Sweet Little Lies
15 Jun 2020Today’s prompt: “The biggest lie anyone told you”
“The Order of Dagon is dedicated to discovering the best new flavors of ice cream,” Gail tells you.
Today’s prompt: “The biggest lie anyone told you”
“The Order of Dagon is dedicated to discovering the best new flavors of ice cream,” Gail tells you.
Today’s prompt: “Pick a classic fairy tale, and set it in your modern-day hometown.” [I feel like modifying this prompt to keep the tale in its original timeline, but provide a new perspective on it.]
You pour your stepsister’s lentils into the fireplace. “Enjoy your dinner,” you laugh. Your sister joins you in the mockery, dubbing your stepsister “Cinderella” as her fingers trace through the ashes to pick out her food.
Look. That’s the thing with stepsisters. If you don’t put them in their place, they’ll start expecting the same attention, love and resources as everyone else in the family, and there’s only so much to go around. Your family can only afford so many pretty dresses.
And you’re going to need a pretty dress. The king has announced a ball in a fortnight and invited all eligible maidens. He’s looking for a wife for his son.
On the night of the ball, you’re decked out in your finest. So is your sister, but you know she hasn’t got a chance. Your nose is much cuter than hers. Oh, and ash girl’s staying at home, of course. Mom doesn’t want her competing with you or your sister.
The ball is infuriating. The prince danced with this one girl the entire night. She completely monopolized his time. You know if you’d gotten a fair shot to dance with him, he would have been completely taken with you. But no.
That girl he was dancing with was pretty weird though. And not just because you thought she looked vaguely familiar. Who the hell runs away at the end of the ball, just when the prince is about to propose? Maybe you’ve got another chance after all, you think.
You were right. Another ball is held. You and your sister insist on more expensive dresses, so you can catch his attention this time. You get to the ball, but before long, there’s that same vaguely familiar girl. And the prince is only paying attention to her. He must have just not noticed you in the crowd, because you made sure you were looking devastatingly gorgeous that night.
She ran away again! Cray.
A third ball. A third chance. Your hair? Upswept to perfection. Your face? Flawlessly made up. Your decolletage? Noticeable. And yet, once you get to the party, he only has eyes for that tart.
She runs away at the end of the evening, but this time she lost a shoe. So now the rumor mill is saying the prince is going door to door with this shoe and trying it on every girl in the household. Because apparently he wouldn’t recognize her on sight? Maybe he’s face blind? Well, that would actually explain a lot, because he clearly was incapable of comprehending your beauty.
Your mom comes to you with a strategy. “Look, here’s a knife. If the shoe doesn’t fit, just cut off a toe or something until it does. When you’re engaged to a prince, servants will be carrying you around anyway.”
The prince comes to your house. You try on the shoe, and yeah, no dice. It’s way too small. This girl must have some ridiculously tiny feet. You cut off your big toe and slide the shoe on. It’s agony, but it’s bound to be worth it.
You and the prince ride off together. You wrap your arms around him and nestle into his back as he urges his horse toward the castle. You’re about to pass a meadow, when you hear voices. “Turn and peep, turn and peep, there’s blood within the shoe. The shoe it is too small for her, the true bride waits for you.” You look around, but you can’t see anyone. Just some birds.
You’re horrified to see the prince turning his head. And you can’t help but stare at your own foot. Blood is noticeably seeping into the fabric of it.
You’re dropped back off at home. A servant of the prince rinses out the shoe. And now it’s your sister’s turn. She comes out of the bedroom, the shoe securely on her foot, but you’re pretty sure your mom gave her the exact same advice. Sure enough, about an hour from when they start off at the castle, your sister arrives back home, mortified and clutching her heel.
And then freaking Cinderella comes out. You know it’s not her, because she didn’t go to the ball. And yet her foot slides in effortlessly, and the Prince deems her his true love. Gag me.
It’s embarrassing to have to be there on her wedding day. The idea of watching her dance with him again pains you. Fortunately, you don’t have to. Unfortunately, it’s because birds peck out your eyes.
To add yet more injury to insult, you die from an infection from your self-inflicted foot wound. Medical care is just not good in your time.
Today’s prompt: “There are two kinds of people: drunks and survivors of drunks. Which are you?”
Your car lies at the bottom of a ravine. Bits of it are scattered down the slope from the road where your car was forced through a guardrail. Your blood soaks into the car upholstery.
They missed a category: non-survivors of drunks.
Today’s prompt: “You know the person with whom you’re talking is lying. Do you confront him or let him continue?”
“Why no,” the member of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue says, holding his knife behind his back. “I’m not here to find a sacrifice to the Great Old Ones.”
You don’t say anything. You’ve already decided the blade in the back is less frightening than the blade from the front.
Today’s prompt: “You walk into your bedroom and discover someone going through your drawers.”
Unfortunately for you, they just found the pistol you keep there, and they don’t like witnesses.
I feel like I’ve been running on autopilot with this blog. I’ve continued to make light of death despite the horrors going on around me, partly because the creative release is an escape for me. But last week, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 topped 100,000, with a disproportionate number of deaths occurring among African-Americans. And George Floyd, only one of the latest in a string of black men and women murdered at the hands of white policemen, was killed last week and buried yesterday.
I haven’t been ignoring this in my real life, and it’s time to stop ignoring it on this blog as well. I haven’t got much of a platform, but any platform I have, I should use.
I’m not going to weigh the merits of going to a protest vs. staying home to stay safe from COVID here. I mean, definitely don’t go to a protest if you think you might have COVID. And definitely stay home as much as you can in other areas of your life. Coronavirus cases in my state are rising again since the governor loosened restrictions. On the same token, showing up in numbers too great to ignore is changing the conversation around race right now. Do whatever you feel comfortable doing when it comes to protesting. But either way, do something. Educate yourself. Share your privilege. Be there for our black brothers and sisters.
Educate yourself. Ta-Nehisi Coates is at the top of my reading list now. I’m also planning to read White Fragility. Uprooting Racism is another book that’s been highly recommended to me. If you’re a podcast junkie like me, check out 1619, Pod Save the People, and Code Switch. And if you’re particularly interested in the way the pandemic intersects with black lives, check out several of the recent Sawbones podcast episodes, which have been exploring injustices against black people throughout medical history.
Share your privilege. Donate to the NAACP legal defense fund, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Campaign Zero, The Bail Project, or Black Voters Matter. Pick out a couple things to do from this list.
No death scene today. There’s been quite enough death lately.
Today’s prompt: “Each member of the San Francisco Giants can request the song that will be playing when he goes up to bat. Write the lyrics to the song that would be playing when you are up to bat.”
I mean, it’s just the lyrics to “Another One Bites The Dust.” But not because you’re killing it out there. Because when you were beaned in the head with a fastball twice in the same month, the brain swelling from your second concussion killed you.