So a little while ago, I wrote up a little
birthday story about my amazingly magical birthday trip that Duncan whisked me away on. I'm getting so spoiled. He said for next year I'll need my passport. It just gets bigger and better! I'm pretty sure I'm working my way towards a unicorn. (I'll let you pet it, no biggie).
At the end of my birthday story, I mentioned that if people wanted to send me a list of 10 random words that I'd write them a lovely card or something with those words worked into a story or message. I forget exactly what was promised, but the point is, I didn't really do anything. I'm pretty upfront about me being less than motivated. But a couple of you had suggested some random words, and now I'm going to use them here (and some other words too!).
So thanks to Danielle of
Sunday Hatch (words: spleen, prove, world, anesthesia , No!, beloved, golden, mattress, sleek, help) and also from the lovely at
Pink Dandy Chatter (words: love, stuck, lightning, trouble, mother, table, visit, time, toast, flowers).
***Just a petite warning that this stupid story is a complete waste of time, but I feel obligated to post it anyways, because really, I have nothing better to do. I'm sorry. I'm truly idiotic***
Golden Beak and Ruby Shoes
She was an odd creature, with her beak and sparkly red heels, taking pulls on her cigarette as she harassed the passersby. She had thin spindly legs that she teetered on as she stood by the old steam clock, ignoring the sneers from the school kids and the
sleek advances from the old gentlemen.
She was a sad creature. She knew she was a special bird-lady in this town full of ordinaries, but she had never been outside this town. She was
stuck in this dreary town of nobodies and nothings. She's never had the chance to spread her wings and fly, to
prove it to these simpletons that she was better than them, beyond them. She wouldn't have had this beak and these shoes if she wasn't, and she knew it! But she had been frozen in this town the moment her
beloved father died, and her heart died with him.
She relived that morning every day. Her
mother sets her
toast on the
table. Says "darling, I have some sad news." A pause of concern. "Your father... is dead. It was a death by
lightning bolt. It got him, and it exploded him. He basically exploded."
"
No!" she wailed out of her beautiful golden beak. "No!" She didn't say much more for the rest of the day, but rather dragged her
mattress out to the yard, sat on it, and wept. She waited for the lightning bolt to come get her too, her golden beak just like a beaconing rod, just like her father's. "Explode me!" she'd yell at the sky! "Explode me, you sons of bitches!" But it never exploded her. Nothing exploded her. So one day she had to pick herself up off the ground and drag the mattress back inside and get on with her life.
She took up smoking. She was about to head off into this big wide topsy-turvy
world to go out and find the rollercoasters, the gypsies, the other golden-beaked creatures, and the mountain dew. She needed excitement, and adventure, and a laugh riot to really shake her up, get her out of this funk. She needed
help.
She took up drinking. She experimented with rums and vodkas and elderflower and cherry. She added basil and mint and tiny little
flowers to the rims of glasses. She slurped her inventions daily, sucking the last drop of vodka from a mammoth pimento stuffed olive like it held the answer to all of life's problems, the solution to her never-ending heartache. It didn't though, so she would try the next olive in the next glass. They all proved fruitless.
Until one day it didn't. She popped a giant, juicy green olive into the shiny, golden beak of hers and her world slowed down. With one swallow, it happened, the pain in her heart was gone! For one sparkly second she could breath with ease, she was lifted, she was happy and pleasant and free of worry and full of
love. For just one moment only though. You see, the pain had simply just moved. To her
spleen, where
trouble was brewing. It felt different, like it was fat and swollen and on fire. She decided it was not heart-ache in her spleen. The heart-ache was gone, but her spleen was very likely exploding inside of her.
She called the local health authorities and was whisked away in a bustle of flashing lights and noisiness. They poked and prodded at her beak and laughed at her pretty shoes. She didn't want any
trouble with these people, who held her little life in their hands, so she stayed silent and helpless and scared as they spoke about her as though she was already dead.
They wheeled her into an operating room, STAT. There was no
time for forms and pleasantries with doctors and surgeons. Next came the
anesthesia. Then the surgery.
She woke the next day feeling lighter and nauseous and frightened. Her eyes could barely open and it felt as though her face was being crushed by a vice. She reached for it to make sure it wasn't. What she found was so devastatingly worse, she wailed so loudly it shook the entire hospital. Patients were woken from comas, crying babies ceased to cry, wounds were cauterized by the sheer electricity her voice.
Her beak was gone. Her beautiful golden beak had been removed, replaced by an ordinary one, a nose. It sat on the counter like a dull trophy ready to be binned. Her sparkly ruby shoes next to it, sad and worn. Her spleen was likely gone too, but it didn't seem to matter so much amidst these atrocities. What did her spleen ever do for her? Not like her beak, full of mystery and wonder and magic. Now she was like all the other ordinaries. Ordinary.
It felt boring and plain and dull. She felt nothing, nothing in her spleen and nothing in her heart. She just lay in the boring, plain, dull hospital bed being a boring, plain, dull ordinary person. She saw a boring family go past her room, on its way to
visit an ailing family member. A little boy carried some shiny balloons in his chubby fist when he caught a glimpse of her. He looked shocked and surprised and delighted! His eyes opened wide and his little smile widened as he began to rush towards her.
He reached his hand out towards her head, and gently stroked it. She looked sideways at their reflection in a mirror and saw a magnificent display of feathers and plumes on the crown of her head!
"Look how pretty!" the little boy said to her. It was pretty indeed. Colours like key lime and velvety purple and burning sunset orange and the royalest of blue. Even tinges of gold peeked through this forest of feathers, reminding her of her lost beak. She had lost her beloved father and and her tremendous golden beak, but in that process she had grown a glorious crown of feathers. She was not an ordinary. She was still a very special bird-lady indeed.
THE END.
The moral of this story is that even if you get your spleen removed and they accidentally removed your beak at the same time, you might gain a glorious crown of feathers!
OR
The moral of this story is that I will always find the most ridiculous way to spend my valuable time when I have actual things to do. You want me to clean the bathroom? NOPE. I'm reading up on the invention of peanut butter. You want me to write thank you letters for lovely birthday presents I received? NOPE. I'm sorting my t-shirts by colour. You want me to actually work at my job? NOPE. I'm writing a ridiculous story about a bird-lady with a golden beak and ruby shoes and looking at lettuces that look like people. Ridiculous.
THIS IS WHY I DON'T POST VERY OFTEN. Thank your lucky stars.
