About the Author

  Janie couldn’t, and honestly didn’t want to imagine what type of substance it was that she had just stuck her hand into. She was doing a quick sweep, investigating for toys possibly stuck in the No Man’s Land between the kitchen cabinet and the fridge. And before she left for the evening, she needed to find Brian’s most precious item - a teeny, tiny plastic Happy Birthday Troll Janie had stuck on top of his third birthday cake over six months ago. The fuzzy-haired centenary prize rarely left her son’s hands and on today of all days, it had gone missing, for almost two hours. And poor little Brian was approaching critical mass.
  If Janie had any chance of actually being able to leave the house tonight without a coda of pitiful wails following her out the door, never mind first making that date with the hot shower, the at-home waxing kit and the weapons-grade pink Daisy Twin Blade that she would definitely need to put to use before stepping foot in public, the troll would need to be back in her son’s eagerly awaiting hands.
  So right now, Janie needed to see what cool, gelatinous slime she had just unseeingly plunged her fingers into. She closed her eyes, pulled out her hand and looked.
  And her worst fears were realized.
  It was brown.
  Please, please, please, please let this be chocolate. She held her hand as far away from the rest of her body as the length of her arm would allow, unable to take her eyes off of the oozing sludge. Now, she would not only have to clean her hand but move the fridge, get a cloth, immerse it in some type of bleach/soap solution and completely sanitize the entire area between the cabinet and the refrigerator. Although she did realize that no one else in the world would ever look there, or have an opportunity to run their hand in the tight spot in their improbable quest to find out how disgusting her house might actually be, Janie, for her own sanity, needed to know that the offending substance, whatever it was, was gone. Otherwise, I’ll be at this concert all night, thinking about festering, brown slime.
   “Katie!” She called to her five year old, as she fanatically scrubbed off the glutinous grossness, “Can you keep Brian in the living room for a few minutes?”
   “Yes, Mama!”
   “Thank you!” Janie called back, snapping shut the safety gate between the dining room and the kitchen, just to be sure. Despite the promise of youthful cooperation, Janie had to realize that invariably her two little children’s curiosity would get the better of them. And soon, she would be pinned behind the fridge answering a litany of “Mama,whatareyoudoing? Whatisthat? Thesoapisstinky. Ismytrollinthere? CanIhaveajuicebox?” while being baptized in both bleach and disgusting, unidentified-but-I-sure-still-hope-it’s-chocolate goo.
  Janie ran the hot water and grabbed a bucket and her old reliable Clorox. She dried off her hands, stepped to the refrigerator and placed them against the only side not covered in fingerpainted artwork and shoved. The big appliance wouldn’t budge. Bad leverage? She lowered her hand position, dug in with her sneakers and rammed it again.
  Nothing.
   “Come on, you big, ugly bas…” Before she ended that particular sentence, mama-instincts kicked in, she glimpsed over before beginning what would have most assuredly proved to be a very satisfying catalogue of curses. Her two little darlings were peeking over the safety gate.
   “Hi Mama,” they chorused.
   “Hello sweeties,” she chimed, with a wave and a little smile, glancing up at the clock over the doorframe. Stacie’s gonna kill me. Janie stood back, cracked her knuckles, put her hands in optimum leverage position upon the plastic exterior, threw her weight up into her shoulders, dug her toes into the tile grout on the floor, grunting and heaving against the largest appliance in her house. Her t-shirt rode up on the side where her skin was sliding hard against the edge of the counter, “Ow… jees… godda… sonofa… ow.” Little ears, Janie.
  But, wait, she could feel it. There it was - the giant almond bisque elephant of a refrigerator was moving! She was doing it!
  It wasn’t much, but it was at least enough to slide a bleach-laden sponge, a hand, an arm and a shoulder in far between so she could clean that disgusting whatever-it-was up. She went to the sink, grabbed her bucket, her sponge, no time for gloves, screw the gloves, and some paper towels.
  After a quick but effective sterilization that would have made a member of the CDC beam with pride, the entire area was clean and dry. And Janie was light-headed – Bleach Buzz. All vestiges of the sticky, brown, still unidentified and hopefully-will-stay-that-way substance were eradicated. Janie scrambled up, went to the opposite side of the fridge, cleared a spot in the magnetized art gallery and placed her back against it. She shoved and heaved and hoisted until beads of sweat formed in the hollow of her chest and upon her brow and the fridge slid slowly back in to place.
  Whew. “Ah, now, let’s go upstairs,” she sighed to her two little cherubs still watching this interesting show over the top of the gate, “You little pumpkins need to get ready for bed.”
   “But Mama,” Brian’s face took on a very distraught look, and his voice climbed up two anxious octaves, “Happy Birthday Troll?”
  Janie picked up the bucket, the sponge, the wet paper towels, and dumped them all into the sink, “Oh honey,” she said sympathetically over her shoulder, “I promise we’ll keep looking.”
  Turning back towards her audience, she felt her foot kick something small and hard. She only caught a brief glimpse of the punted item as it skittered across the floor before finally wedging itself deeply in between the dark, yet fully disinfected, half-inch of space between the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinet.
  It was the Troll.
  Of course.
  Janie looked to the ceiling and sighed. I can’t say this out loud. There are children here. Not out loud. As much as I would really, really, really like to.
  Shit.
  And Brian and Katie chirped over the barrier, “Can we have a cookie?”