Micro Fictions

Rewrites



            Goldilocks plucked at the tatters on hem of her dress. How many were gone? Red, Jack, and oh God, now Jesus, he should have been their ace. How could it even be possible to go on without him?
            Baby bear waddled up and put his head on her lap. She rubbed the fur around his muzzle and scratched behind his ears.
            “What are we going to do now Goldie?” he murmured.
            “Don’t fret,” she lied. “We still have Edward and Bella, even if all their sparkling is exhausting to look at. We’ll manage.”
            “You’re right Goldie. You’re always right. Best not to think of it at all.”
            “How’s Mama?”
            “Not good. Papa has been trying to comfort her, but she won’t have it. She misses Pooh. She keeps trying to look for him. Papa can’t even sleep anymore. Every time he nods off she will slip out of the cottage. He has found her twice over by the honey tree. The last time she had already filled a giant balloon and tied it around her waist. I’m scared that she’s going to hurt herself.”
            “We can’t have that, she doesn’t have Pooh’s fluff. We should collect the balloons. If those are put away at least we don’t have to worry about her falling from the sky. We’ll need help. Let’s get the kittens.”
            Baby bear rolled over and stood up. Together he and Goldilocks walked across the meadow to where the kittens were crawling through the bushes.
            “Did you find anything?”
            “No, not yet, what about over there?”
            “No nothing. Do you remember what he smells like? It’s been too long. I think I’m starting to forget,” the last kitten whimpered.
            “Kittens,” said Goldilocks, “will you help us look for balloons?”
            “What do you want with balloons? Are they warmer than mittens?” they replied in unison.
            “No they aren’t. We are just hoping to keep Mama Bear from killing herself. She has become…unhinged.”
            “Not Mama Bear! She was always a strong one,” they replied.
            Goldilocks lowered herself heavily to the ground and sat. “I know.”
            “Well, we can help find balloons, just as soon as we find Jesus.”
            “Didn’t you hear? He’s gone. The golden fish saw it happen.”
            “Noooooooo!” they wailed.
            “Come now little mews.” Goldilocks plucked up the kittens by the scruff and put them in her lap. She stroked their fur ‘til calm settled in and they began to purr. “There, there. You have given me an idea. Maybe we should go talk to the golden fish. Perhaps there is another side to this tale.”
            Goldie raised herself up from the ground, pausing to stretch her legs. Her hips had locked up from the chill of the earth. Without being asked Baby stepped forward so that she could support herself with his shoulder and rise without falling. Once erect, she skimmed her hand over her skirt, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the remaining fabric above the crinolines. Not quite presentable but it would have to do. With her hand still on Baby’s shoulder and the kittens trailing behind they crossed over the meadow again, picked up the stream and followed it to the sea.

            “Baby, I can’t remember. Do we still have to catch him?”
            “No, not anymore. It makes his arthritis act up.” Baby reached out his paw and patted the surface of the water like it was a drum.
            In due time a small golden fish rose to the surface. His eyes, which had once been bright like diamonds, now held a core of frost as though pearls had been set inside them. His crown tipped off to one side, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.
            “What is it?”
            “Your majesty, we came to ask you about Jesus. Please tell us what happened.”
            The golden fish circled around a few times as though trying to avoid an internal current before he spoke.
            “Not much to tell. He was here and then he was gone.”
            Baby tilted his head and raised his lip just enough to expose one of his petite canines. “Your majesty, I know you well and you are not being honest with us. Tell us the full tale.”
            “Baby bear, I can hear those teeth. You cover them this instant.”
            “Tell us the full tale or I find out what a royal dinner tastes like.”
            The golden fish circled.
            “How about I grant you a wish for not asking?”
            “You Majesty,” said Goldilocks, “you know that we will just wish for the full tale, so you might as well just tell it.”
            The little fish groaned. “I’ll tell you. Just…just…I’m afraid that you will go too.” The king swam forward onto the sand until his belly rested on the bottom and his head peeked out over the surface of the water.
            “Jesus was here on the beach. We were talking about the vanishings. He was saying that he had seen glimpses of the lost. He didn’t think that they were gone at all, but rather changed…altered. And just as he said that his feet started to sink into the water.
            “He sounded a little confused at first. Then I heard him smile. He looked at me and told me not to be afraid but to welcome something. His voice was garbled, but I thought I heard him say something like ‘get their attention’ and ‘being born anew’. I felt Mary over his shoulder.”
            “The mother?!” the kittens gasped.
            “No the other one. He was so happy to see her. I think…I think I heard them dancing. She said something about how she had been waiting for him and they were just gone.”
            “But how could the stories being changed effect him? I thought he was … different,” said Baby.
            Goldilocks didn’t hear Baby. For a moment she just stood there, waves lapping at her feet. “Balloons,” she said, “we need balloons now!”
            “No Goldie, don’t go!” yelled the golden fish. “Please, please don’t leave too!”
            “Look at you my sea king,” she said. “How long have you been here? A millennium? You’re half blind with arthritis so bad you belly up to the sand rather than fight the current. And look at me, I’m in tatters and my hips lock up if I sit to long. This world, this existence is too hot, too hard, too soft and too cold. It’s time to go. That’s why the stories have been vanishing, but they aren’t disappearing, they are being rewritten! They are being remade, new. And I’m going too.”
            “Baby bear, we’ll need some string, and we have to hurry. Mama hasn’t been trying to kill herself, she has known what to do all along. She’s trying to get their attention.”
            Together they turned and ran. In the distance the golden fish cried, ‘but how do I do it?! How do I make it work for me?”
            Goldilocks couldn’t answer that for him.
            They raced back along the stream, over the meadow and into the forest. When they got to the house they found Papa sleeping and Mama nowhere in sight. He woke with a thud as they pushed him off his chair.
            “What? What?! Where’s Mama?” he said.
            “Hurry Papa, she’s gone, and if we don’t catch her right now she is going to be off from us all together. We have to get to the honey tree NOW.”
            They spilled from the back door like candy falling from a torn piñata. Huffing and puffing, tottering on sore hips, nursing bad backs. They made it to the honey tree just as Mama Bear finished tying a huge balloon around her waist.
            “Don’t try and stop me,” she said, her paw raised high and ready.
            “We…we…,” Goldilocks gasped, “ we want to come with you.”
            “Praise Jesus, finally,” said Mama Bear.

            Trussed with large balloons on their backs, it was time.
            “Let’s hold hands,” said Mama, “that way hopefully we have a better chance of staying together.”
            “Should we say a few words Mama?” said Goldilocks, “you know, to say goodbye?”
            Their feet were already rising up from the ground.
            “I don’t know,” said Mama. “Maybe we should just pray.”
            They swayed in the air. Hands and paws locked tightly as they floated upward.
            “Dear writers,” Goldilocks began, “please remember us and be gentle… we only wish for everything to be just right.”

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(Not a kid's story. Use your judgement read/not read)



Rejection Point

Xalia clenched the icy handle of her torch. She fiddled with the adjustments, turning the heat down and the light up. It had been a long wait, but the day was finally beginning to show it’s darkness.

It had taken far too long, that much was not in doubt. Mala could be so stubborn. Amazing how she had clung to him. She was like a linty seed pod on a fresh cotton tunic. No, disgusting… disgusting was a better word for it.

The heat from Xalia’s swollen belly rose up through her chest and settled itself around her neck. She tugged at the front of the threadbare cassock to pull in the brisk night air. The rhythm of her pulling moved the shirt as though it began to breathe by itself. Someday she'll have animated fabric. Patience, she must remember how much would come when she made delivery.

If only Mala had grown a son. Maybe that would have taken some edge off her disgrace…the family’s disgrace. Xalia couldn’t help but think that at this point it might be better if they were both going over.

Would it really have been that hard for her to find a man of real breeding, full and brimming in his courage? A man that would stand tall before the burn boxes and walk proud through the droning clouds of bluebottles. Mala wasn’t completely without charms and it’s not as though that much was required. Just split herself and any of a hundred more suitable matches would have offered his stick. Surely anything would have been better than the humiliation of having a deposit in the family.

It came down to bad choices, her sister’s bad choices. To think of her, her own sister with that…that poltroon, she retched in her mouth. The shame of it all burned the worst. The hot flood of rough was bad enough when he stood on the square harping on about cultivating a milder spirit, showing pity to our enemies and bah, forgiveness, but talk of freeing slaves and refusing service, there was only one path away from that stink. How could anyone be so dim as to not even understand the way the world worked. Would the plasma shears of the North been blunted by garlands and poetry? A small blessing that father cuffed him in the mouth.

Maybe if he stopped there, hushed his ravings and pushed sons into Mala. It would've still been ugly, a secret embarrassment you’d rather lock up in the basement, but quickly forgotten behind a phalanx of fit young blood shields. He was not hard to look at. His mind might have been soft, but his thighs weren’t. Fine in height as well, commanding even when he stood in the sun in prism armor. That must have been what Mala clung to. That bright young warrior earmarked for leadership.

The waste of it scalded, but where is there room in this world for regrets? She pushed the images away. The son in her abdomen kicked as if in agreement and she rubbed her belly in long circular strokes. It would be different when this baby finally came. There would be a measure of absolution for her with the birth of a strong male to join the ranks, especially if he was deemed fit for service. With Xalia as his brood mother how could he not be. The stain of familial disgrace would fade as she populated the field with warriors. No one need know his origin, and she could be back in the thigh dance within a month.

A branch cracked in the wood. From her perch Xalia just marked two figures walking down the path in the darkness. So he had come. She couldn’t help but be a bit impressed. She expected him to run.

He broke when the city rose against him. No wonder, the taunts alone were ferocious. The piles of chicken hearts and jellyfish put on their stoop could have fed an army were such fare fit for true human consumption. He raved...martyrdom...the very idea was absurd. He should have stopped to plant something in all those hours cowering in the garden, at least then people would have seen delirium.

Mala clung to him all the more, poor dim thing. She even spouted tommyrot of her own. Xalia cringed to think how she herself had almost been taken in by it all, how his defiance almost seemed like true courage. Insidious. There was no doubt the elders were right about deposit.

At least Xalia would go forward without fault. She was a fully supportive sister. She walked with Mala through the jeering crowds at the market, and braved the pelting of fish by her side. She made all the appropriate sacrifices to bring the family back to dignity. She even did what Mala could not. She carried the son in her own body, proving there was something of a man inside him. How could Mala even suggest that she had been anything but her greatest champion? It exploded reason. Sad proof that she was as puerile as her husband. No, Xalia was in the right. After all she was here defending the family honor. She was the one holding Mala to her resolve.

Xalia lowered the light in her torch. The figures were consumed by the dark, but she still heard their footsteps on the loose stone. They were almost to the end of the path, where the trees gave way to scrub and dry ravine. Relish turned up the corners of her mouth. Finally her family would be back in the fold. There would still be some lingering suspicion at first, of course, but it would give way with the waters of birth. She would bring the family back from the precipice, she and her son. She would raise a true man. He would grow in a world without comfort, he would see no mercy and he would give none. When he reached his full growth he would leave for the battle, and he would return with his shield or on it. All that remained was for Mala to finish this deposit and succeed in a small redemption for herself.

Xalia set the heat of her torch to maximum. Soft murmurs floated in the heavy breeze, a scream and then a thud. She knew he would be a screamer. She set light to the scrub and scrambled down from her perch to a clear side path. More screams. Flames would silence those soon enough as they raced up the ridgeline. She moved as quickly as her burden would allow until she came to the convergence of her path and the rejection path.

There he was, bent in the crossroads and whimpering like a pig. It had been Mala! Mala threw herself down the ravine. Oh sister! Xalia was shot through with a pang. She had misjudged her sibling. A tear of desperation ripped her. How she longed for one last moment to tell her sister all was redeemed. This was superior to forcing him to deposit.

The smell of smoke and cooking flesh had already begun to crowd the air. Xalia looked down at her groveling brother-in-law. He was not even worthy of her spit. She stepped over him and continued on the path to town. Her stride was large and for the first time in months her shoulders swung back with pride.



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