It's a Love Thing

by Cindy C. Bennett

  Then I heard it. A small tinkling sound. A small tinkling laughter to be precise. I spun around to find a six-inch girl—correction: a six-inch totally hot girl, floating next to the fireplace.

  “If I had a nickel for every time I heard that promise, I could retire,” laughed the hot little mirage. She was dressed in an iridescent green gown that hit halfway down her calves. She had the tiniest little pink shoes on I had ever seen, and her . . . wings were a golden translucent color. They sparkled when the light caught them. She held a small stick in her hand, and a tiny shimmer of light emanated from the tip.

  Leave it to me to dream up a six-inch babe. If I even tried to kiss her, I’d end up biting her head off. Bummer. I lay back on the couch, kicking the stupid cricket book out from under my foot. “No more bug books. I’ll read the CliffsNotes tomorrow,” I promised myself. I turned back onto my side and tried to imagine the six-inch girl as a five-foot-six-inch girl. If I was going to dream of a hot girl, she might as well be a tall hot girl.

  “Whoa, pungent boy. You’re not sleeping on the couch tonight. We have a lot of work to do starting tomorrow and I need you to be fully rested. Sleeping on this lumpy thing isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Go away, bug girl,” I muttered to my figment. “OUCH! Cut that out!” I complained, rubbing my backside where another sharp jolt of something clearly stabbed my butt cheek. I thought you didn’t feel pain in dreams. “This is my dream, and I’ll decide where it is going to take place. And there will be no more pain!”

  “Get up and go to your room or I will zap you again.” She was a bossy little figment, to say the least.

  I sat up and stared hard at the floating pygmy. “Listen, Tinker Bell, I’ll sleep where I want to—Hey, don’t point that thing at me!” I demanded, climbing backwards over the couch. Her wand was pointed directly at my heart. My healthy heart, thank you very much.

  “Don’t. Call. Me. Tinker Bell!” she spit out. She tried to zap me again, only this time I was ready for her. I ducked behind the sofa. I felt it move a couple of inches as the sparks hit it. That one would have really hurt.

  “Fine. Stop zapping me.” I was exhausted and needed to fall into a deep sleep. I’d promise the figment anything if it meant sleep.

  “Up to bed, now. We have a big day ahead of us. Move!” she ordered.

  So done with this dream, I marched up the stairs as she floated behind me. I watched her nervously over my shoulder in case she decided to point the wand at me again. When I got to my room, she smiled.

  “Now, wasn’t that easy?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yeah.” Whatever, pint-sized witch! I went inside and shut the door before my imaginary friend could follow. No more Spongy Crèmes and soda for lunch, I promised myself before falling into a—thankfully—dreamless sleep.

  *****

  “Pete. Pete. Peter!” Someone shook me and I bolted up straight in my bed. I looked around half expecting to see the miniature hot demon. Instead I saw my mother.

  “Sorry, son. I want to remind you to take a bath and clean this room while I'm at work, it's disgusting.” I nodded at her request before dropping onto the pillow. “I mean it, Pete. And no video games today. I want you to finish the book you started last night.” She set the book onto the side table next to my bed. “You left it downstairs on the floor, young man. Is that any way to treat a library book?”

  “No, mom,” I muttered from under the pillow.

  “Peter! Do not go back to sleep. If you don’t do what I said, you’ll be grounded from video games for a week, do you understand?”

  “Yes, mom.” I pulled the pillow off my head and sat up. She stepped back and plugged her nose.

  “Shower, now!” And with that rude demand, she turned and left.

  I glared at the clock. "Seven a.m. I’m so going back to bed. This is my summer vacation, for crying out loud," I mumbled before dropping back onto the bed. I began snoring almost immediately.

  “Da da dada da, da da dada da.”

  What the . . .? I swore I could hear a bugle, and it sounded as if it were playing . . . Reveille? I peered out from under my pillow and there it hovered. The six-inch demon girl, her wand at her lips as if she were blowing on a bugle, with sparks flying out the other end. Oh no! I was in hell. Who knew the devil was a girl?

  “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream,” I repeated, snagging the pillow over my ears, frantic to drown out the make-believe sound.

  No, not a dream, a nightmare! A full-blown nightmare. The bugle’s notes crashed on my eardrums, causing me to jerk with each note.

  “Peter Pancerella, time to rise and shine. I let you sleep in.”

  I peeked out at the clock. "I hardly call eight-ten sleeping in," I said to her, and she smiled.

  “Don’t make me regret my kindness.” Thankfully, she stopped the horrible bugle sounds and now chirped away as she flew around the room.

  “My, my. Cleaning is not your strong suit. What’s that horrible smell?” she asked, plugging her dainty nose.

  This cannot be happening. Six-inch people didn't exist, especially six-inch people with wings. I was dreaming again. That had to be it. I pulled the pillow back over my head and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer–just in case I was going crazy.

  The room fell silent. “Thank you, God.” Only when I removed the pillow, she was still there with her arms folded.

  “Are you done with your morning prayers?” she asked politely. I rubbed my eyes. “If not, I can wait,” she assured.

  “You can’t be real. Six-inch, flying people do not exist,” I sputtered out.

  “Five-and-a-half inches. I’m a little small for my age,” she replied. I think she actually blushed, but it was hard to tell on a face so tiny.

  I jumped and began pacing around like a crazy man. Why not, since I was crazy!

  “Relax, Peter. You’re not going crazy,” it said, trying to reassure me. But a six-inch, or rather a five-and-a-half inch, figment of my imagination telling me I wasn't crazy didn’t reassure me.

  I ran into the bathroom and began splashing cold water on my face and slapping my cheeks, hard. When I turned around, much to my dismay, there she hovered.

  “I’m trying to tell you, you’re not crazy.” Her impossibly delicate wings fluttered softly as she spoke. “This happens every time. I told Jaxton there had to be a better way to prepare our clients, but he won’t listen to me.”

  I didn’t know what to ask first. Who Jaxton was, or who her clients were, though I had a pretty good idea on the second one.

  I decided on the first question. “Wh-who’s Jaxton?”

  “Jaxton Williams is the head faery in my department. All orders have to go through him. He coordinates our assignments and decides who goes where. He also runs the computer simulations to try and predict the best fit for each human and faery.”

  “Best fit?”

  “Yes. We are assigned to the person who is the most physically repulsive to us. That’s why I was assigned to you.”

  Okay, that is just plain rude.

  “Jaxton is the best coordinator we’ve had in a long while. He hasn’t missed yet in pairing the right faery with the right human,” she cooed softly. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say she had a crush on this Jaxton Williams. "We usually don't allow female-male pairings. We work quite closely with our human and it's too easy to fall in love. We've lost many a good faery that way. So sad." She shook her tiny head. "Anyway, Jaxton estimates the chance of you and me falling in love at point zero-zero-zero-one. And after meeting you, I do believe that number is a little high," she said with a snort.

  “Alright, faery girl, let’s—”

  “Tinkanova-Marie Bellitoinski,” she smiled. She looked rather sweet when she smiled. If I lost my mind, at least I’d have something cute to look at in my padded cell.

  “Listen, Tinker Bell—"

  "Don't call me Tinker Bell," she snapped.

  Whatever. "Let’s say I believe you. Let’s say I'm not
losing my mind, and a six, I mean, five-and-a-half inch faery really does exist. Why exactly am I being paired, as you put it, with a faery?”

  She dropped a few inches, a frown now hung on her face. “Ah, well, I’ve been instructed to help improve your social skills and to clean you up, which, by the way is the first thing you’ll be doing. You stink.” She pinched her little nose again and pointed to the shower with her other tiny hand.

  I got the feeling she knew more than she let on, and wanted to ask her what exactly that was, but then I remembered: SHE DOESN’T REALLY EXIST! I decided not to push the delusion. I mean, seriously, why did it matter? I should be wondering where the padded cell was that I’d be spending the next several years in. Man, I hope my family will visit me.

  “Sorry, delusion, I’m not getting into the shower. I’m tired and need sleep. Hopefully, after a good long nap, these hallucinations will disappear, and I’ll be cured." I waved a hand at the hot faery. “Good night, Tinker Bell. I’m going back to bed.”

  I was halfway down the hall toward my room before the electrifying zaps began.

  “I. Told. You! Don’t. Call. Me. Tinker Bell!” With each word she jabbed her wand at me. Little sparks flew out the end and hit my body, repeatedly.

  “Stop doing that, you obnoxious five-and-a-half inch demon!”

  Oops, I shouldn’t have said that. She froze in midair, sucking in a huge breath. I’m a dead man. A delusional dead man, but a dead man all the same. Is it possible to die at the hands of a delusion?

  “I am not a demon! For your information, demons are two feet high and covered in hair, you narrow-minded troll.” She folded her arms. I slumped against the wall, grateful to have escaped my faux pas with my life.

  “Get into the shower. Now!”

  Okay, enough was enough. If I was going to spend the rest of my life in lala land, I wasn’t going to let a faery boss me around.

  “No,” I said simply.

  “What did you say?” she asked, clearly shocked by my defiance.

  “I said no, Tink … whatever your name is.”

  “Tinkanova-Marie Bellitoinski. You can call me Tinkle,” she replied calmly.

  Yeah, right. Like I was going to call my delusion Tinkle. Tinkle was something two year olds did in the toilet. Definitely not a name you called a hot delusion.

  “I said you need to take a shower. You stink, big time. Now, get into the shower.”

  “And I said n— hey, knock it off, Tinkle,” I protested as my shirt flew off my body and down the hall. I stood there glaring at her as if she had a third eye, my hands clasped tightly over my bare chest. “I’m not getting in.”

  “Unless you want me to see what you're keeping in those disgusting way-too-small jeans, I suggest you get in, now,” she said sweetly.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I challenged.

  Out came the wand she'd tucked up her sleeve just seconds ago and my jeans began to unsnap.

  “Okay!” I stepped into the bathroom.

  “Thank you,” she said with an angelic smile.

  Obnoxious imp! I slammed the door and locked it before dropping onto the closed toilet.

  No stinking faery, real or otherwise, was going to tell me what to do. I tried to refocus my mind as to when the whole delusion started. I was just fine after dinner. I even had my mental faculties when I started to read the cricket book.

  It was the book! I should have kept playing Laser Wars, maybe then I'd have dreamt up hot girls that were my size. I sat there for fifteen minutes, picking at a few zits, thumbing through my dad’s Readers Digest, and observing my rather sparse facial hair in the mirror-quite a pathetic showing for two weeks.

  Suddenly the water in the shower sputtered to life, and my body, my half-clothed body, was hoisted into the shower.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I yelled, pulling off my jeans before they became too wet.

  “I gave you fifteen minutes, I’m done waiting,” Tinkle yelled through the door. Out of nowhere appeared an ominous scrub brush and some strange looking blue soap. The soap and brush started at my head, lathering and scrubbing, hard. My head began tingling.

  Each time I tried to grab the brush; it rapped me on the hand. After several welts, I decided to try for the soap, only it kept slipping out.

  The pair worked its way down my back, scrubbing off what had to be six layers of skin, all the while my skin tingled.

  “This has to be real. It hurts way too much to be my imagination.” Yet there was still a nagging voice in my head telling me it was impossible. As the soap approached my lower male regions, I protested.

  “Listen up, Faery.” I was not going to call her Tinkle again. “I’ll wash my own man parts, if you please.”

  I heard her snicker as the soap and brush slid to a halt in midair in front of me. I grabbed them and proceeded to wash my reason for living, unassisted. After only a few seconds, the soap and brush bolted out of my hands and resumed scrubbing my legs.

  "Hey, I wasn't done!"

  “It takes the average male 10.6 seconds to adequately wash his ‘man parts’”, she snickered again. “I gave you 12.4 seconds, in case you’re a little slow.”

  I continued to grumble and complain, in my head, until the mandatory shower was complete. As I stepped out of the stall, a towel floated over to me and began a vigorous rubdown of my wet body, stopping long enough to allow me to dry my man parts. I stepped to the mirror to shave my face as the towel continued dying me, and was taken by surprise to see a naked, pink, fat guy staring back.

  It was me. The pink and naked part I got. What I couldn’t figure out was why she made me fat. Before I could ask, the door opened a crack. I grabbed the towel, which was still drying my feet, and covered my body. In flew a clean t-shirt, underwear, and some jeans.

  “Why did you make me fat?” I demanded, jerking the clothes to cover my body. The towel had ripped itself from my hands and had resumed drying my feet. Fighting with the towel, I somehow managed to slip on the underwear and t-shirt, but the jeans didn’t fit. I looked at the tag, they were from last year.

  “What do you mean I made you fat? How did my forcing you to take a bath make you fat?” she demanded from the other side of the door.

  “I’m looking in the mirror and my stomach is bloated. And these pants don’t fit, by the way. They’re from last summer.” I wrapped the finally dormant towel around my waist, tossed the jeans out into the hall and closed the door again. She reopened it a few seconds later and tossed in another pair.

  “These are from last year too. I need the ones with the pockets on the side,” I explained. This time she came back with some gray sweats.

  “Here. These will have to do. Those pocket jeans are filthy,” the faery grimaced.

  “They’re not that bad.” Just my luck, I got assigned a rude pixie.

  She pulled out her wand and raised the pocketed pants off the floor, suspending them in front of me. “And what exactly do you call this?” She pointed to a large gray spot on the right thigh. “And this?” She proceeded to point out several spots of who knows what on the legs.

  “Okay, so they’re a little dirty. I have several other pairs in my room.”

  “These were the cleanest ones,” she said grimly.

  I grabbed the still floating sweats and put them on strategically under the towel. The little demon smiled smugly as I started toward my room.

  “The dress I am wearing is from two years ago and it still fits,” she said, pulling on the collar.

  “Well, those jeans shrunk. All my jeans shrunk last summer. My parents had to buy me all new clothes.”

  I sank onto my bed and grabbed the cricket book, while Tinker Bell grabbed her stomach in a giggling fit. You’d think since it was my delusion, I would dream up something better than an obnoxious girl.

  Regaining her composure, she flew over to the top of my dresser and waved her wand. A small silver bag appeared out of nowhere. She opened it and pulled out a pink pen with a feather attached to
it and a tiny purple notebook covered in sparkles. While I pretended to read, she wrote furiously with her feathery pen, sitting atop of my dresser.

  Now this was much better. This kind of delusion I didn’t mind. Cute girl—sitting in my room, keeping me company—while I studied. I hoped this delusion lasted.

  My stomach growled. I reached into the nearly empty Spongy Crèmes box on my nightstand to grab some breakfast.

  “Oh! You want to know why your pants don’t fit? There’s your answer, pal.” She flew over toward me and zapped my breakfast with her wand. It disappeared.

  “Hey, cut that out! I’m hungry!”

  “Do you have any idea what’s in those things? They’re poison. Pure. Poison. Not to mention fattening.” She rattled off the ingredients to me. I blocked her out. I’d heard it from my sister way too many times.

  Now closer to me than before, and I got a really good look at her. She had the prettiest dark auburn hair I’d ever seen. It fell in long delicate strands down her back. How had I not noticed that? Maybe because she was constantly zapped me with that stupid wand of hers. Mesmerized, I reached out and touched the coppery tresses, expecting them to disappear. After all, you can’t touch a delusion. Can you?

  My fingers began to stroke the silky strands. And sadly, she didn’t disappear. She did shoot three feet in the air though.

  “You are not allowed to touch the faery, mister!” She zapped me again, and my hands began burning.

  “Ouch! Stop that!” Oh, man! I’m one sick puppy. I needed help.

  “Peter, come down here, please.” My father. He must have come home for lunch. I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs, cradling my bright red hand.

  I studied my dad. He seemed normal. Same thin face, same blond hair, same toothy grin. I turned him around–no wings. He still stood five-foot-seven-and-a-half. The half was very important to him.

  “What’s the matter, son?” He pressed his palm to my forehead like mom always did when she checked me for a fever.

  “Nothing,” I lied. How could I tell him he had a crazy child for a son? Crazy, as in certifiable. It’d crush him. All my life he’d been there for me, at my side, guiding me along. Never once had he spanked me. My mother had, but that was another story. My dad never did, nor had he screamed mean, hateful things at me when I so deserved it. He was the best father in the world. He taught me how to ride a bike and shoot a basketball. When he taught me about the dangers of drugs, I actually listened.