Trip-Trap

"How's the gnocchi?" Tyler asked as Lucy chewed another mouthful of the fat, squashy dumplings.

"It's amazing," she said thickly, reaching up to brush a dribble of marinara sauce from her lower lip. The smile he gave her in return was hesitant, and she wondered if she was devouring her dinner a little too enthusiastically. Earlier that night, she had fished out an old size 6 dress from the back of her closet; the black one she had worn on their second date. The zipper had needed a little urging near the top, and after wolfing down her salad and some garlic bread, the seams felt a bit tighter. Maybe...maybe she should slow down. She set down her fork and smoothed her napkin pensively over her lap, trying to concentrate on flattening the wrinkles instead of the deliciousness of her dinner. "This place seems familiar," she mused.

"Of course it does," Tyler said cheerfully. "This is where I took you for our first date. And as of tonight, that was--"

"Oh my god," Lucy gasped, feeling the color drain from her face. "Tonight is our fifth anniversary." Tyler chewed quietly on a rubbery bit of shrimp, casting his eyes down towards the tablecloth. "I'm a horrible person," she choked. "Oh, Ty. I'm so, so sorry. I had so many things planned for us to do on our fifth, but I've been distracted with work and everything..."

"Hey, hey, hey. Slow down, Lu," he said soothingly, setting his elbows on the table so he could lean in a little closer to her. "Tonight's about us--it's not a big deal that you forgot some traditional couple bullshit. All that matters is that we're here. I know the past year has been weird, but I wanted to do something special to celebrate getting through it together. It wasn't easy, but we did it." He lifted his beer bottle and she mimicked the action with her vodka cranberry. "To resilience," he announced, and the chime of glass on glass followed.

"Yeah," Lucy mumbled around the mouth of her glass once they had pulled away. "Resilience."

"So, what's been going on with work? You've seemed stressed lately. Is it--"

"Joe? God, yes, it's fucking Joe. It's always Joe." The tiny straw in her beverage left a tail of ripples in its wake as she dragged it restlessly through the pink liquid. "That asshole wants me to manage the Johnson project too, now. Like I'm not already in charge of the research for two other companies." She leaned back in her chair, gazing hopelessly at the ceiling. "When I looked for a job in advertising, I think I underestimated the number of slack-jawed idiots I'd have to interview about airbags and travel mugs."

"Then what did you expect?" he asked wryly.

"I don't know. Something more glamorous," she teased. "Like Mad Men. I'd sip whiskey and smolder at the cameras whenever I talked on the telephone, and all my assistants would be sexy twenty-one-year-olds with snappy shirts and european-cut khakis." She waggled her eyebrows at him hopefully, but he was staring moodily into his beer bottle.

"Sexy twenty-one-year-olds, huh?" he grumbled. Lucy's face contorted into a reproachful glare.

"Stop it. It was a joke and you know it." His nostrils flared as he took in a slow, steadying breath, and while he let it out, he ran his fingers through his wavy chestnut-brown hair. He must have gotten it cut and styled today, she realized. It seemed more artfully tousled than his usual rumpled mane. And...shinier? That was odd. Ty wasn't the type of guy who spent more than five minutes combing his hair, let alone put product in it...

"I'm sorry, Lu. But I just..." He paused and took a rather violent swig of his beer, wiping his mouth roughly on his sleeve after he swallowed. "We've talked about this. It's not...respectful."

"Respectful?" she asked loudly, and the couple at the next table over turned to stare. "Wow. Tell me: how respectful were you being when you took that girl at your office out to dinner three months ago...?"

"That was work-related--"

"Yeah, work-related sushi downtown. Alone. Until eleven."

"I understand that that might have been a breach of trust--"

"I bet that wasn't the only thing you breached."

"Are we really doing this now?" he asked helplessly, gripping a frustrated handful of that too-shiny, freshly-trimmed hair. "I thought we were done with this. Tonight was supposed to be..." He trailed off, letting the sentence hang in between them like a wrecking ball poised to swing. Lucy sighed angrily, but then reached forward to grip his hand in hers.

"I'm sorry, Ty. I won't talk about well-dressed college students," she said, offering him a little smile. He returned it weakly, inclining his head in rueful acceptance.

"And if you do, I'll try not to feel threatened," he replied dully.

"You shouldn't. I'm sure you can pull off tight dress pants just as well as they can."

"Maybe I'll add some to my wardrobe."

"How are we feeling about dessert?" the waiter asked brightly, appearing with an uncanny suddenness near Lucy's chair. She jerked at the spontaneity of his arrival, but then shrugged.

"As conflicted as always, I guess," she admitted. Tyler gave her hand a firm squeeze.

"We have other plans for dessert," he said. Lucy's eyes widened. It wasn't typical of him to take over like that, but...she kind of liked this in-charge attitude. "I'd like the check. Unless," he continued, his eyes drifting towards Lucy's plate, "you aren't finished...?"

"Get it away from me," she declared quickly, shoving the plate a few inches forward. "I'd like a box, though," she added as the waiter's hands drifted down to retrieve it from her.

"Sure thing." And then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he vanished.

"He's way too efficient," Lucy whispered. Tyler laughed.

About an hour later, they were strolling through a nearby park. Tyler's hands were tucked into his pockets, and Lucy was spinning next to him, giddy from one too many vodka cocktails.

"It's beautiful out tonight," she sighed, looping a hand through his arm so she could clutch his sleeve as they walked. "Did you plan this, having a summer anniversary...?"

"I wanted to ask you sooner, but I held out," he agreed solemnly. Lucy giggled, immediately ashamed by how high-pitched it was. The sweetness of the summer air and the heady smell of fresh roses was making her feel slightly unhinged. A flutter of cool air made the hem of her dress brush against her thigh, and she felt sixteen again; perched on the hood of her friend's car and talking about simpler things, like clothes and grades and curfews. They finally scaled the small hill, and suddenly they were overlooking a vast pond that was filled with stunningly white lilypads and a small family of ducks. A charming wooden bridge scaled the length of it, the rails carved into quaint spirals that caught the twilight and cast wickedly spindly shadows onto the ground beside it.

He seemed to pause as they reached the top of the hill, and despite the gloriousness of the scene before her, Lucy was overtaken by a certain sort of trepidation. "Do you remember this place?" he murmured, and the feeling only grew as the answer found its way into her throat.

"This is where we met, isn't it?" she whispered. "I was sketching under that tree, and you were--"

"Walking Charlie, yeah," he agreed, grinning. "He shoved his nose right up your skirt before I could call him back."

"That dog got to second base before you did," she laughed, but there was a sinking feeling weighing down her stomach. "Babe, what are you...?" He wriggled out from her grasp and sank onto his knees, and she felt her eyes grow wide with horror. "Oh, Tyler," she breathed. "Oh, Ty, no..."

"Lucy," he said, a quiver in his voice, "I know we've been through a lot this year..."

"Wait," she begged, but he quickly took her hands in his and kissed the knuckles, his green eyes wide and pleading.

"It really has been a lot," he admitted. "We were so close to ending everything, and that made me think--"

"Ty..."

"--about the prospect of losing you. You mean the world to me, Lucy Clark, and living without you...that was more than I could bear. You're something inevitable to me--and I mean that in the best way. You're like coffee before work, or hot cocoa on a snow day. You just make life more bearable, and I need you. I don't think I'll ever stop needing you." Lucy's brown eyes began to brim with tears, and he withdrew one of his hands to fish fervently in his pockets. When it came back into view, it was clutching a tiny red box. He released her hands to open it, and a brilliant diamond caught the glow of the setting sun, sending a glittering halo of light onto the grass. "Lucy," he whispered, "will you marry me?"

The park was very silent after that, broken only by the chirp of crickets and the steady percussion of the trickling brook.

"Are you finished," Lucy finally asked hoarsely, "or would you like to compare me to more beverages?" His face seemed to slacken with grief and disbelief, and she tried to hide the pain from her expression as her heart shattered into a thousand pieces. "What are you doing, Ty?" she urged, clutching her mop of straight, shiny red hair frantically with both hands. "Fuck. Just last month, you were living with your mother..."

"I had to move out," he protested weakly. "You were threatening to break up with me if I didn't leave--"

"That's not the point. We were fighting, we almost called it quits for good. And now you're trying to marry me?" She shut her eyes tight and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation, trying to fight back tears. "Did you think this was going to fix it? That putting a ring on my finger would just make the last six months vanish?"

"Lucy, it's been five years! You wouldn't stay with me that long if you didn't want--where the hell are you going?!" he shouted as she began to stride quickly down the hill.

"This is insane," she yelled back. "I'm going for a walk, alone. Come home when you've gotten this out of your system, and we can eat ice cream and watch South Park and pretend that this never happened..."

"But it's getting late, and the park..." She broke into a run as his voice seemed to grow nearer, and she heard him growl in frustration. "Jesus, Lu! Don't pull this runaway bride bullshit...!"

"I'M NOT YOUR FUCKING BRIDE!" she screamed. Her ankles wobbled precariously in her four-inch heels as she ran, but she managed to scramble into a thick cluster of trees without snapping any bones or twisting any joints.

"I have the car keys, Lucy!" she heard him groan, and she waited with baited breath until she heard him pass the tiny grove. Then, with the stealth and precision of Kung-Fu movie ninjas, she dove out from her hiding place and scurried towards the man-made pond. Her heels clacked briefly on a thin ring of concrete as she made her way towards the area beneath the bridge, fumbling with her purse as she searched for her pack of cigarettes, tears springing to her eyes. This was happening so fast. So fast. She needed to be alone. She needed to think...

She finally ducked under the bridge and knelt to creep into a wide tunnel beneath it, her heels skidding slightly in the slimy water that was coursing through it. It was very dark, but a few sparse lights glowed from the ceiling. A flash from her lighter illuminated her surroundings a little more, revealing hasty swirls of graffiti and lines of names written in a column in Sharpie. Thankfully, the area seemed quiet. One of her eyebrows arched as she surveyed the area, taking a long drag from her cigarette. She certainly hadn't expected the drain to be this massive, or this long. So, wielding her cigarette, she ventured slowly into its depths.

Many minutes later, she found herself at a small fork. On one side, the tunnel cut off into a wall that trickled water through a skinny little drain, but on the other, a stone tunnel led into a strange, circular cavern. Parts of the ground beneath her were littered with discarded cigarettes and old, broken beer bottles, but as she continued forward, the litter seemed to vanish. The cavern was dry and free of any sort of vermin and, to her surprise, lit by a single fluorescent light that flickered weakly on the side of the wall. An isolated, underground room like this probably should have been covered by a thick layer of urban trash from various delinquents, but it seemed somewhat clean. In the center, a forgotten concrete slab sat alone on the stone floor. Every few feet or so, a variety of feeble flora sprang through the rocks in a shock of green and tender leaves. She slumped wearily onto the concrete slab, burying her face in her hands. Tyler's voice, calling her name incessantly, echoed dimly from the tunnel entrance, but as she waited, that too seemed to dissipate, leaving her alone with the trickling water and the strange little plants.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," she finally said in a tiny whisper, finishing up her cigarette and staring sadly at the floor as she flicked it away. A fat, quivering tear escaped the corner of her eye and began to slide down her cheek, and she quickly rubbed it away, feeling completely defeated. She and Tyler had been through a volatile sort of relationship, and even though they had both managed to forgive each other when he moved back in last month, the prospect of marrying him filled her with dread. It would be hard to kick someone out of your life when they shared your finances, the title of your house, and pretty much half of anything you owned. For Christ's sake. What the hell had he been thinking...?

"Who dares--" a terribly deep voice began suddenly from behind her, echoing richly throughout the room, and she promptly threw her leftovers towards the source of the noise. They fell with a loud crash, and the voice seemed to silence in disbelief.

"Go away," she snapped, burying her face in her hands. "Jesus Christ, if you're going to be creepy, just take my purse and go." A looming shadow fell over her, and despite her glumness, a twinge of terror made her voice falter as she spoke again. "I'm warning you," she continued, "I have pepper spray..."

"You are trespassing," the voice said delicately, and her spine stiffened when she realized that it was almost directly behind her. "Why have you come? Did you hear rumors of a monster in the tunnels? Did you want to see it?"

"What are you talking abou--" she began irritably, turning to face the voice, and then she felt the color drain from her face.

Crouched over her was a massive being maybe twice her size, with mottled green skin and a long, almost fluffy mane of black hair that seemed to travel down in a tapering stripe to the middle of his bare back. His enormous hands were braced on the concrete slab she was sitting on so that their faces were level, and each finger was topped with a sharp, wickedly curved nail that gradated to black at the tip. Long, curling horns, like a ram's, spiraled out from his temples. His eyes were bright in the gloom, gold with wide pupils and flecked with spots of black--almost like a frog's eyes. But frogs didn't have pairs of knife-like incisors that jutted out from their lower lip like he did, the points of them ending just below his long, sculpted nose. His eyes narrowed angrily as they met hers, and his upper lip curled in contempt, giving her a glimpse of more sharp, strong white teeth.

"Satisfied?" he snarled. "Take a good look. It might very well be the last thing you see." Lucy stared at him in horror for several minutes, but then her eyes squinted shut against another flood of drunken tears and she turned to sob wordlessly into her hands. He watched quietly, and an uncomfortable silence bloomed between them, punctured only by her sobs.

"I really don't understand what I've done to deserve all of this," she finally choked out, disgusted by the high-pitched whine that tainted her words. "All I wanted was a nice dinner with my stupid boyfriend, and now everything's falling apart and I'm about to get eaten, and my gnocchi is probably ruined," she continued in a horrified wail, pressing a hand to her lips and staring up at him through eyes blurry with tears. "I...I don't know why that part bothers me so much," she admitted shakily. "B-but I don't do anything awful. I'm not a bad person. I don't know if I'm a good person, but I'm definitely not evil, and this kind of night should only happen to evil, evil people..."

"Wait," he began, his expression softening, but she just shook her head violently and continued to spew nonsense at him.

"I don't know. Maybe I am evil. Maybe he's a great guy and I'm just being horrible to him. It's...it's just that...it should feel better. I should be happier when I'm with him, and I'm not. Sometimes I don't know if I even like him. He's so awful sometimes, and I can't help but think--"

Suddenly, he jerked forward to cut her off with a fierce kiss, stealing her words into his mouth. His lips weren't rubbery at all, she realized, despite their dark, glistening texture. Quite the contrary, they were like warm, oiled silk; practically liquid and all-consuming in their size. His protruding teeth brushed against her cheeks as his massive mouth moved hungrily over hers, and she felt her entire body melt into a delighted puddle. Which was...odd, considering the circumstances. He pulled away after several moments, his eyes now hooded with a content sort of laziness.

"You don't sound evil," he told her, his face still only inches from hers. "But you are very loquacious." She brought a finger up to touch her lips, feeling the wet heat from his kiss lingering on her skin. It had been a while since anyone had kissed her quite like that.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, staring slackly at his lips. "I'm a little drunk."

"I can smell it all over you," he agreed, inclining his head in a solemn nod.

"...Are you going to eat me?" she asked quietly after a pause.

"I think I like you," he said. His lips parted into a wide smile, made all the more terrifying by the length of his teeth and the underbite of his tusk-like incisors. "You're quite pretty, and the way you fret is adorable."

"I'm not fretting," she retorted, feeling her cheeks heat up. He let out a low chuckle, and she let her eyes roam over him. The broadness of his shoulders was accentuated by a thick layer of hard muscle that seemed to cover his entire body, and the black ridges of his horns caught the dim lights lustrously. Once she got a better look at him, she realized that the line of his jaw was chiseled and pleasantly angular, and his chin curved into an attractive point. His arms were taut and strong looking and utterly, utterly large.

"It isn't polite to stare," she heard him murmur, and her eyes strayed from the rigid hollow of his throat and darted back to his face. He looked faintly annoyed.

"No, no, it isn't like that," she assured him, shaking her head hastily. "You're just...very good-looking, for a monster."

"A troll," he corrected her gently, apparently mollified. For some reason, that admission made her situation seem much more real, and she swallowed.

"A troll," she echoed in a weak voice. They both were quiet for several minutes, and Lucy listened to the trickling of the drainwater as she stared uncertainly at her new acquaintance: this possibly bloodthirsty troll who had declared a fondness for her only minutes after meeting her. "You can kiss me again, if you want," she finally decided. He cocked his head to the side in response, watching her curiously. "It felt nice," she admitted, shifting a little closer to him. "And, well..." She bit her lip, her fingers folding in her lap. "...I think kissing someone would be good for me right now."