Once Upon A Dystopia: An Anthology of Twisted Fairy Tales and Fractured Folklore

by Heather Carson

  “I admit, at first, it was just to free Greta, but after hearing you talk about Heston and how I am just a means to breed, I feel every bit the silly child I am.” Blair continued closing the gap between us until she was just out of reach.

  “I don’t want that. I truly thank you for opening my eyes. Perhaps in exchange for Greta I could offer Heston as a replacement. Would you consider letting us stay here with you as your subjects? There is clearly so much I could learn from you.” My voice was almost unrecognizable as I heard myself.

  Considering my offer, The Queen extended her hand to me and I took it.

  “I think we have come to a suitable agreement, child,” she said, still shaking my hand.

  At that moment I pulled her into me and sank Heston’s knife deep in her chest cavity. With a sickening rupture of skin, the blood painted the ground grotesquely. One turn of the blade and she dropped where she stood. As did I, being caught by the two people I cherish most in this world: Heston and Greta. We had no time to fixate on what I did because a whole chain of events had been set into motion and this was just the first obstacle. We made our way back outside carefully checking for the guards Blair spoke of, but not before arming ourselves with The Queen’s huge stockpile of weapons. No guards were found. Instead, we found our rag-tag group of malcontents in high spirits.

  The next phase of what had become a movement fueled by the rage of injustice took us into the unguarded sewers under Atlas. The women and men mixed together in a way I had never seen, prepared to fight alongside one another. The people of Atlas deserved to make their own choices. The only way to do that is to cut off the head of the beast so freedom might replace fear. There was no going back. We would take on his guard as well if the need arose. We had to see this through or surely a bleak fate awaited us.

  Again, our band stood guard, able and ready to assist if we were discovered. Greta, Heston, and I snuck into The Great Master’s bedroom. He was caught unaware in his slumber waking to the barrel of a gun pressed against his head. Greta led him outside at gunpoint into the town square. Our army followed closely behind. Every citizen and official in Atlas gathered as we passed. We outnumbered them, we out weaponed them, and we had outsmarted them. No one challenged us.

  “This man stands accused of rape, murder, abuse, genocide and malfeasance in office. Does anyone have a statement to the contrary they wish to give?” I asked the crowd.

  No one stood up for The Great Master.

  “I have led you all and kept you safe and fed and this is how you repay me? No one is willing to bear witness for me? Everything I did, I did for the betterment of Atlas. We could not have some inbred half-wits running through the streets. The girls found to be wanting were cast aside by righteous action. They were the lowest of the gutter trash, harlots!” he screamed.

  A gunshot echoed through the silent streets.

  Greta was on the bestowing end. Tears streaked her face. I ran to her.

  It was over or just beginning, depending on how you looked at it.

  We learned so many difficult truths the year of our Ranking Ceremonies, many about the corruption and sheer lies The Great Master was poisoning us with. There was not a food shortage. Just on the other side of the wall was lush forest littered with the possibility of farming and wildlife. I learned, when necessary, I will do anything for the people I love. We had set things right, declared everyone free, women and men stood as equals and first on the agenda was a democratic vote for who should lead us.

  “So, tell me Madam President, what is the first order of business?” Heston chuckled in my ear.

  “I think it might be to convince my husband to finish painting the nursery before his child is born,” I said as he bent down for a kiss, gently rubbing the barely visible bump in my belly.

  Greta smiled knowingly from across the porch, secretly saying she told me so. Real love did exist and it existed inside the walls of Atlas.

  A.K. Harris was born and raised on a farm in the rural Midwest and continues to live the small-town life in her hometown with her two active children, husband, and her exuberant dog, Roxy. Her love for reading drove her to her current job as Director/Librarian of her local public library, but ranks as a close second to her true passion of writing. When not enduring numbing bleacher butt from her kids’ many sporting events she enjoys cooking and running amuck outside, a self-proclaimed wanderer who thinks adventure is just around the next corner. She is currently working on her debut novel The River Hears.

  Contributions to editing of Atlas: The Tale of Hanna and Gretel by Tom Alston

  Find out more at: https://akharrisauthor.com/

  My Own Skin

  By Sherri Cook Woosley

  It doesn’t hurt to peel off our outer layer – pelli – but tonight when we do, we are nervous. They pronounce our skin “pelts” and call us “selkies,” something from their home world. That was one of the original misunderstandings when they came from the stars to our home. That is not what we call ourselves. And our pelli is more than skin, more than a shell, more than fur, it is the part that connects our emotions and thoughts to our physical form.

  Tonight, we come ashore together, threading through the black rocks that jut out like teeth in a ring that encloses this island. Then, we take off our pellis. Two moons light the beach in a soft pink glow. Big Sister pulls at the tides, regular and uniform. Little Sister is the troublemaker. Her skin is pockmarked with volcanoes, her crown is a red corona in the sky. Her flight path is erratic: when she is angry, she yanks at us, causing peaks in our oceans, and eroding shorelines.

  We are a pod, so we act together. We set our pellis on the black sand in little piles, some transparent and some taking on a soft gray hue as if to match the sand. Tonight we do not want to let go of it, but we are resolved. One of us is missing and we will get them back. We choose a form – some like the newcomer females and some like the males and some with attributes of both or neither. This is funny to us because with our pelli we take whatever form we want whenever we want.

  This isn’t the first time we have shifted so we know how to wiggle our fingers and toes. Some have already begun the dance. It is so different on land than in the sea. Gravity makes us teeter as we stretch away from the sand, arms extended for balance, and then fall to the forgiving beach. And when one comes over to help another up, perhaps they become a tangle of limbs.

  The feel of wind is so different than water, but dancing keeps us warm. We know the pattern and soon we flow. And as we create harmony, as we are together, so does our bliss grow. In our pellis, our thoughts are open to the pod. By taking them off, we separate and open ourselves to a new way to create beauty through movement.

  We sense the newcomer. Awareness passes among us, a resolve, and we hold tight to the dance’s form until tension breaks us. We scatter. Grab for our individual pellis so we can change form and dive into the friendly water, hide behind the rocky teeth that dash the newcomers’ boats.

  The newcomer, alone, steps from behind the dune where they’d been hiding, form enveloped in a giant hooded coat. They are done watching our dance. Now their legs pump as they run toward the beach.

  We all get away but one.

  There is a breaking inside, a ripping as if a leviathan from the deep had bitten us, taken one away, leaving wounds inside of the survivors. Water splashes against the rocks.

  We are gone.

  No.

  They are gone.

  I am here.

  The newcomer is shoving my pelli into a sack and I cannot move. I am a woman, now, and this body feels strange. I reach for my pod with my mind, but there is an absence. I am trying to wave an appendage that doesn’t exist in this form. My breath quickens, my torso expands and I am afraid. I have never been separated from my pod and this body does not talk to me. A moment ago, there was harmony in our dance, but now this newcomer has stolen from me. My mind, this woman’s mind, knows words, but I don’t have the concept.

  I try, “Please?”
>
  “You must be cold,” he says. How do I know it is a he? This body knows.

  I touch my head. Hair grows there, and under my armpits, and where my legs come together, but nowhere else to keep me warm. I shiver.

  He is not ungentle as he wraps me in a blanket, my arms held down by my sides, and then scoops me up, carrying me up to the buildings the newcomers built. Alone in my mind, I repeat that this was the plan. That one of us had to be captured. We made the decision and I must carry it out. Over his shoulder I see the moon sisters. Red streams down Little Sister’s face and makes me think of tears. I know what tears are now. This body has taught me.

  We took their form because we could and they couldn’t take ours. We took their form because this is a planet of water and they do not have the right bodies for it. We took their form because we felt sorry that these newcomers had no fur for the cold.

  But we did not misunderstand when they stole our pellis — and our people — like the leviathans from the deep. Leviathans do not mask their intent. Their jaws open wide and their breath smells of death. They – the newcomers – came with mouths full of teeth, but they hid them behind smiles.

  Inside the building, he sets me down and puts something over my head that covers my body. Clothing. Table. Light. The words rush at me. We’ve—no, I’ve—experienced this expedited learning when changing forms before, but this human body is complicated.

  The table is too large for the two of us; it is solid and made for many people. We do not have this thing under the seas. His metal lantern casts a ring of light and shadow, but my lanterns, the sister moons, hang in the sky. I can see them from the windows behind this man: Big Sister edging out of sight, Little Sister moving into frame. I feel the sea creep up the island in push-pull increments and imagine the sound increasing as water slaps at the black rock teeth.

  “You’ll live with us now. It will take some time, but you’ll get used to it here.” He speaks with such authority that each statement traps me in this human body; my bare skin hurts. “This will be a good life for you.”

  “I do not belong here.” I lift the dress that he put over my head and slap at my legs. The fabric is coarse and I long for my sleek skin and warm fur.

  “They call me Flicks.” He leans forward. “What’s your name?”

  What do I call myself? I don’t know how to answer this so I shrug my shoulders.

  “We can help each other. Your pelt-sy,” he mangles the word, “is the most amazing bio-aril we’ve ever seen. The lab is trying to figure it out. They think maybe a gel that holds stem cells of amniotic fluid --”

  “Please,” I say, as if being polite will persuade him. “Return my skin so I can go home.” If he would cooperate, if he would listen, then we could be on the same side. I understand “we,” that is how our pod thinks and solves problems, but this man wants something and it is different than what I want: to bring our stolen member back to the pod.

  He rises, hands clenched by his side, pacing. His boots beat the floor. “I chose you,” he says, finally. “You are beautiful. Your eyes are kind. Not like the other humans on this outpost.”

  Does it matter whether he chose me or whether my skin was merely the closest? My hands clench into fists, unconscious echo.

  “But it’s more than that.” He faces me, forces his hands to unclench. My body sees that this is hard for him. “This place is my last chance.” He swallows. “I’m a soldier. Everyone in this outpost is. We put in our time for a meaningless war and then we’re allowed to retire here.” He shook his head. “Even if I left, others will come, figure out how to recreate the pelt-sy. How to live on this planet. But we can figure it out together, if you’ll help me.”

  My mouth moves, but it is so dry that it’s hard to urge words out. “We tried to help you, we said your bodies were too fragile.”

  “Right.” He sits down across from me, grabs one of my hands, but he did not ask permission. The touch is overwhelming, the way this body responds. We do not do that.

  “Who knows how long the labs will take figuring out how to make the pelt-sy? Some of us thought that we could create it another way. That the offspring of,” he rushes through, “one of you with one of us would have the best of both worlds. You know?”

  The human part of me tries to parse meaning from his words, but the animal in me recognizes desperation. He reeks of a rotting fish.

  The kitchen faucet bursts to life and I stand from the chair, rush to the white froth pouring out. “Saltwater.” I dip my hands in, splash my face, and gulp at the stream so the familiar taste is on my tongue when I announce, “The sea comes for me.”

  “No. That’s ridiculous.” He pushes past me and turns the faucet knobs one way and then the other, but the water won’t stop. “Stupid equipment. Maybe a bad pump? I’ll check the well head and the casing. They gave us outdated equipment when they dropped us off on this rock.”

  He leaves the room, it’s called kitchen, I know, and does not tie my hands. Why should he? This body, like his, is too fragile to go outside.

  I go to the sink, stand there watching with a sense of satisfaction.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” The voice has too many emotions for my limited experience in this body. The statement is, somehow, a command and an entreaty at once. Not something that someone born a human could produce.

  I turn toward the speaker. They look like an older human female in a dress that hangs too large on her gaunt frame. Her skin is brown like sediment that clouds the water when the tentacled dreer rise from their hiding places. White hair interlaces down the back. A braid, my mind supplies. Her eyes are blue and sad. I imagine that she cries a lot. Her hands have calluses, flesh building up from repeated actions, not from swimming in the sea. Not from playing in the waves, not from dancing in the rosy light of Big Sister and Little Sister.

  Something new flutters inside of me like butterfly wings tickling my ribs. I have never seen a butterfly, but this memory of a form with colorful membranes is exactly what I mean. I would like my pod to experience being such an amazing amalgam of scales and hairs and beauty. They would like the harmony. No, we would like the harmony.

  Distracted by my mistake, I take a deep breath.

  “I’m here,” I say, and that butterfly sensation startles me again, “because of you. We didn’t forget.”

  Their chin, her chin, who is she now, anymore?

  “You waited so long,” she says, “I didn’t think anyone would come.”

  “We have missed you every moment and we sang for you.” I swallow because I am happy and I am proud. “And now you can come home.”

  “They took away my pelli.” She makes the right sound with the human mouth. “They sent it to a lab. I can never change form again.”

  Steps announce Flick’s arrival with enough time for her to slip into the adjoining room so he does not see us talking.

  The sound of the water running is a constant shhhh in the background. This is soothing to me, but he is frustrated. “I’ve put in a work requisition. Hydraulics aren’t my specialty, but someone will be here in the morning.” He kneels to open the cabinet, using a wrench against the pipe.

  “What is a lab?” The word was too foreign. He’d said it earlier and then she/they said it, but the image that fills this mind makes no sense.

  “You’ve been talking to Lucy.” It takes me a moment to realize that this set of syllables has been assigned to the woman in the other room. He puts his hands on his hips. “Fine. Scientists. They have to figure out what the pelt-sy was made from and the only way to do that was to cut it open. Our survival on this planet means understanding alien technology and then replicating it. But it’s taking too long.” He scoffs. “We’re not exactly a priority for the off-planet labs."

  My stomach drops and I feel dizzy, reaching out a hand to the chair. This body shocks me with picture after picture of what the lab is doing, destroying, desiccating. Our pelli is so integral to our being and these newcomers stole it and allowed
, no encouraged, other newcomers to rip our pellis apart.

  I look through the doorway. Lucy is there. She is watching me with her hands clasped together and her chin wobbling. This is why she has given up.

  “We need a new plan.” He is still talking. “I need my children to have selkie blood so they’ll understand the sea. No worries about being drafted in the never-ending war. This is the only way that my family survives. I need our future. That’s the only thing that’s kept me going through the Hell I’ve been through.”

  Little Sister winks in the middle of the window. I look over at Lucy and see her eyes widen as she begins to understand why I was captured tonight.

  “Listen, I know that you don’t understand, but you’re so beautiful. The color of your skin, the shape of your mouth, the size of your eyes. You could save me.” Dropping to his knees, the soldier grabs at my dress. “Please. I love you.”