Mr. Grimm's Fairy Tale
Eric Andrews-Katz
William Grimm sat behind the desk in his office. He tried not to breathe while the previous client's unwashed body odor began to diminish. It made his stomach tighten and he wrinkled his nose from under his wiry glasses. Trying to shake his mood, he subconsciously took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as the stench invaded his nostrils. His mind drifted back to the hospice where another of his close friends was very ill. He had seen three friends in as many years fall under the virus' curse and struggled as their minds faded into sickness and darkness. He felt helpless.
"I wish..." William muttered and sighed heavily. He shook his head to clear it and brought himself to his present task. He reached an arm out and with a small hand, picked up the next file of the next unemployed person of the next appointment seeking job assistance and/or placement.
Grimm was about to review the applicant's résumé when a scent of freshness crossed his desk. He sniffed trying to place the smell. It reminded him of lush, green forests or an early-morning meadow spotted with wildflowers. Maybe laundry softener. From the corner of his eye, he saw a bluish blur glide into the seat across from his desk. He glanced over the name on the file before looking for the person.
"Good afternoon, Miss, ah, Mary Weather." It was almost a question. He tried to speak with disinterest to make up for the softness in his voice. He believed it suggested authority. William lifted his head and blinked. Only a blue peak could be seen. It reminded him of an upside down ice cream cone. Slowly, he slid forward and looked over the desk's edge.
Mary Weather was dressed in blue--electric, bold blue to be precise. No taller than four feet, she wore a dress that billowed out around her much like a hoop skirt of the Ol' South, but it folded nicely over her knees. She wore a French Blue conical hat, but instead of a wide brim, it had two lighter cloth ribbons that tied below her chin and kept the hat in place. Her chipmunk cheeks with red pinches gave her a kind, elderly, granny-type of look. The soft wrinkles of her face added to the comfort she seemed to naturally offer. The woman's hair was black with gray strands liberally strewn throughout.
But it wasn't her gentle face or the woman's height that caught William's attention. Neither the matronly demeanor, nor the boldness of color made his lips mold into a perfect "O" as he raised a single eyebrow. Held delicately in a feminine, almost childlike hand was a wand. Mary held it erect like a conductor's baton ready to fly into action. Sitting atop the shaft, a bright yellow star dimly glowed. Tiny lights like snowflakes fell from the star, transforming from translucent white into blue specks before disappearing.
William took a moment before snapping his mouth shut. He pulled himself back using only his neck and shoulders until he sat against the chair's backing and both feet were firmly planted on the floor. He felt his chest and buttocks clench. William started to say something several times, but each attempt was unsuccessful and frustratingly ended before beginning. He didn't know where to start.
Eventually, William took a deep breath and slowly spoke. "How may I help you, Miss Weather?"
The tiny matron sprung to life like living animation. She jumped up and stood on the chair creating the illusion of an eye-level, even pegging.
"Oh," she said with a chuckle, "that's me. Yes, I'm Mary Weather." She cupped her free hand to her mouth and giggled. "It's not like I don't know my own name." She glanced at the nameplate on his desk. "You're Mr. Grimm." She frowned at the name a moment then clenched her eyes. "And, I'd like a job, please." Her eyes opened and she nodded with enthusiasm. The vibration caused the wand to tremor.
William kept his eyes on the sparks that fell. His words were slow, distracted by the sound of tiny bells. "What kind of work are you looking for?"
The woman spoke rapidly. "Anything will do really. I'm kind of a Jack-of-all-Trades." She covered her mouth again and giggled. Her tiny shoulders rocked. "I guess I mean Jill-of-all-Trades." She laughed passionately. Her hand provided little barrier from either the sound or the traces of spittle that flew out.
"What kind of skills do you have?" William asked. Discreetly, he wiped the side of his cheek. He dismissed the visuals with a shake of his head. This was going to be an extreme case. Either it would be quick and easy or he was in for long and slow pain. He hoped his head wouldn't start to hurt.
"Well," Mary said. She closed one eye in thought and tucked her free hand under her chin. "I can change the color of things into the color blue. I like the color blue." She leaned in and supported herself on the desk with both hands. She whispered a secret: "It's my signature color." She nodded confidingly.
She returned to standing upright on the chair. "I can make little things appear and vanish. I can hide princesses in the forest, turn puppets into real boys and grant kitchen wench's wishes." Her eyes grew wide with delight. "Did you hear that? It sounds like 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.'" She began to sing, "kitchen wench's wishes, fiiive goollddden riinnngggs!" She laughed and clapped her hands. Iridescent lights fell from the wand. "I'm sorry, sometimes I just can't help breaking out into song."
William kept his neck very still. The bottom of his head began to vibrate beginning at his chin. He puckered his lips biting the inside of his cheeks. He heard bells again. They were creeping him out. He shifted in his chair looking for their source.
"Is something wrong?" The petite woman imitated William's awkward shuffling. "What are we looking for? Besides a job for me?" She giggled, reached out and grasped his arm giving it an affectionate squeeze.
"I'm sorry. I keep hearing tiny bells ringing. It's distracting."
"Oh that!" Mary laughed and gently shook her wand. The tiny lights that fell rang gently through the air before vanishing. "Sorry, it was either the bells or the 'Mexican Hat Dance'. All the good sounds were taken." She waved the wand again. Dancing light arched over the desk. "I wanted the theme to Bonanza, but it was already gone." She leaned back and rocked on her heels in amusement. Then she saw William's stern look and calmed down. "I'll just place it right here so it doesn't distract you." She set it on the desk's closest edge.
William looked at the wand and slowly reached toward it. It was beautiful and alluring and he just wanted to run his fingers over the intricately carved designs. As his hand approached the glowing ball around the star, his fingertips began to warm. In a flash of blue lightning, the wand was snatched away.
Mary raised the wand but kept it of the reach of William's hands. Her index finger on her free left hand raised in caution. All trace of gaiety had left her and those motherly eyes widened with warning. Aside from a raised, painted on eyebrow, only her lips moved.
"There will be no touching of the wand."
William sheepishly nodded more in surprise than concession. Her voice held an edge, a high sound like the recording in an old talking doll. "Kiss me goodnight," "Pick me up," "Touch the wand and I'll kill ya!" all spoken with the same saccharine robotics.
Mary began to lower the wand and then snapped back into a defensive position. She waited in warning and then rested it against her shoulder.
"We'll just keep it here for now," she patted the glowing star. "No bells, but you can still see it."
William sat back in his chair and Ms. Weather made a grand production of folding her arms, watching him. They stared at each other for several moments of silence.
"Let's start again," William said professionally. "What did you do at your last job?" He shuffled in his drawer for a notepad and pen. With a blast of indigo, a blue tinted pad and pencil appeared neatly on his desk. On the pencil's erasure was a tiny troll doll with wild azure hair. "Thank you," William mumbled, taking the pencil in hand.
"My last job," Mary burst forth, "was for King Stephan. I took care of his daughter, Briar Rose. Lovely girl. Lips as red as petals and skin as soft as daylight. She always walked with a song in her heart." Her voice broke with tears. She pulled a cornflower-colored, lace hanky from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes before blowing her
nose loudly, sounding like a cartoon foghorn. "Rose grew up and a hundred years later got married. Then there was no need for me. Mission accomplished." She sighed heavily before snapping back into full animation. "Wanna see some pictures?"
"I'm sorry," William said. He politely and pointedly blinked several times. "Did you say, 'one hundred years later'?"
"Oh that," the tiny woman laughed as she folded up a row of snapshots preserved in plastic covers. She snapped her fingers and they disappeared. Her arms moved as she spoke, lifting the wand. Lights fell and the bells returned. "I bet you're thinking; 'my goodness! One hundred years, that's a long time', but I tell you, it would have been sooner if it wasn't for that whole evil spell."
"Evil spell?" William wasn't sure if he should be amused or ring for security.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Mary related, "there was this evil fairy you see and she cast a spell. Briar Rose pricked her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel's spindle and died."
"She died?" William repeated. He was stunned. His finger began to reach for the security button under his desk.
"Well, almost," Mary barreled on. "But I ask you: should one bad prick really kill ya?" She quickly puffed herself up proudly before continuing. She nodded and stuck her thumb into her chest. "I saved the girl. I changed death into sleep. That would be the whole hundred year's thing. Goodness triumphed in the end when true love's kiss woke her." She pulled out the hanky again. "One good kiss and all was as it should be." She smiled with melancholy. "That was a good job." She nodded enthusiastically and rubbed her fingers together. "A good job, ya know what I mean?"
The wand flashed and a tiny cash register appeared. It rang with a "ka-ching" and the words Major Sale appeared in the window. It disappeared a moment later with a puff of smoke.
"So . . ." William was at a short loss for words. "Let's start with your interest in children."
"Not so much anymore," she was quick to correct. "Ya see, before King Stephan, I worked in France with my cousin, Dente. She has this huge business. Trade and commerce. Whenever a kid put a tooth under his or her pillow, I would slip in and leave a shiny quarter. Sweet deal for the kid, eh? Free money for a tooth?" She giggled.
"What did you do with the tooth?" William asked. Under his desk his finger circled the red security button without ringing it.
"Did I say there was going to be a question-and-answer period?" She snapped harshly. In a flash, she broke into a huge smile. "Just kidding!" Mary chortled and lifted off the chair, spinning like a blue and white dreidle. Sparkles shot off of her like exhaust fumes.
William noticed the heart-shaped, sapphire gossamer wings that wafted the woman back to a standing position. They also rang with tiny chiming.
"I'm sorry." Mary slowly calmed herself down. Noticing William's shiver and renewed search for the bell sounds, she pointed to the wings and then the wand. "They came as a set. One sound fits all."
He only smiled back. His head was already hurting.
"As I was saying, I worked with my French cousin, Dente Fey, and my beat was this little village. The king of the village had two sons. Well," she clutched at a lapis necklace around her neck, "the younger son was a wisenheimer, ya know what I mean? The older prince was definitely charming, but the younger one was a little monster. You should have seen the dreams he had!"
She whirled her fingers around her ears in opposite directions and stuck out her tongue. It was colored like a purebred chow-chow dog. She winked with much exaggeration.
"He woke up and caught me leaving the money and that's definitely not allowed in the rule book, so my night was not going well." She took a deep breath and pulled on an angry face. "To make matters worse, he wanted me to grant him three wishes or he threatened to tell his parents!" She put both fists on her hips in mock indignation. "I told him, 'This is a wand, not a lamp!' Then I said, 'if you are going to act like a beast, be one!'" Her fingertips covered her lips with faux repentance. "I guess I waved the wand and the next thing you know.... Oops! He's on all fours, covered in hair, howling at the moon!" Her eyes rolled off to one side and she shrugged her shoulders. Mary shook her head to insist on her innocence. "It's not like it didn't work out for him." She leaned forward and whispered, "He lives in a castle and gets his freaky-freak on in a three-way with an enchanted French candelabra and an English teapot." Her face was long and her eyes were wide. She nodded knowingly. "Can you imagine?" She tightly shook her head with a distinctive "Tsk, tsk, tsk."
"Ms. Weather," William began. His hand slowly receded from the panic button and he knotted his fingers together on top of his desk. "This may sound like a silly question but . . ."
"Oh," she giggled, "call me Mary. You're like an old friend, now. And there's no such thing as a silly question if one can learn from it."
"Yes," William drew the word out with a snake's breath and frozen smile. "Since you are gifted shall we say with 'extra abilities,' why do you need a job at all? Couldn't you just conjure what you needed?"
"Oh, no. Noo, nooo, noooo." Mary sounded like a shocked owl. "I can't use my powers for self-profit." She chuckled. "That would be cheeaatiiinnng." She sang the last word. "Besides, that's something only an evil faerie would do." She reached out to pat William's hand. "Or a politician." She broke out into hysterical laughter. "Get it, self-profit, politician?" She laughed heartily and spun off the chair floating back downward. "Sometimes I just slay me like a princess-guarding dragon."
"There are evil faeries?" William asked. His hands clutched each other tightly, his patience reaching new limits.
"Oh sure," Mary answered. "There's Maleficent, the Banshee, the Sluag, Roy Cohn." She erupted in gales of laughter patting her hand over her heart. "There I go again!" She slapped the back of her own hand, "Bad Mary! Bad fey! No biscuit!" Her hands flew wildly about as her laughter began to subside. She calmed down with a sigh.
"So you've never done anything bad?" William asked. He had to admit, he had begun to like her. Once the initial shock of her gregariousness passed, it was hard not to. He felt his breath become regular and his back started to relax.
"Well, bad is actually a relative term," Mary replied. "And if you want bad relatives, you should meet my sister! Talk about a howling banshee! No, seriously, it depends on how you define it. I had this one client named Gepetto." She put her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered behind it. "Dirty ol' bugger, but I didn't know it at the time. He fell in love with the puppet he created." She lowered her hand. "Since my great, great, great grandmother did such a wonderful job on one of her clients--Pygmalion (what a name!)--I thought I'd help poor Gepetto out and bring his work to life. What a mistake that was!"
Mary looked to both sides of the room and focused her glistening, blue topaz eyes on William. "I won't tell you the details," she related in a stage whisper, "but I got to little Pinocchio just in time to change him back and give that lecherous father of his some nasty splinters!" Mary's eyes went wide with false shock and her mouth opened in mock surprise. She giggled wickedly. "Robin Goodfellow and I laughed about that for days!"
"Who?" William asked.
"Robin Goodfellow." Mary seemed shocked by the lack of recognition. She winked exaggeratingly. "I'm telling you, Titania named him 'Goodfellow' for a reason!" She ran her tongue slowly across her lips. "Hubba-Hubba Zing-Zing!"
William watched her turn color with embarrassment. Or perhaps from great satisfaction, he wasn't sure. He didn't want to know and blocked the implied visual before it took complete form. Red color crept up the woman's face, mingling with all the blue surroundings and created a rich, purple blushing.
"So you were fired from that job?" William asked.
Mary smoked a cigarette that he had missed her lighting. She exhaled a rose the color of a Confederate uniform, as easily as someone would blow rings.
"Yeah," Mary replied with a heavy breath, "but it was worth it!" She waved her wand causing both the cigarette and the smoke flower to disappear.
"Okay!" William snapped. H
e lowered his falsetto voice to a low rumble. He paused between each word to make sure there was no misunderstanding. "The bells need to go! Can we put that thing on mute?"
She tucked her mouth tightly behind closed lips. Her eyes were round dark oceans and her painted-on eyebrows were raised in defensive arches. "Sure." She said it as if the word was hot. Her delicate hand reached up and snapped. A low sound of descending xylophone scales deflated in the air. The glow around both the wand and the wings dulled. Mary kept her hand raised and put it into a fist. She mumbled while keeping her eyes focused directly on William, "if you want to take away some of the fun." She turned her head away and breathed heavily, pouting.
"It's distracting and giving me a headache," William said in a softer voice.
"Oh your head hurts?" Mary clicked into action; all traces of hurt feelings apparently vanished as a smile crossed her face and the rose color in her cheeks blossomed. "Let me have your hand and I'll take care of that!" Her sing-song voice returned. "I know just the cuuu-reee!" She ended the word with a playful purr.
Hesitantly, William turned his head slightly and slowly lifted his hand out to her.
"Would that be a spoonful of sugar?" He asked hopefully. The glowing lady bounced upon the chair.
"No." She took his hand into hers and began to knead it. "It's acupressure. Now close your eyes and take a deep breath in."
William did as he was told. He let go of his inhibitions and closed his eyes, giving into trust. Slowly, his lungs filled with a deep breath. He smelled the forest and earth's freshness. No, he thought, it's definitely Bounce. The tightened band in his head slowly ebbed away. It faded and the pain was gone. He took another deep breath, feeling the freshness clear his mind and begin to flush away the tension in his neck and muscles. In his mind it was twilight and the color of the sky welcomed him. Something glistened there and it came forth from the evening's cloak.
So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction Page 36
