It was a sunny friday afternoon. I was relaxing on the back yard, when I heard an odd noise coming from the woods near my house. It was a weird, gargling scream, echoing eerily in the still air. Then it was all silent again, except for the sound of some grasshoppers desperately looking for a mate. I knew that little forest quite thoroughly, what with having been there a lot since we moved here - that's 15 years ago - and I knew it's size was only about a square kilometer. You couldn't really get lost in there, and if you did, you'd just have to walk a few hundred meters to any direction and you'd find a road or a house. But still, something about that forest scared me. If you went to the center of it, you always felt an odd sensation, as if you were being watched. But now I felt strangely compelled to check out the source of that weird sound.

I hurried towards the place where the sound had come from. My brain was telling me to turn around and go back home, but I couldn't resist the weird urge to check what was going on. Then I heard it again - this time it sounded more intense. Someone or something was probably hurt badly. Suddenly I noticed that everything in the direction I came from had started to look somehow evil, forbidding me to go back. The forest in that direction didn't look any different, but I could somehow sense that I shouldn't go back there. Also the direction where I was going felt sinister, but in a fascinating way. I was curious and anxious at the same time. Then - surprisingly suddenly - I was facing the source of the strange noises.

A giant mushroom lay smashed down on the ground, some milky liquid dripping out from a cut in it's cap. The most intriguing thing about the mushroom was not it's huge size (about 1,5 meters tall). It was the fact that it was the source of the scream. It had a mouth, a wide, toothless mouth with a big brown tonque. It reminded me of the big furry Bantha creatures in Star Wars movies. But it didn't have a face - no eyes, ears or a nose - just a mouth. And now it looked dead.

"Well umm, what have we here?" said a dry voice, that seemed to come out of a moldy rock near the dead giant fungus. Then I noticed that it wasn't actually a rock, it was a troll of some kind, and another one was standing next to it. They had a vaguely humanoid form, but they had the shape and size of a sumo wrestler, and their skin looked like a cross between tree bark and moldy rock. They had noticed me, and they didn't look too friendly. One of them, presumably male, wielded a long stick that was dripping with the same milky liquid that was on the mushroom. It was clear that it was the weapon they'd used to smash the poor mushroom down. The other troll, which looked like a female but I wasn't absolutely sure, had a large rock in her hands.

The male troll sniffed the air like a dog, while the female one produced a peculiar laugh with her extremely raspy voice. "Rah-hah-rah rah hah! We get much food today! A tasty human to go with good mushroom soup! I like it!". The male joined her laughter, only his laugh sounded more like a burst of happy grunting. I turned around and started running away in horror, but I got only a few steps away when the female troll threw the rock she was holding and it hit me in the back of my head. The world around me faded away and I felt very warm.

When I woke up, I thought that it was all a dream. Then, when I started to see properly again, I noticed that I was hanging upside down from a tree branch, my legs tied tightly with a thick rope. I saw the female troll sitting beside a large bonfire, boiling something in a big cauldron. I thought it was mushroom soup. Then I remembered that they were planning to eat me, and I started screaming. The trolls noticed that I was awake, and they laughed at my helpless struggling and screaming. My hands weren't tied, but I didn't have the strength to lift myself up to untie my legs. I couldn't do a thing, and nobody heard my screams. I wasn't in that familiar forest anymore. It looked similar, just like an ordinary finnish forest, lots of spruce and pine trees. It was dark. There was definately something magical in the air.

The male troll, an impressively muscular behemoth of a being but dumb as a rock, came near. I could smell his sweat - his armpits and back were dripping wet from the day's heat and from sitting close to the fire. He had a disturbing grin on his face. The troll gripped his wooden stick and struck me on my chest. Very painfully. Out of breath and upside down, I had much trouble speaking. Still I managed to get some voice out, and uttered a desperate plea for mercy. But trolls are not known to have mercy on someone. It's possible that they don't even know what mercy means, they really aren't too smart. This troll was no exception. He smiled and grunted happily, and then swung his crude weapon again. This time it hit my groin. The pain almost caused me to pass out.

The troll continued beating me until I was badly bruised and little streams of blood were running down my body. Somehow this seemed to upset the female troll. "Hey! Stop that! Don't you know that stressed humans taste bad!" she shouted. "Sorry, I thought that only applies to fish!" replied the other troll, seemingly disappointed that he could not continue his game of using me as a punching bag. It was clear who was in control in their relationship. The female troll was ordering him around. "Feed him this." said the bitch-troll and gave a cup to her male friend. My mouth was forced open and a hot liquid was poured down my throat. It tasted like mushrooms mixed in vodka and it burned my throat nastily. They had fed me some of the mushroom soup.

Soon I started seeing everything in two. Then in three. Then I started seeing all kinds of colourful shapes. After a while, I saw even the colourful shapes in two. That lasted for a few minutes. Then there was a very amusing episode of randomly running blue midgets all around me. Some of them had turtle shells for hats. Weird, I thought. I thought there was going to be more, but I passed out. When I woke up again, I was feeling a lot better and I wasn't tied to the tree anymore. I wondered why they let me go, as I could just run away now. Then I realised why. I was paralyzed. I saw that the female troll had finished what she was cooking. I could smell mushroom soup, which now felt more disgusting than ever before. The trolls were eating it. I figured that they must've known what that stuff does to a human - otherwise they probably wouldn't have fed it to me - and it affected them, too. I had high hopes, but neither of them passed out. They were just having a great trip.

The male troll tried to make several sexual advances towards his companion, with no result. Apparently even trolls have some standards. A sweaty, drunk and hallucinating troll is a peculiar sight, to say at least, and right in front of me were two. They were both looking around like a child in a candy store, sometimes giving chase to something that only they could see. Raspy laughter and happy grunting filled the air. The male attacked something invisible. But then something surprising happened: the invisible thing, that I thought to be a hallucination, made a counterattack! A branch of a nearby tree was snapped off by invisible hands. The troll wielded his trusty stick again, but too late. The invisible attacker struck his arm with incredible force, severing the arm completely off his fat body. His other arm was simply torn off forcibly. A shout came from seemingly nowhere: "Quickly, kill him before he grows his arms back!". So, there was at least two invisible attackers.

There was a loud thump, and the male troll fell to the ground, his life taken by an unknown and unseen being. The female troll screamed and started running away, only to be struck down by a crossbow bolt to the head, apparently shot by another one of the invisible beings. Then the attackers revealed themselves. There were two of them, and they had cloaks that could make their wearer invisible. They were gnomes. They were only about half a meter tall, but the stick wielding one stood on the other's shoulders. That way they were just tall enough to reach the troll's arms. The one at the bottom had a small crossbow made of materials that I didn't recognize. It was a remarkable piece of work, capable of killing a troll with one shot.

"We saw everything that happened to you. Sorry to have you endure such a torture, but we just couldn't risk it while those trolls were sober. We had to wait until they drank their mushroom soup." the top gnome told me, and hopped down from his friends shoulders. I had to ask "but you have that crossbow - why didn't you just shoot them earlier?". "Well, we gnomes do make the best magically enhanced crossbows there exists, but unfortunately we are not very good shooters. I'm really happy I didn't miss." explained the crossbow-wielding gnome. Then he pressed his belly-button (they literally had a button there - a button decorated with beads, sown right onto their bare bellies). Something materialized magically inside his pointy hat. He took it out. It was a bottle of some blue liquid. "Here, drink this. It tastes funny but you can walk again after you drink it." he said. So I drank it. It tasted like cold coffee.

The gnomes were suddenly gone. I thought that they must have used their cloaks again. I heard one of them yelling: "Goodbye, human! We must hurry to our mine now. You shouldn't worry about weird sounds you hear from these woods, they're our own business. We may not always be there to help you if something like this happens again. Farewell!"

I started walking back home. Everything looked normal again.