The Secret Lives of Emails.docx (9 page)

The troll looked just like you would think. It was very large, towering over Brittany by at least a few feet, and it had pointy ears that twitched randomly. Its skin was bumpy and green, and it wore animal furs. The menacing creature also carried a large club slung over its shoulder, and as Emal watched, the troll began slapping the club in its palm, apparently emphasizing a threat of some kind.

“Who you calling maggot, little girl?” The troll said, its voice booming throughout the tube. The voice was deep and gravely, and Emal would have assumed it was a male troll, but he really had no evidence to base that on. “I find bigger maggots than you in my stool every morning.”

“Yeah?” Brittany laughed. “You have maggots in your stool every morning? You should probably see a vet. I hear they give out pills for that now. Although that might explain your breath you . . . you . . . troll!”

Both of them were so absorbed in their argument that they didn’t see Emal walk up near them, listening in.

“My breath? My breath is amazing. I floss every day just like my dentist tells me to. Three times a day. I bet you don’t! Yeah, I bet you have really bad personal hygiene; in fact, I can smell you now. You reek of mold and . . . and . . . other stuff,” the troll shouted, gesturing at her with its club and pretending to plug its nose with its free hand.

Emal wasn’t sure, but he thought the troll grew a bit more after that last comment.

Brittany smelled under her arms quickly and with satisfaction stated, “I don’t smell, you loser. It must be your hairy back.”

This time, there was no mistaking it, the troll grew a little taller and said, “Haha, sure you don’t. You reek. I’ve smelled better corpses . . . or stool. Yeah, stool, I’ve smelled better stool.”

Emal involuntarily chuckled at the absurdity of the argument, and Brittany whipped her head around to see him for the first time. Her eyes were like fireballs; the two flames roared with recognition and threatened to catch Emal’s hair on fire. Emal immediately regretted coming in this direction and the involuntary chuckle his body had betrayed him with. He meekly threw his hands up in defense.

“Heyyyy . . . Britts,” he said rather uncomfortably.

“It’s Brittany, bitch,” she snarled, turning back to the troll.

Emal turned toward the troll as well, debating if he should get in on this argument.
Perhaps I can get on Brittany’s good side if I argue with her against this . . . thing.
He wasn’t sure what the fight was even about since they hadn’t been making much sense up to this point, but one has to choose sides in an argument.

“I told you I didn’t smell,” Brittany snapped at the troll. “Smell him. He’s finally wearing clothes at least, but he smells like wet dog. A wet dog that rolled in something dead, then ate the dead thing, puked it up, rolled in his puke, and then ate it again.”

Emal began to reconsider whose side he wanted to be on, but then the troll spoke again.

“Ohhh,” it said with excitement. “You called your smelly boyfriend to fight your battles for you.”

“Listen here, maggot . . .,” Emal and Brittany said together.

Emal and Brittany glanced at each other, but the fire in her eyes no longer terrified him as he was sure they had come to some type of agreement. They were now in this battle together. No one was going to romantically link the two if they could help it.

“What do you know?” Emal said to the troll. “You’re just an ugly . . . ugly green thing!”

“Yeah,” Brittany said weakly in support. It wasn’t her fault she said it weakly; it was just a really lame comeback on Emal’s part, making it difficult to support.

The troll shook with laughter. “Haha, the stinky ugly boyfriend is defending his stinky ugly girlfriend.”

“I got this,” Brittany said to Emal and stepped between him and the troll.

“Just because one of us is a woman and one of us is a man doesn’t mean we are going to be lovers. I am not going to be someone’s sexual object. I have independent thoughts and conversations that don’t rely on a man. I can even have a meaningful conversation with another woman without it being about a man. I can pass the Bechdel test,” Brittany yelled at the troll.

“No you can’t,” the troll said through more laughter. “You are the only named female character so far in this farce of a novel. The main character is a man. Albeit a man wearing a skirt, but still something of a man. The author, and I use that term loosely, hasn’t even had the courage to describe what your boyfriend looks like because he doesn’t want to admit that he is white!”

“You don’t know that,” Brittany yelled back. “Maybe he hasn’t described what people look like because he wants to let the reader decide. Emal could be any color in the rainbow for all we know.”

“That’s lame and you know it. He probably hasn’t described what people look like because he sucks at descriptive prose. I mean have you been reading this drivel?” the troll argued back at Brittany, gesturing about the tube to emphasize that the writing to this point, indeed, had been drivel. The author hadn’t even described the scene properly. No one seemed ready to defend the author, and so the troll continued.

“Besides, what about the Bechdel test? You still don’t pass that.”

Brittany raised her fist in frustration but didn’t have an argument against that, and she let her arm fall back to her side. Smoldering, she turned a dangerous shade of red, until she noticed that the troll was wearing a name tag on its clothes. Pinned right above the right breast was a sticker that read “Mary.”

The troll was a woman, and her name was Mary.

“Aha!” Brittany shouted in triumph, pointing at the name tag. A giant green hand quickly tried to cover it, but it was too late.

“See! We pass the test, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mary shouted.

“No, you don’t.”

Mary wasn’t the least bit worried about winning or losing. Just arguing was winning for her, and she started laughing again.

“This isn’t a meaningful conversation. You have proved nothing. In fact, you might have proved that the author is sexist. He has made the second female character a troll and named her the most common name in the United States. Until now, he has been referring to me as an “it.” I laugh at your puny arguments. I laugh right in your stinky face and . . . and . . . I bite my thumb at you. I . . . I . . . You stink.”

Mary had grown as tall as the ceiling now, and as Emal tried to think of a way to get back into the argument, Brittany produced an umbrella from out of her backpack and began beating Mary with it. At first she was able to hit her in the stomach, but the troll only continued to laugh. Brittany kept hitting her, and Mary grew until she had to hunch her shoulders to stop from bursting through the top of the tube. Soon, all Brittany managed to beat was Mary’s knobbly knees.

Emal grabbed Brittany by the shoulders, pulling her away from the troll. The umbrella went flying against the wall, and Brittany rewarded Emal with an elbow to the nose as she turned to face him. He yelled out once again in pain.

“Owww . . . Will you stop hitting me in the nose? I’m running out of uninjured cartilage.”

“I’ll gladly turn my attention elsewhere if you will stop manhandling me. Don’t try to stop me all of sudden just because she is a named female character,” she shouted at Emal before turning back to Mary who was now doubled over in laughter.

“Stop,” Emal called out and risked a gentle hand on Brittany’s arm. She whirled back toward him again, her face suggesting he had one second before she fed him to the troll.

“Why don’t we just leave?”

“You can’t just leave a troll roaming free. Someone has to defend against stupidity. Someone must sacrifice themselves and stand up for what’s right.”

“Why? We can’t win against her. You can’t defeat stupid.”

“It doesn’t matter. The fight is what matters. It’s something you wouldn’t understand. Since the creation of the Internet, the fight against stupid began. If we allow, even for one moment, ignorant or bigoted comments to become the norm, the Internet community will fall to pieces. People will have to close the comment threads on their blogs or stop blogging all together. We have no choice but to fight the trolls wherever they choose to appear.”

Emal had been focused on Brittany during her speech, but he caught a glimpse of Mary out of the corner of his eye. She had shrunk in the time they had ignored her. Emal had his first good idea.

“Don’t look now, but since we stopped talking to Mary, or acknowledging her in anyway, she has shrunk,” Emal whispered to Brittany.

“Bull,” she said, but she suddenly became very quiet and very still.

Mary was still laughing in the background, but after having been ignored for too long, she shouted out again, “You stink.”

Brittany twitched with rage, but Emal gestured from his eyes to her eyes.
Keep focused. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
After a few minutes of the troll attempting to taunt them while Brittany and Emal stared at each other, they both tried to glance at Mary from the corner of their eyes. They found her to be at their eye level and perhaps even a little less green.

As soon as they made eye contact, she began growing and jeering them.

“You stink, you stink. You and him, sitting in a tree . . .”

Brittany and Emal quickly averted their gazes again, and after another few minutes of taunting, the voice became higher pitched and less confident.

“You . . . you . . . Hey!” came the squeaky voice from behind them. “Look at me.”

“Follow me,” Brittany said as she blindly started walking sideways further into the tube, grabbing her backpack as she went.

“Get back here. I have more to say,” came a high pitched whine from somewhere behind them.

Brittany and Emal slowly eased around the now yelping Mary, spinning around whenever she attempted to jump in front of their vision. They made their way down the tube until they had walked far enough around the bend that they were certain that Mary hadn’t followed them.

Brittany finally stopped; she put her hands on her knees and took a deep breath.

“Whew! I can’t believe we did it,” she said. “Most people don’t survive these encounters. Someone inevitably has to sacrifice themselves to draw the troll’s attention away. They always claim at least one victim in the end. It’s like that stupid plot device in adventure movies when someone volunteers to sacrifice themselves to save the group. The other people always refuse to allow it, yet in the end, they always manage to martyr themselves anyways, so it’s a pointless plot device. Ignoring the troll was so much better.”

“Well,” Emal said. “I just noticed she had shrunk when we ignored her. I’m sure you would’ve noticed it eventually.”

“Gore! You don’t have to get all cocky about it. I said good job,” Brittany snapped at him and started to walk away.

“Not so fast,” Emal said, striding after her. “I can’t let you run off this time. I’ve saved your life twice now, and I need your help.”

“Oh Gore! Saving my life might be a bit of an exaggeration. This author is digging himself a deep hole I tell you.”

“How’s that?” Emal asked.

“The two named female characters haven’t been great representations so far, have they? One is an ugly green troll, and I clearly have anger management issues. He mentions the Bechdel test as if he knows something about feminism but then mocks it. Worse yet, the man is the one who comes up with the solution and ‘saves the damsel in distress.’ I’ll be damned if I’m going to be someone’s damsel. It’s better if you just get away from me.”

“Maybe that’s just how the story is playing out. I mean, he is obviously aware that he’s being sexist, so maybe that means he doesn’t intend to be.”

“It doesn’t matter what his intent is. Sexism is sexism, and I want no part of this stupid story. It was funny at first, but it has really gotten boring in the middle here. I mean that last chapter was so bad.”

“I’m sure the story will pick up soon. I think it’s just getting to the good bits. And I’m sure he is going to include more female characters. The first step to solving sexism is to be aware you’re part of the issue.”

“I suppose. I must admit you have actually been a little helpful so far. But let’s be clear, I am only considering this because of the usefulness you might provide
me
. I am not some plot device, or damsel in distress, or sexual object. I’m Brittany, bitch!”

“So I’ve heard,” Emal said.

“What did you need help with?” Brittany said without attempting to hide her displeasure at the idea of helping Emal.

“Well, I talked to Jeeves . . .”

“You talked to Jeeves? That annoying twit. He is about as useful as single ply toilet paper.”

“I thought he was nice actually. Well . . . mostly nice,” Emal said on Jeeves’s behalf. “Anyways, he told me about the Internet, and about how I was a messenger, and how I needed to deliver my message.”

“He told you that you were a messenger?” Brittany asked.

“Well, he said I had to deliver a message. Why? What’s the difference?”

“Never mind, what do you want from me? If Jeeves already told you everything. . .”