Troll Stew: A Strange Brew of Dark Fairy Tales and Poems for Adults

By Christopher Courtley

While most writers of fairy tales cater to children, some offer up darker and slightly more twisted fare, such as this curious concoction intended for adults. Chock full of deliciously dark and often grimly humorous tales and poems, this singular literary feast is sure to satisfy the cravings of any reader with an appetite for the unusual. Containing three original works of short fiction, four original works of flash fiction, and six original works of poetry, the collection gets off to a playfully mischievous start with a spicy combo of gruesome terror and wry humor in "Troll Stew", a rather macabre nursery rhyme which lends its title to this delightfully strange and eclectic brew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Courtley
• Release date: Dec 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301369218

Christopher Courtley

Christopher Courtley lives in the vast, ancient, crumbling haunted house of his own imagination, perched precariously upon the windswept edges of the cliffs of insanity. There he spends his absinthe-fueled nights writing feverishly, whilst Nightgaunts dog his every step into the deepest regions of the netherworld of his darkest dreams and naked succubi call to him with lurid siren songs that would wake the dead.

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TROLL STEW

A Strange Brew of Dark Fairy Tales and Poems for Adults

CHRISTOPHER COURTLEY

Troll Stew: A Strange Brew of Dark Fairy Tales and Poems for Adults

Copyright 2012 by Christopher Courtley

Smashwords Edition

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living, dead, or otherwise is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Christopher Courtley

http://www.christophercourtley.com

For my mother, in loving memory

Danger and delight grow on one stalk.

—English Proverb

CONTENTS

Troll Stew

Poem.

The Ogre’s Breakfast

Short short story.

The Palace at Winter’s End

Short story.

Of Eternal Snow the Queen

Poem.

The Mad God’s Tale

Short short story.

The Fairy Queen’s Lover

Poem.

The Unfaithful Knight

Short short story.

The Cat’s Claw

Short story.

Fairy-led

Poem.

The Muse of Madness

Short short story.

The Seduction

Poem.

A Faerie Tale

Short story.

Dancing With Fairies

Poem.

Troll Stew

From the dark city park comes a sickening crunch—

It’s a troll in his hole having someone for lunch.

Grinding bones for his bread, he skewers poor Fred,

Nice and hot from the pot, hear him gleefully munch!

Not much meat on these feet, he says, nibbling some toes,

On the floor by the door heaping piles of clothes

Where six children await the same horrible fate

As he chomps and he romps and his appetite grows!

Who’ll be next? he roars, vexed that the boy was so thin.

Here’s a plump tender rump I can sink my teeth in!

And with that he leans down and grabs portly Jane Brown,

Who’s a sweet little treat as delicious as sin.

Then he whirls on two girls who are trying to hide

In the clothes that he throws in a heap to one side—

Now on you will I sup, he growls, snatching them up

In his claws as his jaws gape impossibly wide.

With surprise Mary cries: "Won’t you kill us at least?

Our friend Fred was long dead when you started to feast!"

By the time I am through, he says, you will be, too!

Then he grins and begins on their toes, the cruel beast.

No remains but the stains on his teeth and the hair

All around on the ground of his hideous lair!

Mary’s locks, Helen’s curls, once the pride of those girls

Who are now just his chow, and it hardly seems fair.

Only three left to see; there’s a girl and two boys.

In the back, tearful Jack makes a whimpering noise.

Billy also is loth to be boiled in broth,

But that’s moot to a brute; in he flings them like toys.

In the stew with you two! he exclaims as he plops

Jack and Bill in the swill, spilling only two drops,

And then smacking his lips, from a ladle he sips

Of this new tasty brew, loudly licking his chops.

Jack he wails, Billy flails in the bubbling soup!

They will cook till they look like a bowlful of goop.

Yum, the troll says anon, once the boys are all gone,

Now to eat this most sweet youngest girl of the group!

Last alive, only five, but precocious and wise,

Little Jill remains still on the floor where she lies,

Coolly feigning her death, never taking a breath;

Though he’s near, there’s no fear in her unblinking eyes.

He says: "Come, I’m not dumb, and although I confess

You’re a pro, as a show it just doesn’t impress.

I’ve a keen sense of smell. You live; I can tell."

And he takes her and shakes her till her hair is a mess.

Dead or not, in the pot! the troll chuckles with glee.

All the same, play your game, makes no difference to me.

But she knows that it does—it matters because

As she saw, he likes raw screaming girls with his tea.

So she simply lies limp, like old lettuce, and then

He gets mad—just a tad—and he shakes her again.

C’mon, put up a fight! he yells, starting to bite

Her left leg—C’mon, beg!—till she cries out in pain.

Then the troll’s laughter rolls. That’s what I like to hear!

And he roars as he pours himself blood-flavoured beer.

Save the best for the last, and don’t eat it too fast.

He quotes as he gloats over Jill with a sneer.

But to this, our young miss says: "You don’t frighten me!

Hell, I’ve seen worser fiends on late night TV!"

Courage fails once you learn what it feels like to burn,

He replies, but her eyes roll contemptuously.

"What a feat! He can eat helpless children! This troll

Is so brave in his cave, like a mouse in its hole!"

Now the monster goes wild, and drops the wee child

Starts to swear, tears his hair, breaks his ladle and bowl.

"Little troll in your hole, is that all you can do?

Scream and yell? What the hell kind of monster are you?"

Going out of his mind, with rage driven blind

Now he lunges, and plunges straight into the stew!

As he’d leapt Jill had stepped to one side of the pot!

She had planned where to stand, picking just the right spot.

So by keeping her head, she cooked him instead,

And he learned being burned hurts a hell of a lot.

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The Ogre’s Breakfast

You know much of what transpired during the final battle between the ogres and humans, I am sure, so that tale I will not trouble to relate, as in all probability you are sick to death of hearing it. Suffice it to say that in the end the humans triumphed, and so decisive was their victory over the ogres that those who survived never again ventured onto your lands. They fled high into the mountains, where to this day they dwell peacefully, herding goats and gathering the wild berries that grow here and there upon the mountainside. But this tale does not concern them.

It is of she who set them against your kind in the first place, and of her terrible revenge upon those who so dared to oppose her and win, that you wish to hear. For that is the story your elders will not tell you, though from time to time they may whisper amongst themselves of the Sorceress, and of the evil thing that came from her womb.

Yet I am not afraid to tell you what they never will.

They warned you away from my swamp, did they? I thought they might. Yet if they were as wise as they think themselves to be they would have known that the surest way to get a boy to do something is to tell him not to do it. Don’t worry. While it’s true that I’m a half-ogress, I don’t eat children. Not even full-blooded ogres do that, no matter what the tales may say. As a matter of fact, they eat the same things humans do—only a lot more of it, on account of their size. No, you have nothing to fear from me.

Now the Sorceress, on the other hand . . . it would not surprise me in the least if the devouring of children were but one item on the long list of her atrocities. She was as evil as they come, though if you looked upon her then you would have taken her for a goddess made flesh. Her skin was as goat’s milk; her hair, long and unbound, was the colour of straw; her lips were rowan-berry red, her cheeks as flush as apples ripening on the tree, her eyes the clear blue of the summer sky. She was, in all probability, every bit as fair as I am hideous.

You laugh, but I only speak the truth; I am hideous, both to my mother’s people and my father’s. Be grateful that you do not know what it is to be neither one thing nor the other. Yet you mustn’t think I go around feeling sorry for myself. In a way I am glad that I am so disgusting to look upon. Humans think that ugliness and wickedness are one and the same thing, but they are woefully mistaken. It is an unfortunate fact of life, young master, that beauty and cruelty oft go hand in hand, and the Sorceress was both beautiful and cruel beyond measure.

So it was that after the battle, when she was taken prisoner, whether by her arcane arts