Suddenly the pressure is gone, and I stand up. All around me is chaos, bears hitting each other, grabbing and pulling at fur and ears and tails, stabbing at eyes and biting with their sharp, sharp teeth. The crowd has pulled Mr. Wuzzy off of me, and now they surround him, so many people attacking him that they’re hurting each other by accident.
I brush the dirt from my face, afraid of how badly my fur’s been damaged.
Cuddles breaks free of the melee and jumps onto your tummy, waving his arms in the air. “Quiet!” he yells, with such force that it cannot be ignored. Bears freeze with paws drawn back mid-punch; they freeze with mouths snarling open.
“The sky lightens,” he says, softer now, “and so we must proceed.”
Looking chastened, bears get back into order, helping each other up and murmuring apologies. A battered-looking Mr. Wuzzy brushes himself off, even as other bears stand around him like guards.
“Chosen Bear,” Cuddles says. “As custom dictates, I leave the honor to you. It is up to you to decide if you’ll share with the challenger.”
I nod humbly to Cuddles, then glare at Mr. Wuzzy. “I will not,” I say.
“Then on your word we begin.”
I step toward you and you twist away. “No. No. No,” you chant through the tears. Standing on your chest I stroke your face with my paw as Mr. Wuzzy did, and when I look at you I understand how he felt. It didn’t have to be you, and perhaps I would even have been happier if it were not you. I do not like to see you so sad and afraid.
But it was you.
“Yes, Cherie,” I say quietly, only for you. Then, “Yes!” I say louder. The bears strike as one mass, fast as a pack of snakes. Shark-like teeth surround you from all sides, and we devour you quickly. You do not scream for long.
We eat until there is nothing left, crunching through your bones and licking every last drop of blood from our fur and the grass in the clearing. In our frenzy we even eat your clothes and the ropes with which we bound you. Yet your heart is mine alone, and I eat it slowly, savoring the year of freedom it buys me.
The sky is very light when the last bears leave and I worry that they will not make it back to their homes or stores before paralysis sets in. I am in no hurry. I dawdle, deciding where to go, when I hear a soft moaning from just outside the clearing.
Mr. Wuzzy crawls toward me from the woods. I see a new rip along his side seam, and I think his left eye looks loose. “Mr. Wuzzy,” I say, “did I do that to you?”
Mr. Wuzzy laughs. “No, Fuzzy. I don’t think you could.”
I reach down to help him up, checking the sky in alarm. The sun will peek over a distant ridge any moment now; Mr. Wuzzy should be home by now. Even as I worry about the sun, another thought occurs to me. “Did you get any of the . . . of Cherie?”
He shakes his head. “Couldn’t get through the crowd. For some reason they were mad at me.” He smiles again, but weakly, and I realize how much I’ll miss his sense of humor. Even during paralysis, Mr. Wuzzy was a pal.
I run to the center of the clearing where the grass is matted and trampled. “Maybe there’s some blood left!” We may have missed some in the low light, I think. But I see nothing.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I was asking for it anyway.”
“But the paralysis! Next year—”
“It’s okay,” he says. “Just take me ho—”
The sun has climbed into the sky, and Mr. Wuzzy is inert again, just a toy. He falls limp onto the ground and I run over to squeeze him, shake him. It’s no use. I want to cry, but of course I cannot.
It’s hard work, but I carry him all the way back home. There are people about, and so I have to stop frequently to act like a toy. It’s noon by the time we get to your house, a household in pandemonium. Your humans are frantic looking for signs of you, but they will never find any, Cherie. I looked myself, but not a drop of you remains.
I use the confusion to enter unnoticed. Your door is closed, so I stand on Mr. Wuzzy’s lifeless head to reach the knob, then I carry him the rest of the way to the neatly made bed. It was never rumpled last night. I push him up onto the bed and arrange him just-so against your lacy pillow, just the way you used to place me.
I whisper, “Goodbye, Mr. Wuzzy.”
I take one last look around the room before I go, memorizing everything. Like you, I will never return.
***published in Attic Toys, March 2012
Story notes:
I wrote this story at Clarion West based on a classmate’s musing about sinister interpretations of the teddy bears’ picnic (thanks, Persephone!). I turned it in for critique the same day our instructor for the week, editor David Hartwell, went on a long digression about how you can never kill children or dogs in your stories, and definitely never ever write in second person.
A few people thought I’d done both, though on closer inspection this story is in first person (I = Mr. Fuzzy) but addressed to a specific person (you = Cherie). Mr. Hartwell conceded that the violence against a child somehow worked in this piece. Rules are made to be broken?
When this story was published, I had to file the serial numbers off the other commercially trademarked bears at the picnic, for legal reasons. But I really didn’t try that hard, and any late Gen Xer or early Millennial should be able to identify them pretty easily.
I still think that song is vaguely menacing.
A Fairy Tale
The chorus of “Happily ever after” roused me from my stupor. Even from the living room I could hear the bored edge in Elise’s voice; it was as predictable as Kari’s enthusiasm or Allan’s singsongy tone, and as strained.
Storytime was finished. I headed to Kari’s room to say goodnight, but paused outside the door when I heard her speak. “Daddy,” she said, “is that how it was for you and mommy?”
I held my breath, sincerely wondering how Allan would answer. But it was Elise who answered: “Of course not. Mom’s not a princess.”
Kari laughed, but Allan didn’t miss a beat. “She is to me,” he said.
I crept away as quietly as I could, unsure whether the sound I suppressed was a sob or something more like bitter laughter.
#
It was a over a week later, and storytime was definitely over. I tried not to think of Allan as I stared into an expanse of prairie grass. It spread like a yellow-green ocean from the light on the back porch to the end of the known universe, losing color the farther it went into the night. Finally I could see nothing but the phosphorescent glow of hundreds of lightning bugs: the deep water. There be monsters.
I sat on the kitchen’s island cradling a glass of Pinot Grigio, and without thinking of Allan I contemplated how I had gotten myself stuck in a place like Ohio, anyway. No, not stuck, my editor-mind corrected: marooned. Marooned and emotionally mutinied by a pair of pirate daughters who had always loved their daddy better.
The glass of wine sweated in the evening’s heat, drops of cold water running down the stem and over my fingers. I wiped my hand across my forehead just as a wave of breeze skimmed across the ocean of my back lawn, in through the open window and over my face, turning me suddenly cold all the way through. The screen door slammed on the back verandah and I jumped up to face my girls.
“Mom!” Elise shouted. She held something behind her back as she stood shifting with excitement from side to side. “You’re never gonna believe what Kari and me found!”
In my editor-mind I cringed, thinking Kari and I, and wondering if ten was too young to start correcting the finer points of my daughter’s grammar. But I figured she’d pick them up with or without me; it seemed all she did was read. I tried to smile. “Did you catch some good lightning bugs?”
Little Kari, hands over her mouth, looked as though she was about to burst. But Elise continued over her sister’s muffled snickering, strangely sober. “Yeah, mom. And something . . . else.” She brought the object out from behind her back without looking at it, and I was so focused on her scrunched-shut eyes that it wasn’t unt
il she re-opened them with a little gasp that I saw what she meant.
She held the mayonnaise jar high in front of her like a trophy. Ragged holes had been punched in the plastic lid, the label peeled off leaving only smudgy streaks of glue obscuring its contents: three agitated fireflies, their green butts blinking on and off like living Christmas lights; a few leaves and a bumpy twig; and, sitting on the twig with her elbows on her knees, a tiny winged person.
I looked from my older daughter’s stunned face to my younger daughter’s suppressed mirth to the mayonnaise jar to the glass of wine in my hand, took a sip and set it down on the counter behind me. I took the jar from Elise, still studying her expression. My mind was struggling to convince me that I couldn’t have seen what I thought I had. Not a fairy; not a real one. Probably some toy I gave them and forgot about, I thought. I laughed at my gullibility, and raised the jar for a closer look.
The figure sat turned away from me, presenting me with coppery hair and greenish wings. Delicate, almost translucent wings which, I now saw, moved gently in and out as if to the rhythm of a creature’s breathing. Holding my own breath I turned the jar around.
There she was, not a toy at all, cast in intermittent lightning-bug light. About three inches tall, fair-skinned and naked, she sat on the twig with her bare feet on the glass bottom of the jar and her head in her tiny hands. One of the lightning bugs—to her the size of a barn owl—buzzed around her head, and she shooed it away with a violent wave of her arm.
She picked her head up and fixed me with fierce green eyes. “What?” she said, in a surprisingly big voice.
My grip on the jar slipped. It fell a few inches before I caught it again, and the fairy—or whatever she was—fluttered her wings in the jar’s airspace before settling back down onto the twig. I set the jar on the kitchen counter.
Kari scrambled up onto one of the stools on the other side of the counter, perching on her knees with her elbows on the formica countertop. She peered into the jar like a cat looks into a fishtank, still grinning. “Can we keep her?” she asked.
The tiny woman threw her hands up in the air. I shook my head, feeling like I was moving underwater. “I think . . .”
“What’s your name?” Elise had scooted onto the stool next to her sister to regard the fairy, though with a less predatory look on her face.
The little creature stood up in her 32-ounce world. “What’s yours?” she asked, pointing her whole arm at my daughter.
“Oh. I beg your pardon,” she said, and I smiled proudly. “My name’s Elise, and this is my sister, Kari.” Kari waved quick as a hummingbird, and Elise gestured across the counter to me. “And that’s our mom.”
The fairy turned toward me and inclined her head slightly. “Hey, mom,” she said.
I laughed, reaching for my glass of wine. “You can call me Deb.”
“Iris.”
“What are you?” asked Kari, and her wide eyes narrowed as Elise punched or pinched or kicked her under the counter’s edge.
“No,” said Iris. “I have a few questions for you. Question one: which one of you slack-jawed gawkers is going to free me from this lard-smelling prison?”
“Will we get a prize? A wish granted?” In her excitement Kari didn’t seem to notice the dirty looks she was now getting from both her sister and Iris.
Iris turned toward her, her voice syrupy sweet. “What would you wish for, little girl?”
Kari squealed with joy, talking a mile a minute. “A new bike, or to be the prettiest—no! Three more wishes! Or just for daddy—” She cut off abruptly, and the joy fell away.
“I can do that,” said the fairy.
Kari and Elise gasped in unison.
“But I’m not going to. Wishes, wishes, wishes. Nope, not this time.” She laughed a squeaky, cackling laugh.
“Now hold on, Iris,” I said, setting the nearly empty wineglass back on the counter.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t like me fucking with your kids?” One of the fireflies dived at her head and she ducked, swiping at it with both arms.
Elise and Kari giggled, and I wondered if it was about the bug or the naughty word. I don’t think they knew what it meant, only that it was off-limits. “Iris,” I began, aiming for an authoritative tone. “I’m going to have to ask you not to swear in front of—”
“Hey,” she said, flapping her wings. “Do you know what kind of fucking powers I have? Maybe I can destroy you with a snap of my fingers.” Squinting, I saw that her tiny fingers were poised to snap. Once again she was dive-bombed by a lightning bug, but she simply pointed at it and the bug blinked out of existence. She leaned one hand against the jar’s wall for a moment, head down, then looked up at me with a dark expression. “You don’t know, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Then I call the shots. Open lid, now.”
Her arms were crossed over her naked chest, her foot tapping impatiently. With a shrug I reached over and unscrewed the mayonnaise jar’s lid. Iris flew out, stretching her wings, as did one of the lightning bugs. The other bug seemed content to throw itself repeatedly against the glass wall of the jar.
“Iris,” Elise said, a waver in her voice. “How did you make that bug disappear?”
The fairy paused in mid-air, looking at Elise. “I told you I had powers, didn’t I?”
Elise seemed to consider this, eyes rotating in their sockets to follow Iris, flying in loop-de-loops in our kitchen. She looked more than a little frightened, Elise, and I thought I should say something to comfort her. But what was there to say? Eventually she continued: “But where did it go?”
I re-screwed the lid, locking the remaining firefly inside. In a small way I mourned its missed opportunity for freedom. You snooze, you lose, I thought, and with that, unbidden, came thoughts of Allan. He’d flown right out of the jar that was our marriage—vanished, or maybe just escaped—and I could still hear the buzzing sound as I banged my head against the glass.
Iris flew around, floating like a butterfly with her nude legs trailing behind. She hadn’t answered Elise, and it didn’t seem like she was planning on it. “Can you bring it back?” Elise asked.
Iris set down on the counter, stretching upwards with her arms. Kari reached her arm across the countertop to get my attention, whispering loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Mom? She’s not wearing any clothes.”
“No she’s not, honey,” I said, looking at Iris’s tiny white butt as she bent to touch her toes.
“No she’s not,” Iris echoed. “An astute observation, little girl. And no, I don’t want any of your doll’s clothes. You people are all the same.” Suddenly she twirled around and pointed at me. “Hey, how ‘bout a drink?”
I shrugged, looking into my own empty wineglass. “Wine okay?” She nodded. “What can I put it in for you?”
Iris sighed loudly, and I imagined I could see her roll her bright green eyes. “A thimble is traditional,” she said. She paused, while I mentally searched the house for a thimble. I wasn’t exactly a seamstress. “If you can’t manage that, the cap from the toothpaste tube will do.” She sounded incredibly put out by the whole thing.
I nodded to Elise. “Will you get a cap for our guest?”
Elise hurried off in the direction of her bathroom.
“Wash it out real good!” Iris called after her. “That shit tastes horrible.”
Really well, my editor-mind said. Wash it out really well.
#
It took forever to get the kids to sleep that night; fairy tales didn’t interest them, especially not ones read by mom. “Can we keep her?” was all they wanted to know. I told them it wasn’t really our choice, but I did eventually get them to bed with the assurance that Iris would still be around in the morning. Relieved, I crept out to the back porch with an opened bottle of Pinot Grigio, and lit a cigarette.
“Blow that my way,” said Iris, as I dropped into one of the padded deck chairs. She sat on the edge of the table between them, legs swingi
ng in the night air. “That’s one of the things I miss out on, being so small. Cigarettes. There’s just no way to shrink those.”
I exhaled a lungful of smoke at her, watching as she basked in its carcinogenic fog. “Yeah, but at least you’re a cheap date.” I pointed to the toothpaste cap in her hands, filled with a few drops of white wine.
She laughed, leaning back on her elbows on the table. A few caps of alcohol had made her far less cantankerous.
“And you have magical powers,” I added. “I think I’d like that.” Iris said nothing, her shiny green wings moving slowly in and out like a fan. “Iris?”
“Yeah.”
“If you could make that lightning bug disappear, why couldn’t you get out of the jar?”
“Who says I couldn’t?” she said, an edge entering her voice.
I put my hands up, backpedaling. “You’re right. I shouldn’t assume.” I sipped my wine, then quietly: “I just thought if you could’ve gotten out, you would have.”
She glared at me. Her eyes seemed to be made of emerald light; sometimes they shone, other times they pulled light into them like twin black holes. “You think magic’s like turning on a light switch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not even a light switch is like a light switch. You just think it is because you don’t see what it takes to get the power into your house. Somewhere coal is burned to turn water into steam to spin a turbine to make electricity, which travels for miles to get to your house. You flip a switch and the light comes on, like magic.”
Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas Page 21