"Inferior" by Blair N. Woynarski

A grey Buick rolled down Autumn Street. The troll inside glanced nervously from building to building. This was an all-human neighbourhood, and dangerous for anyone of his kind to be in. The car reached a stop in front of a store – "Aylewood Drugs", according to the sign. The sun busily reflected the nine a.m. light, which appeared not to be too early, as three kids rode their skateboards down the street, closing in on the car. As they rode past, they caught a glimpse of the passenger within. His topaz skin, bald head, and broad, muscular form immediately made him identifiable as a troll.

The boy in the lead made a 180° turn and steadied himself on the Buick's hood. "What's a filthy trod doing in this neighbourhood? We ought to teach him some manners for coming into our turf."

The idea of pre-adolescent boys being so insolent to an adult was certainly infrequent and punishable within a single race, but the demonstration here was anything but uncommon. This happened every time a troll ventured into a human neighbourhood, and this passenger knew there was nothing he could do at the moment. He set his powerful jaw and did nothing but stare blankly through his bluish eyes. He ignored the hate-speech and didn't move.

What may have happened is uncertain, but it was interrupted by a man stepping out of the drug store. "Hey, kids! There's nothing to see here. Scram!" The three boys gave him a sneer, but did as they were told. The man approached the car. "Hi, I'm Richard Aylewood. Are you Helsit?" The troll nodded. "Come in."

They wove through the storefront and entered through an "employees only" door in the back. Richard led the way up a flight of stairs into an office. Helsit gazed around at the sapphire-blue carpeting, a leather sofa, a coffee-table, and a polished mahogany desk on the south wall, in front of a window. It was certainly unlike any workplace he was accustomed to. Richard bade him take a seat, and instinctively he ignored the sofa and sat himself in the wooden chair across from it. Richard reflected a brief look of puzzlement but nodded. He remained standing.

"Your résumé is impressive. Hennington's a fine school. You've spoke on your mathematical and accounting skills. However, you don't seem to have any real experience in the management field. All I've seen are labourious jobs."

Helsit spoke in a volume barely loud enough for Richard to hear. "If you know of any other jobs a troll can get in this part of the country, I'd like to hear about them."

"Right," came the simple reply. Richard took a seat on the sofa, staring at the carpet as his face flushed. He turned back to his applicant. "Well, I have little interest in this position, as yet, so the job is yours. The condition is, I need you to start this evening. Just follow me to your office, and we'll discuss everything."

Helsit followed, and he needed a moment to digest the sight of his office. While not as comfortable as Richard's, it was certainly much more than he had expected (in fact, getting the job at all was more than he had expected). They discussed what duties he would start off with, as well as his starting wage (once again, more than he had expected). It took them an hour and a half before they returned to the storefront. As they passed the pharmacy counter, and old woman stopped and stared like she was facing the man who had just stolen her purse.

"Who's this?" she demanded.

"My new manager," Richard replied, without a hint of interest.

"Well, if you're going to start opening the doors to their kind, you will have to do without my patronage." She spoke freely in front of Helsit, as if he were deaf or an invalid.

"I don't even know who you are. I don't remember seeing you in here at all this past year. I wouldn't consider you a patron."

The sardonic retort clearly caught her by surprise, as she turn and marched out the door, muttering something about "filthy trods".

The blond pharmacist at the counter beckoned Richard over. "What are you doing?" he whispered. "This neighbourhood is a bastion of human supremacy. Do you really want to kill your business?"

"No," Richard replied, apparently astonished. "I'm certainly not killing my business. I needed a new manager, so I hired one. That's the long and short of it."

***

At 7:30, Helsit's Buick rolled up next to Aylewood Drugs. Having finished eating with his family, he traveled across town from the troll neighbourhood to arrive and finish what Richard had given him. There were reports that needed to be finished by first thing the next morning. He entered and swept through the pharmacy section without looking up. He passed into the convenience store half and made his way toward the office doors. A young, dark-haired man stood at the till and shot Helsit a violent glare.

"He, can't you read, trod?" he asked. "The door says 'employees only'." Helsit ignored him and opened the door. "Are you blind and deaf? Get the hell away from the door."

"I'm the manager," Helsit replied. "I am an employee."

The clerk scoffed. "You want me to believe Richard hired a trod as manager?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"All right." He picked up the phone. "He can get pissed at you for making me waste his time." He dialed the number, and there was a pause of ten seconds. He spoke again: "Hey, Mr. Aylewood, this is Ryan."

"Is there a problem?" asked the voice on the other end.

"Some trod says he's the new manager."

"And your point is?" Richard queried.

"What do I do with him?"

"A troll says he's the new manager and you want to know what to do with him? This is a perplexing matter for you? How about you let him do his job?"

"You hired a trod?"

"Here's the deal, Ryan. He's the new manager. That makes him your boss; so you are not going to call him a trod, or a brute, or whatever other term pops into your head. He is going to go do his job, and you are going to stand there and deal with it." There was a click and the line went dead.

The twisted snarl on Ryan's face told Helsit that he had been answered. The troll slipped through the door as quietly as a stare.

***

As the sun yawned its dull rays across the eight a.m. cityscape, Richard Aylewood opened up the drug store and hopped inside. He had a half-hour before the store was officially opened, so he took a moment to let out a sigh and sniff the floor sanitizer. He strolled up to his office, where a note waited for him impatiently on his desk. After reading it over twice, he took it down stairs, hearing the sound of someone else entering. It was Michael, the blond pharmacist. He glanced up and acknowledged Richard with a friendly nod.

"Guess what this is?" the owner asked, brandishing the note which he had found on his desk. "Ryan sent me his resignation. What a dick."

"You had to figure on this happening. The word is getting out already. We're going to be the brunt of hostilities very soon. I'm beginning to wonder if it's best I get out of here before it hits the fan."

"No!" Richard snapped. "Ryan is a till-boy; he brings little to this operation. I need pharmacists. OK, no one is going to get hurt. I'm going to handle everything myself."

Before Michael replied, Helsit entered through the door. He muttered a greeting but kept his head down. Richard addressed him:

"Listen. Today's Sunday, so we close at seven. I need you to come in after hours to take inventory." Helsit nodded. "Hey," Richard grabbed his shoulder. "We're all friends here. You don't need to stare at the floor, though if you're that fascinated by the buffing job, you could pass a compliment to our caretakers."

He incurred a slight chuckle in the troll, and took it as a sign to keep talking. They carried a broken conversation for the next ten minutes, until the first customer, an elderly, greying man, entered. His nostrils flared at the sight of them, and he stared.

"Is there a problem, sir?" Richard queried? The man sneered and turned away.

Helsit spent the rest of the day in his office, away from the abusive stares of the customers. He and Richard left at five, going to homes on opposite ends of the city.

After supper, Richard Aylewood reclined in his living room. Throughout his attempts at relaxation, he had the nagging dread that something was going to happen. His wife sat next to him. She hadn't spoken much since the day before, when she had learned about her husband's new employee. Richard knew she didn't share the same liberal view on civil rights as he did, and he carefully avoided the subject of trolls when he was around her. Now she was burdened with both doubts about the rightness of the situation, but also concern for Richard's safety. All dread was soon realized when they heard the shattering of glass. The two of them raced to the front door, seeing a teenager standing on the edge of their lawn.

"Trod-lover!" he taunted, then leapt into am idling van which drove off immediately.

A quick glance around told that a brick had been hurled through their porch window. Richard swore in simultaneity with kicking the door-frame.

***

Helsit pulled up to the sidewalk at quarter-after-seven. As he reached into his pocket for his keys, he noticed that he didn't need them. The door had been smashed open, and there was definite crashing and movement within. He barged through the door, over the broken glass, to find three teenagers smashing the shelves – one with a baseball bat and two with a crowbar. He released a roar that momentarily stunned the vandals.

One boy stepped forward. "The filthy trod showed up. I didn't know they let you things out after dark."

Another boy crept along the side and caught Helsit in the back of the head with his crowbar. The troll screamed and nearly doubled over. As the boy made a second strike, it was caught mid-swing by Helsit's hand. There was a strange whistling sound, and the crowbar snapped in half, seemingly through the feat of strength.

"That's brute magic," the first boy snarled. He struck his victim in the side with his baseball bat. The troll withstood the blow, but fell forward after being struck in the back with the second crowbar. He picked himself up to a crawl position, but the vandal suffers him another blow to the head with his bat. Drowning pain plagued his skull, and Helsit used the only burst of energy he could muster to lunge forward and drive the boy bearing to the floor. He stood, and the other two charged him. He swatted the unarmed one to the side with a backhand, and the second boy got another strike to Helsit's leg before being hammered down.

The troll staggered onto the street and flopped into his car. He drove down the menacing streets of "friendly" neighbourhoods until he reached Richard's house, who was still sweeping up glass. Helsit stumbled up the steps and through the door.

"What the hell happened to you?" Richard asked. Helsit answered only that they needed to get to the store. Richard gave a quick word to his wife and they departed. "You're in no condition to be doing much," he observed. "We'll take my car."

During the quick drive, Helsit explained how he had come by his injuries. "Son of a bitch," had been the reply. "I didn't think this would happen so fast." But the fact that it had happened was made strikingly evident when they approached the battered storefront. The owner had little time to examine before police sirens approached.

An officer exited the vehicle. "Good day, Mr. Aylewood. I've just received word of a troll assaulting three adolescents over here." The three vandals emerged from the police car, with mixed looks of hatred and smugness. Helsit took a step back.

"That is troubling, officer," Richard retorted, "but I understand that Helsit, here, was, in fact, the victim of the assault."

"That is immaterial, at the moment. We'll answer questions once we have taken this troll to the police station."

"And those boys? What are you going to do with them?"

"Naturally, they would go to a hospital, as they have some nasty wounds from this assault."

"Wounds?" Richard asked, sounding incredulous. He retrieved a pocket flashlight and shone it on the bleeding injury on the back of Helsit's head. "And what would you call that?"

"He can be placed in a troll hospital once he has been appropriately charged and reviewed."

"And you're not even curious as to how that got there?"

"Right now, I'm preoccupied with taking violence off the streets."

"No you're not. You want to take a trod off the streets. You want to flex your policemen's prerogative and haul off the inferior species. He has rights, too. Right to remain silent, right to an attorney; I notice you haven't mentioned those; why not?"

"I will read his rights when I place him under arrest: a process which you are impeding upon."

"All right, officer. I'm not going to obstruct justice. You take him to the station, and I'll follow up with these three kids."

"They are not being charged, here."

"I have a vandalised store that says otherwise."

"You have an employee capable of destructive magic."

"Destructive magic is both demonized and exaggerated. Less than one in a hundred trolls can do it to any significant extent, and there hasn't been more than a handful of cases of reckless use in the past twenty years. And at any rate, why can't you get the guys in here to investigate?"

"Don't tell me what to do."

"It's a crime scene. Are you not supposed to do your job in a crime scene.?"

"Shut up! You let him go with me or I'll charge you with obstructing justice."

"Justice, my ass," Richard muttered as Helsit shuffled forward toward the police cruiser. The policeman slapped on handcuffs and stuffed the troll in the back seat. "You still haven't read his rights, officer," Richard piped up.

The policeman's retort was simply to slam the door and drive away. As the car's taillights disappeared around the corner, one of the boys sneered, "I hope they send him back to the mountains where he belongs."

"Get in the car, all of you," Richard ordered.

"The hell, man? You can't tell me what to do."

"Do you want to get beaten twice, today?"

"You'll just end up in the slammer with that yellow brute."

"Except I'm human, so, by your logic, I can't get arrested for anything. Now get in the goddamn car."

By some miracle, they complied. Richard drove down the road to the west, then made a right turn.

"That isn't the way to the police station," a kid in the back piped up."

"No it's not," were the last words to be spoken by anyone in the car for the next ten minutes. As they travelled further north, buildings got noticeably less respectable. When Richard finally pulled over, they were in the city's ghetto. Trolls trudged along the sidewalk near them, paying not attention, except for a few he shot looks of hatred and suspicion. Richard spoke:

"You know where this is. Crystal Heights, troll housing developments. I'm guessing you wouldn't come down here and say any of the stuff you say back home, because you know that crap will get you killed down here. But why don't you step out of the car. Yell at those filthy trods; tell them to go back to the mountains." There was silence. "No? Well why don't you remember this place? Places like these are places where people like you only go to die. You shouldn't be happy that you were born human, but rather that greedy bigots like you exist to keep these divisions the way they are. That's how you live your life. Should that change – and it will change – you'll lose, and no one is going to take care of you. Now, let's be off." He pulled a U-turn and headed back towards the police station.