Rumpelstiltskin

So for one of my classes, my professor asked us to rewrite a fairytale of our choosing.  This is what I wrote, and also read at an open mic this past week.  I was informed by one of my fellow MFA writers afterwards that I'm "pretty creepy".  Enjoy.

 The Gold-Weaver

            Sarah Walzinski was the finest gold-weaver this side of the Inland Empire.  She had a little shop right in the middle of Victoria Gardens, next to the Apple store.  People would come from all over Southern California to watch her spin the gold from the threads of bark from a Juniper tree.  When she had first opened up the shop, news casters from all over came to ask how she learned to spin the gold.

            She always replied, “A friend showed me,” and she would leave it at that.

            It had been a few years now, and Sarah was happily married to a sound producer from Los Angeles. A couple months after the wedding Sarah found out that she was pregnant.  In her husband’s opinion, this is when she began to act strangely.  She was constantly on edge, thinking someone was watching her.  She would wake up yelling in the middle of the night that someone was trying to steal her baby.  And she became abnormally fearful of any man under the height of five feet.  In her seventh month, her husband, Dale was his name, confronted her as to why she was acting so strange.  She tried to chalk it up to “pregnancy brain,” but he wasn’t buying it.

            So Sarah told him how she had been living in very bad conditions on her own in Victorville.  She had no money and no food and no family.  She had to stand on the corner of intersections with a cardboard sign asking for help.  She was willing to work, but had no job skills.  Then one day a short, funny looking man wearing a beanie approached her at the corner of Main street and Topaz.

            “Why aren’t you working, young lady?” asked the man.

            “I can’t get a job.  No one’s hiring, and besides, I have no experience or skills.  I didn’t even finish high school.”

            The man nodded.  “I see.  How about this:  I buy you a meal, some coffee, and we can discuss helping you get your life in order?”

            Sarah went with him and he had shown her how to spin gold from the bark of a Juniper tree.

            Sarah put a hand on her round stomach and looked at her husband.  “In return for teaching me, he said that my first born child would belong to him.”

            Sarah’s husband didn’t know how to take the news.  His first question was, “Did you sign a legal document?  Was it notorized?”  Sarah said, “No.”

            Three months later the baby was born, healthy and pink with green eyes like his mother, and bright red hair like…no one else in either of the parents’ families.  They named him James, after Dale’s father, and called him Jimmy.

            Jimmy grew little by little, and the more he grew, the more worried Dale became.  The baby’s hair, which he reasoned would steadily get darker, became an even brighter shade of red over the following months.  Dale had brown hair and tan skin.  Jimmy’s seemed as pale as the moon.

            The more time that passed without the little man showing up, the more relaxed Sarah became.  She stopped looking over her shoulder every minute and even let Jimmy run around on his own in the park while she watched from a small distance away.

            Jimmy turned two.  Sarah was happy to finally have a family of her own.  Dale was hired onto a big-budget film as sound director and began working longer hours.

            Now one day when Jimmy was at daycare and Dale was in Los Angeles, Sarah was working in her shop when the short, funny looking man came in.  Sarah jumped to her feet, but the man merely smiled and shook his head.  “I’m sorry I startled you.”

            Sarah took a deep breath to compose herself.  “You can’t take away my son.”

            “You forget out deal, my dear.  I told you, he would belong to me as well.  So he is our son.”  The man stepped forward and removed his beanie, revealing a head full of soft, shining red hair.

            Sarah stumbled backwards into her desk.  “That’s not possible.  I never...we never…?”

            “He is my child.”  The man helped Sarah into her seat then took the one across from her.  “So let’s talk visitation rights.  You’ll be wanting a paternity test, of course.  Oh, and there’s the matter of his name change…I’m sure his first name is fine, but I want his last name changed to ‘Rumpelstilskin’ to match my own.”

            Sarah sat and listened and tried to think back to the night two years and nine months before.  She hadn’t really reflected on it then, because she thought she had been imagining things.  But her husband that night, in the darkness of midnight had come home and gotten into bed without turning the lights on.  He had been silent and his touch had been softer than usual.

            Sarah looked into the eyes of the red-haired man.  “My husband and I will take this to court.  What you did was horrible.  We won’t let him go without a fight.”

            Rumpelstilskin smiled.  “I look forward to it.” 

 

Bus Stop

So I wrote this sketch with one of my recurring characters, Marchosias, last spring.  I was going through my writing folder, read it over and decided I really liked it.  But that's just me.  So, here you go.

11 April 2013

            Marchosias walked to the corner of the street and stopped.  The bus was late.  He knew this despite the fact that he did not ride the bus.  The only reason he cared was because she was supposed to be on the bus, or rather, she was supposed to exit the bus at this stop.  But since she was not there, it meant the bus had not reached this point, and therefore, the bus was late.  He decided he would wait.  For a little while.

            He leaned against the blue metal shelter and watched the cars pass by on the street in front of him.  He never liked cars.  They had always been too noisy in his opinion.  And they stank.  They stank of grease and oil.  Their fire was rank with exhaustion, different from the purity of a wood or coal fire.  That fire was good, and smelled like happiness itself in Marchosias’s opinion.  He picked at the dark particles caught beneath his fingernails.

            It was at this moment a group of teenagers happened to walk under the bus shelter.  They carried backpacks and books, and laughed as they pushed and poked at one another.  Marchosias crossed his arms across his chest and retreated to the back of the little blue bus shelter.  There were three of them in total; two boys with floppy hair that hung over their eyes, and a girl wearing a beanie over closely cropped, bleached hair.  She had a piercing in her lip, a black ring with a red plastic pearl.  She flashed a brief smile at Marchosias then turned back to her friends.  The taller of the boys pulled out a cigarette and metallic butane lighter.  He flicked at the lighter several times but on each pass the flame went out before the cigarette could catch.

            “Must be outta juice,” grumbled the boy.  He turned to Marchosias, the cigarette poking from the corner of his lips.  “Hey, you got a light?”

            Marchosias flicked something from the sleeve of his shirt.  “Are you even eighteen?”

            The boy took the cigarette from his mouth.  “Does it matter?”

            “Not to me, no.”  Marchosias went back to inspecting the sleeve of his jacket.

            “Look, man, do you have a lighter or not?”

            Marchosias paused, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a match and held it out to the boy.  The boy reached to take it, his hand wavering hesitantly as he watched Marchosias’s face. 

            “Thanks.”  He placed the cigarette back on his lips and bent down to strike the match on the concrete.  It lit up instantly in a sharp blossom of blue and orange.  The boy held it to the end of the cigarette and took a long drag.  The end burned with the glow of an ember.  He extinguished the match with a quick shake then dropped it on the ground and stamped it out.  He stood up and took another deep draw, the smoke settling in his mouth before he exhaled it out in a long ghost-like curl.  He passed it to his friend, who had been watching their exchange nervously. 

            This boy was fatter.  His sweater stuck to his arms like plastic wrap, and the zipper, only partially done up, seemed like it was ready to give up.  He held the cigarette between his shaking thumb and forefinger, inhaled quickly, and coughed out a stream of smoke.  The taller boy laughed and punched him in the shoulder.  They turned to face the street now, ignoring the stranger they had found. 

The girl took the cigarette next.  Marchosias watched as she turned it over in her hand, holding the filter between her index and middle fingers, lightly as if she had seen it done a hundred times in the movies or on television.  She pressed it to her lips and kept it there for a moment, mimicking the practiced draw her taller friend had done before, though the release of smoke was much smaller. 

Marchosias snorted under his breath.

The girl glanced back, the cigarette once more posed at her lips.  She quickly turned around and handed the burning stick back to her tall friend who flicked away the accumulating ash on the end.

She pulled on the sleeve of the tall boy.  “When’s the bus coming?”

The cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth as he pulled his cell phone out and flicked the tiny screen to life.  “Shoulda been here by now.”

The girl nodded and looked back at Marchosias.  She was glaring now, her lips pouted out.  Her hands fiddled with the seams of the pockets on her skinny jeans.  She turned back to her friend and plucked the cigarette from his mouth and stuck it in her own.  Her eyes returned to their previous glaring.

Marchosias shifted his weight to his other foot and once more folded his arms across his chest.  He returned the girl’s stare, holding it with his own of uncaring aloofness. 

The girl lifted the cigarette from her apple-red lips and traces of the lipstick stuck to it.  She let the smoke she had been slowly inhaling slink its way from her mouth.  Marchosias wondered if she had practiced this in front of a mirror before.

The two boys did not notice any of this, as they were discussing some game or movie, and so it was plain the girl’s performance was solely for him.  He cocked his head to the side and gave her the smallest of smiles. 

Her cheeks immediately flushed red.

A horn honked. The faded turquoise bus pulled up in that moment.  The girl hurriedly threw the cigarette on the ground and crushed it out with the heel of her flat.  Then she and her friends entered the bus.  She took a seat at the window and stared out at Marchosias expectantly. 

But his eyes were not on her anymore.  They were on the woman exiting the bus in a huff.  She carried three bags, a laptop case, a backpack, and a small purse which had somehow become entangled around her neck.  Marchosias took the backpack and the laptop case out of the woman’s arms and draped them across his own shoulders, which freed the purse strap around her neck.  She stood up on her toes to kiss his mouth before they began walking back down the sidewalk.

The girl with the beanie and apple-red lipstick watched all this from the bus and felt her stomach fall just slightly.  She watched the two walk on, the dark-haired woman talking animatedly while the man listened and laughed in response to the things she said. 

The bus took off again.  Before it could pass the couple though, the man with coal black hair and tanned skin who had lent them a match looked over his shoulder.  His eyes flashed in that moment and the girl with apple-red lipstick could swear he had looked at her directly.  With two fingers he mimicked the way she had been holding her cigarette, and put them up to his mouth. 

Then with a smile he exhaled, and in that breath the girl could have sworn she saw a plume of grey smoke.

Strange Similarities found in Porphyria's Lover and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and the Nature of Evil

Earlier today I attended my English 212 class in a state of tiredness and mild narcolepsy due to the chemistry class I had just escaped from.  As discussions began on the poem of the day, "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning I started to feel a sense of deja vu.  Because I had not read the poem already, it wasn't until the plot had become clear that I realized it was eerily similar to the story line of a piece from Jhonen Vasquez's comic, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

In Browning's poem, Porphyria is a young woman who braves a rain storm to pay a "special" visit to the man she is attracted to.  As she enters his dark room, soaking wet, she greets him and builds a fire to warm the place up.  As the man gives no answer to her from his bed, she sits beside him and tries to be loving.  Now this poem is told through the perspective of the man, and as their scene reaches a point where he believes it is perfect, he wonders what to do.

".................At last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me:   surprise
made my heart swell, and still it grew
while I debated what to do. 
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good...."

What he ends up doing is strangling the poor girl with her own hair.
Robert Browning was trying to show us his ideas on the nature of evil, mostly that it always holds a smidge of insanity to a level where it constantly needs to be in control of almost everything around it.  The man goes on to try and justify and even rationalize the murder he has committed saying this is what she wanted, and always holding onto the idea that she is his forever.  He turns her love into an object and thus, not wanting to ever lose this object to time or any other man that could come into Porphyria's life, he kills her, which in his mind preserves her perfection and love.

Now in Jhonen Vasquez's comic, Johnny is not necessarily evil--all the time.  He creates a relationship with Devi, a girl who works at the bookstore Johnny (a.k.a.Nny) frequently goes to.  She finally asks him out on a date and we meet them when they come back to Nny's house.  The date apparently goes well and the two make a very good couple.  As they're about to kiss, Nny loses his nerve though and escapes to another room where the two doughboys (cardboard cut-outs that seemingly talk to Nny) are and they begin pestering him about how fleeting and pretentious love is.  Devi walks in on him and Nny decides to kill her.  Why?  Because apparently the idea of their relationship's eventual decay is too much for Nny and he wants to freeze their relationship at the point they reached.  Nny also makes a comment that there were others before Devi; this may or may not also be a similarity to Browning's man as we did discuss that it seemed as if he had killed before.  Back to Nny and Devi, though.  Nny does not kill Devi, instead, he get's his butt (and face, and stomach) beaten horribly by her, even having his face smashed into a mirror...brutal.

But whether the similarities in these two pieces is coincidental or intentional, I do not know.  Maybe Mr. Vasquez is a fan of Robert Browning...I know I am now.  But it always gives me a pleasant feeling to find that there are actually very interesting and surprising stories and pieces that were written so long ago.  The subject of the nature of Evil is always interesting, especially when we start making characters to be the embodiment or worker of evil.  Many always place the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, etc. as the center or source of Evil--this I believe is due to the wide-spread influence of the Judeo-Christian perspectives.  Vasquez actually makes a point to contradict this view in his comic when Johnny dies and is eventually sent to hell.  Satan, or Senor Diablo as he likes to be called, isn't really that evil.  He seems to basically fill the position of managing Hell as the people who go there are there because that's where they want to be.  In fact, Hell is created according to their own thoughts, and in consequence ends up being just like the real world, only more annoying.  Though in the comic world, Heaven was no better.  Basically, you go there if you are perfectly content to do nothing except sit around all day, enjoying the feeling of not needing, wanting, or caring to do anything.  This is further demonstrated as everyone could actually do anything they want, and upon hearing this Johnny begins blowing up people's heads only for them to regrow again.

Wow.  I really got off topic, didn't I?

Uh...anyway, so....eh.....NATURE OF EVIL AND STUFF!!!


the end.

The Rising Cost of Laziness

Ahh, college--that home away from home; the nest place of our learning and our future....it really sucks how expensive you are! In this retched economy we all have our struggles as students, trying to find or maintain a job. And many of us are taking out loans--I'm not, because I'm cool like that--but I understand that many people have to. They take out loans to pay for the precious school that will lead them into a brighter future...and then they dig a hole around themselves.

I'm sorry to say that there are some people who are just going about things wrong, and then they make excuses to their friends who miss them in class and are all like, "Where is he? He just missed out on the teacher giving out free candy!" Free candy of course serving as a balanced meal for any savvy college student. But I'm digressing, what I mean to address is this friend of mine who is always missing class, always late for tests, and always struggling to pull things together at the last minute. Now we all procrastinate sometimes, maybe even a majority of the time, but we're still able to get our money's worth out of college in the end. What makes me very sad and pissed at the same time is the fact that my friend is building two ditches for himself: one for his financial future by taking out all these loans for school that he'll eventually have to pay back; and two from his lack of attendance and overall performance as far as we can see in college. He's smart and talented and has an array of friends ready to support him. So, if you see this, you know who you are, don't get angry or discouraged because we just want you to succeed and do good so you can go be a teacher and pass on your horrible habits to the kids of tomorrow. We're at the end of our 7th week in school, SO GET YOUR BUTT IN GEAR...please.

It just doesn't make sense to take out loans for school and then not go to school, so massive hoards of people reading this, make your money count!

That is all I have to say for the moment....you can leave now.