A wall of sweltering heat welcomed him home. His bedroom door had been shut all afternoon while he was squandering his time in at school, learning nothing of real value. He did not like the intense heat but relished in the fact that he was now in his own little world. He booted up his most prized possession; his computer. He sat down in the office chair he had scavenged from a dumpster a few months back, a little worse for wear but still functional and very comfortable. While he waited for the computer to come on line, the system was checking for both system errors and viruses, he popped open the mini fridge nearby and pulled out a soda. Cracking the soda he felt a wave of pleasure as his desktop wallpaper came into view, it was now time for him to shine.

The ceiling fan spun slowly, doing little to circulate the stifling heat, his computer fans doing the job better even though they were tiny in comparison. He cracked his knuckles and opened up the internet. He logged into his E-mail and checked to see if anyone had taken the bait on his forum threads. He had a couple of nibbles, but nothing solid just yet. He went to each link carefully examining the threads, reading each response to his challenges and insults carefully. He then took the text and examined each sentence for errors and misquotes. When he found one he would cut and paste it into a word document, after a few moments of scanning each response he would craft a reply with wit and guile. He wanted to maximize each of his own words, whilst diminishing the posters meaning and intent, breaking it down to a worthless statement.

After hitting each thread and artfully destroying each and every post and making the author look like an idiot he stopped for a brief break. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He smelled something awful. At first he thought it was his sweaty armpits, but then he quickly realized that something smelled even worse than them. A quick visual search of his room revealed nothing that could smell that bad. He took another quick whiff of the air, inhaling the foul odor without a clue as to its origin. He began shuffling school papers around in an effort to find to locate the stench. After a few futile attempts he finally located the source. A moldy sandwich from two weeks ago had never made it in the trashcan, let alone out of his room. It had been sitting under an empty action figure box and so his mother had missed it in her last efforts to keep his room clean.

“Mom!” He stood up carrying the sandwich at arms length to avoid as much of the foul odor as he could. “Mom!” He walked around the house trying to find her, opening each door in their small apartment in his search. “Mom!” When he discovered her absence he went to the kitchen with the offensive sandwich and set it down on the counter closest to the trashcan. “God, I have to do everything around here.”

After that he retreated to his room, to continue conquering the internet one chat room at a time, but such is the life of a Troll.