Under the Cover
Sara thought the pool cover looked like a big figure eight of a trampoline, and all she wanted was a few bounces. She wasn’t used to getting yelled at. When her Grandpa caught her prodding her toe over the pool cover, he yelled louder than she's ever heard somebody yell before. His voice cracked, and his eyes were so wide he looked like some sort of monster. He was scarier than the idea of drowning, which he kept repeating over and over while Sara cried and cried.
Later on, when Sara was inside sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of her, Grandpa Timmy told her the real reason why he didn’t want her playing on the pool cover. "You know why you and all the other kids really need to stay away from the pool when it's closed?" Her grandfather asked. Sara waited, knowing he would tell her anyway.
"There’s a monster, and he lives under the pool covers. Do you know what trolls are, Sara?" He asked, gentle and soothing now.
"Yes." She replied although she could only think of ugly horned things that s bunkered down under bridges.
"Well, under all of our pool covers is a distant....cousin to the troll. We call it a frollock. Like the birds that head south for the winter, it comes from the far north and it really, really likes all the chemicals in pools. It creeps into them just at the end of summer, and because we give it shelter...it doesn't bother us."
"That's not true!" Sara tried to catch him in his lie. There was no way she hadn’t heard of something like this before. There was Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairies, and Boogeymen. Sara believed in that last one even though her parents always told her he was the only make-believe one. If Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny were real, then it was definitely possible the boogeyman was too.
"It’s true indeed darling, that's why you walking so close to the edge of the pool gets me nervous. If I let some stinking frollock get to you, I don't know what I'd tell your parents."
"Why's it so mean?"
"Cause it's cold, darling, and sleeping under that pool cover only makes it irritable. You see, all Trolls were once fairies"
"Like Tinkerbell?"
"Yes, yes-just like Tinkerbell, except these trolls and frollocks, they were selfish fairies. They only used their fairy magic on themselves, and over time...they got ugly. Trolls grew warts but the frollocks, they got it the worst. Trolls are like your sister’s boyfriend, Kyle, with all those zits on his face. Tolls are ugly but they still look like people. Frollocks, on the other hand, are all wart, and on top of those warts they’ve developed scales that glow green and yellow in the dark. If you look at them from far enough away, they look like a bunch of fireflies moving as one. Now the frollocks, they feed off toads and mice and all the other vermin all winter long; that's why the pool is so icky and green come the end of spring."
"It would eat me?" Sara asked with eyes wide enough to pop out of her head.
"Yes, sweetie, cause little girls and boys are extra tasty to a frollocks.”
"But I don't get it." Sara lightly tugs at her ponytails. "Why do you let them be so mean? You're giving them a home, shouldn't they be nice?"
Her grandpa blew hot chocolate steam out of the corner of his mouth as he took a big gulp. "Frollocks are just plain mean, and evil, we only tolerate them because they're a pain in the ass to put down!" With that, Sara’s grandmother came into the kitchen and the story was over. Sara had a lot of questions and theories of her own, but she kept them to herself. Her grandfather had promised not to tell her grandmother that she’d been playing near the pool.
That night, Sara snuck out to the edge of the pool, because she doesn't believe any creature, especially a magical one, could be so cruel or mean. Everybody has a nice part to them, like the mean girl at school that’s recently become her friend. "Mr. Frollock?" Sara whispered, her breath coming out as fog. Her grandparents had gone to bed so early, it was hardly nightfall; she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Sara walked to the edge of the pool cover and listened closely. Something was breathing under there; she was sure of it. She placed one foot across the pool cover. Trolls and frollocks and gremlins, they couldn’t be as bad as people said. They're just misunderstood. She wasn’t going to be like everybody else, she wasn’t going to hate something she didn’t understand. Instead of being frightened by stories, she would start a new relationship between people and the things that hide. She placed her other foot on the pool cover, then hopped forward.
"Mr. Frollock?" Sara called, just before the jaws of something ancient and plastic snapped shut around her.
Nicholas Manzolillo’s short stories have appeared in over 60 publications, including The New England Horror Writers, The Tales To Terrify podcast, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. He has an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. He is a native Rhode Islander versed in New England culture.