I Came Upon a Troll
By Jason Pierre
Every so often, I take these hour-long walks. I drift for miles at a time. It gives me a chance to look out at Los Angeles in a way I would never have done on the bus. One thing I’ve learned about this town is that it’s very segregated. Areas are designed to be cultural pockets for different communities and pride is held in the emotional ownership of a neighborhood. And these neighborhoods aren’t small. Los Angeles is a massive place. A neighborhood is like a town. And me? I’m a man on my feet, wandering through them as a stranger; belonging to no piece of land other than the footprint of pavement my feet touch for a tenth of a second as I walk.
Recently, I walked under an overpass and saw a bed of massive rocks surrounding a gated entrance to the sewers. Construction trucks loomed over the area like gargoyles protecting a church but there were no men sitting inside of them. Wind crept out from below that sounded more like the ominous breathing of an old giant.
“Is there anyone down there?” I asked as I looked into the darkness.
“Is it time for me to rest?” asked a voice from below.
“Um… I don’t know. There isn’t anyone up here.”
“I need to rest, they promised me I could rest,” said the voice from below.
I pulled the grating open and climbed down to see a massive old troll. His feet filled with calluses and bruises from standing for so long, his hair as long as telephone lines and his massive arms, they held up the city above ground.
“Oh… my… god,” I whispered, shocked at this creature bearing the weight of the city above. “How long have you been standing here?”
“Two hundred years,” he said. “I can stay in my home as long as I hold up the city they’ve built on top of mine. Will you give me a break? My arms… they hurt.”
“I’m not that strong,” I replied, wishing I could offer him some help. Sadness covered his face as his arms quivered, causing an earthquake to echo above. The whole city felt his fatigue. I looked around this underground world and saw dozens of trolls, covered in the rubble of the city above. They were no longer able to carry the weight so the city crushed them and their homes.
“I want to give up,” he whispered. “There is no one left to talk to, I spend more time holding this city up than I do enjoying my existence.”
“But if you give up, everything will cave in.”
“Then they will build on top of that cave. Then when that is not enough, they will build on top of that and on top of that!”
“Then why stay in the first place? Why didn’t you leave one-hundred years ago?”
“Because in the middle of the night when everything is quiet, someone will listen and hear the heartbeat of the city: that heartbeat is mine. And what is a city without a heart, without an identity to call its own?”
He was right; I listened and could hear his heart beating as loud as the beat of a drummer leading a band. And his breath was the wind that flowed through LA at night.
Beep, beep, beep… the sounds of the construction trucks backing up came from above ground.
“They’ve come to let me rest,” said the troll. A smile formed on his face as he gleamed up at the entrance above. The humming engines moved closer to us until the entrance was blackened out by the ominous slow moving wet cement that poured on top of us.
“They’re filling it with cement!” I shouted as I ran. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!” But the troll stayed. They lied to him and he accepted it. He stood there like a guard protecting a castle and let the cement blanket his sad, disfigured body.
“I don’t want to run. I’ve held up this city for so long, why not do it forever? I’ll be its heartbeat if that is what it wants me to be.”
I ran for the nearest manhole and escaped.
When I got above ground I closed my eyes and listened for the city’s heartbeat… and there it was. I’d never heard it before that day, and now that I’ve heard it, I can’t escape its rhythm. Now when I go on my long walks, I’ll stop in a neighborhood and listen for its heartbeat. There’s someone down there holding it up, giving it soul, personality and a reason to belong.
Jason Pierre is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and writer. He was born to first-generation Jamaican immigrants and raised in the South Bronx. Jason attended the High School of Art & Design, where he became interested in filmmaking and fiction writing. He earned his BFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. Shortly after, he moved to Los Angeles, where he has worked in Creative Development at production companies such as Red Varden and film studios such as FOX 2000. His first short film, David at Daytime, premiered at the New Filmmakers New York 2014 Winter Screening Series at the Anthology Film Archives. He is currently developing his next short film, Gemini.
