How I learned to please the troll

Once upon a time, in the wondrous world of German bureaucracy, there was a temp employed at a state office department. She wasn't one of the local creatures and she felt very alien in this hostile environment. After all, she just needed to save some money up to go to Hogwarts. Every day she heard the bacchanals of the residents, heard their songs and magic chants through the walls but they were unfamiliar and strange to her. The job itself was well paid for but very dull. So dull in fact, that the temp was looking forward to getting home every day, even though she was living with a bunch of neurotic cleaning gnomes. She was a generally clean and tidy person, yet she was not clean and tidy enough to live with a bunch of OCD ridden fairytale creatures. Not that she liked it but she was just rolling with it, because fucks were generally not given by her either.

One day -it was a sunny Friday afternoon and our temp was still at work- she decided to get ready for meeting a handsome prince from overseas after work. And like you do when you have a date, she went to put on her human suit in the bathroom area of the magical kingdom of forms and paragraphs. 
She disguised those antlers, washed the ink stains and the government filth off her hands, brushed her hair until she looked decently human again and without noticing it, she left some hairs behind. With anticipation, she went back to her room and finished her work load for the day. 
After a while there was a strange noise to be heard from the hallway. The sound of heavy feet which -without doubt- were (more or less) carrying a huge mass of carbon based organic matter. Presumably intelligent. Well, let's say sentient at least. Coming closer and closer. Slightly worried and with a weird sense of de já vu, she noticed the rings forming on the surface of her coffee. "What could that be?" she thought to herself, while the irregular slurring noise of footsteps stopped in front of her door. A knock. Another knock. "Come in?" she exclaimed, moderately terrified about what Lovecraftian horror was awaiting her behind that office door. 

With an eery creaking noise the door opened and she gasped. There it was, the thing on the doorstep, a local government creature, staring at her with tiny yellow eyes and small chubby claws on short and squishy extremities. No bodyparts could be distinguished from another, there was no neck and too much abdomen, body hair where it shouldn't be and all of it a mush of wobbling flesh . It was limping, yet it had an evil smirk on its face. And then it spoke, relieving the shocking fact that it was of female gender: "Fair maiden, I saw you in this our local bathroom. I saw you how you did your hair and there's no problem with that [implying that there is indeed some sort of personal problem with that] and you seem to have lost a few hairs in the sink. It's not very appetizing." 

Horrified, the temp rushed to clean up the mess, apologizing a lot in the process of doing so and the beast disappeared. Our protagonist thought the matter would be sorted and was cautious about not making a mess ever since, being traumatized by the terrifying experience of witnessing a supernatural appearance. However, everytime she walked past a dark and secluded area next to the bathrooms she felt watched. And after a while she indeed saw some yellow eyes glinting at her displeasingly from a dreary corner of another office room. 
A few days later she talked to a fellow worker -also not a resident creature like her- about it "What is this creature and what did I do to bring its wrath upon me? How can I calm its anger?" And her friend advised her "The locals call it the ELSA. Usually she riddles people at the doorway and eats them if they don't know the answer but she can be bribed with untainted flesh. At least that's how the stories go."

Our heroine then went and slaughtered a baby goat in the dark secluded office next to the bathroom and nothing has happened ever since. 
Everyone lived happily ever after and no one was missing that damn goat or asked where the temp got it. 

THE END.

Mamsell Sofie's Silence

Part of some illustrational work I'm doing for a friend. 

The project consists of short stories revolving around a curious collection of redbrick houses where weird things are bound to happen ever since people can remember. 

This piece deals with the story of young pianist Sofie Sommer, who fell in love with the second son of the  director, Friedrich Rothbaum in 1904. Her plans to marry him are denied by her family because they disagree with the Rothbaum's jewish heritage. After she gets pregnant, Friedrich forces her to abort the unborn child. Subsequently she commits suicide by drowning herself and Friedrich disappears. She still haunts the red houses as a sad ghost, wallowing in sorrow. 

He came back as well -changed- as one of THEM.

If you are a german speaker, you can read the stories HERE

I highly recommend them! 

Cheers, CK

Disturbia

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