Burner

by DonnaRae Menard

Burner was moving along, making good time. He was on his first solo cross-country trip, an excursion every young rock troll has to make eventually. Though he had traveled this way many times, his family had always accompanied him.

“Go, my big-butt boy,” said Papa. “But do not stray from the tunnels.”

“No, Papa,” Burner said.

Mama had drawn the map on his round belly. X marked each family crossing. But Burner, like most almost grown males, was sure he knew better. As soon as he was beyond the first mountain range and long before the first X, he deviated. Now he hummed along from the north to the south, and then to the north again. Swooping here, curving there. He had a voracious appetite, consuming large bites of tasty soil. Even though he regularly pooped out volumes of sterilized dirt, filling in the area he had just traveled, large sinkholes appeared behind him. Whole parking lots disappeared into the newly churned dirt. When he needed to sleep, he would chew out a dank, dark den, tuck his head between his legs, wind his long arms and sharp clawed hands around himself, and doze.

Occasionally, Burner rose to the surface. One time, a face full of water caused him to turn and flee—a lake drained. Another time he rode so close to the top, a mighty canyon which ran for miles appeared above him. Traveling alone was monotonous, so Burner dug deep until he could feel the heat of the planet’s center. It was forbidden territory. The center was a ball of fire, just as the sun was. It could dry out the soil, melt rocks, Papa had warned. The molten core would crisp Burner up like the yummy fried green caterpillar Nana made for supper. But Burner was a big butt, almost an adult troll. He was not afraid. With a laugh, he continued on his journey.

Not much later, he took a big bite, choked on his meal, and coughed it out.

“Ooh, bad.” He frowned.

Another bite—a nasty-tasting morsel. Good dirt was moist, loamy, rich with a hint of the animals and vegetation that had rotted within it. This was dry, chalky, and hard to swallow, leaving behind a bitter burn in his throat which made him cough.

“Gag,” said Burner. “What is bad here?”

“It is the bodies of the dead,” said a squeaky voice through the dense soil.

Burner paused, suddenly fearful.

“Who goes there? Where, what are you?” he asked. In all the miles he had traveled, he had yet to hear another voice.

“I am death if you do not heed my words,” said the voice.

Burner turned aside. He would go around the evil voice. Traveling slower, he circled. His nerves tingled, and with every clawing stroke, he took another bite. The dirt was different here, hard, heated from above, and with the taste of something long dead and rotted between each grain. His belly swelled and eventually his girth was larger than his ability to tunnel quickly. Burner stopped, unable to go on and without the strength to burrow a den. His pooper was not working, and his lips were thick and dry with a taste not unlike sand on the ocean’s shore.

“Are you done messing around?” asked the voice.

“Aaugh,” whined Burner, suddenly sorry for not following Papa’s advice. “How are you here, too?”

“Foolish troll,” said the voice. “You never left. You merely circled me. Twice.”

“Are you?” Burner licked his salt encrusted lips with his dry tongue. “Did you kill all the others?”

“Would you be terrified if I had?” asked the voice.

“Yes,” whispered Burner.

“Then be terrified.”

Burner tried to cry, but tears would not come. He squeezed mightily, but his pooper still would not work.

“Go up,” said the voice, “carefully. You will see a long slithering thing rising from the land. That is the demon of death.”

Trembling with fear, Burner tunneled upward. When he broke through the crust, he found himself in a barren place. The whitened ground was covered with winding cracks. Stepping onto the hot dirt, he stared. Laying a few yards off, and pointing toward the west, was what looked to be a winding section of knotted offal. The further end led away, and in the distance, Burner could see where the land had stopped, consumed by a marauding dust devil. But the ragged near edge of the offal waved in the wind. Burner stared at the danger. Both hands covered his mouth, then his eyes. He squeezed his pooper. Nothing. Once again, he looked at the red and yellow danger which lay twisting in the hard sunlight waiting for its next victim.

Burner dove back into the burrow. “Where are you?” he called. “What was that horrible thing?”

The voice said, “Here. What you saw was the nose of the rising devil. It is how the evil finds its food, those poor souls it will kill and consume. Beware of the slithering nose. It is death.”

Burner shook with fear. His belly hurt. Every time he tried to move, pain slowed him. A powerful instinct urged Burner to poop. He held still, took a deep breath and squeezed. He pushed with all his might. But no matter how hard he tried, no poop piled up behind him.

“I am broken,” he cried out.

“Poor troll,” said the voice. “The evil thing did that to you. It will continue until you are so swollen, you burst.”

“What is this place?” Burner asked, rubbing his hands over his belly and squeezing his pooper. It did not matter any longer that a rock troll should be brave and defiant of danger. He was alone, scared, and broken.

“A salt flat, home to evil,” said the voice. “Did you not learn anything at Troll Academy? Can’t you taste the poison?”

“No,” said Burner, whimpering like a silly flop-eared fairy. “What poison is this you speak of?”

“It is…salt,” said the voice dramatically.

“Salt?” asked Burner. It did not sound dangerous. How could something as simple as salt stop his pooper?

“Yes,” said the voice, in a tone dark and mysterious. “These are the Great Damaging Salt Flats. For hundreds of thousands of years, the ocean dumped its salty waste here. Then, when the ocean disappeared, the salt was left behind. It mixed with the soil. Nothing grows here because the salt absorbs all the moisture. That’s what it is doing to you, sucking the wet from your body. Every bite you take fills you with more salt. Soon you will be only the dried-out husk of a troll, filled with dried, hard-as-a-rock poop!”

“Save me,” cried Burner. He tried to tuck his head between his legs and roll up, but his enormous, swollen belly would not let him.

“Only if you will carry me with you will I tell you the secret of banishing the salt.”

Burner paused.

“Then die,” said the voice, fading away.

“NO! No. I will take you.”

“Come to me,” said the voice.

Several minutes later, Burner discovered a frilled and chipped crustacean left from centuries before. Inside, he could see a wriggling thing.

“Are you a worm?” asked Burner, suddenly much happier. Worms are a troll delicacy.

“No.” The wriggling stopped. “I am a…a thought. Yes, a thought. Thoughts can help save you.” The worm pulled himself as tightly as possible into the crustacean.

“Come out.” Burner coaxed.

“If I come out the evil will find me and kill me as it has all my brothers. I won’t be able to guide you to safety. Your mother will weep and your father gnash his teeth.”

Burner pictured his parents grieving. “Stay in,” he said. “I will carry you, and we both will live.”

Picking up the crustacean carefully in his strong hands, Burner tucked it into a small pouch he wore on the back of his butt where the rock would not scrape it away.

“Eew,” said the worm.

“What?” asked Burner.

The worm considered its options. He’d been hiding in the crustacean below the salt flat for a long while. He and his hundreds of brothers had been on their own quest when they had burrowed into the salt flat. One by one, his brothers had dried out, leaving nothing behind but a petrified pink stick for each. The worm had stumbled upon the crustacean left behind over eons and taken refuge in it. He knew he could not leave, or he would die, but to stay meant eventual death as well. Then he had heard the hearty digging of the young troll, and seized the chance to escape.

The worm’s options were limited. Though disgusted, he decided the stink from Burner’s broken pooper was not as bad as being left behind in the salt flat. If he left the crustacean, the salt would suck all the wet from his body before he could escape. He would be as dead as all his brothers.

“Can you hear me?” the worm asked.

Burner nodded and began slowly digging. The worm listened to the sound of Burner’s claws, and the scraping of the dust devil above. Like many other creatures, the worm had an innate sense of direction.

“Left.” The worm ordered Burner. “Now, right, just a bit. A bit more. Down a little.”

The worm’s constant nagging made Burner angry, but he swallowed his ire in the same way he would have normally swallowed dirt. Now, because his belly was so full and his pooper still on the fritz, he dug slower, having to simply push dirt out of the way. On the second dawn, Burner took a small bite. The soil here tasted sweeter. He rose to the surface and emerged in a place where ferny green things grew. A light mist drifted down, and Burner drank it up, sucking water from dripping plants and out of shallow mud puddles.

“Leave me here,” said the worm, with a happy sigh.

Burner removed his butt pack. Holding the crustacean in his hands, ready to lay it among the ferns, he paused. “When will I be able to poop again?” he asked.

“Soon,” said the worm as it crawled out of the shell and began its own descent into the wet soil. “But you must beware, young troll. Do not go near that evil ever again, for it knows your scent and it will chase you down.”

Burner trembled, then using the map on his belly, headed toward the closest X. He decided to follow the course his mama had given him and not to go off on his own again. Along the way, Burner’s pooper let out an enormous cloud of foul gas, and a mountain range appeared behind him as he moved along. As his belly emptied, he once again filled his mouth with lovely, dense, moist dirt.

Back on the sand flat, the braided jump rope lay rotting in the sun.

THE END