Vice was all around me. Intertwining strains of music cranked out of a busted accordion and a warped Victrola. Neon beer signs, flashing crosswalk signals, and whirling bits of carnival machinery, all stolen from the human world, lent a hallucinatory, strobe-lit feel to this red-light district. I whirled around like a drunkard until I bounced off a large-breasted female troll who had proudly modified her body with the contents of a human sewing kit. Her toes had been replaced with thimbles, several of her fingers with pinking shears, her nipples with mismatched buttons, her hair with unraveling spools of yarn. She smiled at me luridly. Her toothless gums had been fitted with hundreds of sewing needles.

I stumbled down another alley. Groups of trolls hunched over strange war games built of stone, and all of them were cheating—I could see extra playing pieces stuffed into their fur. Other gangs tossed hubcaps at a weathered old tetherball pole while one troll kept score by making claw slashes on a board. Everywhere I looked, fights broke out. These scuffles were sudden, savage, and generally short-lived; after a few blows, the disgruntled beasts returned to their games and their stone steins of foamy mead.

Strangest of all were the TVs. In this district they were everywhere. Oversize cabinet models from the ’70s, portable black-and-white sets from the ’80s, sleek monitors from the ’90s, and the occasional high-definition brands of the modern day. Some were piled on the ground and others lashed to wooden poles with barbed wire, but all of them were jerry-rigged with makeshift antennae and attached to dozens of extension cords that snaked into the overhead power grid. Not a single program played on these sets. Instead, they broadcast different patterns of static. Trolls handed over money (or small rodents) for the privilege of standing slack-jawed and glassy-eyed in front of the bad signals.

ARRRGH!!! was less impressed. The troll bounded through sawhorses and fences. TVs were destroyed, board games scattered, and mead cups overturned. Countless trolls bayed their chagrin. Heart pounding, I wove through the smallest thoroughfares I could find, sliding between tightly packed shacks so the troll couldn’t follow.

It didn’t work. ARRRGH!!! began tearing these shacks to pieces. It was like trying to outrun a tornado. I fled with my arms above my head to protect myself from the hailstorm of wood and metal siding, and kept jagging around every bend I could find. The lights of the gambling district faded, and I became aware of a dramatic decrease in population. The slap of my feet against brick was replaced by squirts of mud. Each landing of ARRRGH!!!’s feet sounded like the dropping of a boulder into a thick mire.

Right away I identified the sparkle of water. Buildings were growing sparse, so I had no option except to sprint for it. With ARRRGH!!!’s hot breath burning my neck, I made it in thirty seconds. It was not the cool, rippling brook I had imagined but a sweltering ditch of excrement that twined through the underworld. Four or five trolls with ornate tusks were scattered along the bank using nets to capture junk that tumbled along in the current. This looked to be the main point of entry for much of the trash with which the troll city was built. Hills of it, yet to be categorized, towered behind each fisherman.