Annabelle woke up on the anniversary of her second sobriety with a dry mouth and a doomed certainty that she would fail. She could hear Luke rummaging around in the kitchen, the clink of pots and pans, water running over dishes. She rolled over. She pulled the blankets over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut. If she slept the day away, she might make it. She felt a weight on the edge of the bed.
“Coffee,” Luke said. “I made a scramble too. But you have to get up for that.”
Annabelle lowered the blanket. Luke had already dressed in his gray suit, gray hair slicked back in that business way she didn’t like. She preferred his weekend hair: unruly curls and stubble. He handed her a cup of coffee. She let the steam tickle her chin before taking a sip.
“I dreamed about our pond,” Annabelle said. “The water was red.”
“Blood?” Luke said.
“Wine,” Annabelle said. “You’re sure you have to go today?”
He reached out and touched her hair. “Call me if you need me,” he said. “But I believe in you. You got this.”
She had been furious when he told her the date his company had decided on for the opening of the warehouse he’d designed. Not at him, he couldn’t help when they decided to throw him on a plane, but angry at a world that delighted in such coincidences.
“It’s just a day like any other,” Luke said. “You’ve changed so much in a year, Annie.”
Annabelle groaned and pulled the blanket back over her head, over the coffee and her hair. Inside her blanket tent, there was no opportunity for mistakes.
One year ago, after six months of her first go at sobriety, she had woken up not in a bed but on the kitchen floor of a coworker’s house, the stench of vomit overwhelming. She’d stumbled to the bathroom and seen not herself but a monster in the mirror: or maybe, she’d thought, this was her, in all her glory, with chunks of the stew her coworker had cooked for her stuck in her disheveled hair.
Luke had left her there. He’d instructed her coworker to do the same. He had begged her to stop drinking. He’d set his boundaries: he would never carry her home again. It worked. For six months, it worked, but she thought she could handle herself. She thought she could have a glass of wine with dinner. She should be able to; adult women should be able to drink a goddamn glass of wine from time to time. One had turned to four had turned to shots snuck from her coworker’s liquor cabinet.
The coworker didn’t have to inform Annabelle’s boss of her dinner performance; Annabelle’s boss had been there, had seen it all firsthand. Annabelle arrived at work the following Monday to an email. Meet me in my office asap. It didn’t look good for the company, her boss said. Especially not one that created content for children.
Annabelle didn’t need Luke to tell her she’d gotten out of control again. She returned home and poured out every bottle of alcohol in the house. Except for one: a special liquor they’d picked up on their first trip together, a cherry-flavored gin from the Netherlands. She couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it. Instead she asked Luke to lock it up in the gun safe and never tell her the combination. He had obliged but made sure to let her know that he trusted her. She’d made the right decisions for herself over and over. She appreciated the trust. She refused to know the combination anyway.
“You can’t hide under that blanket forever,” Luke said. “For one thing, you’ll suffocate.”
“Will not,” Annabelle said, but he was right, she couldn’t breathe well in the hot coffee stench.
“Join me if you will, Annie,” Luke said. “I’ve got an hour until my airport ride comes.”
She felt his weight leave the bed. She sighed in her tent. She emerged from the dark to a room half-lit from the window. Annabelle swallowed the rest of her coffee and crawled out of bed. She paused to peer outside. The house had been built near a dried-up creek. Over the previous year, she and Luke had taken down the rickety bridge the previous owners had built over the creek and dug out a pond. Her sobriety project, they called it. Water made her calm. The pond would remind her, Luke said. The blue-green water sparkled in the sunlight.
Annabelle slipped on her robe. In the kitchen, she refilled her coffee cup and sat at the table with Luke. His suitcase was by the front door. They ate breakfast together. Filled with anxiety, she found the eggs tasted bland and unsatisfactory. The coffee seemed weak. Before Luke left, he held her hand.
“You got this,” he said.
“I know,” she said, but she knew nothing of the sort. Outside the window, the bushes rustled.
When Annabelle had realized that her first anniversary would come on a weekend, she felt a drop in the pit of her stomach. After losing her old job, she’d taken on the first work she could find: a telemarketing gig. The work didn’t fulfill her, but sometimes she caught herself taking pride in her efficiency, in the ease with which she moved through her caller lists, the professional tone she took with her supervisors, her ability to push away the insults leveled at her by the people she interrupted during their lunches. They didn’t know her faults. They assumed that calling her a terrible person would sting, but she knew how she looked at her worst. Calling people who did not want to be called was the least of her transgressions.
Annabelle looked down at her hands as she cleaned the dishes. They were shaking. She glanced out the window again. The water hissed down the drain. The surface of the pond rippled, as though someone had thrown something into it. Probably an acorn fallen from a tree. Annabelle finished up the dishes. She thought about calling a friend, but she had lost most of those when she stopped drinking the first time. She stood at the window. She might spend her whole day standing at the window, and that would be okay. It would be better than what she wanted, what she always wanted: to crack open that safe and drown her heart in the bottle there. To rest.
It was okay to ask for help. Luke told her that all the time, as did her therapist. But it meant something to stand at the window alone. It meant something to keep herself from dialing Luke or her sister, people who would listen and offer platitudes, people who would never really understand. Luke had told her to call him if she needed him, even though he would be on an airplane for the next three hours, then working steadily after. He was kind. The perfect partner for someone like her who needed help but didn’t want to need help.
Someone knocked at the back door. Annabelle looked out the window. Nothing. She opened the door, but no one was there.
Annabelle went back into the bedroom. She opened her closet. The safe was still there, locked. Luke knew the combination. He would give it to her, if she asked for it. She sat in front of it and touched the black metal. It was cold. When she’d first insisted that they keep the bottle inside, Luke had asked why.
“You say you’re never going to drink again,” he’d said. They were sitting at the dining room table, the cavalry of liquor in formation before them. “I’m not going to drink it without you.”
“It’s important to me,” she’d said. “Please.”
She had tried to form the words. She wanted to tell him, but sometimes her brain fogged when she thought of alcohol, or when she thought at all. There were warring reasons in her mind: she didn’t want to have to be the kind of person who couldn’t live with a bottle in her house. She wanted to be so strong she could handle having it there, even if it was locked away. But she also didn’t want to let all of it go. Wasn’t alcohol a part of her, the way her love of water was a part of her? She went back and forth. Her therapist advised her to let it go. Let it all go. Annabelle had not told her about the remaining bottle, about the safe. Annabelle clicked the combination lock. She unfolded herself from the floor. She returned to the window.
A troll stood at the edge of the pond.
Annabelle had never seen a troll before. It stood at the height of a nearby holly bush. It stared down into the water with a face that, from the window, looked like a scrunched-up rhino. Its body was covered in folds of gray skin. Annabelle’s heart skipped a beat. She stood frozen in the glass. When she finally returned to herself and stepped back, unsure if trolls were friend or foe, the troll turned its gaze to her. It had white tusks protruding from its mouth. It growled. Even through the glass and all the way across the yard, she heard it: a deep growl like an overprotective dog. Annabelle yelled and ducked to the floor. Her hands shook harder now.
When she stood back up, the troll was gone. Annabelle sighed. She was letting the stress of the day get to her. She laughed at herself.
The troll stepped out from the shadows on the porch. It slammed at the window with its fist. Its five claws pierced the screen. It pulled down, ripping the mesh. Its eyes were dull black holes. It bared its razor teeth.
“You,” it screamed. “What have you done with my bridge?”
Annabelle yanked the curtains closed.
The troll banged on the glass for what seemed like five hours but was only, as Annabelle watched the minutes click by, five minutes. Some days were a long stretch. Many days were long stretches. Her heart hammered. Her throat was parched. She couldn’t think. She needed a drink to calm her nerves. She couldn’t have one. She reached into her pocket for her phone.
She typed a message to her husband: What’s the combo? She needed the gun. She needed it. She didn’t send the message. Instead she raised her phone up through the curtains and snapped a photo. She stared at the picture of the troll, out of focus but undeniable. The troll stopped pounding on the glass. She caught her breath.
Annabelle crept around the silent house inspecting objects and locking doors, checking windows. She peered out through the window in her bedroom and saw nothing but a glint of light on the pond. Before, she had sensed two paths branching before her: she would make it through the day or she would not. Now, the troll opened other doors, doors less certain. She knew nothing of trolls. Except, no, she thought as she double-checked a window near a bookshelf. She knew a little: they lived under bridges. And she knew more now: they looked like rhinos. And this one was angry.
She grabbed first an old statue she had won for the lesson plans that she had written for the city’s after-school science program; it was the shape of a rocket and as heavy as one, or so she joked with guests, when she had guests, before people stopped showing up to her parties due to the lack of alcoholic activities allowed under her roof. In the kitchen, she swapped the rocket for a book of matches. In the bedroom, she left the matches and grabbed the Taser she kept for protection out of her bedside table. A Taser would allow her to protect herself without bloodshed, without getting too close to the troll.
She opened her back door and stepped onto her porch, finger on the button that would fire the electrical charge up to twenty feet away.
The troll emerged from the bushes beneath her window. It stepped toward her once, twice. It stopped. It watched her. She stood still, then called out: “Leave me alone. This is my house.”
The troll dragged its heavy body forward. It was close enough to hit with the Taser, then close enough to smell; the troll smelled like bog stench, like a murky lake in the heat of summer. The troll growled as it approached.
“Don’t come any farther!” Annabelle yelled. “What do you want?”
“You leave this house,” the troll said. “Or I will make you leave.”
Annabelle stood her ground even as the troll’s great hulk advanced. Its tusks were red at their ends with dried blood. “Why?” Annabelle said.
“My bridge,” the troll said. “My water.”
“I built that pond,” Annabelle said, her voice shaking.
“I built that bridge,” the troll said. “To cross the creek.”
“This is my house,” Annabelle said. “I live here now. The creek is gone.”
The troll snarled. It picked up its pace. It charged.
Annabelle pressed the button. Two wires shot from the Taser, the arrows at their end piercing the top layer of the troll’s flesh. The troll shook with electricity as Annabelle dropped the Taser and ran back inside. She flipped the lock.
From the window, she watched the troll tear the arrows out of its skin. She watched the troll turn toward the door. The troll ran toward her. It gored the wood, then wrenched its tusk free. It looked in at Annabelle, who was too frightened to move.
“You leave, or I’ll make you leave,” it said.
“What do you mean?” Annabelle yelled through the door. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You leave,” the troll said. “Or I’ll come in there. I’ll rip you open. I’ll build a new bridge with your skeleton.”
The blood drained from Annabelle’s face. She had been threatened over the phone before; there was no end to the death threats men lodged at female telemarketers. But this was the first time she’d believed a threat. The first time it had come at her face-to-face.
“When your man comes home,” the troll said. “I’ll tear out his skeleton too.”
“All because of a rotten old bridge?” she said.
“You think I don’t know how to get through this door?” the troll said. It smiled with a mouthful of terrible teeth.
Annabelle’s husband answered her message within seconds.
Are you sure?
I’m sure, Annabelle wrote.
The code is 10-23-15, he wrote back.
He’d used the date that they’d first moved into the house. It had always been a dream of theirs to build a pond. For a year, Annabelle had been depressed, sorry for herself, crying every night at her failure. She had been anxious. She had obsessed over new hobbies, knitting until her husband requested that she find some other people to accept her gifts of scarves. She’d broken down; she couldn’t live her life without some all-consuming thing, and she hated knitting, really, and she took to pacing the yard until she determined to build the pond they’d wanted since that first time they’d laid eyes on the spot where they put it.
It had been backbreaking work. She’d shoveled by hand and lined the edges with marshland plants. She’d stocked the thing with fish. She’d tended to it every morning since the day they’d finished it.
She opened the safe. She pulled out the gun. She pulled out the liquor. She put the liquor back. She left the safe open. She loaded the pistol.
Her husband had taught her to shoot when they first met, out at his parents’ ranch. The power of the gun was overwhelming in her hands, the ease of the bullet leaving the shaft. She was keenly aware that any slip she made, any fall, could cause destruction. She asked her husband to keep the guns in the safe, away from her. Now, she once more held one in her hand.
The troll had camped out in front of the back door. It had stopped head-butting the wood; blood dripped down its mouth where it had rammed its bottom lip into the doorknob. Annabelle studied it from the bedroom window. While she’d gathered the gun, the troll had torn crisp lines in the window screen. Annabelle had a clear shot where she stood. In the distance, the pond water stayed still, nary a ripple. Water didn’t understand conflict, turmoil. Annabelle glanced once back at the safe and the liquor, then opened the window quick as a relapse and shot the troll right in its bloody face.
The troll whipped its gaze to the window, to Annabelle and her weapon. It reached its hand up to its face, where the bullet had lodged next to its left eye. It dug its claw into the wound. It scooped the bullet out. It dropped the bullet on the porch. The metal landed on the concrete with a single clink. It clonked toward the window, one step, two steps, a dance to hint at violence. Annabelle shut the window.
“I won’t leave,” she said.
Blood dripped down the troll’s face and onto the concrete. She didn’t want to look away from the troll, to show her weakness, but she felt in her stomach an emptiness that had one cure. She dropped to the ground and gasped for breath. Like so many things, it was her fault that the troll was here: she had finished her pond. She had thought it would help, would cure all her ills, but in doing something to help herself, she had called the troll instead. As with anything she ever did, she ruined the thing by trying to improve it. She held her head in her hands and cried.
The troll screamed outside. It ripped out the screen and pounded the window once with its fist. The glass cracked, then shattered. The troll roared. It poked its head inside the broken window. Blood dripped down on the top of Annabelle’s head.
“You’re not worthy of the water,” the troll said.
She heard its words, and she heard the words’ meaning: you don’t deserve this pond. You don’t deserve this life, this satisfaction at a shitty job well done. Annabelle yelped and crawled, without looking up at the troll, on all fours across the floor to the closet. She grabbed the bottle. The glass was cool in her hands and smooth. She uncapped the bottle and stuck her nose in the opening: the smell burned her nostrils and cleared the ever-present fog.
In the bedroom, the troll yanked its head out of the window. It disappeared. Annabelle heard something drop outside, then the sound of stomping above her. She’d forgotten: the outdoor patio had been a sunroom before the previous owners took the windows away. They’d left an unsecured attic access. Annabelle looked up at the access door in her own ceiling. The troll smashed through and fell to the floor. It grinned its ugly grin at Annabelle but did not move toward her.
Annabelle lifted the bottle. She was a trash fire of a person. She should light herself aflame. She started to drink, and in tilting her head back, from the corner of her eye she caught sight of the matches she’d left on the bedside table. She lowered the bottle.
Annabelle gripped the bottle and rushed at the matches. The troll’s eyes widened. Shards of glass stuck out of the troll’s neck. Annabelle scurried over her bed and past the troll. She jumped up on a table by the window and crawled through. The troll wedged itself into the window and reached for her, but she’d fallen onto the deck outside, out of the troll’s reach. The troll screamed. It tried to pull back, but it was stuck at the shoulders. Annabelle stood and moved right next to its face and stared it right in those bulging eyes as she doused the troll’s head with the precious liquor she had saved. She lit a match. She smiled a terrible smile. She dropped the match onto the flesh. The troll burst into flame. It screamed as it burned, its gray skin turning quickly to black. She watched as it died. She turned on the water hose she’d used to fill the pond and doused the fire before it spread through the walls of her home.
Annabelle dragged the dead troll’s body to the pond and heaved it in. Sweating, muscles quaking from the effort, she watched the body sink. There was a part of her that felt bad for killing a creature who had only wanted what she wanted: the comfort of the pond. But there was a part of her, too, that smiled at a job well done. She stood at the shore of her pond long past the time the troll’s body had sunk. She watched the sun sink, too, watched the moon rise and shed its light across the pond surface. She watched the day disappear into midnight. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out. Her husband’s face flashed on-screen.
She answered. “I did it,” she said.
He breathed out. “I knew you could.”
Annabelle would always want, would always long for the taste, for the smell. The memory of a free-flowing creek she had never seen. But she would be content, in those rare moments of serenity, like this one, to stare at the pond she had made. It was hers and only hers, and nothing in this world or worlds beyond could take that from her. 
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction and poetry have appeared in over fifty publications, such as The Offing, Fairy Tale Review, Clarkesworld, and Uncanny, and in six languages. She was the featured author at the Dallas LeVar Burton Reads event. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, placed second for Selected Shorts’ Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, and won the Grand Prize in the SyFy channel’s Battle the Beast contest; SyFy made and released an animated short of her short story. Stufflebeam curates the annual Art & Words Show in Fort Worth.
Illustration: Matt Rota
