Norm Nowrecki was mortally pissed.
Fudgepacker had played him like a two dollar banjo and that jangling metaphor had induced a cognitive and musical dissonance unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He hummed the NYW theme as loud as he could, in an attempt to drown out the Dueling Banjos that had screwed itself in his mind like the worst worm that had ever been let loose.
"I have to focus!"
SMEGMA (Subsentient Maniacs Encouraging Gibbering Mindless Arguments) had many haunts. Norm's 133 was downloading the postings to alt.usenet.kooks, a known SMEGMA hangout. Fudgepacker was undoubtedly using an alias but Norm knew his style. Fetus Fudgepacker had a very limited vocabulary that was all too well known to Norm and so, he set up filters to trap all postings using the obscene expressions most favored by Fetus. Once the qualified postings were directed into Norm's looneybin, he would parse each one in an attempt to catch Fudgepacker's noxious scent.
Norm walked over to one of the many Jatoba piles that crowded his tiny office. This particular one had been arranged into a rough simulacrum of a couch. With a Janka side hardness of 2820 pounds at six percent moisture content, the Jatoba couch was hardly a place to rest one's head, although the natural germicide contained in the wood was a definite plus in an office such as Norms'.
"Where is Fudgepacker hiding?"
He'd already gone through all the postings on the newsgroups most frequented by trolls; alt.troll, alt.flame, alt.sexuality.confused - no sign of Fetus or SMEGMA. It was no wonder that he was feeling disoriented. He contemplated Nietzsche's quote, which had become a mantra to all troll trackers:
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
The cheesy winmodem smelled like fried halitosis - the download was complete.
Norm was running IP numbers through the Sam Spade tools when his Motorola chirped out the NYW theme. Could this be Fudgepacker calling to taunt him? He banged the Motorola on the Jatoba pile that served as his desk, hard enough to pop the outer layer of duct tape - he held the Motorola to his ear as a voice whispered.
"Tage Frid."
"Tage Frid" was the password used by his friends. Like the biblical "shibboleth", it could not be properly pronounced by their enemies,the trolls.
"Momma's Basement. Midnight."
The line went hollow with silence.
Momma's Basement was a troll club on the Southside. Norm had been there before when tracking down other trolls. The trolls gathered there and celebrated their iconoclastic individuality by dressing all in the same clothing. Black on black on black. The place looked like a convention of pimply-faced, cross-dressing, Roy Orbison impersonators but the music was by the house band The Defecators, who had made their mark by spot welding their guitars into a B flat cord that was played over and over in accompaniment to the hoarsely shouted lyrics of Wanker's Melody.
The place stank of Yoohoo and the remains of half consumed Twinkies.
He hated this part of the job.
Norm gathered up his troll disguise and headed for the door.
(next time - "Momma's Basement".)
Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania