The Troll Life

Glenn Michael Beckmann sat stiffly on the McPherson Square park bench, dressed in several layers of winter clothing topped with a waterproof hooded parka. He was using his Amazon Kindle Fire to read the latest news stories on the eviction of OccupyDC campers. (Ever since that Jewish girl had thrown Coke in his face when he was holding Mein Kampf in his hands, he had learned to load his reading material into the hidden recesses of his reader.) Beckmann had planted lice, bed bugs, e-coli, staphylococcus, salmonella, and giardia around the camp, so he was disappointed to read that only rats had died. There must be a cover-up. He looked around at what remained after the filthy bedding materials and vermin corpses had been removed, and he was disappointed to see protesters, tents, and signs still in place. I've gone soft, he thought. I should have massacred them in cold blood! And I shouldn't require two pairs of socks when it's forty degrees out. Soft! He browsed a couple more stories, then pushed the reader inside his coat. I should have ordered some small pox on the web, or measles, at least! He caught sight of television reporter Holly Gonightly a hundred yards away and impulsively ran over to confront her. "You're a reporter!" he yelled, as several protesters laughed. "Don't laugh at me!" he screamed at them, approaching Gonightly, whose cameraman was still filming. "You spied on us!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I did," replied Gonightly, thinking fast. "I've been preparing a piece on unsung heroes of Washington, D.C."

Beckmann chewed his lip and pondered this for a moment. "Well, we don't WANT to be sung about, lady! I'm warning you!" He jabbed his index finger into her clavicle. "You better not!"

"As you wish, good sir," she said.

With that, Beckmann stalked off, still wondering if he should have killed her for the honor of the Hunter-Gatherer Society.

"Who was that?" asked a protester.

"He's secret troll hunter from Norway," Gonightly joked.

A few miles to the north, Chloe Cleavage was stuffing Pierre's OccupyDC bedding down her building's trash chute. How could you bring this crap to my condo?! Ugh! She peeled off the sweatshirt she was wearing (which had come in contact with the bedding) and pushed that down the chute as well. Not cool! She walked back to her apartment, slammed the door in hopes it would rudely wake him up, and hopped into the shower. When she got out, he was still asleep. After dressing and packing her bag, she sprayed Lysol and anti-microbial Febreze all over the place, opened a window to let the fresh air in, then headed off to Prince and Prowling. You better be working on your resume by the time I get home, "Pierre"! She slammed the door on the way out, almost wishing he would just leave instead so she would never have to know he was some kind of unemployable troll named Tom, Dick, or Harry.

Meanwhile, over at Prince and Prowling, former Senator Evermore Breadman was meeting with a constitutional law expert. "So the Supreme Court says foreigners still can't spend money on elections, but corporations can?" (The expert nodded.) "Do the Supremes understand that half the companies incorporated in Delaware are actually multinational corporations?"

"They don't care."

"Do they understand that we have foreign CEOs running a lot of corporations here in the U.S.?"

"Probably not," said the constitutional law expert, carefully examining a gold-plated, rose-quartz pen holder he had picked up from Breadman's desk.

"So my clients, even if they're foreigners, can have their Delaware corporations use foreign money to contribute to SuperPACs or whatever they want to?"

"Yep."

"And a foreigner can use his money to set up a Delaware corporation, and then the corporation can spend money on U.S. elections?"

"Yep."

"Great! Just wanted to confirm that I've got it straight," said Breadman. "Could you put that into a memo for me? I mean, something a little more formal."

"Sure thing," replied the expert, standing up with hand outstretched. (He hated everything Breadman stood for, but getting closer access to Breadman's client information could be very useful.) "Just shoot me a list of the clients' names and so forth--"

"Uh, no, I would prefer an advisory opinion, just something generic," said Breadman.

"Sure," replied the expert, "but it would be stronger if--"

"Oh, I understand," said Breadman, "but there's no need for it to be that strong. Some of my clients are patent trolls and other sunlight-averse types, shall we say."

Back at McPherson Square, Federal Reserve Board economist Luciano Talaverdi turned back for one more look at the reformed OccupyDC assembly before heading into his psychiatrist's building. What if they're right? He shook the thought off indignantly, anxious to get his head back on straight. A few minutes later, he was lying down on Dr. Ermann Esse's couch and telling the shrink about his recurrent nightmare that trolls have taken over the library, cafeteria, and board room, and they won't leave the Fed until unemployment hits 25% and every major city in the country is wracked with riots. "How do I get rid of this nightmare?" asked Talaverdi.

"When did you first see these trolls?"

"After the State of the Union address," said Talaverdi.

"No, before that. As a child in Italy, perhaps?"

"How did you know that?!" exclaimed Talaverdi.

"Because grown men are not afraid of trolls, but little children are."

Several miles to the north, Angela de la Paz was standing on the edge of Wyoming Avenue, looking up at the Syrian Embassy. Anti-Assad protesters had just attacked and damaged seven Syrian embassies around the world, and the beefed-up embassy security staff stared menacingly at Angela. She was only a couple miles from where she had grown up, but under international law, the embassy was considered foreign soil--or something like that. Still, she knew how to get in and out in 20 minutes--then on her way to Rock Creek Park--but nobody had asked her to. The Heurich Society had spent some time explaining the Sunni/Shiite split in the Middle East, but it bored her. History bored her. If people wanted something to change, it should change...and if that didn't work, it should change again. She turned around to head downtown, where a Saudi sheikh was staying at the Ritz Carlton. She was supposed to deliver a package to him and seduce him for "Project Troll", but since the Heurich Society refused to give her an explanation for either action, she was thinking of taking it to Charles Wu instead. She stopped, sat down on the curb, ripped the package open, and smiled contemptuously at the sight of the cursing embassy guards ducking and covering because they believed her to be a suicide bomber.

Over in the river, Ardua of the Potomac gray-bathed under the overcast skies and contemplated six more weeks of winter.