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.”