Curse of the Weretroll (rewrite)

Chapter 2

     Down in his bunker, Branch worked on fixing up the invitation he had ripped to shreds...

     Tape... glue... epoxy... sealant... binding... nothing was working...

     "Why!? Why did I tear it up!?" Branch screamed out in overwhelming rage and despair, slamming his head down repeatedly on the table as he scolded himself. "I'm so stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

     With a soft sigh, the gray troll finally sat back up, placing his head in his hands as he looked down at the tiny shreds of paper in front of him...

     "One more try..." he muttered, rising from his seat to walk to his crafting shelf for the tenth time that day...

     Honestly... Branch hated crafting... scrapbooking... everything that had to do with putting things together in artistic pattern... he was absolutely awful at it... but with all the invitations he had destroyed in the past... he needed some way to put them back together again... hence the crafting shelf...

     He searched the shelf, shifting through all his art materials, finally pulling out his hot glue gun...

     "Please work..." he muttered, heading back over to the table and plugging in the hot glue gun before sitting down, beginning to carefully place the pieces of his treasured invitation back together, meticulously gluing each piece in the correct places...

     Actually... it was kind of like a puzzle... and Branch... Branch was a puzzle master. He and his grandma...

     He paused at the thought, a few tears coming to his eyes at the memory of his beloved grandmother...

     "Focus, Branch..." he muttered to himself, wiping the tears from his crystal blue eyes before going back to the task at hand...

     Finally, he finished up the repairs, looking carefully at his work...

     'Branch! You're invited!' it read out almost perfectly.

     The gray troll cracked a small smile, seeing that the invitation was now good as new, almost as if he had never destroyed it in the first place...

     Slowly, as to not break it once more, Branch opened up the invite, looking sadly at the pop up characters of him with Poppy, the two of them holding hands...

     'Happy Birthday!🎉🎁🎂🎈🎊
Hope your day is as amazing as you!'

     With a sigh, Branch's smile faded as he rose back up to his feet, heading over to carefully place the invitation in with the others... all the cards Poppy had given him through the years... he had kept them all... making sure they were nice and safe on his ultra super secret shelf...

     He looked at his over filled shelf of seemingly useless pieces of paper, thinking about how special they actually were to him... how special Poppy was to him...

     "No... don't think that way..." he told himself, slapping the thought out of his head. "You can't like her... you can't..."

     The gray troll took one last longing look at the invites before closing the curtains on the shelf with yet another sigh...

     "You're no good for her anyways..." he whispered, heading back over to the table to clean up his mess. "You'll only make things worse... you're... you're a bad troll..."

     Without paying attention, he wrapped his hand completely around the hot glue gun, a sizzling sound instantly filling his ears as a sharp burning sensation took over his hand...

     His eyes widening in shock, Branch let out the loudest most pained scream of all time, the sound actually echoing through the whole forest...

     "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"