The Tale of Stanley the Dancing Monster

Once upon a time there was a monster named Stanley, and everyone was afraid of him.  Whenever he went out shopping, or driving, or out for a walk, everyone screamed and ran.  Stanley was so lonely.  He tried to do some hobbies that would take his mind off his troubles.

First he took up jogging.  It really focused him, but whenever people saw him running down the sidewalk, they completely freaked out.  Children stopped playing outside in his neighborhood.  Cars swerved towards him on crosswalks.  Stanley grew more depressed.

So he decided to try an indoors hobby.  He started building a ship in a bottle, up in his apartment.  He tried hard to get immersed in the tiny details of the tiny ship with its tiny captain, but Stanley just didn’t care.  He wanted some real people to talk to.

On his way to hurl the bottle off a bridge, Stanley passed by a dance studio and enrolled in the ballet class.  The teacher didn’t want a monster in her class, but Stanley started to cry.  He gave her the unfinished ship as a token of his thanks, and she didn’t really want that, either.

Stanley was, of course, an amazing dancer.  When he danced, he was so beautiful no one could tell he was a monster.  In a few years, he was dancing professionally.  One day, when he was on tour, some monster hunters came to a performance.  They stormed the hall with their guns and yelled at the dancers, “We hear one of you is a dancing monster.  Which one?”  All the dancers knew that the second Stanley stopped his beautiful dancing, the hunters would see he was a monster.  And if only he was dancing, the his cover would be blown.  So Stanley kept dancing, and all his colleagues came around him in a big circle and kept dancing, too.  They danced all night, till their feet were bloody, and their arms were shaking, and they were crying, and they all looked like monsters, but they were still dancing.

Eventually, they realized they were alone.  The audience was gone.  The hunters were gone.  Even the staff had left.  The limping, monstrous company danced Stanley home, in the dark.

The Tale of Little Miss Monster-Hair

Once upon a time there was girl named Sally, with long blonde hair.  Her hair was so beautiful that a thousand tiny monsters came to live in it.  They climbed up her hair, and whispered in her ears, and gnawed on her eyebrows.  At night, when she fell asleep, they tangled up next to her and fell asleep, too.  But no one could see them but Sally.

Sally went to the doctor, but unfortunately she was already a diagnosed schizophrenic, so the doctor just upped her medication.  The monsters were real, though.  Life is difficult when magic realism and real realism intersect.  Sally decided she had to solve this problem by herself.  She was a proactive kind of gal.

She wore a hat, but they pushed it off.

She got that shampoo kit for lice, but they told her it just “cleared their sinuses”.

She shaved her long hair, but they piled up on her bare head, and dug their little claws into her skin.

Sally was desperate.  No matter how long it took, or how far she went, she would find a way to get rid of her monsters.  She travelled to the deepest jungles, the highest mountains.  When witches and wise men were fuck-useless, she consulted with camels and polar bears.  When animals didn’t work, she asked rocks and trees.  The monsters reminded her to take her medication.

At the age of 112, Sally was nearly finished building her submarine.  She had a few questions for the Mariana Trench.  The monsters were sharing some opinions on welding.  And then she died.  When she was buried, the monsters tangled up in her long grey hair and fell asleep.

The Tale of Moon-Girl

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived on the moon, in a house full of bees.  The bees were also stars.  Every night, when the sun left the sky, Jane the Moon-Girl would open the door and let all the bees out of her house, and they’d fill up the sky and be stars.  When that happened, she’d steal their honey, and sell it to an ogre that lived on the other side of the moon.  The ogre was the sun, and he needed to eat the star-bees’ honey to stay strong for his long commute around the Earth.  If he didn’t eat that honey, everyone on Earth would die a cold, dark death.

Unfortunately, the star-bees did not appreciate having their honey stolen and eaten by an ogre.  Star-bees are actually kind of racist, against ogres at least.  Ogres and gnomes, if you really want to know.  Jane the Moon-Girl was getting pretty paranoid, sleeping in a house full of bees with a grudge against her.  They just watched her, buzzing to each other behind her back like bitches.  The Moon was getting dull and dusky, because she was too tired to clean it properly.  Even her former best friend, Barbara the Bee, wasn’t speaking to her.  Not a tenable situation here.

She decided to talk to the only sympathetic Moon denizen left, the ogre.  He offered to take her on a ride around the Earth on his back, so she could have some time away from the bees, just a little distance.  Having roommates can be hard, and a short vacation can be helpful.

So Jane the Moon-Girl climbed up on the ogre’s back, and he flew into the air and started his trip around the Earth.  Unfortunately, he was the sun.  He grew brighter and brighter, and hotter and hotter, and he was the most beautiful thing in the whole universe, but Jane just couldn’t hold on any longer!  She let go, and feel into the Pacific Ocean.  She fell so fast and hard, she punched a hole right in Hawaii, and made a volcano.  The ogre didn’t even notice.  The sun is generally well-meaning, but pretty oblivious to details.

Does this story need a moral?  Don’t get into cars with strange men, you don’t know where you’ll end up.

The Tale of Anne and the Time-Door

It’s Christmas and no-one is reading this anyway, so I wrote another dumbass story!  Yay!

There once was a lady named Anne, because why the hell not?  Late one night, Anne tried to open her bedroom door, but the door wouldn’t open.  She looked through the keyhole, and she could see a bright sunny day through the windows, and a strange woman sitting on a strange chair, drinking a glass of white wine.

Obviously, time travel was happening.  So Anne shouted through the door at the lady, “Hey, what time is it?” and the lady was all, “I don’t know, noon?”  They had to shout really loud, because they were shouting across goddamned time.  So Anne said, “No, sorry, what year is it?  Year is the relevant thing, here.”  And the wine-drinking lady was in the year 2034.

Anne was absolutely terrified by this, but decided to try opening the door anyway, because plot is happening and Anne makes poor life decisions.  So she got her emergency battle-ax and went screaming for the bedroom door.  The power of poor decisions breaks down the time-door!  Huzzah!

The wine-drinking lady was pretty chill while a strange voice was screaming at her through her door from the past, but the sudden appearance of Anne with the emergency battle-ax was startling.  Unfortunately for Anne, Wine-Drinking Lady is a sorceress with an emergency combat wand.  Fortunately for Anne, Wine-Drinking Lady is really drunk and has bad aim.

The battle royale finishes when Wine-Drinking Lady realizes that Anne is her long-lost mother.  The two have a tearful reunion, and Wine-Drinking Lady joins AA now that she knows her mother never abandoned her, she just ran through a time-door.  The moral is, if you have kids, think of them before you rush headlong into the first bizarre anomaly you find.

The Extemporaneous Tale of Zorn Dragon, Jr.

I had a request for a story, which was just so amazing I thought it should be recorded for posterity.  Enjoy!

There once was a boy name Blargity Blarg.  He realized he had the worst name on Earth, seriously, bordering on child abuse, so he decided to go find some new parents that would give him a new name.

On his journey, he met a fearsome dragon.  The dragon said he would adopt the boy and name him Zorn, and the boy decided Zorn was a better name than Blargity Blarg, so fine.  The dragon’s name was Zorn, too, and the boy’s full name become Zorn Dragon, Jr.

But Dad Dragon said that any son of his had to be able to fly.  He thought that humans were able to fly, but didn’t because humans are wusses like that.  But no son of his would be a wimp!  Zorn Dragon, Jr just had to believe in the power of flight, and he would soar magestically.

Dad Dragon took Zorn Dragon, Jr to the highest cliff, and the boy believed in himself as hard as possible, and jumped!  Sadly, he fell like a brick.  But!  Dad Dragon rushed down to rescue him!  He grabbed his beloved son in his claws!  Too bad, Dad Dragon’s problems understanding human physiology weren’t limited to flight capabilities.  Zorn Dragon, Jr was crushed to death by Dad Dragon’s rescue.

Even though Dad Dragon had only adopted Zorn Dragon, Jr that morning, already his heart was bursting with paternal love for his non-flying, crushable son.  Heartbroken, he cried a thousand dragon tears.

The tears made a river, flooding the nearby town.  This town was where the Blargs, Zorn Dragon, Jr’s original, crappy family, lived.  They totally drowned.  The river became the Danube, which translates in many languages (that I invented) as: Zorn Dragon, Jr.