Off The Page

Wheel of Chaos 2025

Week 9
Prompt: Edgelord
September 11, 2025

OFF THE PAGE

Grumlek Stenfang prided himself on the edginess of his life. He was a keen observer of society and he always knew what was cool and what was not – the barely-known bands, the obscure movies, the latest internet slang, the hot new coffee shops in downscale neighborhoods. Popular music was dreck, something for your parents. If you didn’t know about the Screaming Squash, your life wasn’t worth living. The Squash was a no-hit band from the 80s who single-handedly invented veggie rock. They were the latest darlings of the terminally cool, at least for this week.

Edginess was a constantly moving line separating people worth knowing from those who were best ignored. “If you worry about being cool, you’re not,” Grumlek once said in an interview on a podcast so cool it didn’t even have a name.

But Grumlek was more than just cool. He was an accomplished origami creator, known not only for his straight edges but also the simplicity of his tiny designs.

Truly, he was a lord of edges. He was also a troll – and not just any troll. He was a paper troll.

“It all comes from my origins,” he once said. “After all, I’m a two-dimensional drawing of a troll who escaped from a fairy tale -- I’m nothing but edges.”

Grumlek taking time off from “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” to invent golf.

Life was not easy for a two-dimensional troll living in a 3-D world. He was liberated from the pages of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” in which a troll princess tries to keep the hero as her captive husband. Kidnapping is a common marital strategy among trolls, because even trolls don’t want to marry trolls unless they’re forced to.

Grumlek had a minor role in the story, but it was enough to catch the eye of Timmy Arbuckle, a five-year-old with a penchant for cutting things up with scissors. One day, Timmy tried to give his little sister a haircut. For his tonsorial efforts, he was banished to his room. Unfortunately, he took his scissors with him and freed Grumlek from the drawings for “East of the Sun,” which his father had sadly left behind after last night’s bedtime story.

The drawings were so vibrant that Grumlek sprang to life and immediately ran away. With Timmy in the house, he knew what would happen if he stayed.

Life was difficult at first. After all, he was only two inches tall, made of paper, and he had part of the text for “East of the Sun” on his back. But he was a troll and he persevered after the manner of all trolls.

Grumlek was unfortunately at the whim of every breeze, wind, or gust, which blew him everywhere. In the course of his unintended travels, he got to see the human race from his different perspective. He was rarely impressed.

One day he was blown into the office of the Gazette Tribune. The building provided a hideaway, safe from being stepped on or blown away. A week later, a janitor tried to sweep him up as just another bit of trash. That’s when Grumlek discovered his voice.

“Stop that!” he yelled, to the surprise of both Grumlek and the janitor, who had never heard a piece of paper talk before, especially one with the squeaky voice of a two-inch troll.

The janitor took a swig from his hip flask, then drank some more for good luck. He got down on his knees to face Grumlek.

“What the ##!@@ are you?” he asked.

“A troll,” Grumlek replied, who then told him his story.

The janitor knew he was out of his depth, so he picked up Grumlek and put him on a stack of papers in Rose Wisneski’s in-box, with a note that said “Talk to me.”

Rose wrote the “Now!” column, which covered local soft items, like restaurant openings, movie reviews, local culture, and anything deemed not to be real news. Rose and her column were well-liked and well-written, leading to a Herb Caen Award for Non-Specific Journalism for her article “Why an Apple?” A two-inch talking paper troll was a dream story for her.

“So, why should I talk to you?” asked Rose. “You’re scrap paper.”

“Beats me,” said Grumlek, who was feeling grumpy, the usual mood for trolls. “Why should I talk to you?”

Once she got over her surprise, Rose recognized that she had a good story, maybe even a great one, about a totally new life form: paper. She loved the weird intersections of human interest and science, and this had Pulitzer written all over it.

“Because we can help each other,” Rose replied. “Tell me your story and I’ll make you famous.”

As a troll, Grumlek didn’t care about being famous. He couldn’t eat it or spend it, so why bother?

Still, he had once been part of a story, and he had a voice.

“Why not tell her?” he thought. “Maybe I can get something out of it.”

After all, trolls are greedy and grasping, and Grumlek was a troll.

So, he talked. And talked. And then talked some more.

“Once upon a time, there was a book, a little boy, and a pair of scissors,” he began.

He talked about life as a tiny paper troll, some of which was true. Since he started as a fictional character, he lacked a firm grasp on the truth, but he knew how to spin a story. Rose bought it all. Besides his grim start in life, there were stolen babies, talking puppets, glass shoes, and battles with mice kings.

There were also comments about the people he had seen, their desperate desire to belong, and the lengths they would go to be kjekt, which Rose said was Norwegian for “cool.”

"I’m cool,” she said by way of explanation.

“I didn’t know that shopping at Sears was cool,” replied Grumlek, with a giggle.

And that started his career as a pundit on the human social scene from his trollish point of view. He would talk and then Rose would write. Her column was soon carried nationally, she got a blog, and there were occasional television appearances.

But Grumlek wanted none of this. No self-respecting troll would. Trolls work and they work hard. It’s what they do, and this just wasn’t troll work. Talking with Rose was fun, and if she’d been a troll, he might have kidnapped her and started a family. But he needed real work.

“What can you do?” Rose asked when Grumlek told her he needed a job.

“Trolls are good at guarding treasures and castles and smashing things,” he said. “Some like to eat people, but I’m not that kind of troll – I don’t have a stomach. Some trolls live under bridges and collect tolls.”

“Let me make some calls,” said Rose.

Within a few days, Grumlek had a job as an automated bridge toll attendant. He didn’t have to do anything, just watch the cars go by. This was perfect for a piece of paper. To keep him from being blown away, every morning a co-worker taped him to the booth’s window, and took him down when his shift was over.

Since the bridge was close to Rose’s office, he decided to live in her filing cabinet, in a folder under “T.” The paper’s cartoonist drew a cave and a bridge on the inner sides of the folder to make Grumlek feel at home.

One day when he was talking to Rose for a column, he noticed something new on her desk.

“What’s that?”

“An origami swan -- I make them when I’m stressed,” she said.

Grumlek was entranced by the beauty of it.

“But I’m not stressed,” he thought, “just bored.”

As a piece of paper, the idea of making things out of another sheet of paper appealed to him, so he took up origami. Trolls have very nimble hands, and soon he was an expert at making all sorts of animals, real or imaginary, out of bits of paper. He loved to make trolls. In the back of his mind, he hoped that one would come to life. Rose was a great friend, but he was still lonely. There was no one like him to talk to, or, hopefully, kidnap. Despite what the stories tell us, trolls are very sociable and like to live in small tribes.

Deep in their hearts, all trolls have a yearning for northern Europe, their homeland. Grumlek’s problem was that he came from a book. He didn’t know anything about trolls except for fairy tales. One day, Rose wrote a humorous column on the origins of trolls which mentioned Norway, their ancestral home.

Grumlek knew what he wanted to do, but he was happy with Rose, the bridge, and origami. He pushed thoughts of Norway to the side. But then one day, the inevitable happened. Rose retired. This was upsetting to her many fans, but most of all to Grumlek.

“You can come live with me,” she told Grumlek one day. But both knew it wouldn’t be the same. “Just think about it,” she added, but she knew what Grumlek wanted.

After Rose’s retirement party, she had to clear out her files, including the “T’s.”

“It’s time,” she said.

She took an envelope and addressed it to the Troll Sanctuary in Norway. Grumlek crawled inside, and then Rose put it in the outgoing mail.

Ten days later, Grumlek arrived at the Troll Sanctuary. An administrator opened the envelope and he stepped out. The air was crisp and cold, and everywhere there were trees, rivers, rocks, and snow. And there were trolls. Lots of them, and all in three dimensions. This was truly the troll homeland, and he knew he belonged. He could feel his lungs expanding for the first time. And his body started to grow until he too became 3-D. He was no longer a paper troll.

“Home at last,” Grumlek thought as he was greeted by several trolls.

Rose was home as well. Even in retirement, she continued to write, finally winning a Pulitzer Prize for her children’s stories featuring a cool paper troll.

Little Timmy kept using his scissors and grew up to be a tailor on Saville Row.

Most of them lived happily ever after.

#####################

If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it and read the many other fine entries here. https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1200039.html 

The drawing of Grumlek is by Arvid Kristoffersen, a fairy tale illustrator whose drawings are inspired by cultures with a deep tradition of troll stories, including Norway (where he was born) and Montana (where he lives). This did not result in any cowboy trolls that I could find. That level of kitsch would clearly be uncool. A golfing troll is enough.