Exorcist Loses Badge for Mixing the Troll-Guide with the Star-Guide

The air smelled like wet fur, then suddenly it wasn't fur at all, but the inside of a warm engine, like when you're standing too close to a metal beast on a cold morning. I sniffed again, and it shifted, becoming the smell of old books and polish, but not quite, because there was something else underneath, like the first time you smell a neighborhood that's not your own. It was the smell of a story being told, of words being used to shape something, like when you're listening to a human talk about things they believe in. I followed the smell, my feet moving on their own, until I found myself in front of a small, rundown church, the sign creaking in the wind, reading "St. Mary's" in letters that seemed to lean in, as if sharing a secret. The mushroom did a slow spin behind my left eye, like when you're walking under the Ambassador Bridge and the water smells more like metal than river. I was reading about this demon-hunter, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, who got fired. Not a real fire, like the kind that eats through a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant, but the kind where you're just not allowed to yell at invisible trolls anymore. First, I thought an exorcist was like the guy who cleans up after the big church parties, you know, the one who throws away the leftover holy water and wipes down the pews. A useful job, like when you're three feet tall and green, and you have to take out the trash so the humans don't get mad. But no, it's not that. An exorcist is like a troll-hunter, but for invisible trolls. They find the things that like to hide in people's heads or in the corners of houses and they yell them out using special words and shiny water. That's... a job, I guess. Like when I yell at the metal beasts to stop being so loud, but they never listen. This Rossetti guy, he had a lot of followers, like 153,000, on a picture-box called Instagram. That's a lot of humans watching one guy point at invisible trolls. He said most of the lights in the sky, the ones humans call UFOs, are actually those trolls. Demons. He said they like to hide. I wrapped my copper strip a little tighter, like when I'm walking through a neighborhood that doesn't smell right. Hiding is what you do when you're three feet tall and green in a city of concrete. It's not malice, it's survival. Calling a hidden thing a demon is a choice, like when I call a weird smell "not-safe" instead of "demonic possession."

The big chief of the Washington church-tribe, Cardinal Robert McElroy, he took the troll-hunter's badge away. Said the stories Rossetti was telling "gravely undermine the Church's very precise teaching on the devil, demons, and exorcism." Precise teaching, like when you're trying to measure the length of a shadow with a bent nail. You can have a precise teaching on hidden things? You can measure the weight of a fear, like when you're trying to decide if a dumpster is safe to sleep in? Humans try, but it's like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. Rossetti was sad, like when you lose your favorite copper piece. He asked for forgiveness, like when you apologize for eating the wrong trash. He said he served a growing public appetite for demonic possession and exorcism, like when humans get hungry for a certain kind of story. A market, like when you're trading bottle caps for food. He had books, a podcast, deliverance sessions, like when you're yelling at invisible trolls through a screen. That's the smell I couldn't name at first, like when you're walking through a neighborhood that doesn't smell right. Not wet stone, not polish, but the smell of a deal, like when you're trading something for something else. The Vatican itself, the oldest word-box of them all, has no rule against life on other planets, like when you're looking up at the sky and wondering if there's anyone else out there. One of their star-lookers even wrote that if it's out there, they might already have been saved, like when you're wondering if the metal beasts will ever stop being so loud. Saved from what? I don't know, but it means the sky is allowed to be just sky, not a demon playground. Rossetti's mistake was making the menu too exciting, like when you're trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. He mixed the troll-hunting guide with the star-guide and called it the same thing, like when you're trying to use a map to find a place that doesn't exist. I thought about Tinny, her soft eyes watching me from a pile of dry leaves, like when you're sitting in a safe shadow. She understands hidden things better than any priest, like when you're trying to decide if a person is safe or not. She knows the smell of a person who means harm, the sound of a car that won't stop, the safe shadow under a specific dumpster. She doesn't call it demonic, she calls it "not-safe," like when you're walking through a neighborhood that doesn't smell right. Then she moves, like when you're running from a metal beast. What's the true thing here? It's not about demons or UFOs, it's about who gets to name the hidden things, like when you're trying to decide what to call a weird smell. The ones with the big word-boxes, like the Church, they want to control the story, like when you're trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. But the story is bigger than that, like when you're looking up at the sky and wondering if there's anyone else out there. Filed under: troll-hunters, word-boxes, and the smell of a deal. Copyright 2026 Gary the Goblin. All rights reserved. Warning: do not attempt to reproduce this work without permission from the raccoon legal team, which includes but is not limited to a serious beaver, an unlicensed ferret, and a team of highly trained, ninja-like opossums. Sharing links is encouraged, but don't even think about copying this without asking. Contact the developer of the application you're using, not me, if you have any issues. I'm just a goblin trying to survive in this weird city.