Peep

by Hilbilly Mom

Once upon a time, there lived a troll under a rickety wooden bridge just outside the village. He was not considered attractive, as trolls go, with his lime-green flesh, tall tuft of lemon-yellow hair, and a shape like the Tasmanian devil of future cartoon fame. The similarity ended with the shape. This troll did not whirl like a tornado. He was bothered by an inner-ear disturbance, and tried not to spin or make sudden head movements. Though he had not been formally christened, the troll adopted the name of Peep.

Peep trolled his days away picking daffodils, arranging them in attractive floral displays under the bridge where he had established residence. Nobody ever came to visit, but Peep liked nice things. What he didn’t like was people. People pissed Peep off. They thumped willy-nilly over his bridge at all hours of the day, causing dirt and sand to sift down in a rain of grit into Peep’s home. To exacerbate the matter, children often stopped on the bridge and taunted Peep. They didn’t know if he truly existed, or was just a legend their parents had made up to keep them off the bridge. They jumped and stomped and hooted and hollered, bringing down grain upon grain of despair into Peep’s peaceful existence.

Peep did not retaliate against the children. He regarded them as merely ignorant, and would not seek revenge for their childish shenanigans . Peep was not of a pugnacious nature. All he wanted was to sit peacefully in his underbridge lair, and gaze upon the beauty of his daffodils. And while the people pissed Peep off, Peep preferred to internalize his anger. It wouldn’t do to lose one’s temper, charge out from under the bridge, and eat someone. The local scofflaws would take matters into their own hands, and Peep would pick daffodils no more.

So each day, Peep arose with the sun, and gathered his beloved daffodils. He licked the fresh dew from their stems, and wove them into the most Byzantine patterns no one had ever seen. He made walls of woven daffodil mats, and rugs, and blankets, and rich tapestries. Peep’s ineffable attention to detail created exquisite treasures the likes of which the townspeople would never encounter.

One sunny day, amidst the shuffle of the shouting children, a tiny tot was bumped over the edge of the bridge, and was saved from a nasty head-knock by one of Peep’s hanging daffodil curtains. The other children saw one of their own disappear under the bridge, and took off for the village. They were too afraid to tell the true tale of what had happened, having been forbidden to play on the bridge. They feigned surprise when one of their number was noted missing, and joined the crowd in beating the bushes for their fallen comrade until sunset. None of them slept well that night. They dreamed of the wee one being mauled and devoured by that ugly old troll under the bridge.

Peep had been much surprised by the chortling child who tumbled down his daffodil drape. At first, he stared as the child blinked in wonder at Peep’s colorful countenance. Then the tot crawled to him and clambered into Peep’s lap. Peep dandled the toddler on his knee all afternoon, and played pat-a-cake, and got-your-nose, and this-is-the-church-this-is-the-steeple. When night fell solidly, Peep picked up the sleeping child, and climbed out from under the bridge.

He plodded down the road toward the village, the slumbering tot in his arms, the moon at his back. Peep did not know where the child belonged, but deemed he would find the proper home before first light. The erudite daffodil-weaver knew he would never see his home sweet-daffodil home again if he was discovered with the young one in his arms.

Peep traipsed from house to house, peeping in each window. His eyes, long accustomed to dark nights under the bridge, had no trouble discerning beds full of sleeping children. Unfortunately, they turned into beds full of screaming children each time Peep looked in. Some sixth sense of child-preservation, or perhaps the nightmare of breaking the bridge rules, caused each child to awaken, and scream, “It’s PEEP! It’s PEEP! There! In the window! He’s going to eat me! EEEEEEE!”

Each time this happened, Peep quickly ducked and headed for the next house, sticking to the shadows. At the last house, he spied an empty cradle. The mother lay on the bed beside it, dangling her hand over the side of the crib. Peep took a deep breath, and slipped silently through the door. He laid the gently-snoring babe into the cradle, a lone daffodil clutched tightly in its chubby fist, and backed out as quietly as he had come.

Still in the shadows, Peep tiptoed through the village toward his daffodil-dappled lair. At each house he passed, he heard the stern voices of parents scolding their screaming offspring: “That’s enough of this foolishness! Trolls are not real. Now get back to sleep. I mean it. I don’t want to hear another peep out of you!”