Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Grandma Britnee on Extraterrestrials
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
Well of course in my day there were no aliens, and if you started saying you’d seen one people would think you were crazy, but now there are all these Slugs and Thanatites and those blue monkey ones, and sometimes when I walk down the street to the drug store I half think I’m on another planet!
Some people don’t like the Slugs–you know, “Type 3 Barnardins” I think they call them? That’s because of the tentacles and the slimy trails and all that, but one of them goes to my church, and he sits right in back where he won’t bother anyone and he makes the best crumb cake I’ve ever tasted since my mother died, because there was a very good one at her wake. And some of them don’t like being called “Slugs,” but that’s what I call him and he never says anything about it, which is all he should do. I mean, that’s what they are.
But I do not like the Stalking Mantises. Their little husbands are all right, but the you know how big some of the females get, three and four meters sometimes! Well, the other day I was on the way back from laser bingo with Taylor-Anne when one of them stepped right on my walker and bent the leg of it!
“Watch where you’re going,” she said, in that crackly voice they have, and well, that just got me started. I took out my purse and started hitting her, and then the next thing you know we were rolling on the ground and having at it, just like during the bandwidth riots of ’09.
Oh, don’t look at me that way! How was I supposed to know she was their sacred whatever? Don’t blame the interstellar war on me. Besides, what’s one city more or less? I never did like Cleveland anyway.
Cinderella and Prince Charming Have a Post-Divorce Meeting to Discuss Some Financial Matters
Monday, November 19th, 2007
“A dwarf, Charming!” Cinderella said. “Seriously, a dwarf. Why? Is this some kind of bizarre plea for attention?”
“Cindy, I thought you of all people would understand. We’re in love. What other justification do we need?”
“If you remember, we were in love once,” Cinderella said. “And look how that turned out.” She had planned not to drink anything, to keep the meeting as short and businesslike as possible, but now she poured herself some sangria out of the carafe after all and drank a long swallow from it, not looking at Charming the whole time.
“Well,” said Charming, and with the warmth he put into that one word it was as though he had said Well, and even though it didn’t last forever, our love was amazing while it lasted, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. To give the devil his due, he could be very charming.
“I admit,” Charming said, “I wouldn’t have looked for a dwarfess if I hadn’t literally stumbled on Gloina. But she’s so constant, and she practically glows with happiness the whole time we’re together … and the sex! My God, the things that little woman can do! Have you ever been with a dwarf?”
“I think you’re confusing me with that whore Snow White.”
“Not that again. Why do people keep repeating that rumor?”
“Oh come on, you’re a man. You should get it.”
Charming pushed his glass aside and leaned toward Cinderella across the glass surface of the table. “We don’t have to argue. We’re not married any more! What about you? I heard you’re seeing someone. Tell me about him.”
“What, Hansel?” He’s a woodcutter, she could have told him. He lives in the forest in a small cottage with his sister, Gretl, and her husband and three happy but really filthy children.
Charming was looking at her, waiting.
“He’s in forest products,” she said finally.
“Nobility?”
“Nearly,” she said. And then she didn’t say: And he smells like ginger and cloves, and sometimes when I’m with him I forget who I am. Last week I cleaned his house from top to bottom, and the forest creatures actually turned out to help me.
“All right,” said Charming, as though she had asked him for something.
And as they turned to the papers they had to go over, Cinderella found herself wondering if she could cast off the princess she’d become like the old skin of an insect, and if so, what might climb out into the sunlight.