Fucked Up Fairy Tales: Pudding Fairies 

Empress Cherrypop, her flaming red hair unbound and floating in the etheric breeze, gazed down from the crystal balcony of the Euphoric Palace at the writhing mass of pudding fairies below. 

Their gelatinous forms shifted and merged in obscene configurations, reminding her of that documentary on deep sea creatures she’d watched with Silver last night. The way they moved, pulsing with an inner light that made her think of bioluminescent horrors.

“They’re getting restless again,” Silver whispered, wrapping cool arms around Cherrypop’s waist. Her silver hair cascaded over both their shoulders, mixing with the empress’s flame-red tresses like metallic blood.

The pudding fairies had been acting strange ever since that ancient grimoire had been discovered in the palace kitchens, bound in what appeared to be human skin and written in a language that looked suspiciously like binary code.

Below, the pudding fairies began to form a massive spiral, their bodies melting together into a hypnotic vortex of vanilla, chocolate, and blood-red strawberry. It was beautiful in a nauseating way, like watching flesh dissolve in acid.

“Something’s emerging,” Cherrypop said, her voice tight with anticipation and dread.

The spiral began to pulse with an otherworldly light, and from its center rose a figure that made both queens gasp. It was the Mistress of Graves herself, but reconstituted in pudding form, her body a shifting mass of dessert that somehow maintained the shape of a woman in a flowing gown. Her face was a constantly moving tableau of features that seemed to be drowning in custard.

“Welcome to my kingdom,” the pudding apparition gurgled, her voice like someone drowning in butterscotch “I’ve come to claim what’s mine.” 

The fairy creatures below began to keen in harmony, a sound that made Cherrypop’s teeth ache and Silver’s skin crawl with goosebumps.

What happened next occurred with the terrible inevitability of a nightmare. The pudding fairies began to rise, forming a massive wave that threatened to engulf the palace. But Cherrypop and Silver had been prepared for this moment. They joined hands, their ancient queer magic surging between them like electric current.

“Now!” Cherrypop commanded, and Silver pulled out the secret weapon – a massive spoon forged in the fires of the palace kitchen by the royal chef, who had been mysteriously transformed into a talking teapot the week before. The spoon began to glow with an inner light that matched the bioluminescence of the pudding fairies.

The Mistress of Graves let out a shriek that sounded like a thousand spoons scraping against the bottom of empty bowls. Her pudding form began to collapse in on itself as the fairy horde was sucked into the vortex of the magical spoon, their bodies compressing into a single serving of the most dangerous dessert ever created in the Kingdom of Euphoria 

When it was over, all that remained was a single bowl of innocuous-looking pudding on the crystal balcony. Cherrypop and Silver looked at each other, their faces reflected in its perfectly smooth surface.

“What should we do with it?” Silver asked, prodding the bowl with one perfectly manicured finger.

Cherrypop smiled, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Let’s serve it at the next royal banquet. I hear the Duke of Tartland has been plotting against us.” She leaned in to kiss her partner, tasting of cherry wine and revolution. “Besides, who doesn’t love a good pudding?”

The pudding in the bowl wiggled slightly, and both queens could have sworn they heard it giggle.

The Morning After

The amnesia was all too familiar. 

I remembered drinking with Todd at a downtown dive bar. Then nothing. Nada. Blank. Zip. Still, I could fit the pieces together. The narrative wasn’t hard to construct. After all, I hadn’t gotten home all by myself. Somebody had returned me to my apartment and tucked me in all nice and tidy. 

Todd. 

A real gentleman. 

It was enough to make me sick. Which I already was, although not so severe that I couldn’t climb out of bed and pad to the bathroom in my stockinged feet. The thoughtful bastard had even removed my shoes before covering me with a blanket. 

Shedding my blouse and miniskirt, I took a long shower and mentally reviewed last night’s failure. No doubt Todd had searched my billfold to ascertain my address. He had driven me home, using my key to unlock the door, and carried me to bed. 

Chivalric prick. 

Of course, he wasn’t the first. I had been treated like a princess before. Granted, Todd was the first to actually enter my apartment. Most guys called me a cab at the bar, others an ambulance. A few had actually driven me to the emergency room. 

Unfortunately, this was the norm. Believe it or not, most folks are decent people. 

I got out of the shower, toweled dry, and put on some comfy sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of instant oatmeal. Half the day was shot. I had slept through it all, slumbering like the dead. Not that it mattered. It was Sunday. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Curled up on the sofa, I finished the oatmeal and nursed my second cup of coffee. Familiar street sounds came through the open window of my second-floor studio. Most people would have found them comforting. I found them loathsome. Last night’s dud date had put me in a foul mood. 

I was losing faith in men. 

The city was full of hipster pussies and woke faggots. Momma’s boys, every last one. Effete do-gooders. Scumbags were getting harder and harder to find. It had been months since my last successful hookup. 

Gene. 

A real degenerate. 

I had regained consciousness the following morning behind a dumpster in a trash-strewn alley, my skirt hiked above my hips, my back bruised and bloody from him pounding me against a cement wall. Used. Abused. I was long overdue for another Gene. 

A man who wouldn’t freak out when I started to fade, a man who knew how to take full advantage of the situation, a man more than capable of sealing the deal . . . 

I was contemplating a third cup of coffee when my phone vibrated. Todd. Fucking great. I had hoped it would be my dealer. My supply was getting low. Todd was checking on me. How touching. I visualized him crossing the threshold of my bedroom, carrying me like a young groom with his chaste bride. 

“Give it up.” I frowned at my device. “You’re not my type.” 

The whole thing was terribly confusing. 

I wondered why he—and the others who had failed to measure up—had even messaged me in the first place. My profile on the dating app should have made my sexual aberration abundantly clear. I was nothing if not transparent. Starting with my screen name . . . 

Mickey Finn.

Black Chrome

Lydia Christian emerged dripping from the starfield. She attempted to wipe away the black and star-spackled droplets which felt like rubber against her body, but discovered they had worked their way into her flesh and were worming through her cellular structure.

“This is fine,” she said, a halo of flames suddenly bursting from her head. She sat down before the controls deck of the spaceship and examined the feed.

“Now navigating the Lucipheria galaxy,” said Major Tom.

“Nice name,” said Lydia. “Does she play?”

“All the games.”

“Does she play Black Chrome?”

“Oh yes.”

“And to win?”

“She kills at Black Chrome.”

“Get her online,” said Lydia. “Let’s see how bad the bitch is.”

“So it goes,” said Major Tom. 

The board came online. Lydia picked up the MirrorShades and put them on. Slight burning sensation as the contact points fused with her neural weave.

“Uploading to pain.net and Akasha.net with Reality Hack embedded” said Major Tom.

“Looks like Lucipheria is a Kopy Kat.”

“That is correct,” came a disembodied voice, soon followed by the enormous face of a black panther.

“Good to meet you.”

“Enchanted, I must say,” purred the panther. “In how many moves do you expect to be defeated?”

“I’ve never been defeated at Black Chrome,” said Lydia.

“First time for everything,” said the cat.

“True,”

“Shall I make the first move?”

“Yes.”

In an instant, Lydia was transported to a Reality Studio stage with a live audience. On the stage was a table at which sat her mother at age 36, her at 10 years old, and a math book. Tears glistened on Lydia’s cheeks like diamonds.

“I win,” growled the cat.

“Why in the hell would you expect me to agree with you?” said Lydia, giggling to herself, then bursting out into loud laughter. 

“Because that is the nature of Black Chrome. The nanocircuitry is already rewiring your DNA to express different enzymes based on the recognition of your specific learning disability, dyscalculia.”

“Is that what you think?” said Lydia. But she was bluffing. She could feel the nano ants working inside her. Everything about her current attitude was bravado, including how she had faked her way through StarRider Academy and fabricated her test scores. Her field tests were slightly more difficult to forge, but with the help of a friend on the inside who had a link to an Akasha.net admin, she’d managed that too.

The truth of the matter was that Lydia had done whatever it took to land a coveted commander office, and nothing and nobody, she felt, was capable of defeating her.

Until now.

She looked deeply into the implacable eyes of the panther. She could feel the beast’s hot breath infused through her skin. She began to sweat the rubber droplets which writhed and churned inside her flesh like razors. Her brain was boiling alive with recalled shame as the nanobots, manifested and exuded as avatars outside of herself, began to unmake the pixel content of her form as a represented 10-year-old girl.

But she loved that girl. Admired her for her fortitude in never giving an inch, always learning from other people–and animals, and cyberconscious beings. That girl with the black pigtails and Lycia girlie t was going to triumph even over this local optimum.

“How badly does it burn?” purred the cat. “The shame of it. Your family’s shame. How your mother would beat you up afterwards and then send you to your room, exhausted from crying. You lost sleep, and in the morning when you had school your brain was so sleep-deprived and exhausted your head slammed against your desk. All the other children made fun of you. Mocked your disability, your poverty, the fact that you alone weren’t able to access Akasha.net, which had just come online.”

“It’s true,” said Lydia. She felt sick now. Her stomach was doing flip-flops and her face was burning. “I’m so fucking sorry I let you all down,” she cried, and before her stood her family, her aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandparents, some of them deceased, back in a line of savants that stretched back forever. She was uniquely stupid in her entire line. But sometimes she wondered if they wanted it as badly as she did.

Neither of her parents had done anything with the gifts. They’d squandered their time on Earth 2. They were ready for the landfill or worse, the underworld where the Dark Ones roamed. 

“Are you ready to give up yet?” asked the cat, not cruelly but in matter-of-fact tones.

“What is the nature of Black Chrome?” asked Lydia.

“Are you fucking serious? Its nature is ambiguous. Their nature is God. It is us.”

“Correct answer,” said Lydia. In one move she had swapped out the cat for herself. The cat now sat opposite Lydia’s mother, transformed into an enormous female black panther. 

The catmother growled. Her kitten wailed. Glistening tears streaked her fur.

She mewled. 

The catmother lifted her with her teeth by the nape of her neck, dropping her off in the corner of a virtual cage.

Lydia watched with enormous satisfaction as the cage was closed on the kitten’s terrified face.

Despite the fact that she was unable to count the number of years her galactic adversary would be incarcerated, due to her learning disability, she knew it would be many indeed. Lydia now had full range of the Lucipheria galaxy, a fact she intended to take complete advantage of.

Two Smoking Hot Girls

JUNE 8, 1980

Fairfax Boulevard marinated in a vermillion afterglow, touching the date palms, simmering against the show and flow of slick glossy chassis rushing past in an electric stream of posh and style. Designer duds on sun-kissed hard bodies strolled past. Stellas and studs. It was all feeding into the kinetic pulse that rippled through the back lot of Canter’s Deli, and was now vibrating between Stephanie McGrath’s thighs. Stephanie was the early-out. They always had one last cigarette—Penelope and Stephanie, whenever one of them was the early-out. One for the road.

Penelope Wise’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked hard on the tubular white forerunner to emphysema. The fiery tip glowed against encroaching dusk. She blew smoke.

“So…it’s like a throbbing, euphoric ache with a hint of…Technicolor TV static?”

“Yeah”. Stephanie took a drag, and a long exhale. “Throbbing and like a stretching sensation inside…”

“Like your body getting ready for something to go inside?”

“Yeah.”

“Blue walls.”

“Blue walls?”

“Yeah”, Penelope said. “Like what happens to guys. “I’m hip, man. Been there, had that.”

Penelope was hot shit, and she knew it. 26 and laughing at the reaper. As though he showed up to assign her that first set of wrinkles, and instead she gave him the best blowjob this side of hell, and sent him merrily on his way. Brunette and curvy, half Jewish and half guido grease monkey on her mom’s side. But all scrappy broad.

“I don’t know. I think it’s something else.”

“Like what? Coke?”

“No,” Stephanie said. “Nothing like that. Last night I went to that party over at…”

“UCLA. With ah, Patrick?”

“Patrick.” Stephanie choked on smoke mid-exhale when she giggled. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Spill it.”

“It was our third date…”

“Third. First. C’mon, kiddo. Who cares.”

“I…” Stephanie cleared her throat, and lowered her voice, then looked around, and said, “Gave him a blowjob. I tried to give him a blowjob…”

Penelope burst into laughter. “Oh, honey. You have to maintain eye contact…”

“He…You know. Lost his hard-on…”

“Oh sweetie. It wasn’t your fault. But full range of motion…Play with his balls…”

“I just…I panicked and ran off…But I met this other guy. He was older. He kind of looked like my uncle Rod.”

“His name was Rod?” Penelope giggled. “Gross.”

“No. His name was like Steve, I think…But my Uncle Rod was kind of hot. He died in a car wreck.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“He took me for a ride on his Harley Davidson on my sixteenth birthday. We rode around my small town back in Iowa. All the girls in school were like He’s so groovy. I’d make out with him.”

“So this Steve guy looked like your uncle?”

“Yeah. And he was like I guess a professor at UCLA, of farm-a…”

“Pharmacology.”

“Yeah. And he gave me these pills…I guess he wasn’t supposed to…”

“What do you mean, wasn’t supposed to?”

“They were like, experimental. Called Adam.”

“Like Adam Ant?”

“Yeah. It was called Adam. It was called Adam, because they felt it returned patients to a more innocent state.”

“Like Adam and Eve?”

“Yeah. It was supposed to get people in touch with their sexuality. I got like so high.”

“Looks like it worked.” Penelope took a drag. “So did you guys fuck?”

“Fuck who?”

“You and Uncle Rod?” Penelope filled in the silence. “The guy who looked like your Uncle Rod.”

“Oh. I don’t know,” Stephanie said. “I don’t remember anything. I woke up naked in my bed. With heart palpitations. And feeling like this.” 

“Trippy, man. Did your drunk asshole old man cash in on your ah…Altered state?”

“Fuck no. He was passed out in his clothes on the couch.”

“Stephaine. Oooh. When are you going to get rid of that asshole? The one time you’re actually horny…” 

“I get horny…”

“He can’t even get it up. C’mon, look at you. You’re rock candy baby…You’re hard sweet and sticky…C’mon look at you. Strawberry blonde…Contours for days. A chassis like a friggin’ Corvette Stingray. Look at those tits!” 

“Stop.” Stephanie looked around the nearly vacant back lot to see if she should be embarrassed.

“Better use it up before it gets old.”

“Oh, look who’s projecting.”

“Oh screw you, man.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Like three weeks. On top of that it’s going to be that time of the month. Like any minute now.” 

This wasn’t news to Stephanie. They spent so much time together on and off shift and on so many smoke breaks, they had the same cycle.

“No wonder you’re so goddamn horny!”

They both laughed.

Penelope grounded out the remnants of her cigarette into the curb. “How’d that audition on Friday go?”

The New Backstage came out every Thursday morning with a list of open calls. Come Thursday at 10AM, Penelope and Stephanie would be hovering over the counter at Sam French on Sunset and Stanley. They’d find the general auditions—ones that weren’t union, and didn’t require an agent. On audition day, they’d get up before dawn to get into a line (they were never first) that stretched sometimes three blocks long. But this past weekend Penelope had to work.

“Oh hoho. Oh…You won’t believe it…” This required another cigarette. Stephanie slid a Virginia Slim between her cherry red lips and fired up the tip. “Okay, so I read the sides. And okay, it’s a guy. The casting director’s a guy. Like how often do you see that?”

“He was cute?”

“Oh fuck no. Total poindexter. Okay, so I read the sides…And then he goes turn around. Let me see your behind…Let me see you from behind, that’s it.”

“Your ass.”

“Yeah, he wanted to see my ass.”

“And?”

“And. I said, I don’t fuckin’ think so. And walked out.”

“So he saw your ass anyway.”

“Oh, okay…”

“So you might as well have shown him your ass, you know…”

“Politely?”

“Yeah, politely. And maybe you would have gotten a call back.”

“Oh fuck that.”

“Who was it for?”

“Oh. The director? Wes Craven.”

“Wes Craven. Oh, you fucked up, man. The Hills Have Eyes. The Last House on the Left.”

“Yeah, okay. Alright,” Stephanie said, sucking in a nice long drag. “I prefer a little more chivalry.”

“Chivalry? You want chivalry go to a Ren faire, man.”

“What? You think you don’t deserve chivalry?” The pulsating shudder Stephanie felt between her thighs gave way to the throaty rumble of high-performance engine. 

“Of course I do,” Penelope said. “Here comes my knight in shining armor now.”

The Cavallino Rampante, a prancing black stallion, was center stage as the front grill of the inferno-red Ferrari plunged into view, searing the edges of their POVs, flexing its muscle in a deep-throated growl. “Four point four V12 engine with 352 horsepower,” Penelope said. “Ferrari Daytona, 1972. Holy shit. That’s Jon Peters.”

“Barbara Streisand’s old man. Total womanizer.”

“Bet you’d show him your ass.”

Jon Peters had style. Watching him get out of his Ferrari was a performance. 

So now Penelope had the newly lit cigarette hanging out at the very corner of her mouth, gripping it by the tail end of the filter. Probably thought she looked sexy. She did. 

“Nobody’s rocked a beard that hot since Jim Morrison,” Penelope said.

A chocolate velvet blazer with a navy blue wide collared shirt belted into Guess blue jeans.

“Check out the blazer. Looks like Yves Saint Laurent.”

“Nah,” Stephanie said. “Halston.”

Both girls were quiet, as he pushed the door shut and stepped up onto the curb. There was only one true test to know if a guy had style, or he was a sleaze: Footwear. Jon Peters had on Gucci loafers.

“Thanks for saving me a space, girls,” Jon Peters said. 

He was staring at Stephanie when he said it. All she could do is stare up at her reflection in the midnight blue lenses of his Carrera aviators. Her work tee had shrunk on the first wash and now she was pitching tent poles.

“Anytime”, Penelope said, as he walked past them. “Come again.” They watched him discreetly slip in through the back entrance. 

Penelope cocked an eyebrow. “Way to show him your ass, Steph. Jon fucking Peters just spoke to you, and you couldn’t even say hello. Total deer-in-the-headlights, man”. She dropped the latter half of an unfinished cigarette onto the asphalt and stamped it out. “I’m totally grabbing his section.”