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The Grimm Reaper

By: AMoveableBeast



Author's Note: This story is Erotic Horror, with the emphasis more on the "horror" than the "erotic". If you proceed, know that this tale is fishing more for gasps than moans. I hope you enjoy it in that terrible way that scary, disturbing things can be enjoyed.

*

Arthur Rosenbaum ran the tips of his fingers around the lid of the bright green barrel, checking, for the third time, that it was correctly sealed. His hand slid down the side and stopped on the biohazard sign, where he pressed his palm firmly against the laminated warning. Sometimes he thought he could almost sense a heartbeat, nearly feel another hand pressed against the inside of the waste barrel, separated from his by only a few inches of plastic. It was ridiculous, of course. There was nothing inside by this point, just soup. Soup didn't have a heartbeat. Soup couldn't hold your hand. Still, he liked the idea. It was romantic.

Arthur Rosenbaum was quite a romantic.

More than anything, he wanted to find the perfect woman, one who was also a romantic, maybe even a little old-fashioned, like him, who believed in waiting.

Arthur very much believed in waiting.

Indeed, sometimes it felt like all he had ever done with his life was wait, in the fervent hope that he would find this elusive girl, a pure, wholesome flower of a girl who loved to dance—dance, like in a ballroom, not that horrible grossness that those wicked women did at the club—and whose smile was like a mouthful of pearls. Every time he thought his search was over, however, he only ended up disappointed. The flower turned out to be a weed, common and invasive, and the smile proved to be merely ceramic, cheap and dirty--like a toilet. He had waited so very long. Even a romantic, a true believer, could survive on faith only so long and, much to Arthur's dismay, he was starting to lose hope. At fifty-five, he was running out of time.

And he had held such high hopes for the last one: Molly McMillan. Even her name was cute, warm and yummy sounding, a name that would not have been out of place on a box of muffins. The woman herself had been just as sugary as her name, possessing a sweet disposition and a body significantly rounder and fluffier than her profile picture on the online dating site where they'd met suggested. No matter, Arthur had found her personality effervescent and her appearance charmingly cherub-like.

She was a bit older than he usually went for, thirty-eight, but she had a young soul, admitting over dinner that she still held great affection, even at her age, for Winnie-the-Pooh. In fact, she had told him that she held a soft spot for many childish things and that, generally, she preferred the company of children, so much so that she had chosen to become a kindergarten teacher. When she added, after some embarrassment and no small amount of wine, that she often felt awkward around people her own age and that this discomfort had led her to avoid dating entirely for the last five years, he had been instantly enamored.

Arthur often found himself uneasy around his peers, as well.

They had champagne at dinner. This was the only drink Arthur found acceptable for a young lady to drink. It was generally low in potency and girls often commented on how the bubbles tickled their noses. He found the idea pleasant. Molly must have been unused to alcohol, as a second glass caused her to blurt out that not only had she experienced little in the way of romance but that she was, at her advanced age, still a virgin. She had raised her hand to her mouth in humiliation and blushed so furiously at the unintentional confession, turning her chubby face the color of a tart cherry, that Arthur had become even more smitten. She was so shy and adorable that, for the first time in a long time, he dared to believe that this one would be the one, that she was different. Here, finally, was a pure woman, a woman without guilt.

But, of course, she wasn't.

It was after he had driven her home, sitting in the car outside her apartment, when he learned the truth. Tipsy from alcohol, she smiled at him sheepishly and leaned forward ever so slightly to place the smallest of kisses, so slight it might not even have happened, on his cheek before getting out.

Arthur had been thrilled by this tiny show of affection, by her class and restraint. Then, pausing midway through shutting the door, she had bent down so that she was staring right at Arthur, chewing the corner of her lip as if struggling with some difficult decision. A sudden dread filled the older man when he saw the amorous look in her eyes. Then, she asked him if he wanted to come upstairs.

She had giggled when she spoke, like it was some big joke. And the way she said "upstairs", breathlessly, like she could barely get the word out between nervous breaths, it wasn't charming. Then she had just stood there anxiously, grinning at him like a kid on Christmas morning, hoping she received the gift she hoped for. But it was too late. She no longer looked like a cherub to Arthur. Now she just looked like a fat, desperate old woman, foul and vile just like all the rest.

After nodding his agreement, he retrieved a black leather bag, clasped at the top by two wolf heads looking in opposite directions, from the trunk of his car, a beige, 2001 Mercury Cougar with loads of trunk room.

Trunk room was very important to Arthur.

Afterward, he walked with her, slightly behind, as she dragged him by the hand, looking over her shoulder furtively to gauge his excitement. Arthur attempted to smile, but even he could tell that it held no warmth, no real encouragement. Yet, so eager was Molly, so desperate was her need to debase herself, that she never paused in leading him "upstairs".

She had said it so simply, as if they might only spend the rest of the night sitting in her apartment playing Monopoly or looking at old photos of her from when she were a kid, but Arthur knew what that word meant. He knew what she really wanted: to fuck, to slam her fat old-lady body against his until she was full of his specialness. She wanted to open her dirty mouth and say crude things, to call him "baby", and pull him deeper and deeper into her evil until he was just as filthy and worthless as she was, just as tainted. That's what they all wanted, to bring him down to their level, until he was just as unclean.

Arthur felt nauseated that he had ever thought that this one, this slut, Molly McMillan, could be any different than the others. Hiding it as best he could, he even managed a thumbs-up when she suggested that she slip into something more comfortable. Arthur prepared the room while he waited. It took her quite a while—it always seemed to with the heavier ones. Arthur had plenty of time. When she finally emerged, now dressed in a flimsy white babydoll, everything was set.

She seemed more confused than anything at the sight of the black tarp, which had been retrieved from the leather bag, spread out like a blanket on her living room floor, the bag itself opened beside it, revealing an array of blades, Arthur sitting on the couch with a length of wire wound between his hands. Some of them caught on faster than others. Arthur thought she would have been quicker, being a teacher and all. He already had her on the carpet, stripped of her clothing, arms bound together with the wire before she even started to scream. He stopped that with a warning and a quick kick to her stomach.

He opened a small cylinder on his key chain that contained several little blue pills and carefully plucked one out and swallowed it without water. At his age, he often needed a little help. Then, as Arthur Rosenbaum often did, he waited; he waited while Molly cried into the slick plastic of the tarp, while she begged him to let her go, while she asked him again and again why he was doing this. Then, when the magic pill finally kicked into effect, he began.

Most people didn't know this about Arthur, but he was a writer. He'd even been published several times, local rags at first, but, as he kept working, even national newspapers had picked up on his art before he became hesitant of his fame and turned reclusive. Only Arthur didn't like working on paper.

He wasn't sure where the idea had come from. Perhaps it was innate, like an artistic gift or a calling he had been born with. Certainly, he'd been doing it a long time, since high school. He could still remember the first time, at the drive-in theater, staring down at his high school girlfriend, Tammy Wilson, the plastic baggie that the cotton candy had come in still encasing her head. She'd just given him his very first blowjob a few minutes earlier. She'd done it so easily. He hadn't even asked. She just sort of put her head down there. Afterward, while she was sipping on her soda and watching the movie, like nothing had happened, he felt this anger inside him.

Tammy just sat, laughing at the funny parts, smacking her lips as she ate popcorn, the same lips that had been on him, on his dirty part, a few minutes before. Who could go on? What kind of whore could eat with that same filthy mouth?

He wanted her to stop using that dirty hole, to stop laughing, stop eating, stop breathing. It had taken longer than he had expected. Arthur could still remember her screams, muffled inside the bag, partially drowned out by the sound of people laughing at the movie, Tammy's eyes swollen with fear, her face looking like some enormous goldfish that had grown too big for its bowl. When she was done dying, Arthur looked down at her for a long time.

During the struggle, her blouse had been ripped open, exposing the smooth skin of her breasts and tummy. She seemed so normal, so bare. It wasn't right. There was no indication that she was anything other than the innocent, wonderful girl she had seemed prior to their trip to the drive-in. Arthur knew better, however, and he wanted others to know as well. Grabbing the key from the ignition, he dug it into her, scratching and gouging until he had carved a single crude, bloody word into the space between her breasts: Slut.

It had started small like that, with short, ugly words. Looking back, Arthur was actually quite embarrassed by how amateur his early work had been. With each new girl, though, he had gotten a little bit better, a little more precise. By thirty, he could manage sentences. At forty, paragraphs were within his grasp. Now, he had evolved past even that.

Fairy tales and fables held a special place in Arthur's heart, and had since he was quite young. They reminded him of sweet, happy things. Molly McMillan had nearly the entire story of Hansel and Gretel--the real one, where the house was plain bread and the mother was mean and died at the end--scrolling around her body in neat, impossibly small letters by the time she passed out for the first time. After that, he worked even more rapidly without the added difficulty of her moving, switching tools as needed, big blades for hard lines, small ones for detail and scalloping. He used her lingerie, a tasteful piece as such things went, like blotting paper, soaking up the blood so that he could keep his writing exact and perfectly distinct. Skin was a difficult medium, but Arthur was well-practiced and his carved calligraphy was immaculate, each letter a perfectly dug out pool filled with red.

She woke up again, crying in agony, when he reached her inner thighs, but she was so weak from blood loss when he made it past her left knee that she was doing little more than gasping.

Arthur knew about shock; he wasn't an uneducated man. One did not become a sanitation manager by being stupid. He understood the processes the body underwent before death, understood them far better than most. Still, he liked to think of this quiet time as a moment of realization, of redemption.

When he had only a few sentences left, he would ask them if they understood why he had to do it. Sometimes, the really stubborn ones would start with the screaming again or worse, the crying. Molly wasn't that stubborn. She said nothing, just blew out progressively more shallow breaths and kept her eyes on Arthur's knife. In the soft light of her living room, covered in perspiration and trembling, she looked smaller again, not so fat, and young once more, like a frightened little girl. He called it 'The Revealing'. They all revealed in the end. She was ready.

As was Arthur's way, he brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her forehead. Then he held her hand, interlaced his fingers with hers. When he spoke it was soft and gentle, understanding even.

"You didn't mean to be a bad girl. You were good once. I can see it, underneath all of that filth. We just have to find it. We can find your goodness. Then you can be free. Would you like that?"

Molly nodded weakly. They almost always agreed by this point.

"What are little girls made of?

Molly didn't answer, but he could see the guilt waiting in her eyes. Arthur could always see the guilt. It was like he was especially attuned to it.

"What are little girls made of?"

She tossed her head feebly from side to side, frustration and delirium warring on her face. Arthur could see tears welling in her eyes. He knew that if she started that, she'd be lost for good, so he led her.

"Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of....What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of."

Silence.

"What are little girls made of?" He grabbed her chin in one hand and held her steady. "What are little girls made of?"

"Sugar..." was the faint reply.

"And?"

"Spice."

"And?"

"Everything nice."

"That's what little girls are made of. Again. What are little girls made of?"

"Sugar and spice and *mumble* nice."

"Everything nice. Keep saying it. What are little girls made of?"

"Sugar and spice and everything nice...."

"That's what little girls are made of. Say the whole thing. What are little girls made of?" Arthur's words were velvety and rhythmic, tender and soft. They bounced quietly off of each other, springing from syllable to syllable.

She repeated it once, perfectly. Then again. He encouraged her to keep saying it. After a few minutes, she was babbling right on cue. It droned on, becoming almost a chant, a mantra, which is exactly what Arthur wanted. The next part was the most difficult, and would demand much of both him and the girl. Better that she had something to distract her, something to focus on other than the pain. It was unfortunate, but true artistry demanded suffering and, sometimes, a little blood. Other times it demanded a lot.

He cut into Molly's sternum, right where her ribs made an "A" shape, deeper this time than he had gone with his lettering. Quite a bit deeper. He had left a space for it, beneath the part where Hansel tricked the witch with the bone of a dead child so that she would think him still too thin to eat . The words were garbled for a second, lost in the sudden intake of breath, obscured by the croaking sound she made. But she recovered quickly, sticking to the pattern.

"Sugar and spice and—ahhh--everything nice. That's what little girls are made of."

When the entry was fully-formed, Arthur put his hand on her torso, felt the outline, like an arrow of red pointing the way forward, inward, onward. He pushed with his fingers, gently at first but with increasing pressure. Untethered, thanks to his incision, her skin surrendered to his advances. Reaching into her, he felt the warmth of her cavity envelop his hand. She was hot and viscous and ripe with the essence of origin. The truth welled up in her, spread beyond her borders, cascaded down the sides of its vessel. He would not have long to find it.

"Sugar an—ahh! spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of. Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of." The words came fast now, popped out between sharp breaths.

Arthur searched her vigorously but with meticulousness. It wouldn't benefit him to become careless in his excitement. What he was seeking was rather small, difficult to find under any circumstances. With the time constraint, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone less experienced, less dogged in his pursuit. Arthur was a wrangler of such things, however; he was at home elbow deep in the obfuscations of corpulent life.

She was getting jerky now, spastic in an attempt to escape the reality of the hunt. "Sugar...spice...everything...and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of." They often did it at the end. It wouldn't help. It was too late. He'd already laid a finger on it. Just the tip, but it was enough. Arthur could feel it now, wild and wiggling: Molly's soul.

"Sugar and spice, sugar and spice, sugar and spice—" Into the throes, she was fighting hard for it, convulsing on the floor like some great pale fish. It wasn't uncommon. This part frequently reminded Arthur of when he'd fished for 'striper' with his dad, the way they'd turn this way and that, frantically darting about hoping to catch you on a stump or snap your line. Bass were stupid. Frequently, they'd just end up making the whole thing worse, come out of the water sporting a broken mouth and shredded gills. Girls were sometimes lot like fish. Molly was. In her thrashing, she ripped the opening wider and more of her than need be gushed out onto the tarp.

Souls were fast little devils, tricky, and while they weren't exactly smart, they were cunning, just like those striper bass. This one was an especially devious one, and it darted back and forth, leading Arthur this way and that. On a lesser angler, it might have worked, but Arthur was seasoned. He knew when to zig, when to zag, and he kept his hand firm enough to be secure but loose enough not to get caught bearing down and lose it. The back of his hand pushed against the inside of Molly's skin, and he could see the outline of his knuckles pressing up when he entered the cramped area. He stayed patient, let the soul tire itself out. Let it run. There was a bit of splashing and only the faintest gasps and a murmur of a single word.

"Sugar...sugar...sugar."

With one last gambit, Molly's soul tucked in on itself, end-to-end and shot straight up into her chest, through the narrow path. In the early days, that might have been enough to get free, but now, Arthur knew simply to follow, which he did, jerking his hand past the lungs, right up to the heart, fast enough and hard enough that he heard the cracking of ribs.

It was the last sound Molly McMillan ever made. There were no more gasps. No more repeating of rhymes. No more anything.

Arthur didn't notice. He had his catch.

Gently and slowly, he brought it forth, out of her sternum and up to his face, his fist still clenched around it. A lot of people wouldn't have been able to see it, might have even argued that it wasn't there, but to Arthur it was a glowing light, radiating through the cracks in his fingers, so bright and so pure that even partially blocked it forced him to squint just to look at it. Still, he had to check; they were all different.

With one hand clasped over the other, he made a sort of tunnel with the areas between his thumbs and index fingers, then, pressing one eye to the end of the tunnel, he gradually relaxed his grip enough so that he could see her soul, which he examined gleefully and with great fascination, like a child who had captured a firefly.

He was not disappointed. Molly's soul was an exceptional specimen, shiny, so shiny in parts that it threatened to blind him, and warm and white, like irradiated milk. There was no tarnish--Arthur attributed this to her virginal status—and it almost hummed with untapped energy. It had been long since he had seen its equal.

So close. She had been so close.


The Grimm Reaper



Feeling momentarily sad, Arthur spared a glance to the wrecked body he had pulled it from. It was exposed now, open and empty, like a lake that had been dredged and left to dry in the hot summer sun of her living room lamp light. She had been pretty, hadn't she? Cute? It seemed as if she had been. It was hard to remember. He almost missed her liveliness for an instant. He felt, well, not guilt, but something close—almost guilt, the way someone feels when one remembered how perfectly shaped an egg had once been before they cracked it open to make an omelet.

Then he remembered the way she had said "upstairs", and the almost-guilt disappeared. A disgusted look crawled across his face and he forced himself to stay happy in the moment. It was such a special moment for Arthur. He focused once more on the precious treasure in his hand. No, far better that he had removed such a wonderful gift from its unworthy shell. Far better to eat the omelet.

He tightened his grip.

Arthur sat on the couch and carefully unbuttoned his pants with the hand not holding the soul, careful when sliding them down not to get any of the splatter clinging to them on the couch. Underwear followed, tight and white and now spotted with red. The Viagra was still working its magic and his excitement sprang up and bobbed slightly as soon as his briefs came off. With great deliberateness and care, he brought his fist parallel to his hard arousal, and then--in a quick but controlled manner, efficient and tight to keep the soul from escaping--he wrapped his bloody fingers around the girth of his manhood, trapping the glowing brightness against his sex.

Slowly, at first, he began to stroke himself. The slickness from the blood helped, and the heat from Molly's soul sent tingles through his body. More than at any other time, Arthur felt right, basking in the shaky illumination of that soothing light. Each stroke sent rays of it bouncing across the room, across him, across what had been Molly. They all seemed connected in that purifying glow, all of them perfect, all of them fresh and new.

Happiness spread through him from that spot of contact with the soul, swam in his veins, up his body, down his legs, fluttered his heart before emerging from his throat in a long, droning satisfied moan—a joyful, peaceful, contented sound. Just as quickly, it fell back down his esophagus, climbed up his legs to his groin and out through his penis.

Happiness shot from him, an explosion of it, and Arthur reveled in the slick warmth on his hands, the play of light, the reaffirming sound of his own achievement. Desperately, he wanted to make it last, and he milked it firmly and rigorously until happiness barely leaked from him, and then ceased to drip at all.

Opening his hand, he saw the crimson-smeared skin of his penis, more pink now combined with his happy mixture, but no light. It had been extinguished in the rubbing. It always was.

This was the hardest part: the death of that sweet light, snuffed out like a fairy, a flying little beam of hope.

Arthur Rosenbaum hated when he thought of them like fairies. He was quite fond of fairies, and seeing the little souls in that way, well, it made him sad.

Arthur was quite tender-hearted, and he showed it by sitting on the couch naked and streaked with blood, crying softly over the death of what had never been a fairy, in an apartment that had once been Molly McMillan's.

Nothing would be Molly's again. Not even her soul. It was Arthur's now, just another winged memory--a happy thought.

When he was through mourning the fairy that wasn't a fairy, he dressed and went about concluding the ritual.

Everything had a point, a place. An artist had to clean-up afterward. Sloppy clean-up led to fame and newspapers, and Arthur no longer courted that kind of mainstream appeal. They would start calling him that name again. The one he hated.

It would be enough if he alone knew. Art for art's sake. That was the truest expression.

He showered in her bathroom, noticing as he did the hasty way she had left her own clothing strewn on the floor. He sneered once more at her hurry to debase herself. Strange that one so whorish had contained such a beautiful glow.

When he was done, he used the cleaning supplies in his bag to thoroughly scrub everything: the shower, the carpet--everything. Oxiclean, he found, was as good as anything. Sham Wows, too.

Arthur had trouble sleeping sometimes, and often found himself watching late-night infomercials. Contrary to what most people thought, the products were generally top-notch, and could handle most any job, no matter how messy. Just like the enthusiastic gentlemen on the televisions said they would. A portable Dirt Devil sucked up anything he had missed.

Pausing, Arthur knelt over the former Molly one last time. Not to mourn, or grieve, but rather to read. He traced his fingers from the first line, Next to a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children. The boy's name was Hansel and the girl's name was Gretel. He had but little to eat, and once, when a great famine came to the land, he could no longer provide even their daily bread. It started behind her left ear and ended at the middle of her neck, all the way to, My tale is done. A mouse has run. And whoever catches it can make for himself from it a large, large fur cap. Which ended with a firm period on her right calf.

When finished, he made a satisfied noise then rolled her body up, making sure to fold the tarp as he did in a manner that ensured that the blood would stay neatly packaged with the body and prevent any unsightly spills. Even Oxiclean had its limits.

A casual walk to his car proved uneventful. In his experience, Arthur found that people in movies and on television tended to greatly exaggerate the need for stealth—most people simply didn't care what you were doing unless you advertised it. Acting like you belonged went an awfully long way, he had found. All of the way, in most instances. A well-placed fib usually covered any additional ground required. Few would pursue it any further. People liked watching shows about being perceptive and investigatory far more than doing the leg-work, it turned out.

There was no furtive drive to where he worked at the garbage site, either. Arthur drove the speed limit, even a bit over it at times, with the windows down and Frank Sinatra's "Young at Heart" blaring out into the night. The world didn't know what he had in the trunk of his car. The world didn't care.

His key unlocked the gate at the dump and a code let him into the area where the toxic waste was disposed. He was careful that the barrels were always properly sealed and that the coded numbers always matched, always came in the right order. After that, it took just a bit of strength and remembering to lift with his legs for Arthur to have what used to be Molly floating indelicately in the vat of medical waste that was to be buried the next day, her hand perhaps pushing somewhere on the other side of the thick opaque plastic. The biohazard sign on the side of the barrel would do most of the work; human indifference would do the rest. Another can of soup into the ground, a remembered moment of warmth for Arthur, a ration for a rainy day.

When the headlights of his Mercury finally kicked back on, the results of his date were sealed in only one barrel among many, no different than any other apart from the particular string of numbers and letters that ran around the top.

Nobody said goodbye to him as he exited the dump. No one cheered as he relocked the gate and drove off into the last hours of Friday night. There was no fanfare for the departing writer. Another project completed, another heroic deed accomplished, and the world went on sleeping, unaware of how it benefitted from the genius of Arthur Rosenbaum.

Arthur didn't like to use the word "hero" when referring to himself, but, he had to admit, that it sort of fit. It was a thankless job, creating art, purifying the corrupt. But where would the world be without him? These women—he hesitated to call them that—would just be running around, spreading their sin, their filth.

No, they weren't like women at all, not the way women were supposed to be: innocent, pure, modest and sweet. They were more like a disease, a plague of locusts, gobbling up anything they could get their hungry, dirty little mouths on. Arthur knew what they wanted in those mouths and it made him sick.

Locusts, that's what they were. And he was like a spider. No one ever appreciated spiders, because sometimes, in going about their important work helping to cull unwanted elements, they could look a little scary to the uninformed. But Arthur wasn't scary. He was really very nice, a nice, well-meaning spider spinning his web of words.

Oooh, like Charlotte, from Charlotte's Web! Yes, a spider, that's exactly what he was. He very much liked that idea, and drove for sometime, thinking, smiling, imagining people gathering around to see his words suspended in skin the way that the heroic Charlotte's had been suspended in silk. He was just trying to save people, too, but from themselves. If he could find a woman like Wilbur—well, not as fat as Wilbur, preferably, but Arthur was willing to make concessions—he and she would be happy just like in that novel. She would be good of heart, just like that "special pig", and would be unburdened by all of that awful guilt that the women he met carried around.

This idea filled Arthur with joy. Despite everything, all his failed searching, he still believed wholeheartedly in fairy tales, in happy endings. And he wanted so passionately to be a character in one of his beloved children's stories, but could never decide which one. Maybe Charlotte was his character. Oh, how he loved those stories. You could learn all there was to know about life from a children's story. Arthur believed that. Completely.

It wasn't until later in the drive that he remembered something that caused him to rethink his sudden association with the beloved arachnid from that most famous of books: Charlotte died at the end.

****

When driving home from work, Arthur generally took the shortest route and was usually at his house within ten minutes. One of the reasons he had selected the quaint little two bedroom ranch was precisely because of its proximity to the dump--a feature that, for most, made the property less desirable and lowered the asking price a bit. The neighbors often complained about the smell, which you could catch very clearly on the autumn breeze if the wind shifted and you stood in exactly the right spot on his porch. Arthur knew this spot well. Truth be told, he often sought it out, purposely standing there, sometimes for the better part of an hour, letting that rancid odor waft up his nostrils. For most, the smell brought merely revulsion, but for Arthur, it brought memories, old stories, some he had written long ago when he first started working at the site almost thirty years ago, blowing back to him. That rancid smell was a library to him, and he perused it lovingly. He was smelling the odor of his life. Arthur couldn't get enough of the scent.

For this same reason, after making a drop-off, he would always take a different, much longer way home, down Old River Road. It ran around the dump in something of a circle. Well, an oval now. As the dump had grown too large for its original confines, new zoning had been commissioned and new land bought, and it had expanded significantly on its eastern side, making the site something of an oblong shape. The road had been moved and repaved accordingly.

Why it was called Old River Road, Arthur was unsure, as the creek that dribbled along was nothing resembling a real river, nor was it very old. It was just a wretched little run-off, really, like the dark water that came from his gutters after a good cleaning, a dank little ditch that sometimes filled with refuse and rain water and circled the dump like a stagnant moat. This was befitting the great mound of garbage that, in his mind, he had taken to calling "The Glass Castle", in reference to its height and the way the sunlight often played off the generous littering of glass bottles and reflective bits of metal.

There were even sentinels from time to time, crows and scavenging birds that would man the battlements and call out warning cries to each other when intruders, namely the sanitation workers, would approach. Arthur liked this idea. Many of the best fairy tales featured castles, often a prince, or a dragon that billowed out smoke—much like the great incinerator on the north-side did, like a great sleeping beast that hoarded garbage. Most dragons preferred treasure, but what was it that they said about one man's trash? Maybe this dragon was fond of aluminum cans and bottle caps.

Many such stories involved a bewitched princess, a sleeping beauty. This one, his tale, featured several sleeping beauties.

They called to him as he drove around the winding little road parallel to the sputtering drainage creek. He knew it was silly, but as he entered each new section, he could have sworn that he smelled the scent of each woman: Meredith, who had been a dance instructor, and her faint scent of baby powder, treatment for the way her thick thighs had chafed when she moved; Abigail, and the spicy smell of chilis that always clung to her hair after she got off her job at Chipotle; Sue, with her constant chewing of her too strong wintermint gum to hide the sweet decay of her halitosis.

It should have been quite impossible—of that, he was sure—like picking out the scent of one overly-ripe banana over the combined stink of a thousand. Still, some part of him insisted that it was true. That he could differentiate them, entombed as they were beneath several tons of compacted refuse. He was attuned to them, to the smell of his accomplishments and the stench of their failures. He could smell them, just like he could see the souls.

Each one was different, a unique shade, a definitive brightness, some cracked and tarnished, others nearly right, like Molly's had been. All of them, however, had been ultimately flawed. If he were being honest, he would have admitted that he remembered the little balls of light more clearly than he did the women—the way that they had felt against his skin, how they had made him happy, the way they had eventually winked out.

They were all imitations. False princesses. They would never have been able to get their fat, ugly feet into the glass slipper. But there was one out there who would, and she would be pure like Snow White, beautiful like Belle, and adventurous like Ariel. He would know her and she would know him, and they would dance on air. Her soul would shine a brilliant, undiluted white and it would never wink-out, no matter how hard he rubbed.

And Arthur wouldn't even need to take hers out to feel it. He'd be able to see it glowing in her chest, and feel it, warm and soothing even through her skin, so hot that no polyethylene barrel could block out the heat.

He was so focused on the idea of her that he almost missed the actuality of her.

The tail end of his way home always took him past the old elementary school, which had been shut down decades ago. The children, more specifically the children's parents, didn't seem to have the same affinity for the garbage smell. And there were health concerns about the smoke from the incinerator and the runoff from the creek. The dump was no place for innocents.

He barely ever noticed the school anymore. It was a little hard to even see, even under a moon that was as full and pale as a well-fed tick, half-shrouded by the nearby woods that grew thick around the mountain of refuse. Gray limbs, twisted and thick from supping on the putrid strength of the runoff from the creek, obscured most lines of sight. Barely visible through the tangle, the old yard had stood empty for so long, just a ramshackle building and the skeletal remains of a playground. Even the crows, who seemed to nest and perch everywhere near the trash site, avoided it. No crumbs in a graveyard.

It was the color that drew Arthur's attention. A bright red, streaking forward before disappearing behind a tree a second later. He thought he imagined it--surely nothing so vibrant could live in such a gray, lifeless place—but it reappeared an instant later and then vanished once more, just as quickly. It took him a minute to figure it out: someone was playing on one of the old swings.

The gravel driveway into the school had long since been overgrown, but with care, Arthur managed to maneuver his car along the bumpy path. Peering through the trees as he steered, he kept his focus on the crimson flare. It was almost like a fishing lure, jigging back and forth under the shadow of The Glass Castle. Arthur swam after it readily.

Eventually, the car circumvented the cover of the trees and the driveway meandered into what was once the parking lot, but was now a grassy, spongy field. Free from obstacles, Arthur just sat in the car and watched the swinger from the comfort of his vehicle.

Though he had pulled fairly close to the playground, the girl on the swing gave no sign that she recognized his presence. She was young, in her early twenties probably, but dressed to look even younger, in a loose-fitting plain, white t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts with a flower design on one leg, rolled up to the upper portion of her thigh. Over the top of this, she wore a neon red, synthetic windbreaker, unzipped in the front. Her hair, which was a dirty blonde, the color of dry mustard, and pulled into pigtails. A pair of worn sandals flapped about on her feet, threatening to fly off with every swing. Her feet, which were encrusted with dirt, probably from walking in the woods, peeked through the old leather straps. She wiggled her toes at the apex of her swings, as if she were having the most fun she had ever had.

She still gave no indication that she noticed him or his vehicle.

Arthur immediately liked her.

Arthur stopped the engine but left the headlights on so that he could see. Getting out of his car, he slammed the door hard, hoping that the noise might cause her to acknowledge him. When it didn't, he just stood awkwardly, unsure of how to proceed. He must have stood there silently for the better part of five minutes, shuffling his feet, casting a long shadow in the glare of the Mercury's lights.

He didn't always know what to say to people. First lines were the worst. Eventually, after what was probably far too much deliberation, he decided on an approach. "Nice night for a swing, huh?"

The wind blew and the forest came alive with the sound of branches.

The girl didn't answer. Thinking she was ignoring him, he began to feel a pressure building in him and briefly thought about simply getting in his car and driving away to escape it. He might have, but there was just something about this girl. He repeated the question, louder this time.

He was rewarded with an upward glance and a, "What?"

"A swing. A nice night for it, huh?"

"A what?" She was cupping one hand to her ear and motioning him forward with the other.

Arthur walked forward, then hesitated and backpedaled a step before continuing on. "Swinging, I said. A good night."

He was still some distance away and the girl again couldn't quite make out what he was saying. "Oh. Goodnight to you, too." A little wave, and on she went swinging.

"No. Not "goodnight". It's a good night. For swinging." He was right up next to her, but his nervousness was so great that he couldn't even face her, and kept his face half-buried in the shoulder of his button-up Van Heusen shirt when she looked at him.

Her eyes were a cloudy shade of amber, glassy like an agate marble, with eyebrows much darker than her hair that formed the slightest bit of a unibrow. Arthur was never socially graceful, but he was usually better than this.




The Grimm Reaper



"Ahhh," she finally said. "I like swinging. It's fun."

"Yes, yes, very fun."

Arthur just stood as the girl swung. She was now knocking her feet together at the height of her swings. This sent a shower of dirt raining down with each clap. Arthur said the only thing he could think of.

"Your feet are really dirty." It was a stupid thing to say and he immediately regretted it. As far as opening lines went, insulting the hygiene of a girl's feet had to be among the worst. He rubbed the thumb of his right hand against his palm trying to recapture just a sliver of the peace and happiness he had felt earlier at Molly's. His hand felt wrinkled and old. Surely this beautiful, fun-loving creature would have no need of a man with such old, wrinkly hands. He turned to go, shuffling awkwardly back to the waiting Cougar. He was brought sharply back around by her cry of dismay.

"Oh no, you're right!" She had now stopped her swinging and sat with her legs fully extended, toes up examining her feet with a look of fear on her face. "My daddy would be terribly upset with me. I'm always getting myself in the worst messes."

And just like that she burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands and sobbing hard enough that the swing once again began to move slightly back and forth.

Arthur was at a loss. What an odd girl.

He had a cousin, Sarah, who had a face like a moon pie and the mind of a child. Arthur had always liked Sarah, and the two got along great. In fact, when Sarah became angry one Thanksgiving and put her fist through a window out of frustration when they had unexpectedly run out of cranberry sauce at dinner, it was Arthur who sat with her on the couch and watched Snow White until she was calm enough so that her bloody hand could be wrapped in gauze. She was so distracted by his explanation of the dwarves and their various characteristics that she was practically tranquil. Arthur enjoyed telling her, and had been a little sad when the ambulance finally showed up to take Sarah to the hospital.

The swinging girl reminded him of his cousin. Something around the eyes, where everything didn't seem to quite lock into place. Except that where Sarah was a great hulking ox of a girl, this pigtailed wisp was slender and beautiful. She didn't talk like Sarah either, whose voice was too slow and too long and too loud. And Arthur couldn't image this one punching out a pane of glass over a blob of gelatinous fruit.

He walked back over and raised his hand to touch her shoulder, to comfort her as he had seen people in movies do, but stopped just short of lowering his hand. It seemed wrong somehow, invasive.

"Well," he finally said. "They aren't THAT dirty. I've seen dirtier." It was all he could think of to say.

"You have?" The girl brightened considerably at this.

"Oh, yeah. Much dirtier."

"Really?" She had stopped crying and was now wiping the wetness away from her cheeks. She was so beautiful. "You aren't just saying that?"

"No, not at all. I've seen feet twice as dirty. Three-times as dirty." The girl laughed. Arthur wanted her to keep laughing, to keep liking him so he continued. "Ten-times as dirty. I knew a girl whose feet were just little mud balls with toenail polish on them."

"You're silly." Arthur's face dropped. He didn't want to be silly. He wanted to be charming. Seeing his expression, she added, "I like silly." Not knowing what else to do, he waited several seconds and then used his two index fingers to pull open his mouth so that he could stick out his tongue and make a funny face. Arthur felt like an imbecile but the beautiful girl laughed again, a musical sound that mingled with the metallic jingle of the swing chains and the rattle of the branches in the breeze. Hearing that, he was content to be an imbecile for the rest of his life.

"I'm Rowan," she said, making a business-like expression and extended one rust-streaked hand. When Arthur shook it, she couldn't maintain her seriousness any longer and exploded in amusement once more. The older man had no idea what was so funny but he desperately wanted her to like him so he laughed too.

"Arthur," he replied, once she had settled down.

"Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. Aaaaaarrrrrthhhhhhhuuuuurrr. Ar-thur. Arth-ur." She said his name quickly, then slowed it down, spread it out. Tried it on like a new glove, stretched it in every way imaginable. After getting the shape of it she said, "Arthur," and nodded as if accepting that it was, in fact, his name. Then, before he could say anything else, she added, "I'm hungry, Arthur. Do you like peanut butter and jelly?"

Arthur did like peanut butter and jelly, and told her so. In response, she dipped back and shot forward a few times, rattling the chains and surprising Arthur with her aggressive swinging before suddenly springing into the air, only to land an instant later in a mud puddle a few feet away. The impact of which coated her feet and sent brown water sloshing onto Arthur's Dockers. This would have normally displeased him--Arthur was a meticulous man--but he didn't have time to think on it as, a second later, he was darting forward to steady Rowan as she seemed certain to lose her footing and fall back into the mud. His dress shoes were poorly suited to such a task, however, and he found himself slipping also. When he reached the girl he succeeded only in sending them both tumbling to the muddy ground.

All her previous amusement had just been a prelude to the giggle she let out as they both sat, propped up on their hands, illuminated by headlights, in the cold yuck of the puddle. Arthur tried to give her a stern look but her grinning face, speckled with mud, was so honestly pleased and joyful that he couldn't manage. Moments later, Arthur was laughing too. This time, he got the joke.

They fell twice more--once, Arthur was fairly sure, Rowan caused on purpose--before, hands and arms entwined, they managed to use each other as fulcrums and stand up. The older man's shirt was a mess and the backs of his thighs were soaked and chilly with puddle water. The blonde pointed and laughed at his wet bottom and then turned around and asked if hers was similarly damp.

Being such a thin girl, her butt was modest but well-shaped, and absolutely caked with mud. Arthur could barely make out the raised flower pattern on her back pockets that matched the design on the front under all of the filth. When he didn't immediately answer, Rowan flipped up her jacket and t-shirt revealing the skin of her lower back and looking over her shoulder with a questioning expression. "Well?"

Arthur felt his masculinity stir at the sight of her flesh, the smooth and supple curve of her back above the waistband of her jeans and the perfect sculpting of her mud-splattered slender thighs shooting out from the legs of her shorts. And in between, the allure of her bottom.

Even without the blue magic, Arthur felt himself swell a little for the charming waif with the sleighbell laugh. He searched her eyes for any sign of seduction but found none. She was completely unaware of what she was doing to him.

"No," he said with a blush. "You're perfect."

She flashed him a wolf's grin and skipped over toward a pair of large stumps.

"Where are you going?" Arthur asked.

"To get lunch, silly."

"Lunch? It's after midnight."

"My daddy said lunch is any meal that keeps you from starving but leaves you wanting more. Don't matter what time it comes." She sat on one of the stumps and then, reaching behind it, produced a small Igloo cooler. She motioned to the other stump and called out to Arthur, "Aren't you eating?"

Arthur walked over, moving awkwardly with his wet pants and pausing once to pull the fabric from between his buttcheeks. Sitting on the empty stump he asked the girl, "Do your parents live around here? Do you? This is an odd place to swing. Why are you out here?"

She pressed the release button and slid the cooler, revealing the silvered sheen of a Capri Sun, a sandwich in a baggie, a Snack Pack pudding, a butter knife and a spoon. "Not far. And what's so odd about it? Why're here, if it's so odd?"

There was a defensive edge to her voice, and Arthur worried that he had offended her. "I wasn't saying...." He trailed off and said nothing more while she retrieved the baggie and swooshed it around in her hands. She undid the Ziploc and tore the pb&j as evenly as she could. She wasn't particularly successful and the whole process ended up being fairly messy. When she extended a smushed and ripped up bit of sandwich toward Arthur, peanut butter clung to her index finger and jelly leaked down her wrist.

The middle-aged man looked down at his filthy hands and then back at the sandwich half. Rowan gave him an exasperated look. Not wishing to further offend, he hastily wiped what muck he could off on his pants and took the offering. She didn't immediately take a bite of her half and he realized that she was waiting for him as if he were a guest. He chanced a nibble and found the bread somewhat soggy and the peanut butter of less than stellar quality. Lying, he said, "Yum," and nodded a thank you toward her. Still she did not eat.

Arthur waited, sure he had done something wrong. Eventually, she said "I don't like the crust." Arthur waited again. He nodded blankly. Rowan raised her eyebrows.

"Oh?" Arthur smacked his lips and looked at her curiously. "Oh!" He finally figured it out. Lying his sandwich on his knee, he reached into the cooler and picked out the butter knife. Moving slowly, still uncertain if he was getting it right, he took her half from her and, setting it on his other knee, did his best to cut off the crust with the knife. It was sloppy work in the indirect light of the Mercury's headlights and his knee was a less than ideal surface, but he managed to separate the crust and hand her back a trimmed piece. By this point, the scrap of sandwich, between the tearing and the cutting, was just a clump of bread and goo but Rowan smiled with pleasure when she took a bite. She chewed loudly and with relish and when she spoke Arthur could see food in her mouth. "Thank you. My daddy used to do that for me."

"My mother too," said Arthur.

"Is your mother living?"

"No." Arthur frowned at this. He had been what some people called a mama's boy, sleeping in the same bed as his mother up until he was twelve. Even then, he cried when she forced him to sleep in his own, by then, too-small sailboat bed, with its nautical designs and lighthouse covers. It was his erections that ruined it. His mother hated his erections. Arthur grew to hate them too. He still did. Maybe that's why they rarely came around anymore without assistance.

"Mine neither. What happened to your mom?" A spurt of raspberry jam oozed out onto her cheek and she tilted her head this way and that trying to get it to drip back into her mouth. Arthur wanted to help, to use his finger to scoop up the sugary spread and place it on her tongue, but he resisted the urge. She would have been powerfully offended by such an act. And if she wasn't, he then would be.

"Stroke." Arthur answer as if it had been only the one, but that wasn't the truth.

The first one had set her to pouring orange juice on her cereal and eating it with a fork. She averaged one every couple of months for two years after that. Her eleventh had reduced her to singing the alphabet out of rhythm and rarely finishing the whole song. Arthur, who had moved her into his house by the dump at that point despite recommendations from the doctors, would spend his evenings after work when he didn't have a date singing with her and then carrying her to his bed at the conclusion of the night.

By day, she sat in the green chair by the window and sang and shit herself while the television blared. Until one day she got to "T" and no further. He still carried her into his bed for days after. He lay next to her as her body stiffened then grew supple once more. Arthur stayed stiff the entire time. No magic needed. "Yours?"

"They both died in an accident. You remind me of my daddy a little. You got the same hair."

Arthur touched the remnants of his hair. Just the slightest pressure yielded the feel of his scalp. He'd gone gray early, in his thirties, and turned toward snow before his season. He had little more than white fuzz at this point. He was a dandelion in a muddy dress shirt.

Digging into the cooler, Rowan grabbed the Capri Sun. After tearing the plastic wrapping off with her teeth, she twirled the pointed straw in her fingers and made a show of stabbing at the silver pouch. No matter the force of her attempt, the curve of the container seemed to deflect her attacks. If she hadn't looked so earnest, her tongue hanging out one side of her pretty mouth in concentration, Arthur might have laughed. She still had jam on her face. If she focused much harder she might taste it.

After watching her struggle for about a half a minute, he stuffed the remainder of his sandwich in his mouth and held his hands out for the pouch, his eyes questioning above his bulging cheeks.

She smiled broadly, revealing a raspberry seed stuck between her two front teeth, and shoved the drink into his hands. When he speared the entry hole with a single well placed thrust she clapped her hands together rapidly and said, "Goody, goody, goody."

Having never heard a real-live person say the phrase, Arthur found himself even more smitten. He handed her the pouch and gave her his best smile, which wasn't all that great as far as smiles went. Crinkling the pouch, she sucked so hard that she went fish-faced when she took her first drink and the older man's smiled grew large enough to hurt his face.

"Mmmmm! Very Berry, my favorite!" With the Capri Sun more than half-gone after the first drink, she extended it back to Arthur. He took a sip while she held it in her outstretched hand. When he couldn't get at the liquid and produced only slurping noises, she gave it a squeeze and shot a burst of sweetened liquid into his mouth, surprising him and causing him to gush fluid out of his nose and cough violently. It burned his nasal passages and tasted like chemicals and flavored chapstick.

"Good, huh?" she asked without a hint of sarcasm. Arthur could only manage a strangled noise and a thumbs-up. He would have guzzled a gallon of Very Berry to spend another second in the light of her smile.

Arthur was very much in love by this point. Like he had been with Molly earlier in the evening.

Except that Rowan was different. He was certain of it. Still, he had to be sure. Unable to help himself, he just blurted it out.

"Rowan, do you know what a blowjob is?"

The young girl in the little girl outfit turned a deep shade of scarlet. When she nodded, Arthur's heart sank. "Uh huh, but proper girls aren't supposed to do it. Do you want me to show you?"

The older man's eyes went sad and he nodded. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the two wolf heads on his black bag slid past each other with a click.

"Well, do you?" She seemed nervous and embarrassed. At least she had that decency, Arthur thought. He couldn't bear to vocalize his disappointment so he nodded, already thinking about how he was going to grab her wrists together and force her to the ground. At least the dump was just through the woods. He'd have to ready another barrel. No rest for the righteous.

She locked eyes with him, all seriousness. For the first time, she seemed her actual age, an adult. She was almost sultry. It was awful. Then she leaned forward with exaggerated slowness, her lips opening, her tongue darting out.

Arthur hated her now. Hated her worse than all of the others combined. She was the trickiest yet. Only the thought of how bright her soul might glow if properly extracted keep him from grabbing her by the hair and smashing her brains out on the stump.

Bent forward, she looked up at him, her face between his chin and his lap. She gave a shy smile. "I can't do it with you looking. Close your eyes," she said.

He did and began counting down from five. He would have to stun her. One blow to the side of the temple should do it, small girl like her. Then he could get his tools and---

The sound was almost deafening. His eyes shot open and he saw her inches from his face, Capri Sun and straw held to his left ear, just blowing with everything she had. The pouched was expanded near to the point of bursting. With a quick inhale she brought it back to a crumple. Then she puffed out again. Each time it made the same rude noise. She did it for the better part of a minute, playing it like an instrument while Arthur looked on incredulously.

Rowan only stopped when she grew lightheaded. Arthur felt a little lightheaded himself.

After she was done she did her best to hide her giggles and look contrite. "I'm sorry. I know that's not proper manners for a young lady. Daddy used to yell at me for doing it at the table."

"A blowjob. A blowjob?" Arthur nodded the admission out of her. When she gave a guilty acknowledgment he started to giggle too. "A blowjob. THAT was a blowjob.?"

"Yep."

Arthur stared. She stuck her tongue at him. It was purple. He returned the gesture. She let him know that his was as well. They both giggled until Arthur feared he might urinate.

She was the funniest, most perfect girl in the entire world, he decided. He was going to marry her and they were going to have a dozen babies. And she was going to be the best mother ever. Arthur was sure of it.

The wind picked up again, running through the trees and causing as much racket as a set of cans tied to a limousine. Too much racket, actually. Arthur looked up and noticed them for the first time.

It wasn't only branches that were rattling, as he thought earlier, but windchimes, dozens of them, hanging from boughs and small limbs alike. Many of them looked quite intricate, pale wood with the bark shaved off, though Arthur could see little detail that high up, out of the beams of his headlights. They clattered like drumsticks to a arrythmic beat, speeding up with the wind until they were as loud and long as a whip-poor-will. Arthur waited until it was quiet enough to speak and then asked, "How'd those get up there?"

Rowan turned shy again, averting her eyes. After dropping the shriveled Capri Sun into the cooler, she lifted out the pudding and the spoon.

"You?" Arthur was incredulous.

She nodded and used the tip of her tongue to try to leverage up the foil that covered the top of the Snack Pack.

Arthur looked up again, noting the height. Some of them were hung what must have been a hundred feet up. He watched the girl as she put the raised edge of the metallic cover in her mouth and tore it open with one quick motion. "Wow," was all he could say.

Rowan turned the foil around and licked the sweetness that clung to its underside. "I'm a real good climber. Just like Jack Spriggins with his enchanted bean."

Arthur's heart grew two sizes and it still wasn't enough to contain the swell of love that he experienced. "You like fairy tales?" He asked the question so quickly and with such excitement that the syllables threatened to run past each other and turn his words to gibberish.

"What's a fairy tale?" Rowan extended a spoonful of pudding toward Arthur's mouth, who brushed it away, too excited by the turn in the conversation.

"A fairy tale. A fable. You know, a legend?"

She gave a suit-yourself shrug of her shoulders and ate the spoonful of pudding. "Old-timeys? Marchens?"

Arthur gave her a blank look.

In response, Rowan drew herself up, spine straight ,and made as severe of an expression as her little girl face would allow. "Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of a Puritan. Be he alive, or be he dead. I'll grind his bones to make my bread." Then she plunged her spoon into the pudding and took an oversized bite, looking as fierce as she could manage, before she laughed at her own joke, mouth wide, tapioca balls stuck to her tongue like pearls in a clam.




The Grimm Reaper



She'd gotten the first part wrong, but Arthur didn't care. Here she was. He'd waited so long.

"Yes." Finally. His princess. "Do you know many?"

Arthur knew most of them. From obscure ones such as The Boy Who Drew Cats and Corvetto, to the well known classics like Rapunzel and The Billy Goats Gruff.

Rowan gave a sheepish look. "Pretty many. Even though daddy didn't like 'em none."

"He didn't like them?" Arthur couldn't imagine such a stupid man.

"He said they were a bad influence."

Arthur scoffed. "A bad influence? How?" He took exception to even the implication that such stories could be bad. An image of his mother reading to him when he was a child snuggled into his mind. Arthur curled into the crook of her arm, a Tiffany lamp casting a rainbow of light across the pages. Her breast pressing firmly against his cheek, separated only by the thin cotton of her nightgown. The Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing the scent of her Oil of Olay moisturizing cream into his nostrils.

"Well," Rowan said, looking just on the verge of shame. "My Granny was the one who would tell 'em to me."

"Why was that bad?"

There was real sadness in her eyes when she answered. Regret even. "She was like me. Touched."

Arthur looked into Rowan's big eyes. They were so round, empty of guilt, empty of guile. He felt like he might fall in. Even then, there would have been plenty of room. Touched in the head. "You mean...special?" He imagined the grandmother reading in his cousin Sarah's mongoloid voice.

The girl winced at the word. She had sense enough for that. Arthur regretted saying it. "Yeah. Special."

"Well," Arthur began, searching for the right thing to say. He was so bad at this. Just once, he wanted the words to come easy, like they did to him when he was working on skin. "You are special. Special special. Not special...you know."

She brightened a little, but seemed unconvinced. "You really think? Even if I'm...touched?"

"I know. I've known a lot of people. A lot of women." Arthur made a face. "Well, not like that. I don't mean like that."

"Like what?" Rowan seemed to be honestly asking.

"Nevermind," Arthur answered uncomfortably. "The point is, most women are ugly. Ugly inside. Monsters. You're...something different." The word came to him. "You're a princess."

"That's what Granny used to say." Rowan showed all of her teeth. Her smile was huge.

"Smart lady." It slipped out of him before he thought better. He hoped the young girl didn't overthink it.

She didn't. She never overthought anything. She just grinned and then grinned some more, then interspersed her grins with big bites of pudding. When she was down to the last bit, she scooped it off the sides of the plastic container and held it out once more toward her guest.

Arthur refused her pudding advances, and asked her the same question he asked every woman he dated, the same question he asked himself every day. "What fairy tale character would you be?"

This time, she refused to answer him until he took the bite. Moving the spoon in an erratic flight pattern, she brought it to his lips while making airplane noises. The wind shook the wind chimes and Rowan and he had a dogfight over dessert. The third time she pressed the coolness of the pudding to his lips, he begrudgingly swallowed it.

"Well?" he blurted before it was even all the way down his throat.

She pointed at him and pantomimed a disgusted face. "Ewww, you just ate birds' eyes. Ewwwwwww!"

Impatiently, Arthur grabbed her hands and held them tight. They were larger than he would have guessed, almost as long as his own, with dirty nails that she dug into his palms out of surprise. "Tell me," he said more urgently than he intended. "Just think about it."

Most girls picked one of the famous ones from the Disney movies.

Not Rowan.

She looked at him apprehensively. "I don't have to think. I know. Granny used to tell me."

"Which story?"

"My story."

"Your story?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

"Granny told it better. She'd always tell it the same way. We'd sit in our special chairs and she'd say to me, 'Rowan Griswold, did you hear it tell that you're a princess, nice and true?' And I'd say, 'No Granny Griswold, I ain't never.' Even though, really, I had."

"Was she your mother's mother, then?" Arthur asked.

"Kind of...I called her Granny. She had a couple 'greats' in there, but she always told me she was an old woman with precious little time left and not given the luxury to suffer fools or formalities, so she had me call her Granny. She told a mighty story. Since she ain't here, I'll tell it best I can."

"You'll do great," Arthur said.

"I ain't so sure. When she was talking, I'd prompt her, as I was taught. She always liked me to ask her things, like she was calling out and I was answering. It took me a long time because Granny was hard to figure with her accent and I wasn't very quick to learn. But I ain't never told no Marchens to nobody before."

"Well, how did you prompt her?"

"I'd say, 'If I's a princess, how came I to be here?' That's how she talked. And when I was with her, I talked the same."

"What did she say?"

"She'd answer, 'Ain't no path too narrow under the light of the bright moon.'"

"Was she from the South?" Arthur asked.

"Back East," Rowan replied.

"Where back East? Connecticut?"

"Don't think so."

"You don't know?"

"Granny always said the same thing, 'We're from the old lands, from a time when the Rhine river was still Rain, the Griswolds was still Stumps, before there was white in my hair, or would have been yellow in yours, little Rowan. We were pureblood then. German. Tall and gray as the trees in that country, before my son Peter, your daddy's grandaddy, picked a poppy and brought that ruddy Irish blood to your cheeks and honey to your head. You's a mutt, but a cute one, and I love you fine, even if you's cursed as an owl at noon. 'Course, so am I,' she'd say."

"Cursed?" Arthur asked.

"I'll get to that." Rowan shot Arthur an irritated glance. "Granny said all stories was true. Every last one." Rowan fell into a singsong rhythm that said she'd heard this said the same way many times before and learned it by heart. 'She'd seen a bee sting anyone that came too close to the orange tree that it was in love with. Seen a girl dressed for a ball by doves and chosen as a queen for the way her foot smushed into a pair of squirrel fur slippers. Seen a goose the color of spun gold who caused laughing madness in anyone who slept on a pillow stuffed with its feathers.

"All true?" Arthur believed in fairy tales but not even he believed that much.

"To hear her tell it, each word in those old Marchens was gospel. Trouble was, everybody had the wrong hymn books. The stories people knew were just enough wrong that they didn't see the truth of them when they gawked it. More, the stories was always repeating. People just stumbled in and got tangled up in old yarns willy-nilly. Never even noticed for the most part, because it wasn't exactly the old-timey they knew."

"What does this have to do with you?"

"'Cause, Granny said I was one of the stumblers. Wasn't my fault for being the way I was or her being the same. We was both caught up in our stories."

Arthur was fascinated, but becoming frustrated with the runaround. "And what was your story?"

She sang on in the way she'd learned. "In the old country, there was a place called Old Rinkrank by some. It was a mountain of glass, tall and shiny in the sun. Even had a village built under it. Some called it Glasberg. Though Granny said the people living there now call it something else and they done cleaned all the glass off so it's just dirt and rock and boring stuff now."

Arthur looked over his shoulder at the dump and then raised an eyebrow at the girl.

"Granny said a handful of bad pennies like my family, with our history, couldn't help but settle here, under our own glass mountain. Strange calls to strange. Mama and daddy did what mamas and daddies do and I was born ill-fated as a stopped clock."

"How were you ill-fated? You mean because you're....?"

"Yep."

"Honey...." Arthur wasn't accustomed to feeling pity, but he felt it heavy in his breast listening to this sweet girl. "That's genetics and environmental factors. It's science. Not a curse."

She looked sad again for a second. "Daddy said that. Thought maybe they could fix me. Wanted to take me to special doctors. Granny said I didn't need to be fixed. I ain't very smart, but whether it's science or a curse don't make it no more fair."

Arthur felt so guilty that he didn't interrupt her again.

"In the old world, in the shadow of the glass mountain was a castle. Locked inside the castle, lived a cursed princess. Some will say enchanted, but it weren't so. It was cursed. On the mountain were apple trees, taller than any apple tree had a right to be, only instead of apples, they grew keys of ivory, each a different shape. Only one would fit the lock in the castle so that the princess could be set free.

"Many knights tried and failed to conquer the slickness of the mountain, and their armor littered the mountain. Metal on glass. Shine on shine.

"One knight made it halfway, but when he went for the top, he was attacked by the magical eagles that guarded the keys.

"Eventually, a prince happened along. He killed a mountain lion and used its claws to climb. Even still, he grew tired and rested on the slope. Sensing he was easy pickins, the eagles attacked. But the prince grabbed onto them and they, in trying to shake free, carried him to the top where he found the right key and entered the castle and saved the princess, breaking the curse."

Arthur had heard the story before, even if the details were slightly different. His mother had done the same thing, adjusting the tales to suit him. For a significant portion of his childhood, he actually thought he was King Arthur. He pictured a step-slow grandma doing the same for a big-eyed Rowan.

They were meant for each other. And if she were his princess....

"So," she asked bashfully. "I've been wondering...are you a prince? Did you come here to save me?"

She waited on his answer like a girl leaning out of a tower window. It was so clear now, who he was, what he was.

"Yes," he answered with no reservations.

Her saucer eyes were all excitement. "I knew it! My Granny said I'd would know my prince because he would love me for the real me. He'd be a gentleman and a knight and he'd watch over me when she was gone."

Most women grew uglier as he talked to them. Not so with Rowan. He looked at her full-on, with her thick eyebrows and jam-stained face. She was beautiful. He said the thing she most wanted to hear in the entire world. "Take me to your castle, my princess."

She nodded enthusiastically, then a concerned look cross her face and she looked up. "Okay, but shouldn't you find the right key?"

Arthur craned his neck up at the wind chimes and tried to determine how many seconds it would take for him to fall from the top of the canopy to the ground. "That's okay. I don't need it." Rowan eyed him skeptically. "Would your prince lie to you?"

Rowan turned the question over in her mind like a car with a broken timing belt. Her mind cranked and cranked but never got anywhere. Fingers still entwined with hers, he freed his thumb and used it to gently stroke the back of her hand. This seemed to calm her concerns where logic had failed.

They stood together, leaving the cooler where it lay, and, holding hands, Rowan led Arthur in the direction of the school. A few steps in and she changed to skipping. She urged her prince to do the same. He initially refused, but her youthful energy was infectious. By the time they reached the rusted side entrance of the school, the man the newspapers had once dubbed "The Grimm Reaper" was skipping as well, on knees that creaked like a dungeon door.

Neither thought to leave bread crumbs.

****

If laughter had ever filled the halls of the old school, it had peeled away with the paint on the walls. The outside had long ago found the inside and the only sound that echoed as Arthur and Rowan made their way, was the crunch of twigs under their feet and the cheerful mumble of the girl humming "Ring Around the Rosie".

The place was strong with the smell of animal urine and Arthur noticed raccoon droppings piled in the corners. Only a scattering of too small desks in the rooms they passed and a few surviving but faded handprints in various colors on the parts of the wall that were still covered gave any indication that this had once been a place for children.

It was hard to imagine anyone living here. It was the house from The Old Woman Who Lived in The Shoe foreclosed on by the bank and rented out by ghosts.

"You live here?" Arthur asked.

"Yep. Granny too before she passed."

"Your parents?"

"No. They lived in a house not far from here. They didn't come here unless they had to. Once a month or so. Granny took care of me most of the time."

A mentally-challenged girl left in the care of her mentally-challenged grandmother in the husk of a ruined school. Arthur wished he could have met Rowan's parents. Told them a story. Told a story with them.

She led the older man to a room unlike any of the others. There was no stink of urine, only the pungent scent of a kerosene lamp that sat on what was once a teacher's desk and filled the room with flickering light. The floors had been cleaned of debris and feces. In the middle of the room was a collection of tables that had been pushed together to make one big round one. Stacked high on the big table, were crayons of every imaginable color, scissors, bottles of paste at various levels of fullness. And plastered on the walls, affixed with copious amounts of Scotch Tape, were pictures of princes. There was Charming and Phillip, Prince Eric, Prince Adam, Aladdin, even the frog prince with his green skin.

Rowan had been waiting for him just as Arthur had been waiting for her.

She smiled and detached herself from him without a word. Sitting at the table, she gathered an assortment of crayons and, using one arm to shield her project from his view, began to scribble profusely on a blank piece of lined paper.

Arthur was content to just watch her at first. The light of the lamp seemed to cling to her, almost like she was glowing.

Arthur opened the compartment on his keys and shook out a blue pill into his hand, and then another just to be sure. They caught on the nervous lump in his throat and turned sour in his mouth. Tonight was the night.

After he had choked them down, he sat near her at the big table and began working on his own project. When she tried to peek, he admonished her and piled the unused supplies so that they created a fort around him to protect his privacy. Rowan giggled.

They worked like that for about fifteen minutes. The Viagra was giving him a headache and his vision had tinted blue by the time they were both through, but he hardly noticed. Arthur couldn't remember being happier.

She held up her coloring. It was a picture of her--Arthur could tell because of the pigtails--inside of a cage. A depiction of Arthur, dressed in white and with a frosting of pale hair, stood some distance away holding up a funny looking key. Rays of sunlight shot forth from it.

Arthur took the piece of art from her, folded it up, and placed it in the left-hand pocket of his shirt. Then made a show of patting it and rubbing it against his chest where his heart was. Rowan seemed pleased.

She seemed downright giddy when he showed her what he had made. It was a tiara of yellow construction paper, held together at the back by tape and a smear of paste. The points weren't even and the little gems he'd drawn on the front looked more like cherries than precious stones, but when he placed it on her head, she squealed with delight.

Then Arthur did something he never did; he made the first move. He kissed her. It was sloppy and she still tasted like pudding, but it was pure in every other respect.

It was the best kiss of his life. It was the first kiss that didn't make him sick.

His pharmacy-grade hardness stretched his pants. He reached for her.

"No 'ever after' yet," she said. "You have to climb into my room and rescue me first."

"Isn't this your room?" He was confused.

"My bedroom, silly. This is my playroom."

Arthur's need for her spurred him forward, his need for her glow.

They stood, left the room, and walked down the hall, with Rowan leading the way, her tiara bobbing on her head, Arthur's cock bobbing after it.

She led him to a an old iron door. It was rusted and the ground was covered in brown flakes from the opening and closing of it. A sign still affixed to it read, in barely legible letters, "Keep Out: Maintenance."

It took all of Rowan's strength to open it.

It was the boiler room.

Pipes that had once carried water to sinks and heat to classrooms criss-crossed the space. The entire area still smelled like grease and oil, though it had probably been some time since it had seen either. Wood smoke was heavy on the air, and Arthur could see light bouncing off the walls of an elevated section on the other side of the room. Must be a wood-burning stove or fireplace. It was noticeably hotter here than in the rest of the school, and the warmth had evidently attracted wildlife seeking a snug place to winter, as the animal stench was stronger here than anywhere.

It was hard for Arthur to see, but Rowan navigated the maze of valves and pipes by memory. She led him by the hand to the ladder, where she climbed up and he followed.

The smoke smell was coming from a furnace, into which a collection of logs had been stuck. The flames inside had begun to fade. Rowan fixed this by adding a log from a stacked pile and then prodding the wood with a pipe that leaned against the furnace. The fire huffed sparks and ash in annoyance at being awakened so abruptly, but, after a few pokes, was dancing energetically once more.

The room came into focus under its illuminating limbs.

The only thing that made it a "bedroom" was a worn old mattress shoved into one corner. Even in the dim light, it looked shabby and soiled. The stink of it threatened to overpower the smell of the burning wood. The only blanket on it was the tattered remains of a neon orange hunting coat.

A table stood to one side. On it were pots of all sizes. Arthur could see bits of old food stuck to the lips and sides of most of them. A shelf filled with books sat as far away from the fire as was possible.

Two chairs faced each other in front of the furnace, one large and the other small. They were bolted to the floor and the arms sported shackles. The locks of which were broken.

Arthur was dumbfounded.

"The chairs?"

"Granny's and mine." Her voice was sad.

"They locked you up. Your parents. The both of you. For being special?" What kind of people would...?

"They said they had to. It was for our own good."

"You poor thing." Arthur walked to the bookshelf and pulled a thick bound tome off of it. It was heavy in his hands, leather bound and thick. The pages were wavy and brown with age, stiff against his fingers. He opened it. On left-hand pages, in flowing script, were sentences in a language he didn't understand. The pages on the right had the story in English. He began reading.

"What will you give me if I spin the straw this time?"

"I have nothing more that I could give you," answered the girl.

The odd little man pointed to the swollen belly of the miller's daughter where her child grew.

The girl nodded. "Should I fetch a blade?"

"We will have no need of metal this night."

The man sat her in the chair next to the spinning wheel and reel. He lifted her dress until it bunched on her hips and her thighs were bare before him. He pressed his fingers together like he was diving into a lake and forged into her. The miller's daughter began lamenting and crying but the man took no pity on her.




The Grimm Reaper



He twisted this way and that. Her womanhood grew slick despite her fear. The burden in her belly grew heavier still, and so did her pleasure. The little man pulled both from her with both hands.

"Say my name. Say my name and give me what is mine."

The cries of new life echoed off the stone walls of the spinning room, and above even that, the woman's cries of pleasure.

"Rumpelstiltskin! Rumpelstiltskin!"

Rumplestiltskin? That wasn't right, thought Arthur.

He turned back toward Rowan and found her sitting in the smaller chair wearing an anxious expression. "Rowan," he asked. "Who wrote this?"

"Granny." Why did she seem so nervous. Was she sweating?"

Arthur glanced back at the elegant handwriting in two languages. "But your grandmother was slow."

Rowan snorted. "Granny was the smartest person I ever met."

"You said she was like you, touched in the head ."

Rowan looked right at him. "She was. Cursed. And it's not just the head, it's all of me."

"Cursed?" Something was wrong. This wasn't the right story. None of these were the right stories.

"Cursed." Rowan suddenly cried out in pain. Something moved beneath her skin. In the poor lighting Arthur could have sworn it was her bones. "We have to hurry up," she said.

The young girl's face was a mask of worry and swaying shadows..

"Rowan, those are just stories. They're not re--"

Her little finger on her right hand bent over itself and snapped back against the side of her hand. She screamed. "Use the key!"

Arthur looked at her. Really looked at her. He noticed her eyes, her teeth, remembered the feel of her hands in his own.

Arthur Rosenbaum was a calm man. He reminded himself of that several times. When he almost had himself convinced he asked her another question. "What happened to your grandmother, Rowan?"

Her voice sounded weird when she answered, as if it were coming from down deep in her chest. Too deep. Deeper than a little girl should have gone. Deeper than anyone human should go. "A hunter found her sleeping in the woods and cut her open. He fi--"

"Filled her belly with stones and sank her in the river." Arthur's voice sounded hollow in his ears. He glanced at the orange coat. "Your parents, what time of month did they come? What happened to them? What kind of accident was it?"

Rowan didn't answer except to let out another yell. No, not a yell. A howl. She was trembling. Her body seemed heavier and longer now. The chair was shaking from the force of her shuddering. The unlocked shackles jangled and flapped against the wood of the armrests. Her paper tiara tumbled to the ground, knocked off by her new ears. The thing that wasn't quite Rowan said, in a voice that wasn't quite Rowan's, "Use the key, my prince."

Only Arthur didn't have any key. Because he wasn't a prince. This wasn't a story about princes.

Arthur knew what character he was now.

He ran. Back toward the road, back toward the path he never should have left.

****

The school was dark, and without Rowan to lead him, Arthur stumbled and fell, banged his head on a pipe before he even made it out of the boiler room, stubbed his still erect dick on the door. He slipped in a pile of shit outside of the cafeteria and took a fall that swelled his wrist almost immediately. But he didn't dare stop.

He could hear her. He could smell her. Her scent was everywhere. It always had been.

He hit the double doors that opened to the playground as if he were shot from a gun. With legs that burned from age and exertion, he went full-bore toward his Cougar.

When he reached it, he stopped in his tracks.

Crows. They cocked their heads at him and cried their warning There must have been a hundred of them, so thick on his car that he could barely see a patch of beige beneath the black of their feathers and the white of their excrement.

The soldiers had come out to guard the exit.

Arthur made for the door and they came at him like a murder, swarming and pecking, driving him back with their talons and cawing laughter.

They took his will and a piece of his right ear. He hoped they'd simply carry him away, like in Rowan's story, but they showed him no such mercy.

The howling finally reached the open air of the outside.

Arthur had nowhere to go but up. He ran through the woods, lungs aching and blood rushing in his ears, toward the dump. Sure he'd never make it, he was shocked when he hit the slopes of trash.

Arthur tried to climb, but the mountain moved beneath him. No matter how vigorously he pumped his legs, he made only minimal progress. When he was barely a tenth of the way up, he came down hard on a piece of rebar. It pierced his calf and stuck out the other side.

Arthur screamed and fell and made it no further up the mountain.

Rowan emerged from the woods. A hirsute shape moving against the night, dark on dark. Only her eyes were the same, that unique amber color.

The mountain offered her no challenge, and she bounded up the sides on her thick, haunched legs. Arthur scooted on his butt like a crab, trying to scuttle up the side of the dump. All it earned him was a bottle cap-shaped tear in his palm.

When she stood right in front of him, backlit by the full of the moon, the thought occurred to him that she looked nothing like the stories said she did.

The muzzle wasn't as long as for one thing. And the face had none of a wolf's elegance. It was all teeth and stretched skin and spittle dripping from her chin.

She was tall, impossibly tall, and the joints of her arms and legs bent the wrong way. Still skinny, and not as hairy as he would have expected. Her ribs showed to the sides of a row of nipples caught somewhere between human and canine. Claws, long and twisted, jutted from knobby fingers and wide, padded feet.

There was an energy about her, a heat, some dark magic buried under her chest. It glowed like flame through her skin. It was hideous.

Caught without even a straw house, Arthur waited for the Big Bad Wolf to devour him.

But she didn't.

She tried to speak, but it was too garbled to comprehend.

She slid one clawed finger to the top of his neck. With a swipe down his torso, she tore the buttons from his dress shirt and exposed his chest. Another pass cleaved through the leather of his belt, freeing his cock which was still stoned by the Viagra he'd taken.

She again tried to speak with her wolf mouth. This time Arthur understood. Just one word.

Prince.

The she-wolf lowered herself halfway onto him. With horror, Arthur looked into her inhuman.For once, even Arthur couldn't tell if there was guilt. She came the rest of the way down.Her skin was hot to the touch. Arthur Rosenbaum flopped like a fish under her full weight.

Rowan gave herself to her prince on the side of the glass mountain, animal lust mixing with plain old loneliness. The eagerness of her hands tore into him. Blood ran from his wounds, soaked into his shirt and stained the picture folded in his pocket until even the white parts on the drawing of him were stained red.

Her first orgasm ruptured his spleen. Her second severed his spine. And her cries of pleasure seemed to shake the mountain itself.

Somewhere under all the glass, a dozen princesses rolled over in their sleep and dreamed no more of unpleasant things.

****

By five in the morning, the battery on the Mercury was almost dead. The headlights had weakened to the point that they barely illuminated the girl on the swing, or what she held in her hand. She had the red hood of her windbreaker pulled up now.

Most people didn't know this about Rowan, but she was a sculptor. Only she didn't like working with wood or clay.

She ran the edge of her pocket knife over the bones in her hands until they were smooth. Pressing firmly, she dug away at the points, made notches and canals, until they resembled the ends of keys. When she had several just right, she bound them together with a length of white hair. This chime wouldn't be too long. Not much to work with.

When the sun came up and she could see, she'd hang this one with the rest.

She couldn't remember what happened when she changed. Sometimes at first, she would have a terrible feeling, and she would want to run and find someone and scream at them and cry. But it was like a dark dream that faded with each step. The woods were large and by the time she stumbled across someone she could never remember what the nightmare had been about.

She knew the results, however. The wind chime gave a clatter when she shook it.

"Arthur," she said his name again. It was such a good name. A king's name.

She had been so sure this time. But he had been another false prince. A liar, just like the rest.

Only a real prince could save her.

Another would come. A better one, who would cut the crust off of her sandwiches without being reminded.

She liked the tiara, though. That had been nice.

Maybe the next would bring her a real one! A real prince with a real tiara!

Rowan liked that idea very much. It was romantic.

Rowan Griswold was quite a romantic.

The lights on the Mercury Cougar flicked off for good.

*

Thank you for taking the time to read this, my entry into the 2015 April Fool's Day contest. If you liked it, or didn't, please vote for it and leave a comment. I always love speaking with other writers and readers.

Special thanks to Dianthus, without whom this story would never have gotten an inch off the ground, and sheablue, who helped me line the corners up. Thank you for putting up with my demented imagination. I owe you both a bedtime story.