Fairy Tales

Once upon a time and far away there lived a beautiful princess. She lived in a large and drafty castle atop a high and stormy mountain. Her father, the king, had been well advanced in years when his steward came to him and told him there was a baby lying at the gates. Now he was an old man, with and old man’s walk, and an old man’s tremor, and an old man’s white hair.

Writer's Digest 12/5/2006 prompt

Mr. Norton,

You’re not going to believe this, but we discovered yesterday that my wife is pregnant. As you know, I’ve had a vasectomy and my wife has had her tubes tied, so we’re at a loss as to how this could have occurred. I assure you, I am most heartily ashamed of myself, as I’m sure you’d wish me to be.

I’m sure you’ll understand, this is some major news for our family, and we’re going to have to make some fairly major lifestyle changes. Naturally, we’re going to have to move, I don’t believe a nude camp is the best place for a little one. And Eliza will certainly have to get a new job. Not only that, but our ob-gyn has strongly suggested to us that with a little one coming we might want to get a car to compliment our motorcycles.

Most important in the short run, though, is getting all of the booze out of the house. As you can imagine, this is a rather major effort. We’ve been working on it since we got the news. Eliza, of course, shouldn’t be doing much of the heavy lifting, so that has primarily fallen to me. I do want to support Eliza in this, though, so we’ll both be going cold turkey starting last night.

With so many changes occurring in our life right now, I don’t feel I can be away from Eliza so soon, and that’s why I can’t come into work today.

Sincerely,

Joshua Thrack

FFF #8
He ran through dark woods. Looking over his shoulder he saw the dark shape of his pursuer flitting in and out of the trees. He stumbled. He picked himself back up with arms that oozed blood. He knew he could never run fast enough or far enough, he knew his flight was futile. But the horror behind him could inspire no other response. He stumbled again; this time his arms gave out from under him when he tried to push himself up. It came closer. The last thing he saw was its dark cowl, bending over his prone body.

Waiting

Everyone held their breath, some in anticipation, and some in fear. All stared expectantly at the woman in the front of the room. Waiting for her to smack the table and begin the proceedings. The names of those chosen for hiatus were about to be called. I didn’t know what I was feeling. How could I? There were a thousand rumors and no hard facts. No basis from which to develop an emotional response. People whispered about it, about the selection process and about what it meant. Some people said the selection process was random. Some said a committee made the decisions. The more paranoid said you were chosen when you spoke out against the government. The government always seems to inspire these conspiracy theories, and the one thing that was certain was that the government controlled it. Some believed that the most powerful machine in the world made the decision. A thousand books had been written, all with different theories. All made their authors, if not millionaires, very rich men.
No one knew what happened once they were chosen. They nodded, left the hall with a look of joy or dread on their face, and to outsiders it seemed they carried on their normal life. Yet not quite their normal life, something was different. Everyone disagreed on what that was. There was a change, and a thousand people had a thousand ideas of what changed. Of course there were those that argued that there was no change other than the one society expected to see and saw. No one who knew someone who’d been chosen paid them much heed. Those who were chosen never spoke of it. They would deny it when asked, despite the lists that everyone has access to. They continued to be asked, though, because those who had been chosen inevitably rose high. The ambitious prayed for their names to be called. They tried to determine who to bribe, who to get to know, so that today they would hear their name would be spoken. The fearful or content also tried to determine who to bribe, who to talk to, with an opposite goal in mind. I didn’t know which group I belonged in. It didn’t matter. They didn’t care if you wanted it or not. They didn’t care how much money you paid. They couldn’t be influenced by a short conversation in a crowded room. They chose who they wished, when they wished. They chose me.

So yeah, the ending got rushed around eleven last night as I struggled to finish by midnight. Sorry!

Everyman

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in torrents and ran off the streets like urine in the poorer districts. In the slums of the city the gutters were filled with a urine/rainwater mix that cleaned the streets, but not the children splashing around in it. Phallic bananas float down the gutters on a boat of putridity. It is through these streets that our hero (for he is a hero although he has not, till now, been given any sign of it) makes his way.

“Who?” You, the reader ask, “Is this hero? Is he a denizen of the slums, a kind philanthropist come to give aid, a constable, a thief? Who is this brave and worthy man?”

I tell you: He is the Everyman. He is all of those and more besides. He is the father grieving over a sick child, he is a thief, he is a soldier, he is a handyman, he is a writer, he is a brother, and he is a son. He is all of those and none. His name is Tom Jones, an utterly ordinary name for an utterly ordinary man. On this rainy night, through the torrents and thunder, he is making his way toward a little cottage that sits quaint and comfortable on the edge of the slums that are neither.

He opens the door, a small door, the wood peeling and cracking, remnants of paint still visible to one with good eyesight, which our hero has. Tom enters the room by means of the worn down door. It is a cozy room, almost enough to make him forget that it is raining aardvarks outside, the fire burns like hell, and an old woman tends it. There is a pot over it from which emanates the most delicious odors that someone like Tom could ever smell. Of course, Tom smells them every night, so they are not the most delicious odors in the world to him.

Oh, did I not mention? This is his home, the woman by the fire his mother, or so he thinks. So she has told him many a time, complaining about the hours it took her to give birth. But perhaps all is not as it seems in the home of Tom Jones. For does not the exterior of every man cover an inner interior that is much more complex?

The cottage is a comforting and reassuring refuge from the putrefying world outside. Tom takes his seat gratefully at the small, scarred table that sits in the center of the bright little room; his mother comes over to give him a glass of hearty ale. They talked for some time. He of his horrifying, despicable, boring job as a factory supervisor, she of her day taking care of their small home. Eventually she rose again, ostensibly to glance at the stew cooking on the fire. Tom continued to drink his ale, he noticed a sweetness to it. An engaging new taste he’d never tasted before.

And then he died. Horribly. The poison in his drink did what the wretchedness of his life could not. He died like every man, at the hands of the woman.

Window

There it was. It sat precariously on the toilet paper dispenser in the grocery bathroom. A window into another world. “Take $20 from my $100 withdrawal for Ryan’s cable bill.” That was all. Just a note, a reminder. A slip of paper absentmindedly forgotten in the haste to wash one’s hands. The handwriting is spidery, shaky, like holding a pen is almost too fatiguing to the muscles. Its author learned to write in a time when writing well was an accomplishment. It is cursive, each letter perfectly formed. The tips of the t’s just barely brush the top of the line above them. The curve of one letter into another never falls beneath the bottom line.

This is that woman’s life. And this is Ryan’s life. What was she doing with that slip of paper in a grocery store? Who is Ryan? Why is she paying his cable bill? How is he getting cable for only $20 a month? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But somewhere out there is a woman, to whom these answers make up the details that compose her life.

Confusion

“Can you see anything?” The Face on the Bottom questioned the Face on the Top.

“Indeed, I can,” the Face on the Top replied. “I see beings, like the ones that made us, but uglier, staring at us.”

“Staring at us?” The Face in the Middle queried. “Why?”

“I do not concern myself with the why and wherefores of lesser beings!” the Face on Top snapped with an ugly twist of his fearsome beak. “They do seem particularly interested in my visage, however. My only concern is that they display proper homage.”

The Face in the Middle scoffed, “You have become vain in your old age. They don‘t respect us. Look at the way they point!”

The Face at the Bottom shivered, “I don’t like this. It is not right. Fly at them and scare them away. Their behavior is not worthy of us.”

There is no movement. None of the shivering fear that means one of their trio has departed.

The Face at the Top cries, “I cannot move! What evil is this? Why do my wings not flap?”

The Face on the Bottom whimpers.

The Face in the Middle growls, “I told you. They don’t respect us. No one pays homage. No one sacrifices. We are merely a curiosity. Fallen gods.”