Submitted for your approval, a short story.
NOT EXACTLY A FAIRY TALE
by
Frank Conniff
In matters of the heart, Irving the magical pixie had been going through a bit of a dry spell. Centuries had passed since he’d last managed to get a fairy princess drunk enough to go home with him, and the results of that night were far from romantic.
“Wow,” Irving said to the fairy princess in the aftermath of their curt bout of bitey, grabby, slurpy sex. “I knew I could go all night with you, and sure enough, I did.”
The fairy princess, abruptly sober, sniffed the air and said, “You sprinkled this room with a magical hour-glass sand that made time slow down, didn’t you?”
“No!” Irving said, lying through his hygienically challenged teeth.
“Oh, my God,” Belinda said (for that was indeed her name, although if this were an answer on Final Jeopardy it would have stumped Irving). She buried her delicate face in nicotine-stained hands. “I can’t live like this anymore! The booze. The drugs. The empty, unsatisfying sex with pixies half my size and twice my age. It has to stop!”
Belinda grabbed her wrinkled fairy dress, tucked it under her arm, then reached her other hand down onto the floor, which was covered with a mucky sludge that Irving’s half-assed swiffering had failed to make a dent in. She picked up her magic wand (which was rarely been used in the service of magic; more often than not it was an instrument of self mutilation), and then flew up out of Irving’s futon and into the air, stopping just short of hitting her head on the low, mold-encrusted ceiling. As her luminescent body twirled out of the room, Irving knew that this was the last time he would ever see her naked.
But on the bright side, Irving could now take this brief, awkward, hurtful experience and build a lifetime of boastful exaggeration upon it. This was as close as he ever came to positive thinking.
Every now and then Irving’s diminutive size brought out the fetishistic nature in a woman, but this happened rarely if at all, and even chicks that were into tiny dudes were not necessarily into him. He had a round stomach that protruded against the ill-fitting pseudo-leprechaun onesies he favored. He was an insomniac, so his emerald eyes, which should have glistened like a sun-baked Irish meadow, were instead red and foggy, like a Bloody Mary that someone had doused a cigarette in. It’s safe to say that the phrase “eye candy” would never be applied to Irving, unless it was a poisonous kind of candy that causes diarrhea and death.
It wasn’t as if he never got to meet any interesting, available women. Every day, at his clerical job at the Institute of Enchantment, a castle-like office complex with adjoining convention center located in the downtown business district of the trans-dimensional vortex, he mingled with lots of beautiful fairy princesses: ethereal hotties wearing short willowy skirts that he never failed to peek under when they flew into the air over him. They were all sweet and saintly, so they always waited until Irving left the room before talking about what a disgusting little perv he was.
Irving’s luck wasn’t much better with mortal women. While one might think that his magical powers would have given him an advantage, this was not the case. The Institute of Enchantment has strict rules and guidelines when it comes to the use of magic on unsuspecting mortals, so Irving had to be discreet while trying to spike women’s drinks with love potions and magical elixirs. Thus, there was always something sneaky and conspiratorial about him when he approached a woman, and this only turned up the volume on a creepiness factor that was already at high decibel levels.
He never had any success in earthly bars and restaurants, because he could never get a positive response to the inquiry, “Can I buy you a drink?” But he thought his luck had changed when he began frequenting a Jamba Juice located a few blocks east of a Manhattan strip club he patronized during his many forays into the mortal realm.
“Have you tried the Protean Berry Pizzazz?” he yelled over the drill-press-like sound of the smoothie blender to one particular stunner, a brunette career girl in tight business clothes who looked like she could be a Forbes magazine centerfold model.
She smiled down at him. “I’d love to try it if that’s okay,” she said. “It’s so sweet of you to offer. Here, let me get a straw…”
She tore the paper off a straw with her teeth and Irving thought he’d plotz. As she lowered it into his cup, which contained way more illegal magic love elixir than it did protean powder, Irving began to imagine their life together as New York’s ultimate power couple.
But the moment the fruit-flavored contraband passed her lips, she immediately spewed it back out. Irving felt a shock as it hit his face, although this certainly wasn’t the first time a disgruntled woman had spit on him.
“I am an undercover officer with the I.O.A. Magic Abuse Task Force,” she announced, flashing a badge with the Institute of Enchantment logo. “You’re busted, douchebag.”
The next morning, Irving stood before the Institute of Enchantment Disciplinary Committee, which was made up in its entirety of one perpetually aghast elder with a severe face and chapped lips that had never once uttered the phrase, “no hard feelings.”
“If you are ever caught using another elixir or love potion you will be stripped of all your powers as a magical pixie,” he said to Irving. He then added, “The balance between the magical realm and the mortal world is delicate and fragile, and we’re not going to let it all fall apart just because you can’t get laid!”
Later, at his office desk, an enclosed cubicle exactly like the thousands of other pixie-manned workstations on his floor (except that his computer was the only one with a company-mandated parental control porn blocker), Irving carefully read the judgment that was handed down against him. He realized that the elixirs and potions he was forbidden from using were all listed specifically as beverages. But there were other ways to artificially manipulate a woman’s perception without having her drink anything. (The magical hourglass sand that he had used on Belinda, for instance, although that was a faulty product and Irving had already written an angry letter to the manufacturer.)
Irving concluded that due to a technicality, there was still a plethora of love-inducing spells and formulas available to him. But he knew that he had to stay away from fairy princess. As he said to the bartender at the Spirits Sports Lounge across the street from the Institute of Enchantment, “I’ve had it with fairy princesses. For all their fancy high flautin romantic lyricism, when you came right down to it, they’re just a bunch of stuck-up bitches!”
The bartender was an ogre the size of a landfill who worshiped and idolized fairy princesses. He had framed autographed pictures of many of them on the wall behind the bar, so he put down the ceramic shot-glass he was wiping, picked up a magic wand with a cattle-prod application, and electrocuted Irving. Later that night, when Irving awoke face down and ass up in a dumpster, he wasn’t quite sure how he got there, but he remained determined to go through with his plan to snag a mortal babe.
He found an on-line dating service that seemed perfect for the kind of human female he was looking for, I’mReadyToSettle.com. But as it turned out, only one woman was ready to at least look into the prospect of settling for Irving. Her name was Lily and while she was skeptical of the largely fictional autobiography Irving had posted on the site (“I work as a billionaire financial tycoon when not playing in a rock band and directing critically-acclaimed independent films”) and more than a little confused by his misleading profile picture (a file photo of Montgomery Cliff immediately after the car accident that disfigured his face), she was nonetheless looking for a reason to go out since her cable TV wasn’t working and wouldn’t be fixed until the following Monday.
When Irving and Lily did meet in person, Irving in the flesh fell a bit short of expectations, if only because she had allowed herself to be optimistic enough to expect a date whose actual physical appearance would not make her nauseous.
“Would you like to have a drink?” Irving said.
“Actually, I could really go for a Dramamine,” she replied.
Irving thought that queasiness became her. Her profile picture gave the impression that she was bright and healthy, but in Irving’s presence she appeared gaunt and malnourished. “Me likey,” Irving said to himself.
Their predetermined meeting place was the entrance of a carnival that had opened on a New Jersey marshland. As they strolled the damp fairgrounds, Irving eschewed his usual first date small talk (“Can I touch your boobies?”) and instead just walked by her side and silently drooled. It was only when they got to one certain destination, the attraction that was central to Irving’s whole scheme, that he finally spoke.
“Look,” Irving said. “The tunnel of love.”
Before them stood a mountain made from Styrofoam. There was indeed a tunnel that ran through it, with a canal that was one or two discarded candy wrappers short of being a sewer. An assembly line of small plastic boats traveled into the tunnel. Some of the boats contained couples, many of whom were kissing, although this may have just been their way of not breathing in the toxic fumes.
Lily did not want to go into any tunnel, much less a tunnel of love. So Irving knew that convincing her would require some romantic sweet-talk.
“It’s the only way you’ll be able to get your parking validated,” he cooed.
This didn’t sound right to Lily, but this date had already crushed her spirit to the point where she was too tired to argue, so she stepped into the automated faux-boat with Irving and drifted into the tunnel of love, her only passion being the desire to go home and pray for absolution from the cable repairman.
Once inside the tunnel, Irving and Lily were treated to the smell of Jersey tap water that had been raped by chlorine. The grey walls and suffocating air made the tunnel feel less like a path towards love and more like a DMV office in the wake of a flash flood.
Irving was now ready to go through with his plan, which had been worked out over several post-masturbatory ruminations. It involved dosing the water in the tunnel with a special love-inducing bubble bath formula that he had found in an obscure catalogue in the Institute of Enchantment’s library. And so the minute he entered the tunnel, Irving dropped an alka-seltzer-sized tablet into the water and it quickly began boiling and foaming like a rabid hot tub.
Next, according to the catalogue’s instructions, he had to push Lily into the water and then dive in to “rescue” her. Theoretically, the damsel, drowning in the liquid love bubbles, would fall instantly in love with the first one to grab and save her. It was only under these conditions that the magic formula would work. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to find eternal happiness, but Irving had come to the conclusion that being a successful sleazeball required a certain work ethic.
Now came what was perhaps Irving’s most unconscionable act in an afternoon already rife with moral deficiency. Irving prodded the bottom of Lily’s behind with a nuclear-powered joy buzzer that fit into the palm of his hand like a penny, causing a shock that catapulted Lily to her feet, giving her a precarious, unstable balance in the boat. Irving stood up and pushed her into the water.
Lily flailed about in the narrow canal of bubbles beside the boat. Whatever concerns she had for her own safety were drowned out by her justifiably crazed anger at Irving.
“I’m going to kill you, you pint-sized scumbag!” she screamed. “And I’m going to get my money back from the dating service!”
Irving was about to dive in after her, but he paused to consider whether a woman who could not clearly see the “No Refunds” banner that was prominently displayed on the dating service website was someone he really wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
But that half a millisecond of hesitation gave the person in the boat right behind Irving’s boat the opportunity to spring into action. He was Lt. Clark Johnson, a military veteran on leave from his duties as a Navy Seal. Through years of active service in many overseas conflicts, his square-jawed, crew-cutted, regulation handsomeness had not diminished, although his ability to make it through a night without waking up in a sweaty fit of anguished screaming had. But the athletic requirements of his profession, combined with a disciplined approach to the intake of medicine before and after his numerous visits to East Asian whorehouses, had left him in good physical condition. And so the minute Lily hit the water, the trained Navy Seal dove in after her, grabbing and rescuing her while Irving dithered in the boat.
For once, Irving had concocted a magic love formula that worked, only it was Lt. Johnson who felt its effects, not Irving. The lieutenant had been riding in his tunnel of love boat with three friendly and open-minded gals. They were all beautiful, exotic, and imaginary. He had made their acquaintance while on mushrooms during the invasion of Grenada, and even though they didn’t exist he enjoyed their company, especially their ability to activate his post-traumatic stress disorder in an erotically exciting way that seemed beyond the reach of most women from the reality-based community. But the minute he touched Lily, his make-believe ménage a trois evaporated (although he still had their phone numbers just in case). He didn’t need them anymore because once he looked into Lily’s eyes, he knew that for the first time in years he was willing to give flesh-and-blood a try.
The watery magic also worked on Lily, but when all was said and done, the enchanted bubbles might not have even been necessary. In the past, the guys she had gone out with were mostly overweight nerds who were just as affectionate with a plate of nachos as they were with her. But now here she was in the arms of a slim, buff, good looking jock-type. She didn’t need a magic bubble bath to get wet over this guy.
But Lt. Johnson was a soldier as well as a lover, so while continuing to keep Lily’s lovely head above water, he used his other hand to reach into Irving’s boat, grab him by the torso, and clutch him like a football.
“I’m holding you until the police get here,” he said.
Irving tried to explain. “I wasn’t pushing her in the water to kill her, I was pushing her in the water because…”
He went no further. As far as Irving was concerned, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation to all this, but he knew that there was no way he could articulate it.
Irving was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and the Institute of Enchantment stripped him of all his magical powers. Once in lock-up, Irving’s small size gave him a certain kind of popularity; it was easy to pass him around from prisoner to prisoner. His fellow inmates used him for a variety of functions, everything from shower sponge to communal ashtray. Yes, he was quite useful, but this did not give Irving’s life the sense of purpose that he hoped it would one day have.
Lt. Johnson and Lily were married and stayed that way for the rest of their days. The nature of magically inseminated love is such that couples under its spell consider themselves soul mates without ever having to get to know each other. For instance, Lily never bothered to ask Lt. Johnson what he did for a living (she thought “Lieutenant” was his first name), and Lt. Johnson never got around to telling Lily about the imaginary women that he often invited to into their bed for three-ways, and it never occurred to her to ask him why in the throes of passion he was always screaming out names that sounded like characters from “Hawaii Five-O.” Lily and Lt. Johnson kept true intimacy out of their marriage in a way that other couples could only envy.
Irving was eventually released from prison. On his first night of freedom he lay on a stained mattress on a roach-infested floor in a shabby halfway house. He stared at the ceiling, cursing the insomnia that forced him to experience every last minute of his life.
Just as Irving was about to finally fall asleep, the peeling paint on the ceiling began to strip itself away until a constellation of bright shimmering stars appeared. A fairy princess emerged and hovered in mid-air over Irving’s bed, like an aurora borealis of pure transcendent female beauty. She looked familiar to him, and indeed she was Belinda, the fairy princess he had had a brief, drunken one-night stand with all those years ago.
“Irving,” she said. “Remember me? I slept with you once in a moment of profound bad judgment. But that encounter spurred me forward to therapy and twelve step programs and I turned my life around. Now I am a class-A fairy princess, an advanced provider of benevolent compassion, and in a way I owe it all to you.”
“Does this mean we’re going to do it?” Irving asked.
“No,” she replied with an indulgent smile. “But the Institute of Enchantment gave me special permission to come tell you that you need not despair. Yes, you have lost all of your magical powers, and because of your transgressions you have endured a humiliating ordeal. But you can now start anew, and you need not live without companionship. You’ll just have to pursue love and romance through normal, everyday human means. And Irving, my friend…”
“Yes?”
“Normal, everyday human love is the most beautiful magic of all.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Irving said in a voice sarcastic as the day is long. “The news just keeps getting better and better.”
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