact they did drown me just enough for me to pass out. I thought I was dead, actually. If you can actually think you're dead without actually being dead. Anyway, that's when I woke up in the back of this van. As you do.’

'I know you did.'

'Yes, well. Of course, yes. You were here already I assume.'

'I was already here when they lumbered you in.'

'Yes that's what I just said. Who's they?'

'You're a snorer.'

For some reason, the insinuation that he was a snorer – when he’d never previously been accused of it – had riled Colin more than the small matter of someone trying to murder him and then bundling him into the back of a van. A quite British phenomenon.

‘Not usually known as a snorer, I don’t think. The wife never mentioned it. But – er – I was full of water at the time. That bit where I was unconscious in the back of this van after being forcefully drowned. So...yes. It’s possible. The snoring, I mean. In this instance.’

The troll shifted uncomfortably, aware of Colin's shortness of tone, leaning against the van’s metal side, shifting its posture slightly to shield the dagger from banging against the frame every time they hit another pothole or dip.

'Make sense.'

'Quite.'

What am I doing? Colin thought. Having a relatively normal conversation with a completely naked magical being – one that seemed real enough, very real in fact, at least in this bizarre situation – composed of atoms like him, seemingly made of matter; with eyes, hands, legs, and, regrettably, a fully deployed reproductive tool hanging there without the slightest hint of shame. With a personality, too. And it could hold a conversation. And trolls spoke English, apparently – which, frankly, was handy.

Silence settled over them again.

5.

Eventually – after what felt like about half an hour of a rumbustious, bone-rattling journey – the van they had been unceremoniously deposited in slowed, reversed a little bit, and then finally came to a complete stop.

Colin and the troll looked at one another with the shared, unspoken understanding that whatever came next would probably involve them being dead. They held each other’s gaze without speaking, but somehow managed to say quite enough between them anyway.

They held their breath as chatter filtered through the metal walls. Several voices – high and hurried, like children, or like grown men played on fast-forward through vintage Walkman cassette player. It was hard to make out, distorted by the van’s thin steel skin and whatever lay beyond it.

They kept staring at one another, prickling at every sound that slipped through, communicating in raised eyebrows and flaring nostrils instead of words.

Then, after a silence that stretched like a brief eternity, senses on razor-edge, came a clink, a crank – and the Transit’s doors swung open. A flood of bright light poured in, washing over what was their comforting dark, cramped prison like a desert suddenly drowning.

Colin squinted against the glare, while noticing that the troll’s expression remained unreadable, unwavering as it stared into the monolithic brightness. Two small silhouettes stepped through the glow, standing like alien visitors making first contact with Roswell’s residents. Colin tried to make out if they were children – or something else – but his eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden baptism of what he assumed was sunlight.

'Come on then, dickheads.'

There it was, that unsettlingly high pitched voice again. One that sounded much like a baby, but with the cadence of a bloke down the pub who stank of cigars.

6.

Colin stepped out of the Transit onto a dry patch of yellowed grass and looked around. He was standing on a verge, hemmed in by tall trees that blocked most of the sunlight, which made the place feel later in the day than it actually was. It created a strange, unsettling hew about the place. Directly ahead, a pebbled path ran into the darkness of the woods the van had presumably just emerged from, disappearing with the quiet mystery of an unknowing beyond it.

He turned back to the two figures holding the Transit’s doors open. They looked like tiny humans – no more than three and a half feet tall. Not dwarves, nor midgets; their proportions were perfectly ordinary, just scaled down, like someone had taken an average John Doe and put him through the wash on too high a heat.

Except their skin was a bright, unnatural yellow. Their hair was green and slicked back – shockingly green when the light caught it. They were identical.

And, of course, Colin thought, they were both stark bollock naked. He smirked.

'You're both stark bollock naked,' Colin pronounced calmly, the amount of fucks he was giving were severely diminished at this point.

'Why wouldn't we b – who is this?' One of the Imps said. The one who clearly carried himself as more of the leader of the duo.

'Well, he's a troll, isn't he.' the other Imp replied, turning around to look at Colin and immediately looking anything but assured. 'That's what you...wanted.'

The Imp turned to look at the other Imp.

'Nice to meet you, Colin,' the roundabout leader turned to Colin next and held up his small, wrinkly, yellow hand. Colin shook it, somewhat perplexed that he somehow went from not knowing why he was there to suddenly knowing his first name.

'Go easy on him, his wife dead'd.' said the Troll, who was busy shimmying out of the Transit.

Back arched and head bowed, the troll stepped out onto the grass. The Transit's suspension groaned with relief, giving the impression that another few seconds of troll might have tipped the whole vehicle back to front.

Somewhere beyond the trees – or perhaps above them, near a strange cloud hanging motionless just beyond the leafy canopy, in a place his eyes couldn't quite pin down – Colin thought he heard a group of women laughing.

7.

'Take this one down the end and do what needs to be done,' said the leader Imp, gesturing to the troll.

'What needs to be done?' asked Colin mildly panicked. Nobody responded. 'Tell me what needs to be done.'

The more submissive Imp grabbed the troll by the arm and began leading it down the stoney path towards the shrubbery, towards the woodlands, and whatever lay beyond that.

'For Christ's sake just tell me –' Colin continued, but was cut off.

'Nothing! For Pete's sake! They're just going for drinks! A couple of drinks!'

Of all the things Colin thought he was going to hear, that was not one of them. It bewildered him into a silence he suspected was the intended effect. He watched as the troll – held at the wrist by the much smaller yellow Imp – was escorted down the path, towards to where the tall root trunks stood and into the darkness of the woods. There was a procedure to this. He could feel it. Nobody was going to explain it to him, he knew that too.

At the treeline, the troll looked back. His ruby red eyes did not blink, but still gave the impression of being wet somehow. The troll smiled at Colin, but also looked very sad, in the way that things do when they know something very bad is going to happen.

With an impatient tug at the thick wrist, the troll and its handler were gone – swallowed by the shadows of the trees. All of a sudden Colin had the overwhelming sensation of wanting to cry.

Then Colin heard a new noise – a wet, rhythmic chewing that made him spin back towards the Transit van. The leader Imp had its back turned and was eating something. Hurriedly. Grotesquely. Clumps of white bread and cheese were dropping to the floor.

He immediately knew what it was.

'Hey,' he said, striding towards the imp with purpose. 'You little bastard.'

The imp acknowledged him only by hunching its shoulders and chewing even faster. The sandwich, squashed between its spindly yellow fingers, was shoved into its mouth with both hands. It dry-heaved as it attempted to force the increasingly compressed mass down its throat through sheer determination.

Colin bent down and picked up a rock from the dry grass. He clasped it so the sharpest point protruded from his fist. Then he smashed it into the underside of the Imp's head. A large laceration opened at the hairline and thick, black blood ran immediately down onto the yellow shoulders and down it's back towards the buttocks.

The Imp dropped to the floor without a sound. Face first into the grass, legs twitching slightly. Colin didn't let up – he brought the rock down again on the back of its head. A new laceration opened, bigger than the last. Then again. A crunching sound. Blood spattered up onto Colin's face and lips.

He stood up and looked down at the corpse. The Imp's hand still held the remains of the sandwich. Colin's was soaked in blood. Then a warm breeze, and with it a high pitched scream from within the woods.

A pained howl.

Something terrible was happening in there. Something ancient and bleak. Something so profoundly wrong that what Colin had just done felt small by comparison. He didn't feel the least bit bad about that. He felt very sorry for his friend the troll, but couldn't stop the overwhelming urge to laugh hysterically, but not because any of it was funny.

When the laughter finally subsided, Colin opened his eyes and took stock of his surroundings. The path. The woods. The strange feeling the clearing gave him. The dead Imp lying at his feet. Then he saw it. Resting on the rear bumper of the Transit, the doors still hanging open, was a can of beer. His can of beer.

The very same can that had been sitting in the shallow water beside the cool box beside at lake while he'd been fishing, which now felt like something that had happened many, many years ago and to somebody else. Tiny droplets of thawing condensation trickled down the aluminium. The can glistened in the hazy sunlight. It looked absolutely magnificent.

He took the can, popped it open with a satisfying fizz, and took a long, deep drink. It was exquisite. Then he another long drink, this time with his eyes closed. The cold beer washed down his throat and settled somewhere deep inside him, extinguishing fires he hadn't realised were burning. A strange wind passed across his face and neck, but didn't think anything of it. He swallowed and burped. Then he opened his eyes.

'What a shame Deborah couldn't be with us today,' said the large man standing beside him.

His rotund stomach strained so fiercely against the buttons of a formal white shirt that it looked as though it might burst free at any moment. Colin turned and found himself staring at a face he hadn't seen in years.

It was Greg. An old friend from his days in sales when he lived in London.

'She never makes the effort for such an occasion any more,' said another voice in his other ear.

Colin turned the other way. Two very small men stood nearby, each holding a glass of prosecco or champagne in equally small hands. Their dark hair was perfectly manicured, their pinstripe suits immaculate, complete with exaggerated shoulder pads that looked faintly ridiculous on frames so compact.

The Johnson brothers. Or Johnson & Johnson, as they preferred to be known. Ancient friends from school who still lived nearby.

Colin didn't say anything. He took a sip from his long-stemmed glass and looked around the room. People stood in small groups, speaking in hushed voices. A buffet table occupied one corner where people lingered; laden with sausage rolls, finger sandwiches and other foods traditionally associated with celebration or grief. Colin knew everybody there.

'Busy week next week, Colin?' Greg asked, before sneezing into a sodden handkerchief.

Colin didn't answer. He looked at Greg blankly, shrugged, and took another sip. Then he sidestepped him entirely and wandered towards the buffet. The Johnson brothers watched him go with matching expressions of disapproval.

He picked up a dry-looking morsel of pastry with some grey meat in the middle of it. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, so he simply held it between his fingers and stared down at a nearby bowl of fruit salad.

Something about the colours held his attention. The reds and whites of watermelon. Green kiwi studded with harsh black seeds. Bright yellow mango fading to white around the edges. Beautiful purple grapes.

For a moment, he found himself completely absorbed by it.

'Colin,' a female voice said behind him.

He turned around, still holding the sausage roll. It was Abigail, his wife's sister. She was holding an exotic looking cocktail garnished with the most ridiculous array of pineapple leaves and tiny, useless umbrellas. She was wearing a purple gown which hung off of her pale, shapeless frame.

'I know you're grieving, darling. I know you are,' she said, touching his arm and patting it gently with her fingers. 'But we really need to get you out of these waders.'

They looked at each other dead in the eyes and he realised that she was the woods.