Read Online Do You Think This Is Strange? by Aaron Cully Drake - Free Book Online

pointed to the forest. “I let them keep the forest as theirs. They let me keep this house as mine. They let me walk in the forest, and take whomever I want with me. And they leave us alone.”
    He pointed to the sky. “You know how the clouds come over the mountain and it rains? That’s the trolls, sending it our way. When there’s thunder, that’s the trolls. Sometimes, they’re dancing. Other times, they’re arguing. Thunder and rain are a part of their life, and it’s a part of ours, and they have to keep sending it our way. So I let them.”
    The cliffs loomed higher up the slopes, deep with cracks and fissures.
    â€œUp there,” he said. “That’s where the trolls live. That’s their land, and up there, they have a legal right to sit on you and squish you into jelly.” He knelt down and looked me straight in the eye. “Do you want to be made into jelly?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œGood,” he said. “All you have to do is stay away from the cliffs.”
    â€œThose cliffs up there.” I pointed.
    My father nodded.
    â€œThe thunder is trolls dancing.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œLike Mom dances.”
    He shrugged. “Kind of, I guess.”
    â€œIs Mom a troll?” I asked.
    â€œSometimes, Freddy.” My father sighed and patted me gently on the shoulder. “Sometimes we all are.”

THE DAYS WHEN MY MOTHER DANCED
    When I was younger, thunder at night terrified me. When the winter storms arrived, my father came to my bedroom, sat at the windowsill, and talked with me.
    â€œIt’s the trolls,” he said. “Just the trolls arguing.”
    â€œThey’re loud,” I complained. “Why are they loud?”
    He shrugged and stood up. His hands in his pockets, he was calm, while the wind howled and rain fell like the first wave of an invasion.
    â€œSometimes trolls argue for no good reason,” he said at last. “Sometimes they’re just bored.”
    There were some good thunder days, though. They were joyous occasions, because when the trolls grumbled in the hills, my mother danced. Sometimes she went out and bought orchids, white ones, for the living room. After she shook off her umbrella and hung up her raincoat, she hurried into the living room and found a spot for them on the coffee table or the end table against the sofa chair by the window.
    The TV was off, the laundry folded, the dishwasher finished. Everything became quiet, except sometimes when the thunder rumbled. I ran into the living room and hid behind the curtains, my hands popping my ears or slapping at my thighs, just to make noise.
    Still, I knew it was going to be okay, because soon the music would start. My mother stood at the stereo, smiling at me.
    â€œI know just the song,” she told me and slowly turned up the music until it was pounding off the walls and I couldn’t hear the thunder anymore. She gave me a book, and I sat and stopped moving, fidgeting, stopped clapping my hands. My mother closed her eyes and danced. This was one of my Favourite Things. I’m sure it was one of hers, too.
    She danced with the blinds open, and sometimes people slowed as they walked by, standing under their umbrellas. The heat of their stares never bothered her. They were strangers she would never see again, or they were people who saw her dance often enough to not be surprised by it. My mother liked to dance a lot.
    When Dad came home from work, he opened a Bud Light and sat back on the couch, to watch her. Relaxed, I sat in the living room with them and stared at the wall.
    â€”
    My first memory of my mother is of the thing she said to me, the same thing she said when she danced.
    â€œ Look at me, Freddy,” she said, and I remember her.
    She doesn’t say it anymore. If she asked I would look.
    If she asked.
    When I was seven years old, my mother drove me to the train station. “Look at me, Freddy,” she