The Changeling - Part 1

Kylie looked at the baby and pulled out another handful of hair. Was this why new mothers complained about losing hair after giving birth? She was honestly at her wits' end. He wasn't sleepy. He wasn't hungry. He'd burped 5 times – surely enough to bring up any wind. He had a clean nappy, no nappy rash. He wasn't hot, he wasn't cold. The baby screwed his face into an uglier grimace and turned up the scream volume another notch. The old lady in the flat next door banged on the wall, but Kylie could only hear the banging while the baby was taking a breath.

Justin wandered in, bleary-eyed and looking like death warmed up.

“What's wrong with him?” he asked.

“I HAVE NO BLOODY IDEA!!!” screamed Kylie, snapping the cords that tied her to a semblance of sanity.

Justin took a few steps back and stared at her from the relative safety of the hallway.

“Ummmm...” he attempted, then gave up and went back to bed.

The baby stopped screaming, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and went to sleep. Ruth stretched out on the floor next to the cot and slept too – for a whole half hour.

“There there dear, it'll get easier,” soothed Kylie's fairy godmother, Ruth, on the phone the next morning. “They all go through this love, you can survive it!”

Kylie sighed, hung up the phone, and wondered.

Justin brought her a cup of coffee. “What'd she say?” he asked.

“Oh, the usual crap,” she said “It'll get easier!” She kicked the fridge, then hopped around the kitchen squealing in pain.

“Hmmm... I think maybe we need a fairy godfather on the job, darling.” Justin pondered, “And I know just the fellow!”

“Ohhh, that's terrible, pet!” George said swishily a few minutes later. “It sounds like a nasty-wasty curse. I'll see what the word on the street is, darlings. Toodle-oo!”

“A curse?” Kylie asked the empty air. “To... what? Make the baby cry? Who'd do such a horrible thing? Why on earth would anyone put a hex on a baby?”

Juliette and the Beast

Once upon a time, a beautiful, intelligent woman fell in love with an ogre, because that's what beautiful, intelligent women are supposed to do.

Her name was Juliette. She was blue-eyed, with an oval face and light brown hair. Her nose was straight, symmetrical and just the right size. Her bachelor's degree hung demurely on her bedroom wall. The rose-coloured glasses she'd had since she was young and innocent sat on the bridge of her nose, making everything seem even better than it was.

His name was Urg, because that was the sound he mostly made. His fur was long, coarse and matted somewhat around his nether regions. When he farted, children fainted. When he smiled at Juliette in the pub, she swooned. Unfortunately, she assumed that this meant love, rather than intoxication and airborne poisons from chronic bad breath.

So Juliette loved Urg. She loved him with a devotion that the stars and planets themselves could envy. He moved into her flat. She cooked him dinners. She picked up his dirt-and-other-stuff-besmeared-undies from the kitchen table, the TV, and any other place it pleased him to throw them. She did his laundry and paid his credit card bill and bought him a mobile phone, and considered herself the luckiest woman in the world.

Urg, on the other hand, wasn't particularly happy. Juliette didn't have sex with him nearly often enough. She circled job ads in the newspaper for him. She encouraged him to bathe. He growled. He sulked. He started to throw completely understandable tantrums whenever she made an unreasonable demand. And Juliette smiled, and thought that all ogres were the same, you had to take the good with the bad. After all, he loved her – deeply, madly, truly.

“You don't have to date an ogre, you know,” said Juliette's friend Marge. “I mean, you could date a human being.”

“Oh goodness, what an idea!” dreamed Juliette, “But you know all the good ones are chasing after fairies and elves. No, Urg loves me, he's just a bit troubled. Growing up as an ogre, you know.”

Marge sighed, shook her head, and shut the hell up.

Three years of not-quite-bliss (nothing like it, in fact) later, Juliette asked Urg to marry her.

“Urg...” said Urg, as he watched the football.

Juliette started shopping for the dress.

Urg played World of Warcraft, and wondered vaguely where his dinner was.

“Ummm...” said Marge, “does Urg know he's getting married?”

“Of course!” scoffed Juliette. “He's an ogre, not an idiot!”

Juliette poked Urg to distract him from WoW for a second. Without a sideways glance, Urg backhanded her across the room.

“Urg” said Juliette (grunting, not talking to her fiance). “I shouldn't ave poked him.”

Marge was horrified. “I told you not to date a stupid ogre! He's beating you!”

“Yes, but only when I need it,” said Juliette, reasonably. “And he's an ogre, it's affectionate. Don't be silly, Marge, I'm going to be a bride! Can't you be happy for me?” And she skipped away happily, only a little lopsided where her ankle was a tiny bit sprained.

Juliette was euphorically happy. So was Urg, who'd just killed an elf and gotten all of his treasure (on WoW this time).

“FOOOOOOOOD!!!!” yelled Urg.

“Coming!” shouted Juliette.

Urg sniffed at the fettucini and threw it at the wall. “URG!” he stated, emphatically.

Juliette stared.

“URRRGG!” he yelled at her, and knocked her across the room again. But this time, he knocked her glasses off, and they smashed on the floor. Juliette shook her head muzzily, and stared at him again.

“Why, you're nothing but a stupid violent ogre!” she yelled, and hit Urg over the head with a baseball bat. Urg wasn't hurt, but he was a little surprised. Then she hit him in the groin, and all the matted fur in the world didn't stop that one hurting.

“URGGGGG!” he screamed, and lumbered out of the house, never to be seen again.

Juliette cried, and looked around without her glasses. The world looked so dreary without them. Everything was so grey, and ugly, and scary-looking. The glasses had made it all so pretty... and this was what it was really like?

Marge walked up the path and, seeing the door in splinters from Urg's escape, advanced carefully up the hall. “Juliette?” she called tentatively.

Juliette hunched and hesitated to turn, wondering what her best friend would look like without the glasses. Eventually she turned around. Lo and behold – her friend looked exactly the same. In a world of blah and grey, Marge stood out like a rose. “Marge, I broke my glasses!” she cried.

“Awwww, don't worry about those stupid things!” said Marge. “There's a new elf bar opened downtown... let's go perve!”

And Juliette laughed, and put on her coat, and figured that life wasn't so bad with a few good friends and a new pair of shoes now and then.

The Fairy and the Ogre (Part 4)

FRIDAY

Sally came into work early and relaxed. She headed straight for the kitchenette to make herself a coffee.

In front of the coffee machine, hulking and huge, stood an ogre. No mistaking it, even for a normal girl like Sally – his skin was pale green and scaly, he had two horns, and he smelt like week-old trash marinated in sewerage. The only unogre-ish thing about him was the pale pink silk hankerchief draping out of the pocket of his (huge) Armani suit.

She drew a breath to scream, and choked on the smell, coughing and spluttering.

“Don't bother screaming” said the ogre. “I'm Dan, your new boss.”

Sally stared.

The ogre stuck a hand out to be shaken. “I hear your old boss was an incredible softie.”



Moral of the Story?


There's always another manager.

The Fairy and the Ogre (Part 3)

THURSDAY

Sally and her coworkers sat at their boring cubicles, doing their boring work, and felt as though they were the luckiest people in the world. The tyrant was gone – they were free! They were still bored and dull, but life was good.

The Fairy and the Ogre (Part 2)

WEDNESDAY

Sally entered the office with a hint of trepidation. Everything looked perfectly normal. She peered into her boss's office on the way to her cubicle – empty as normal (he typically got in late and left early – regular hours and overtime were for the plebs). Nothing was out of place. Probably, she thought with rising hopefulness, the cleaner had forgotten his bizarre promise 5 seconds after he'd wandered away.

Wednesday was meeting day. You'd expect a break from dull routine to be welcomed, but somehow work meetings managed to be duller and feel more routine than even the work managed to be. Maybe it was because lots of people, all radiating dullness and hopelessness, were stuck in a small space together instead of dispersing their misery over the office.

The boss walked in late (standard) with a scowl on his face (mostly standard – the only time he smiled in a meeting was when someone was about to be publicly humiliated or fired). He sat down, farted loudly (not standard) and blushed (extremely non-standard). He picked up a pen, which exploded. Not a minute into the meeting, and he looked ready to cry or explode himself. Sally wiped a drop of ink from her cheek and boggled, while trying to pretend she was noticing nothing. All around her, she heard the sound of desperately-muffled chuckles giving way to fits of fake coughing.

Brownies?

The manager thumped the desk, and said, “Right, let's start this meeting! Stuart – what's the status of -”

He coughed. He spluttered. He hacked... and out of his mouth came something looking suspiciously like a furball to Sally's practiced (cat-owning) eye.

Stuart – a bit weak-stomached at the best of times – gagged and ran out of the room. Everyone else kept to their seats, too shocked to do anything useful.

Sally smirked internally (never externally – that would be career suicide in this place). Whatever was happening, she was determined to enjoy every minute. The boss slumped, head in hands, silent.

After a number of very quiet, very boring minutes in which everyone glanced covertly around the room while trying to avoid eye-contact with anyone, the boss thumped the desk again. “Meeting adjourned!” he choked out, then strode out of the room, head held high and arms clasped over his abdomen.

Sally returned to her boring cubicle and looked at her work, thinking hard. Brownies? Mischievous ones? Coincidence? Or had the cleaner poisoned her boss's coffee cup or something? Crud, how would she explain herself to a murder investigation? “Well, Your Honour, the cleaner said he was a fairy and would grant me a wish...” She gave in and banged her head on her desk for relief.

“Sleeping again, eh? That performance review is getting worse and worse, girlie!” boomed a familiar, nasally voice. Well, he wasn't THAT sick, she mused angrily. The boss moved on to his next victim – at least, started to, before tripping over nothing and hitting his head on the ceramic ornamental fern pot. Sally choked back the giggle as he bounced to his feet and looked around wildly for whatever had tripped him. Looking just a little red, he gathered his dignity and strode off into the bookshelf. Someone broke, and a coworker was wracked with laughter. The boss, bright red now and with two lumps competing for dominance on his forhead, swore inventively and fired the nearest employee.

“Someone didn't have his morning coffee,” whispered Stuart from the other side of her cubicle. “Cripes... have you ever seen him so mad?”

“Only that time when his wife walked in, told the entire office that she hadn't had a decent shag in the ten years they'd been married, then dumped him!” whispered Sally.

Stuart boggled, “I missed THAT?”

“Nah, I made it up. She should, though, I reckon it's true!” whispered Sally, then ducked down to avoid the enraged glare of the wounded boss.

The day passed, with miscellaneous mishaps causing regular bellows of fury from the direction of the boss's office. The employees kept a low profile, attempting to reign in their sniggers and keep their whispers from reaching the (bright red) ears of the boss.

Just before 4:30, the fire alarm went off. As the employees dutifully traipsed toward the fire stairs to complete the drill, they were met with firemen – armed with fire extinguishers – heading into their office. What the heck was going on? Not a drill after all?

They met and waited downstairs for more than the usual ten minutes. Just as people started to look impatiently at their watches and mutter about going home and overtime, the firemen re-emerged. Between two large, burly firemen was dragged a small, weedy man covered in foam, with curls of smoke still rising from his head.

He was delivered to a waiting ambulance. Frank, edging as close as he could get unobtrusively, returned wide-eyed with the news.

“They reckon he set himself alight... just his hair! Some weird psychosis! I'd say they're taking him to the mental health hospital down the road.”

Stuart grinned, “He's not going to be back in a hurry – halle-bloody-lujah!” he crowed. “That man's been driving me batty since I started here... thank God he's gotten some of his own back, the great psycho!”

Sally collected her belongings and headed home, deep in thought. The 'fairy' had certainly delivered. Coincidence?

The Fairy and the Ogre (Part 1)

Once upon a time, a young woman sat at a boring desk doing boring work – typing till her fingers bled and reading till her eyeballs fell out.

One Tuesday, as she sat in front of her computer beating her head against her desk in frustration, her boss stopped by for an unwelcome visit.

“Sleeping on the job again, eh?” he boomed nasally, “Better lift that job performance, or you'll lose your bonuses!”

As Sally contemplated the loss of a measly $3.56 annual bonus, her bile rose and she got angry. VERY angry. But what could a mere worker like herself do against the might of management?

That evening, as she labored at her ever-increasing workload, she spied a night-dweller of the office – the cleaner. Hump-backed and quiet, only venturing to speak if spoken to, he shuffled around emptying bins.

“Evening!” she said, attempting a bright smile and succeeding only partially.

“Evening, dear” smiled the cleaner, “you're working late, aren't you?”

Sally looked at her acquaintance, and briefly pondered the office hierarchy which made managers so far above her... and the office of cleaner such a huge distance to fall.

“Do you enjoy your job?” she enquired.

“Well, dear – it's about all I can get, looking the way I do!” the cleaner twinkled cheerfully.

“May I ask... your back...?”

“Oh, that!” he harrumphed. He leant down, “Can you keep a secret, dear?”

“Ummm... I- I- guess so..” stammered Sally, a little bewildered but very, very curious.

The cleaner whipped off his coat (causing Sally a few moments of deep anxiety – an office was no place to be stuck alone, late at night, with a demented sexual predator). On his back was...

... a pair of wings?

Fairy wings.

Translucent, glittery, the works.

What's more, they were firmly attached to his bare back.

“Errrrrr... you're a cleaner dressed as a fairy?” uttered Sally, near lost for words.

“I AM a fairy!” declaimed the cleaner/fairy.

“Oh”

“You don't believe me, do you, dear?” enquired the cleaner/fairy, with a glint in his eye.

“Welllll...” said Sally diplomatically, “It's a bit hard to take in, isn't it? I mean, fairies are kids' stories!”

The cleaner giggled, and Sally started to worry a bit again. Then again, she HAD learnt self-defense. And the cleaner was pretty weedy – she could probably hold him off long enough to call security.

“Tell you what,” suggested the cleaner/fairy, “I'll grant you a wish. Something localised, mind you, and fairly small. No lotto winnings or fancy cars in your driveway, let alone castles built overnight. I'm a fairy, not a genie!”

Sally pondered. She couldn't take this seriously, but she didn't want to seem to NOT take it seriously either...

“Get rid of my boss” she said, “Don't kill him, don't even harm him, just make life a bit hard, make him want to leave. He makes MY life pretty damn hard, I'd like to see him suffer for once.”

The cleaner's eyes brightened. “Perfect!” he announced, rubbing his hands together, “I know the perfect trio of brownies to make his life hell... they love personalised mischief. They'll embarrass him, plague him and make it all look like unlucky coincidence!”

The cleaner wandered off, giggling and muttering under his breath.

Sally, shaken, slumped down in her chair and wondered what on earth she'd just done. Surely at the worst her boss would be in for a couple of slashed tyres or a loosened chair back... something annoying and maybe expensive to fix, but not majorly criminal. She'd hate to have incited a mentally-ill member of the community to cause real damage to someone.

I Would Walk... (part 2)

Monday morning, and George faced an extremely confused, angry boss.

“You're leaving the state and hiking a thousand miles because a woman told you to? Bloody hell, George, we need you here! What are you doing to us?” Mike shook his head and slumped onto the desk. “You're on our top advertising campaign for the entire year! You can't just wander off on some idiotic adventure... there are easier ways of getting laid! Hell, I'll give you some phone numbers!”

“Just wait,” George, inspired, interrupted the monologue, “that campaign's for Powerade – maybe we can spin this into something...”