Troll Extraction

by Mark Szasz

  “Mm-hm, mm-hm… No doubt about it. You’ve got a troll under your dental bridge,” Dr. Gruff agreed, narrowing his gaze.  

     The beam from his dental headlight shone on two tiny shining eyes in my mouth, each reflecting in his spectacles and glowering at me. 

     A gigantic hairy arm flew out of my face, bulging muscles ending in long clawed fingers swiping at the dentist. He kicked hard against the dental chair, the wheels of his own seat carrying him out of reach. Dr. Gruff harumphed at the arm receding back into my maw.  

     “Rude little bugger, too.” 

     I wiped drool off my chin from the creature’s outburst. It’s a surprise my jaw didn’t break each time it did that! But I guess if a troll can break into your mouth without you noticing, it makes sense it could get out, too. 

     “Can you help?” I asked. 

     Dr. Gruff thoughtfully stroked the mask that held his ivory beard. “Yeah, I believe so. Troll extraction can be a tough business though and isn’t always covered by insurance. But we have some options. There’s the Nordic cure, the Scandinavian cure, or the Grimm cure. That’s listed from most to least effective, by the way. Which happens to be most costly to least costly, too.” 

     I placed my hands on the blue bib the assistant had attached before he was eaten by the troll. I still could taste their deodorant in my mouth, which was only a slightly superior taste to troll sweat. 

     “What’s involved in the Nordic method?” I asked. 

     “You swallow the sun.” 

     “What?”  

     “Well, a sun. It’s from the Edda,” Dr. Gruff said, matter-of-fact. “Trolls are swallowers of the wheel of heaven, which means the sun in less lofty terms. You get one of those inside you, he’ll steal it before it goes down your gullet, nosh it, and be cozy as a kitten afterwards. You can just spit him out while he snoozes it off.”  

     When I didn’t believe him, he snickered and handed me a pair of dark, dark glasses. 

     “Put ‘em on.” 

     After placing one of those x-ray friendly lead aprons on me, he switched his glasses out, too, and exhumed from one of the cabinets–and you won’t believe it–a sun. It sat in the palm of his gloved hand making the room incredibly hot. The troll’s arm flailed wildly outside my lips, excited roars echoing inside me from head to toe as it stretched to try and get the star. 

     “Oh!” Dr. Gruff stowed it away quickly. “He gets it, you’re paying! Those don’t come cheap.” 

     “Alright…” I said, a bit baffled by what I had just seen as I took off the glasses. “Um, what’s the Scandinavian cure?”  

     “Lightning. Right in the puss.”  

     “Well, that sounds painful.” 

     “Yeah, definitely have to have an anesthesiologist come in for that one. And you might want to be prepared for some cosmetic surgery afterwards. You’ll sign a waiver for that, just so you know.” 

     “I’m afraid to ask about the last method,” I admitted, not liking the options so far. 

     “The Grimm cure isn’t as bad as it sounds,” he chuckled. “It really is called the Asbjørnsen cure… did I say that right, I think I did?” He looked up as if the answer might hang in the air, then shrugged. “Anyway, a lot of people who aren’t Norwegian have a hard time saying that, so it popularly started being called the Grimm cure instead.” 

     “What does it involve?” 

     Dr. Gruff stood up from the chair, got on his tiptoes because he was a smaller fellow, his white lab coat sweeping behind him as he squared his shoulders to make himself look bigger. His eyes went stern, and I dropped my jaw because I wasn’t sure what was happening. He put his hands on his hips. 

     “Hey! You smell like daisies! And you look cute as a unicorn foal!” 

     A grunt of irritation popped out of my mouth. 

     “What are you d—?” 

     “Keep your mouth open. Hey! That’s right, I mean you! You look like you eat your vegetables! I bet you read the Wall Street Journal! Is that a spankin’ new suit! How was this month’s GQ?!” 

     The troll in my mouth by this point was mightily agitated, and it said so in loud, booming replies. 

     “Oh yeah! Well, come out here and prove you’re a savage force of natural evil then, you manicured, windowsill gardening, properly exercising, book reading, checkbook balancing, practical car owning, driving at the posted speed limit, tastefully decorating your condo, tenderhearte—!” 

     At that, the troll leapt full scale out of my mouth, its noxious form hoggish of aspect, gargantuan in dimension, wrath seething from its all-too-savage limbs. Its stinky foot bounded from my lip like a trampoline as it pounced on Dr. Gruff! 

     The dentist, meanwhile, calmly produced something that had been hidden in his hands as they’d been at his side, and he clapped it in front of him, catching the troll in midair. He slapped what he’d held into a clear container, and the troll landed miniscule and scuttled beneath the small pair of teeth molds the dentist trapped him with. It glared angrily at both of us. 

     “Huh, it worked. Go figure,” Dr. Gruff said. He arched an eyebrow at the troll and quipped, “Doesn’t pay to be so rude, now does it?”  

     Turning to me he grinned. “Fortunately for me, though, it does. My receptionist will bill you on the way out. Unless, of course, you’d like the troll put back.” 

     I smiled, and it felt good to know that a troll arm wouldn’t be souring my doing so anymore. As long as I brushed my teeth appropriately, Dr. Gruff warned as I left to pay.