NOT EXACTLY A FAIRY TALE # 3

by

Frank Conniff

Tina, a five-inch fairy princess, awoke, as she often did, in an unfamiliar place.  As she reluctantly tried adjusting to the idea of consciousness, the pounding bass line from the hangover disco that opened for business inside her head every morning was going full blast.  She untangled herself from the cigarette pack she had used as a sleeping bag and saw that her lodgings for the evening had been a vacant lot on a city street.  She did not want to face the day, but the harsh, accusatory sun insisted upon it, while a nearby garbage truck backing up sounded like Satan’s alarm clock, and it did not have a snooze button.

She looked on the ground for her magic wand, but couldn’t find it anywhere.  Her arms, legs and bare feet were soiled with dirt and wet leaves, and she now realized that she was dressed only in her underwear, with just a few tatters of her regulation fairy dress flapping on her body, like strands of designer toilet paper hanging from a branch.  Her luxuriant auburn hair chaotically pointed in all directions, and her green eyes were mostly hidden by eyelids way too thick for her size.

She had no memory of the previous evening, but she did remember that she always woke up with no memory of the previous evening. But losing her wand meant that she couldn’t wave herself a new wardrobe, and even worse, she couldn’t wave herself back home to the land of the sprites and the hair of the dog.  She lived in the trans-dimensional vortex, which was not easily accessible without magic means. She felt along her back and discovered that she had also misplaced her wings. In drunken states she was prone to removing her wings and using them as supposedly hilarious props the way a mortal inebriate might use a lampshade. The fact that it seemed funny at the time was little comfort now that it was the morning after and they were nowhere to be found.

She had no wand, no wings, and no fairy powers whatsoever, a dangerous situation for a five-inch fairy, and a potentially catastrophic one for a five-inch fairy with a five hundred megawatt hangover.

Tina staggered to the sidewalk, then looked up and saw overfed and undernourished people rapidly walking to and fro with unenthusiastic energy. Tina realized she had once again drunkenly crash-landed on the party planet Earth.

Just then a shadow engulfed her and she saw a humongous shoe bearing down on her.  She dived out of the way and just missed being squashed out of existence, which was the one hangover cure Tina wasn’t considering.  Not yet, anyway.

In the foggy labyrinth of her brain, she remembered being instructed at some point in her past that if she ever found herself stranded on Earth, with no wand or wings, she should find a computer with a wireless connection (preferably a Mac), and punch a special code into it, and this password, along with the magical fairy DNA that transmitted when her toes pranced across the computer keyboard, would connect her with service technicians in the trans-dimensional vortex who could wirelessly transport her cross-dimensionally back home.

And Tina totally remembered the password!  It was just her own name, T-I-N-A, but she was impressed with herself for remembering it. Retaining information had not been her strong suit in the last few years.

So now she had to get to a computer, and she looked up and noted that the guy who had almost stomped her to death was a heavyset man in his early twenties, with stringy hair that seemed as unfamiliar with shampoo as a hermit is with people.  His face was unshaven but refused to grow a beard, and his clothes looked slept in despite bloodshot eyes that implied he never slept. He had “Internet porn addict” written all over him.  It was a mathematical certainty that he had a high-speed wireless computer, so Tina leapt across several sidewalk cracks and then jumped up and grabbed onto the cuff of his pant leg.

To even be in the vicinity of this guy’s pants was to go where no woman had gone before, and climbing up them was an ordeal, although the abundant pizza and barbeque sauce stains made the fabric crusty and easier to grip.

When Tina reached his torso, she was able to find a secure nook between the top of his stomach and his man-boobs, and this gave her the stability to jump into the grocery bag he was carrying.

She squeezed into the bag between several candy and cream-filled cake products.  As the guy continued to walk, a Snickers bar painfully rattled against Tina’s head, but fortunately she was able to cushion the blows by standing behind a Twinkie.

Eventually she heard keys clanging and a door being unlocked.  She peered out over the top of the bag and saw that they were entering a tiny studio apartment. The guy threw the bag down on a table, it tipped over and much of the candy and cakes poured out, along with Tina, who slid across the table. The big giant dude didn’t see her because he was already rushing into his bathroom with an urgency implying that this shy young man’s digestive system was the most outgoing thing about him.

Within seconds, cacophonous splashing depth charge noises came from his private sanctuary. Tina, grateful she didn’t have to witness the gastrointestinal atrocities that were occurring, took this opportunity to rush to the desktop computer that was right next to where she was on the table, the centerpiece of this guy’s home and existence, just as Tina had predicted.

She jumped onto the spacebar and the computer emerged from sleep with far more ease than Tina usually did, and it was no surprise that it was already logged on to the Internet, although the website that appeared, “MST3Kinfo.com” was a bit less salacious than she expected.

Tina danced across the keyboard, stomping with her bare feet the password that would zap her home, first the “T” key, and then the “I” key, but just as she jumped on the “N” key, something in the apartment caught her eye that caused her to stop and look.

It was the weirdest thing, but there appeared to be a giant poster with a photograph of Tina on the wall. Or at least it was someone who looked an awful lot like Tina.  Her hair was the same length and color, and every bit as wild and unruly.  She was barely wearing any clothing (just like Tina at that moment), but she was brandishing a sword in a warrior-like, but very un-Tina-like, position.  That’s when Tina realized it wasn’t a picture of her, but a rendering of a scene from an action movie called “The Adventures Of Princess Priapistress,” which was spelled out in bold letters at the top of the poster.

The sound of a toilet flushing alerted Tina to the fact that the giant dude was about to return.  She jumped on the “A” key, but nothing happened, and she realized she had spent too much time staring at the poster and would have to enter in the whole password all over again.  But she could hear the guy’s size-46 belt being buckled, so now she would have to quickly find a place to hide and come back to his computer later.

She leaped to the top of the computer and then up onto a shelf hanging over the desk, thinking that she could find a suitable hiding space.  But once on the shelf, she saw that there was nothing to hide behind. The shelf was bare except for a single toy, an action figure of “Princess Priapistress,” the character on the poster that Tina was just looking at. Tina quickly took the plastic sword that was wedged in the toy’s hand and used it to tear the few pieces of fabric that draped her body and tied them around her bra and panties to appropriate the action figure’s post-apocalyptic babe in a loincloth look. She then pushed the actual toy off the shelf and it fell to a nook behind the desk that, already filled as it was with an accumulation of dust that spanned the length of the apartment’s two-year lease, was not a place that the giant guy was likely to visit. Tina got into the crouching, defiant, sword-wielding, do-me warrior pose of the action figure just as he emerged from the bathroom.

He seemed to be in an anxious mood, and rather than sit at his computer, he put on a jacket and looked at himself in the mirror while licking his hand and wiping his hair. It seemed clear that he had entered the apartment just to store his snacks and use the facilities and now he was about to venture back into the outside world.  A lucky break for Tina!

But then he reached up to the shelf, grabbed his action figure toy, which unbeknownst to him was actually Tina, and stuffed “It” into his jacket pocket, effectively submerging Tina in an enclosed world of lint, Arbys coupons, and several small dark round things that she prayed were Milk Duds.

The suffocating confinement of her new location did not do Tina’s hangover one bit of good.  After traveling for what seemed like forever she decided she just had to risk exposure and get some fresh air.  She managed to steady herself enough to peer out through the flap of the pocket.  She could see that the guy was now standing in a line of similar looking doughy white males inside a comic book shop.  So much for fresh air.

Colorful and neatly stacked comic books lined the walls, most of which depicted illustrated tableaus of what humans considered fantasy and adventure, but would seem more like gritty photo-realism where Tina came from.

Tina saw a table set up at the end of the room where a woman that she recognized as the actress from the poster was affably writing on anything that the men in line put in front of her.  A sign behind her read, “In Person! Claire Hyde, the star of ‘The Adventures Of Princess Priapistress!’”

As they came closer, the guy grabbed Tina and pulled her out of his pocket.  He clenched her tightly with both his hands, completely covering Tina and almost suffocating and drowning her in a bath of nervous clammy sweat that would have made Tina nauseous if nausea hadn’t already been her default setting.

When they arrived at Claire Hyde’s table, the guy put Tina down in front of Claire and released her from his grip. Tina had to maintain the appearance of still being a toy, so she remained frozen in the crouching come-hither warrior pose and restrained herself from hyperventilating and begging for someone, anyone to buy her a drink.

“Hi, I’m Fred,” the guy said to Claire Hyde. “I’m a big fan. I own every issue of the Princess Priapistress comic book and I was an early advocate of you playing the role in the movie. I was one of the first to sign the Facebook petition page.”

“Oh, thank you,” Claire said. “That was a big help.”

It was a tribute to Claire’s performing skills that she was able to say this without sounding sarcastic, because she knew only too well that the Facebook page had nothing to do with her landing the part. She had lobbied for it and the studio wouldn’t even meet with her.  But then a dozen or so actresses turned it down until she was begrudgingly cast. Claire’s resentment about this had lately diminished to the point where she only thought about it eleven or twelve times a day.

Up close and in person, Claire’s did indeed look like a human sized version of Tina, albeit more presentable and put-together.  Like Tina, she had the kind of beauty that could topple dynasties and destroy religions, and with the help of the best hair and make-up people in Hollywood, she was able to mask the dark turbulence and deep insecurities that fueled her acting career.

Fred handed Tina over to Claire and said, “Would you sign my Princess Priapistress action figure, please?  Across her forehead?”

Claire took a sharpie and with pointillist precision neatly and clearly signed her name on Tina’s forehead. Tina was drenched in Fred’s sweat, but Fred couldn’t take his eyes off Claire, so he didn’t notice that the ink from Claire’s signature was running like mascara down Tina’s face.  The ink then began to seep into Tina’s eye sockets, and when Fred turned her upside down and shoved her back into his jacket pocket, the remaining ink seeped into her nose, and Tina could feel the entire signature flooding her brain like a black-felt tsunami.  This made Tina’s already considerable hangover headache much, much worse. As Fred headed back home, there was nothing she could do but curl up in his pocket and quietly whimper.

Even though Fred really wanted to look at his genuine Claire Hyde signature, he realized that while he was out in public, the sight of a grown man gazing at a scantily clad female action figure toy might seem weird.  This was of course because it was weird, so he waited till he got home to pull his signed treasure out of his pocket.  But he was shocked and disappointed to see that the signature was no longer there!  Someone or something had apparently cock-blocked his autograph.

And almost as disturbing was the sight of his toy grabbing its hair and crying.

Tina was in so much torment she was no longer capable of a practical, premeditated plan for getting home; now her number one priority was to cure her hangover the only way she knew how.

“Please get me a drink!” she pleaded to Fred.  “Do you have any alcohol at all?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t drink,” he responded.  “I’ve never really…”

The shocked realization of what was happening caused him to drop Tina, but her fall was broken by his mouse-pad. Fred stepped back and looked at the depressed collectible that now sat cross-legged in front of his computer with its head buried in its hands and sobbing with a depth of feeling Fred had never before seen in a plastic product.

“Is it okay if I ask you a question?” Fred said.  “What happened to Claire Hyde’s autograph? I saw her write it with my own…”

“I’m really not feeling well,” Tina said.  “Could we not talk right now, please?”

Fred obligingly stopped talking, even though he surmised that as the purchaser and owner of this toy, he probably had every right to engage in conversation with it whenever he pleased.  But he could see that his action figure was under the weather and he wanted to be respectful of its feelings.  Fred was a gentle soul who had compassion for people, animals, and, it turned out, inanimate objects in a lot of emotional pain.

Tina closed her eyes tight, and what emerged in her mind’s eye was Claire Hyde’s autograph, which she knew was now just a puddle of ink sloshing around inside her brain. But it floated before her in its original squiggly form.  It came closer and closer until Tina could no longer see the letters, only blackness, and then she saw a clear HD-quality image of Claire Hyde sitting at the edge of a bed in her hotel room.

As a fairy princess Tina has often been privy to psychic occurrences, so she instantly knew that Claire Hyde’s autograph seeping into her brain had caused some sort of magic mental link between her and the actress, and Tina could now see everything Claire was seeing and feel everything Claire was feeling.

And this led to a happy realization. Tina, sensing Claire’s thoughts and feelings, knew that Claire desperately craved a drink, and the fact that there was a mini-bar in the hotel room meant that Claire was very likely to quench her craving, and Tina, being clairvoyantly linked to Claire, would have hers quenched as well. A cursory reading of Claire’s thoughts told Tina that Claire was an AWOL alcoholic ready to go back on active duty. In all likelihood, Claire would soon be drunk on her ass and that meant Tina would be as well. This revelation warmed Tina with the knowledge that even in the darkest of moments miracles can happen.

Tina watched as Claire got up from the bed and walked towards the mini-bar.  But then Claire stopped just short of the fridge, then picked up a bottle-opener and absent-mindedly fiddled with it. The booze-lust was still there, but Tina could feel a hesitation in Claire, who stood silently contemplating the consequences of her actions, which led Tina to frantically send her a psychic message: “No!  Do not think about the consequences of your actions! You’ll ruin everything!”

Claire did receive Tina’s message, but she was able to summon up the strength to treat it as spam. She turned away from the mini-bar and walked out of the hotel room.

“Damn it!” Tina screamed.  This outburst caused her to open her eyes.  She saw that Fred was staring at her with a look of deep concern.  Tina had almost forgotten that while she may have mentally been with Claire, she was physically still in Fred’s apartment.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’ve been better,” Tina said.

“I’ve figured out the reason this is happening,” Fred said. “I am in the midst of some sort of psychosomatic diabetic shock.  My doctor warned me about this.  Still, it is nice to have company.”

Tina was about to explain the whole thing to Fred, but then she felt hot liquid arriving in her gut.  She closed her eyes and saw that Claire was indeed drinking, but it wasn’t booze, it was a scalding cup of black coffee.  Claire was now in a church basement across the street from the hotel, drinking the coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. Tina observed Claire as she sat down on a metal folding chair that was in a circle with several other folding chairs.  Some men, a few women, and one or two not quite gender specific folks were sitting in the other chairs talking about their problems, which all revolved around their dependence on alcohol.

Tina had but one word to add to this symposium: Boring!  And when it was Claire’s turn to speak, Tina tried to send her a message not to say anything, to let the meeting end sooner so that the two of them could go find the nearest bar.  Claire, who had been told by her therapist to stop listening to the voices in her head, once again resisted Tina and spoke anyway.

“I feel like there are thoughts going on inside of me that I have no control over,” Claire said. “I’m an actress and I live and work in Hollywood, and before I came over here I was signing autographs at a comic book store and everyone was telling me how much they loved and admired me.  I didn’t believe a word of it. I have never done anything in my life that is truly worthy of praise, just a lot of stupid behavior that I wish I could undo. But I think I made the right decision coming to this meeting.  I just wish I didn’t feel so empty.”

Tina was insulted.  She sent Claire a new message: “Empty, my ass.  You have a fairy princess inside of you and don’t even know it, bitch!”

Clair heard the message, but attributed it to her inner child, who was always giving her shit.

Tina was relieved when the meeting finally ended but then Claire began talking to some hairy greasy guy that Tina at first mistook for an Ogre from the trans-dimensional vortex, but then she realized he was just some gross guy that wanted to enhance his spirituality by having sex with Claire.  And then Tina was horrified to realize that Claire had the same thing in mind!

“Okay, enough!” Tina thought.  She decided she had better stop trying to psychically piggyback a drunken bender that might not even happen.  And she sure as hell didn’t want to endure an extra-sensory three-way with a disgusting sober dude.  Proxy-humping was just going to make a bad day even worse.

Tina opened her eyes and saw that Fred was still staring at her.  He was eating malted milk balls, and each crunching noise was like a fist slamming into her skull, and Tina was afraid that if she stayed much longer her ears would begin to bleed chocolate.

She stood up.  “I have to go,” she said.  “I’ve been having this mind-meld thing going on with Claire Hyde and I can’t take it anymore.  She’s about to sleep with some loser, and…”

“He can’t be a loser if he’s sleeping with Claire Hyde,” Fred said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Tina said.  “Look, I get the vibe that you’re really shy around girls.  Well, let me tell you something, I can guarantee you that somewhere in this world there is a girl with really low self-esteem who would totally sleep with you!”

A few moments ago this Princess Priapistress doll had seemed bitchy, but now Fred was touched to hear it say something so sweet and encouraging to him.

“So long,” Tina said. “Thank you for your kind hospitality.”

She jumped on the computer keyboard and leapt from key to key, spelling out her name.  Then a light shot out from the computer screen and engulfed Tina. There was a popping sound, like a breaking bulb, and then Tina was gone.

Fred stared longingly at the empty space where Tina just was.  He already missed her. He felt the all too familiar pang of a paralyzing depression gripping him and settling in for a long stay.

But then something snapped. “Holy crap!” he said out loud. “I’ve gone from being a grown man who plays with toys to a grown man who talks to them.  Maybe my life is falling short in some ways.”

Fred decided it was time for a change, so rather than go forward with his original plan for the rest of the afternoon, which was to recline in front of his TV and anesthetize himself with a combination of sugar, carbohydrates, and popular culture, he instead marched back outside and joined a gym, ready and willing to embrace whatever long-term life transformation his one-day free trial membership with no obligation would bring.

Tina arrived back in the trans-dimensional vortex, and the moment she landed, her mental link with Claire was instantly severed; she was now simply too far away to read her thoughts or observe her life.  Tina’s psychic connection with Claire had limited roaming capabilities.

And traveling by way of wireless portal landed her smack dab in the Bureau of Digital Travel, a think-tank in the Institute of Enchantment run by magic techno wonks who subjected Tina to a long and tedious debriefing that left her more desirous of drink than ever.

Tina finally returned home to her bookshelf condo late that night with her wand and her wings fully restored (the red tape involved in getting them back was the usual nightmare in duplicate and triplicate).

Most evenings Tina went out, even though she didn’t really have any friends, just acquaintances she got drunk with in restaurants, cocktail lounges, and whatever parts unknown her blackout binges took her.

But tonight she just didn’t feel like reuniting with strangers, so she waved the wand and a beaker of vodka martinis appeared on her nightstand. Her plan was to stay in and rent of movie, because she really wanted to see “The Adventures Of Princess Priapistress.” She waved her wand again and a DVD of the film instantly arrived, but it was a Region-2 disk and she was unable to watch it on her player, so she downloaded it from the internet onto her laptop and then she sat back to see what all the fuss was about.

From the moment the movie started, Tina was riveted.  Not because it was any good; in fact, it was awful.  But seeing Claire Hyde degrade herself in scene after scene, most of which involved her being naked, or tied-up, or both, left Tina with a great deal of admiration for Claire.  Not for her acting ability, although she seemed like she might be good if ever given the chance in a better movie, but because it was astounding that Claire could sink to the depths of “The Adventures Of Princess Priapistress” – the cinematic equivalent of being face-down in a dumpster – and still manage to hold on to, if not her dignity, then at least the idea that dignity might somehow still be an option.

When the film finally came to its breast-soaked finale, Tina realized that she had watched the whole movie without once dipping into the martini pitcher.  On a whim, she waved her wand and turned the booze into iced coffee, which she drank in one sloppy gulp.  She then put on the one sparkly fairy dress she had left, jumped into the air and flew outside, taking a caffeinated trip between the skyscraper-sized castles of the trans-dimensional vortex’s business district, enjoying the brisk wind against her face and finding comfort in the steady card-shuffling sound of her rapidly flapping wings.

Eventually dawn broke and she remembered a hectoring wizard had once told her of a room in the basement of the Institute of Enchantment where round-the-clock versions of the same kind of folding chair and coffee cult that Claire had attended on Earth took place. Against her better judgment, Tina flew into an early morning meeting, which was filled with alcoholic elves, meth-freak sprites, crack-whore fairies and predatory monsters only there for the free donuts.

Tina hated the meeting, just as she knew she would.  But she went to several more that morning and then one or two a day ever since.  She has never been able to explain to anybody why one day for no apparent reason she stopped drinking.  By all accounts she is still sober and doing well, although there has been talk among her friends that for her own good Tina should cease her habit of taking greasy hairy Ogres home from meetings and sleeping with them.

NOT EXACTLY A FAIRY TALE # 2

by Frank Conniff

The trans-dimensional vortex is a place where fairies, pixies, sprites, and all manner of mystical beings live and work, but even in this setting, the love affair between Elle, a high-ranking fairy princess, and Sheldon, a mutant half-man/half-peanut hybrid (commonly known as a Peanotaur), was considered kind of weird.

It was unlikely that a fairy princess would ever be attracted to a creature like Sheldon, who never wore clothes because his peanut shell body was not considered the least bit pornographic. His sweet and friendly face was embedded into the upper part of the shell, so his eyes, nose, mouth and ears looked like they were drawn on. Thin, bony arms jutted from his sides, and his short legs and big feet made walking awkward.  Somewhere in the lower depths of the peanut-shell there existed genitalia, but they were hidden from view, and although they do play a part in the story about to be told, for the sake of decorum they will never be mentioned again.

Even for a Peanotaur, Sheldon was strange looking, but Elle was a golden-haired fairy princess in the classic mode, albeit a human-sized one, as opposed to the tiny Tinkerbelle-types well known in the mortal realm (and referred to by some of the cattier vortex fairies as “postage stamp-sized publicity whores”).

Some said Princess Elle’s beauty was so profound that God kept a photo of her in his wallet, and while her face might inspire a chorus of angles to sing, the rest of her perfectly proportioned body would more likely evoke a funky fuzz-boxed wah-wah pedaled porno-soundtrack electric guitar.

The two of them met only because Sheldon had a temp job standing in front of the Spirits Sports Lounge, across the street from the Institute of Enchantment, were Elle worked.  He was promoting that week’s lunch special (the sign that he carried read, “Try Our New Spicy Kung Pao Chicken For Just Peanuts”).  His great, great grandparents had been victims of an evil wizard’s spell (a practice long since outlawed and abolished in the trans-dimensional vortex) and had been turned into mutant half-human/half-peanut hybrids.  They continued to procreate, and Sheldon, like his father and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, worked mostly as a free-lance promotional mascot. And thus it came to be that one afternoon when Princess Elle dove out the window of her forty-seventh floor office at the Institute Of Enchantment and flew down to the Spirits Sports Lounge during her lunch hour, she landed right next to Sheldon.

He wanted to say something, but her staggering beauty left him speechless, so it was Elle who initiated their first conversation.

“How is that Spicy Kung Pao Chicken?” she said, eyeing the sign that was now teetering precariously in Sheldon’s shaking hands.  “I always get the Cobb Salad, but what do you think, should today be the day I try something new?”

She spoke to him with such friendly warmth that some of Sheldon’s nervousness dissipated and he was able to say,  “Well, Princess, this is off the record, but here’s what I think: if you go to a restaurant that specializes in Asian cuisine, then Kung Pao Chicken is a good bet.  But if you go to a place like the Spirits Sports Lounge, that mostly sells burgers, finger food, and salad, well…”

Elle laughed.  “You make a really great point!’ she said. “It was nice chatting with you…what’s your name?”

For a second Sheldon was stumped by this question, but he somehow got it together enough to give the correct response:

“Sheldon.”

“Great meeting you, Sheldon,” she said, smiling. She shook his hand and then turned and walked into the restaurant.  As far as handshakes go, it wasn’t particularly passionate, more like what you’d get from a politician.  But she definitely had Sheldon’s vote.

And like a politician, Elle’s sunny disposition masked an inner turbulence that she had been carrying around for some time, and she was filled with dread about this lunch date.  She was meeting with General Drake, her on again-off again boyfriend. He was the trans-dimensional vortex’s most feared and decorated military officer, a fierce and volatile mutant half man/half dragon (Elle had a thing for mutant hybrid trans-species dudes; she admitted as much to her therapist).  Drake had a normal human body, albeit a strong and muscular one that could kick your ass at a moment’s notice.  He had a scaly, reptilian face, and his smile was more frightening than most people’s scowls.  When he seethed with anger, which was often, smoke billowed from his nose, ears and mouth, and he often emphasized a point by baring his fangs (kept under constant maintenance for maximum ferociousness by his personal orthodontist).

He was the spawn of one of those tempestuous dragon/virgin-sacrifice marriages you might have read about when they were in the news several decades ago.  In those days there was a public outcry in the trans-dimensional vortex over the practice of virgins being sacrificed to dragons, and a compromise law was passed in which dragons were allowed to date virgins and marry them and only then did they have the legal right to deflower (but not disembowel) the virgins.  In almost every instance, these were unhappy marriages that ended in nasty divorces and ugly custody battles. Drake was the product of one such union.  Dragon/virgin-sacrifice hybrid children like Drake were often vicious little brats with hair-trigger tempers, but they also tended to be courageous and made for great warriors.  Drake grew up to become the bravest and most fearsome warrior of them all, but when it came personal relationships, he was an emotional triumphalist who expected girlfriends to throw a parade in his honor every time he walked through the door.  Still, against their better judgment, fairy princesses were often attracted to him, and Elle, a fount of wisdom in every other aspect of her life, was no exception.

When Elle came into the restaurant’s dining room, General Drake was already seated.  “My darling, there’s something I’d like you read,” he said in his sweetest, most tender voice, which usually was a sign of an impending attack. “This is a document I prepared that states in writing that you were in the wrong during our last argument. I demand that you sign it.” 

Elle answered by crunching up the paper and throwing it back at Drake.

“Do you realize what you’re doing?” he said, rising to his feet. “If you don’t acquiesce to my demands, I will be forced to walk out of this restaurant in a huff!”

“So, what should I call you now,” Elle said. “‘Huff the Magic Dragon?’”

As corny as this was, she was proud of herself for saying it.  In past confrontations, Drake was usually able to intimidate her into silence so even a stupid pun was a small victory.

“I’m serious!” Drake said. “If you do not change your attitude, I will terminate this reconciliatory lunch.  I mean it!”

Elle covered her face with a menu. “I think I’ll order the ‘Yeah, Whatever’,” she replied.

Drake kept his word: he did indeed storm out of the restaurant.  There was now so much smoke coming out of his nose and ears that the restaurant’s smoke detectors set off the sprinkler system and all the diners in the room became doused with water.

Elle took out one of the many compact mini-wands she kept in her purse and waved it.  The water stopped gushing, and everyone in the room was a dry as they were a few moments earlier.  This small act of miraculousness was typical of Elle’s considerate nature. The diners at the other tables all smiled their thanks towards her.  She called over a waitress and ordered a Cobb Salad and a glass of white wine. This was about one drink above her usual alcohol limit, but she was so happy about the way she had handled Drake that she felt a small celebration was in order.

She was a bit light-headed when she left the restaurant.  She saw Sheldon smiling at her. Elle smiled back and thought to herself, “Peanotaurs are so sweet. If I’m going to date a mutant hybrid, this is the type I should be hooking up with.”

Sheldon had devoted the last hour to trying to think of something to say to Elle when she came out of the restaurant.  This is what he came up with:  “How was lunch?”

“I went with the Cobb Salad like you suggested and I didn’t regret it,” she said, now radiating an almost goofy smile. “I could kiss you!”

The peanut oil that kept Sheldon alive was now pumping into his heart at a rapid rate. He knew he now had to step up his game and choose his words carefully.

“Wanna make out?” he said.

Giddily, Elle took Sheldon to an underground parking garage beneath the Institute of Enchantment.  She led him to a small and boxy sedan that Sheldon immediately recognized as the most coveted automobile in the trans-dimensional vortex: the new Toyota Space/Time Continuum.  Sheldon saw the personalized license plate, “DRAGON1” and knew exactly who the owner was.

“Uh, are you sure it’s okay to use General Drake’s car?” Sheldon said.

“Oh, the general never even drives it,” Elle said with a gleeful mischief that she rarely expressed in the middle of the day.  “He prefers his government-issued Penis Utility Vehicle.”

They entered the car and for the first time, Sheldon saw for himself the main innovation of the Toyota Space/Time Continuum: an interior that bent time and expanded space.  The back seat of the car had a plush living room and dining area, plus two upstairs bedrooms.  The driver’s seat had a den, a foyer and a bathroom with shower and bathtub.  And all of this somehow fit inside a car that never took up more than a single “compacts only” parking space.

Sheldon and Elle sat on the back passenger seat’s plush sofa bed.  Sheldon was nervous and uncertain about making the first move, so when Elle abruptly thrust her tongue into his mouth, it was a real icebreaker.

Elle and Sheldon barreled over every inch of the backseat’s square footage, bumping into table legs and knocking over silverware.  Elle grabbed onto Sheldon as if he were a large piece of unwieldy, unsecured novelty luggage that was being banged about a cargo hold during a turbulent voyage.  Elle thought that Sheldon was like an amusement park ride and circus snack rolled into one, and she enjoyed herself so much that she didn’t even mind the few shell fragments that got stuck between her teeth.  For his part, Sheldon had not a single objection to the rapid succession of hickeys that almost cracked him open.  And while Sheldon’s salty, peanutty flavor was completely unfamiliar to Elle, she figured that this must be what nice guys tasted like.

Afterwards, as Elle dabbed her face with towelettes to remove the last remaining traces of fluffernutter, she turned to Sheldon and said, “I had a really nice time.” Sheldon came up with what he thought was an excellent response (“I had a nice time, too”) but before he had the chance to say it, they both saw General Drake marching through the garage towards the car.  “Uh, oh,” Elle said. “Here comes the fire-breathing douchebag.”

“Oh, my God!” Sheldon said. “General Drake is going to kill me!”

“Don’t worry,” Elle said with complete calm.  She took another wand out of her purse, and seemed about to wave it, but then she suddenly sneezed.

“That’s odd,” she said. “I never sneeze.”

“Maybe I should have asked this beforehand,” Sheldon said. “But do you have any kind of peanut allergy?”

“Not that I know of,” Elle replied.  By now General Drake was getting very close to the car. Elle was about to sneeze again, but first she waved her wand twice, and in an instant, Sheldon was in front of the Spirits Sports Lounge, holding his sign and back from his lunch break.

Sheldon was relieved to have escaped the wrath of General Drake, but a little disconcerted over the way the greatest afternoon of his life had ended so abruptly.  But he still felt the glow of what had to be the most beguiling nooner of all time.

At that same moment, General Drake entered his car. Sheldon and Elle were both gone, but he sniffed what seemed like an odd mixture of perfume and some sort of sweaty kind of Tai food in the air, and he knew that this wasn’t that new car smell. Right then and there he abandoned his plan to drive to the outer dimensional region for a surprise inspection of a Ninja Sprite training camp and instead slammed the car door shut, went back upstairs to the executive offices of the Institute of Enchantment, and burst into Elle’s office.

“Were you just in my car?” he demanded.

But Elle could not answer because she was bent over her desk in a fit of sneezing. Drake approached Elle, intending to grab and shake and berate her, but Elle looked up and let loose a particularly cacophonous sneeze, the force of which sent a projectile of fairy phlegm smack up against Drake’s face.

Elle’s sneezed continuously and uncontrollably, which General Drake thought unfair because he wasn’t being given the chance to get a word in edgewise.

But Elle couldn’t even see Drake. Her perception of the world had fuzzed up, like a TV that had lost reception. As she continued to convulsively sneeze, all she could see were thousands of bright shiny dots that hovered in the air like tiny Christmas lights.  Then, as her sneezing multiplied, the dots of light shined even brighter, but the effect was more like a million harsh little lamps in a police interrogation room than a constellation of twinkling stars.

And soon the million points of light revealed themselves as having faces and bodies.  The faces all looked the same: round colorless eyes, small snarling noses, mouths that screamed in anger without ever opening. Their arms and legs looked like sharp fingernails immaculately groomed for the sole purpose of drawing blood. This armada of aggressive pointy creatures grew in numbers with each sneeze, and Elle assumed that she was hallucinating.  She had never hallucinated before, but she had never been so physically ill before either. Normally she was open to new experiences, but this sucked.

The sneezing and the hallucinating continued on for what seemed like forever. And then all at once the horrific visions receded and she could see her own world again. She found herself standing naked in a glass device that looked like a human-sized drinking cup filled with soothing warm water.  Tubes were attached to her nose and they appeared to be slowly extracting her illness from her brain through her nasal passages.  She felt a little bit better but was still quite sick. And the strange contraption she was in, while helpful, did nothing to inspire the thought, “at least I have my dignity.”

She realized that she was in the Institute of Enchantment office of Dr. Bilbo Bilbonowitz, perhaps the most renowned medical practitioner in the trans-dimensional vortex.  General Drake, convinced that Elle had had sex with someone in his car, but realizing that she had to be healthy if he was going to effectively shame her, had rushed her here, and he now stood by impatiently as Dr. Bilbonowitz examined Elle with methodical deliberation.  The doctor was thin and frail, yet for a man of his advanced years, he moved with amazing agility and speed (although he wasn’t so quick when it came to promptly mailing alimony checks at the first of the month, as his many much younger ex-wives would be all too willing to tell you).

“Well, Princess,” the doctor said when the examination was complete. “You have developed a peanut allergy.  Have you eaten any peanut-based food products lately, or, uh, this is the less likely scenario, and I only bring it up to be thorough, but have you recently had sex with a Peanotaur?”

“Would earlier this afternoon fall under your definition of ‘recently’?” Elle asked.

“Of course!” General Drake screamed. “I knew there had to be a reason why my car smelled like a peanut butter & slutty sandwich!”

Elle, still in considerable pain and discomfort, ignored Drake and somehow managed to say to the doctor, “Is there a cure?”

“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Bilbonowitz replied with a finality that sent a chill up Elle’s already aching spine.  Bilbonowitz let this sink in for a moment before slapping his forehead and saying, “Oh, wait, I just remembered, I’m a genius and I can cure it!”  He then laughed in a way that both reassured and annoyed Elle.

The doctor whistled nonchalantly as he took out a small plastic bottle of ointment and began squeezing it.  The tiny container oozed out an endless supply of lotion, which coiled out of the bottle and twirled and twirled in mid-air like a lariat until it morphed into the shape of a fully formed female body in the middle of the room.

Bilbonowitz drained the water from the cup Elle was standing in, and then he removed the tubes from her nose.

“Quick,” the doctor said. “Walk into that formation of lotion in the middle of the room.”

Elle staggered into the center of what looked like a cloud of hovering lotion, which then hugged her body from her neck down and made a suction noise as it enveloped and clung to her like a skin-tight body suit.

“How does it feel?” the doctor asked.

“Fine,” Elle said.  “It’s quite comfortable, and…”

A wonderful realization came over Elle. “Oh, my God!” she said. “I’m not sneezing anymore!  I’m not sick anymore! This is amazing, I feel awesome!”

“And you look great,” the doctor said. “My patented Ointment Outfit is quite fetching on you if I do say so myself.” He then made a salacious growling noise, which would have creeped Elle out if she hadn’t been so grateful to Dr. Bilbonowitz for curing her.

“Stop flirting with the princess, doctor, you’re wasting your time,” Drake said in a voice dripping with vicious jealousy, “She only sleeps with Peanotaurs now.  She…”

A loud siren coming from Drake’s cell-phone interrupted his tirade.   His phone only made this particular noise during a top priority alert, and when Drake heard this sound – a high-pitched digitalized musical rendering of La Cucaracha (he had been meaning to change the ring tone but had been too busy to get around to it) – he always stopped whatever he was doing and took the call, no matter what.  He flipped open his phone, placed it against his smoke-filled ear and marched out of the room, making a mental note to emotionally destroy Elle later on when he could fit it into his schedule.

Within the hour, an emergency staff meeting was called at the Institute of Enchantment executive conference room. The magic elite of pixies, sprites and fairies were all gathered; some hovered in mid-air around the conference table, while others sat on high chairs drinking coffee and nibbling bagels. Elle arrived looking healthier and more energetic then ever. Everyone greeted her and expressed good wishes and relief that she was feeling better, but Drake, standing at the head of the table, cleared his throat and almost singed the whole staff with a gust of fire. This was bad breath that could kill, so everyone stopped talking.

General Drake briefed the room. “Radio transmissions from Dimension 0 have been intercepted,” he said.  “Until now, Dimension 0 was thought to be lifeless and dormant. In ancient times a race of creatures called the Geez lived there. They were known for their violent and imperialistic ways, but inbreeding and digestive issues rendered them extinct ages ago, or so it was thought.  No living person has ever laid eyes on them, but we do have an artist’s rendition from tens of thousands of years ago.  And even this image may not be accurate because unfortunately for our purposes, the ancient being who drew this was a caricature artist.”

A three dimensional holographic image of a Geez appeared over the center of the conference table.  A look of shocked recognition came over Elle. The head was cartoonishly bigger than its body, and the florid signature of the artist was a distraction, but other than that it looked exactly like one of the creatures she had seen during her allergic delirium.

Elle stood up and announced, “I saw an entire army of Geez in what I now realize was a cross-dimensional vision I had while I was sneezing.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something earlier?” Drake said.  The tone of his voice made it surprising that he didn’t add “young lady,” and then tell Elle that she was grounded.

“Because I thought it was an hallucination,” Elle replied. “And like you said, the Geez have never been seen before, so how was I to know they were actually real?  But that doesn’t matter; what matters is the harsh truth that I have to become sick so I can see those visions again and gather more intelligence on them.  I’m going to consult Doctor Bilbonowitz about this.”

She turned and left the room, and Drake followed right behind her. Between the conference room and the doctor’s office, Drake berated Elle about her affair with Sheldon, and Elle replied using language not exactly befitting a fairy princess, so for the sake of decorum her words will not be repeated here.

Elle briefed Dr. Bilbonowitz on the situation and his diagnosis was immediate: “If you really are intent on jumpstarting those trans-dimensional visions by returning to that sickly, allergic state, all you have to do is have sex with the Peanotaur again.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” General Drake said. “I placed him under arrest not long after I became aware of the princess’s dalliance…”

Elle gasped and was about to scream at Drake, but he cut her off, saying, “Do not worry.  I have spoken with the proprietor of the Spirits Sports Lounge, and he has assured me that they will find other ways to promote their Kung Po Chicken lunch special.”

“What is Sheldon charged with?” Elle demanded.

“Suspicion of a terrorist act.”

“What, sleeping with me?”

“He is an enemy of the state and must be interrogated until…”

Elle, in no mood to argue, ended the conversation by waving a wand and instantly transporting herself to the suite of holding cells housed beneath of the Institute of Enchantment, leaving General Drake to turn to Dr. Bilbonowitz and fume, “I never should have given her that transporto-wand for her birthday!”

It didn’t take Elle long to find Sheldon in an interrogation room. He had been locked there for hours, sitting in a straight-backed metal chair and waiting for Drake to come “question” him.  His back was aching and he was hungry, but the sight of Elle made him instantly feel better.

Elle explained the situation. “…and there’s only one way for me to have that trans-dimensional vision again and gather intelligence on the approaching army of Geez: I’m afraid we have to make love again.  I hate to impose, but…”

She could say no more because Sheldon had grabbed Elle and was kissing every inch of her face, as if his worst nightmare was to be admonished with, “Hey, you missed a spot.”  Elle kissed back, but before they could go any further, the door was knocked down and Drake stormed into the room, followed by several other soldiers.

“I will not allow you to make love to this peanut-shaped subversive again!” Drake said.

“You’re letting your personal feelings get in he way of trans-dimensional security!” Elle replied.

“Seize them both!” Drake ordered to his soldiers.  But before they could move, Elle waved her transporto-wand and she and Sheldon were gone, leaving General Drake to fume to his soldiers, “I wanted to get Elle a bracelet for her birthday, but who can afford diamonds on a military salary?  So I got her that wand, and…what are you standing around for? Find them!”

Meanwhile, Sheldon was surprised that Elle had used the wand to transport them back to where they had first made love, the General’s car, which was still parked in the same spot.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to come here?” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Elle said. “This is the last place Drake will look. Coming here again is a bold and brazen move on my part, something he’d never expect from me.  But I’ve changed.  Something happened to me.”

“What?” Sheldon asked.

“Well, for one thing,” she said, pulling Sheldon towards her, “I done got me some Peanotaur.”

Then she added, with the utmost gravity: “Okay.  For the sake of the universe.  Let’s do this.”

And do it they did.  Elle, knowing that she was going to start feeling sick the minute they were finished, decided to enjoy her last moments of pleasure as much as she could, so she gave herself to Sheldon with complete abandon.  Sheldon, exhilarated by the knowledge that he was actually getting laid twice in one day, gave all of himself back to Elle.   And although it soon became apparent that the intensity of their lovemaking would ultimately have an adverse effect on the resale value of the car, this mattered little.

Afterwards, Elle did indeed become sick, this time even worse than before. But in the midst of her non-stop sneezing, she heroically gave detailed descriptions of her trans-dimensional vision. A group of analysts took notes and recorded invaluable information about not just the thousands of Geez soldiers, but the airships and carriers traveling behind them, and the tiniest details of signs and symbols on the sides of the ships.  An army of Samurai Sprites was then able to fly into Dimension-0 and unleash a sneak attack on the Geez, easily vanquishing them.  This victory could never have been achieved without the data that had been obtained through Elle’s sneezing.   There was no denying that her inflamed sinuses were a goldmine of military intelligence.

This time Elle’s recovery was slow. She was bed-ridden for months, and Dr. Bilbonowitz decreed that she would not survive another allergic fit of this magnitude.  So her participation in the burgeoning field of telepathic trans-dimensional mucus-based surveillance was over, as was any chance that she could have intimate relations with Sheldon again.

Sheldon went back to his career as a promotional mascot.  He thought about Elle all the time, but eventually his yearning transformed into a kind of comforting melancholy gratitude.  In addition to the signs he held up announcing various lunch and dinner specials, he now carried around something else: the idea that life was filled with possibilities.  And he had Elle to thank for this. So when he visited her in the hospital, he said the one thing that nobody had thought to say to her the whole time she was sneezing:

“God bless you.”

As for General Drake, his jealous rage became so pronounced that every time he drew breath or broke wind, hazardous materials were released into the atmosphere.  By executive order he was taken to an isolated base in the middle of the desert where he could do the least damage.  Quiet, contemplative meditation eventually cured him of his ailment, but he never again recovered his previous standing in the military.

And he never got over Elle.

And so, as the brokenhearted often do, he pursued a religious path, which eventually led to war and thousands of innocent lives lost.  But for the sake of decorum the details of that story will have to wait till another time.