Tag Archives: Disney

Short Stories

Broken Crown

            On a warm summer night, Jack staggered through the door of the one bedroom shack quietly, or as quietly as the fifth of whiskey would let him.  He hung up the pail on the peg in the mantle over the fireplace and turned to the bedroom.  It was nearly pitch black and he had to remember where his ten-year-old son, Jack III, usually left his toys, but it was hard in the dark with his blood pumping straight whiskey straight to his brain.  He reached for the knob of the bedroom door, not noticing the sliver of light coming from underneath, but when he saw his wife, Jill, sitting up in bed, he wasn’t surprised.  This is how it always was. 

            Jill, with one eyebrow raised, asked for an explanation.  But Jack had given up long ago.  She was much better at reconstructing the events of the night without his help.  He stood there, his head back and his arms outstretched as if to say “I’m ready.  Let’s get it over with.”

            “Let me guess.  Tonight it was the dwarves.  They came by the distillation center, offered to take you out for a few at Beast’s Tavern.  I can tell.  I can smell the whiskey, and you only drink whiskey with miners.  I should have married one of them!  A steady job pulling diamonds out of the earth.  They didn’t get caught up in the fairy tale of fame. They had their moment and went back to work, and now they’re all millionaires.  Well, the pigs must have come by too and talked you into eating cheeseburgers out of the trough.  As usual, you can’t do it right and you get slop all over your clothes.  Then you got rowdy and Beast himself had to throw you out.  Don’t try to deny it!  I can see the scrapes from his claws.”

            Jack was still standing with his arms outstretched, taking it, like every night.  He turned his right arm towards her to show off the wound on his elbow from Beast where the oaf had grabbed him.  Jack reasoned that Beast was always angry on account of losing his looks and losing his girl.  Rumor was she ran off with another prince to some place called Hollywood, but it sounded like that place was made up.  Everybody in town always said they felt sorry for him, but then he would come out of the back room of the bar to check a receipt or to talk to a customer or, in Jack’s case, to bounce someone out, and everybody took one look at his face and remembered why they hated him so much. 

            Jill wasn’t finished.  She said haughtily,  “Where’s your pail?”

            “I hung it by the fire.”  Jack’s voice was almost growling as he slumped into bed.  Why couldn’t she just leave it alone? he thought.  Every night it was the same damn story with her. 

            He laid down next to her and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  She started going on her usual tirade about his behavior.  His mind began to drift back to the good times. 

            Jack couldn’t remember what life was like before he met Jill.  He supposed he did the normal things like playing with friends and tipping cows.  His father, Jack the First, had been a rich man.  He climbed a beanstalk and tricked some giant out of his gold.  Wound up with a good bundle, but he lost some in a settlement with the three bears who held him responsible for dropping that giant on their house.  But Jack’s dad had plenty left over and their family lived pretty well off compared to the rest of town.  In fact, he remembered, his father never had to work after that.  Jack Sr. went out every night around town telling the story of how he had beaten the giant.  It was a much better story than any other; way better than the one told by the girl with the red riding hood.  (Red Riding Hood was still around, no longer little, drinking every night, telling that same pathetic story, the riding hood now looking dark gray from years of wear.)  In the midst of a boring story, Jack Sr. would walk through the door of Beast’s and everyone would turn their attention to him.  The way they lined up with offers to buy him a drink.  And eventually he’d tell the tale.  Jack Jr. never tired of hearing it.  It was all he could remember of his childhood.  Well, that and the pail. 

            Jack forgot when and where he had found the thing and had no memory of his first trip to the well.  It seemed like something that had always been in his life, and when he was young, he had thought that was all he would ever do.  But then he met her. 

            Jill was a distant niece of Cinderella, and therefore still under the jurisdiction of that same fairy godmother.  This made her quite interesting among the girls in town.  Jack had noticed her, but hadn’t thought much of her.  But a funny thing happened when he was about twelve.  Some call it fairy dust, others believe it’s something called puberty.  After that, she became Jill. 

            Jill quickly became the woman of his dreams, replacing Snow White.  With those bouncy braids and freckled cheeks.  Oh, how he wanted her. 

            When Jack Sr. threw a party, most of the town was there, including Jill.  Young Jack watched her from across the room, wondering what she thought of him, whether he was good enough for her.  Jack’s mother, Goldilocks, asked him to take his pale up the hill for some water.  Goldilocks, who was always very perceptive, suggested to Jill that she accompany him.

            Nervous as he was, Jack felt ready to make the trip up the hill he had made over a thousand times.  They both held the handle of the bucket as they went up, not saying a word.  He walked very stiffly as he thought of a suave comment, something Jack Sr. would say.  What did his father say to his mother when they met, Jack wondered?  “How do you like your chair, how do you like your porridge …” and then added with a lascivious grin, “how do you like your bed?”  He could say stuff like that because he was Jack Sr., the giant slayer.  Jack, on the other hand, was nothing yet.  Suddenly, he remembered this new story he had heard, one about a land where things called machines do all this menial work for you and people sit in their living rooms all day watching a glowing box that told stories, and the people who lived in this place never had to worry about anything except getting pieces of paper with letters on them, and this place was called “college.”  Jack made up his mind to ask Jill if she had heard about college once they reached the well. 

            But they never made it.  Jack tripped over a glass slipper and fell down the hill.  Hurt like a sonofabitch, Jack remembered.  He never admitted it when he told the story, but falling down and hitting all those little rocks had been more than he could bear, and since that time he’s never gone up another hill.

            At the bottom of the hill on that fateful day, Jack lost his senses.  He knew he lost his senses because he said something like, “Ouch!  My aching crown!  I think it’s broken!”  It didn’t sound like him to use an archaic word like “crown.”  He was apt to say, “Oy!  My bleedin’ brainpan!” 

            Still dizzy, he felt a weight on his body and breath in his face.  Opening his eyes, he saw Jill, dazed and groaning, on top of him. 

            A decade later, as Jack stretched out in his bed, he smiled to himself as he thought, And that’s where the term ‘knocked up’ comes from. 

            “What are you smiling about?”  Jill was still there, still ranting about the same thing. 

            “You’re not thinking about that old story again, are you?  Jack, that happened ten years ago!  Nobody cares!  You walk into Beast’s with that pail every night, but does anybody ask you to tell the story?  No!  There is no story!  We fell down a hill!  Millions of people fall down all the time!  You think you’re famous because you fell down?  You’re not even that good at falling down!  You only did half the job and gravity did the rest, but you can’t accept it, can you?  Every night it’s the same thing . . . “

            Jack had become a master at falling . . . asleep.  Sleeping to the sound of her crazy talk.  “You’re not famous!”  “Nobody cares!”  “Throw the pail out!”  Sometimes she raved about this “gravity” stuff, one of her wacky ideas.  But he knew.  Just like his father, Jack was a living legend.  Whenever anyone in town fell down they thought about Jack, and Jill too, even though she didn’t want any of the attention.  Fine with me, Jack thought, as he slipped into sleep.  He dreamed of the box with the colored images telling his story, things called posters and t-shirts and merchandise, and a thing called “Disney.”  And he felt happy, as he always was, and as he always would be. 

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Money Jungle

Beast

The tank is empty and the Beast still goes.  It still wants to.  Even though it is itchy.  Beleaguered by lice, no doubt.  Lousy with doubts, besieged with guilt, wandering with a keening yawp in the night, waking up not remembering.  Not sleeping soundly, soundlessly escaping through cracks in the window, ceiling, floor.  Slipping out like a thin slice of nostalgia after too much wine.

The Beast is out, wandering the night, saying nothing.  It isn’t embarrassed as it is in daylight, choked in a suit and tie, paw nails trimmed, hair matted down, fangs clean and gleaming.  No blood, just protein, unsaturated fat and lean carbohydrates in a perfect concoction.  Blended, a swill drained into the gullet and absorbed quickly.  There is no flavor to be savored.

Beast, now out and about, cool, eluding the authorities, that Beast.  The Beast in cigarette ads, beer ads, selling whiskey to children.  The Beast embroidered on the jackets of bad women sailing down the boulevard on the backs of choppers, in El Caminos and Eldorados, leaning up against street lights.  Aghast mommies in passenger seats sailing by with their driver daddies who close windows and tighten their grips on pistols.  The Beast has nothing to say.  He doesn’t speak their language.

During the world’s waking hours, the Beast transforms into the Monster that survives under fluorescent lights.  A Monster that thrives in air conditioned nightmarish echo chambers, fraught with doubt, the whole beehive communicating through stress chants, ultrasonic wavelengths emanating from their receding hairlines.  They communicate using the monkey chatter of clenched, ground down teeth.  “Ggggrreeeeeaaaattttt, mmmmmmammmammannnn.”  Another and another and another, casualties picked apart casually, dissected and evaluated for cost-growth strategies.  Let down.

The Beast and the Monster fight.  The Beast, while winning, has the cool humility that any hero strives for.  He knows the war will always slide his way, he feels it and knows it, he can bide his time until the sun goes down.  He knows he has always been there and always will be.  The Monster had to be invented, taught, shown how to work and how to feed itself.  The Beast laughs.

Beauty, as she is sought after, is affectionate, perfect, unattainable.  When she passes by, the flowers perk up, forked tongued serpents smile and grimacing frogs blush.  She is the distraught modern damsel in the clutches of corporate King Kong, hanging from the thirty fifth floor from a martini glass, wondering how it got to this point.  Going with the flow.  Not rocking the boat, biding her time.  Ready to be rescued from no particular distress but the boring, inarticulate present that surrounds her.  Ready to be whisked into eternity, past, future, limbo, hell, ecstasy.

The Beast, the Monster, the boys in the band, the man in the tie, they are the underdogs.  Beauty is up there, they toil.  The Beast will win her, he knows it, in the end.  The rest get the script, memorize and highlight, study inflection, and wait for action.  High infidelity occurs in the first and second acts.  The intermission is infinitely short, photos are taken, some go home.  The Beast is backstage, resting.  He idly twists his mane into a lock like a finger pointing to his heart.

Curtains up, the Beast has claws out, ready for riposte against the thrust of the Monster’s pen.  Beauty swoons.  Beast jumps; it is impressive.  Monster does the robot; it is not.  A dance number.  Two clowns sing the chorus part.  King Kong farts outside and the doors are closed, biohazard warnings are issued.  The Neighborhood Watch deputizes the ushers, they douse the audience in pepper spray like cologne in a college freshman bathroom.  Someone’s boss says, “Weeelllll, IIIIII nnnneeeevveeerr!”  The teeth-grinding sound scares the animal act away, the manager hangs himself with his widow’s pearls.  The Beast looks around for Beauty.

Outside, Beast is cool.  He turns away from the melee, clearing his head, smoking a banana peel, cooling off.  Beauty’s gone off.  It may not be the right time.  He finds himself in an all night diner that serves the Monster Mash Special, plays nothing but Andrew Lloyd Weber.  The Beast sits in a booth and orders black tar pudding.  She will come to him, in the end.  He knows it.  He grabs a lock of hair from his chin to use as a quill, dips it in the blood red monster mash and begins writing a love letter on the back of the playbill.  He never stops, the sun never rises.

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