#sometimes i just wake up with the lorax stuck in my head

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

ribs: cracked

sleep: minimal

makeup: on point

the the last five pages of dr. seuss’ the lorax: stuck in my head

it’s coffee shop day, lads

[terrorandtales]

Where the fuck are you supposed to start with something like this? My therapist has encouraged me to try this exercise to help with my night terrors. Which I trust her. Dr. M is one smart cookie. I’m just scared shitless to have all of my night terrors come to life while I’m awake. The whole point of this is to redirect the story. Control the narrative and directly know that they aren’t in fact real. They may share some oddly sick similarities, but hey Doc knows best so let’s dive in.

Arctic Tundra

So I’m trying to piece this together eloquently. It’s been a few days since I had this night terror. Bear with me please. Alright like most dreams/nightmares how are we supposed to know where the beginning, middle, and end are. Could it be that the end is the middle? The middle is nomans land, and the beginning nonexistent? Does time even exist in this pandora’s box, this colorful brain of mine? Half the time I don’t even know if it’s me in the dream as the lead character. Most of the time I am, but sometimes I feel like I’m a ghost floating through these nightmares scene to scene. Still, living the God awful fucked up shit, but seeing my physical self below my floating self just asking the other me, “what in the actual hell is happening? Can I wake up now? Let’s set the scene…

My other me (I guess my sleeping me) is seeing my physical me in a Biergarten walking around aimlessly. Fretting about some assholes that look like storm troopers rounding up the masses. It almost feels like we’re all the Anne Franks of the world in this place. My brother, sister, and Jean Paul (my lover) are in the dream. So these motherfuckers find our hiding spot which honestly isn’t hard to find because it’s literally the Biergatedn I’ve been to before in real life on a drunken Seattle night. Anyways, we all start panicking and make a run for it through these hidden secret hatches on the floors. Tear gas is dispersing and those fuckers are closing in. I lose sight of my brother, sister, and Jean Paul. I think they made it out before me. So I’m running and trying to get through this secret hatch with all of these panicked people. The hatch turns into a ceiling shaft. Almost like the one in the movie Posidean where they were all trying to escape a sinking cruise ship that was overturned by a tsunami wave. Anyways so I’m panicking because I know those God-awful Sith bloodsuckers are coming for us. The person in front of me is crawling and turning the corner then he starts screaming because he gets blasted in the face with this green and orange acid that starts burning his flesh off immediately. Kind of reminds me of the contagion movie where those people started bleeding from their eyeballs. Sick stuff man. Don’t ask me how it smells because I have no idea. I haven’t had the terrible pleasure of smelling burnt skin in my waking life. So his skin starts peeling off, his eyes are burning out of their sockets. Meanwhile, I’m in shock and trying to crawl back to get away from him and the acid. I don’t know if there’s more coming!! So I’m like what the hell!! When I turn around on all fours which I think is much faster than crab-walking backward up a metal shaft by the way the scene changes again. Now I’m on an airplane. The seats are gone. Everything is stripped away. I’m in what looks like a cargo plane, but the emergency windows look like the ones on a Boeing 737-800 aircraft. There’s padding along the sides of the aircraft and I’m not alone. There’s a little boy stuck inside with me and we’re trying to get out before the plane sinks in the arctic ocean. I’m scrabbling around to try to get the windows open. The first two exits I try are jammed because I guess the plane hit an ice burg or something and it’s dented in. We’re peering out the smaller windows and we can see people lined up in huge parkas with gear. They made it off the plane, but somehow we’re the only two left. The snow is coming down hard and whistling so loudly. So they can’t hear us screaming for help. You can barely make out the faces of the people because of the blizzard. Plus they have their heads down to protect their faces. I look at the kid and say, “don’t worry we’re going to get out of here. We’ll be okay.” I can feel the bile rising in my throat and the butterflies in my stomach. I feel guilty because I honestly don’t think we’ll make it out alive, but I can’t lie to this kid. So the third emergency exit that I try and put all my strength into opens miraculously! I yell to the crying kid, “come on let’s go!” He gets up and runs to me. I throw his gear out first and then push him out of the plane. Meanwhile, the plane starts jerking violently. So I know I’m running out of time. I throw my pack out of the exit. When I try to get out the exit seems to become smaller. All of a sudden I can’t fit. I start panicking. Screaming for help, but they can’t hear me. I’m crying and try to use my arms to push along the ice-cold plane to push myself out. My tears are freezing to my face. My lips are burning because of the cold. My lungs are on fire, but I’m still fighting. I can see the plane approaching the water. “I’m going to die,” says my sleeping self to my physical self. Then before the nose of the aircraft hits the water I wake up shaking and gasping for air. (End Scene)

Okay, so now here’s the part where I take control of the narrative and direct it elsewhere. So which part do I change? Nomans land, end, the nonexistent beginning? Just seems like a lot of work, but we’ve come this far. So let’s pick up from this particular part of the ending scene “I’m going to die.” Ready? “And scene!” “Action”

As I close my eyes preparing for my doom strong hands grab my forearms and violently pull me out of the aircraft seconds before the tip of the aircraft hit the water and the ice underneath gives. I can’t see the person’s face at all because my eyes are closed shut with fear and ice streaked tears. All I can hear is the loud crashing sounds of the ice breaking and the aircraft sinking into the ocean. The blizzard is swirling around us like we’re in the eye of a hurricane. My body feels like ice and I’m so scared I refuse to open my eyes. I just let myself be carried by these strong arms. I feel the wind swirling around us still. I can hear the air and feel the wind pick up. All of a sudden the terrible cold starts to fade. I start to feel warmth coarse through my body. I feel my cheeks start to warm. The wind starts to die down, and those strong arms...Wait Cut! Let’s talk about that for a min. Not a dream min, but a real-life minute or two. The arms holding me are just arms. I don’t imagine anyone. I don’t even imagine the body of a man or woman. If anything it’s more the comfort of them and the bravery of them. They’re magical; invisible strength and comfort you’d feel from a father figure. Caring arms, strong arms, non-judgmental arms. What I’d imagine Hagrid’s arms to feel like as far as size is concerned. I’m remembering that particular scene when he’s carrying Harry’s body back to Hogwarts, minus the death because these mystical God fearing arms saved my life. Anyways let’s get back to the scene. Ready? Take 2! Or is it 3? Anyways, Action! The wind starts to die down, and those strong arms holding me lie me down on what feels like the softest fur, almost like what I’d imagine the Lorax’s fur would feel like. Finally, when I start to feel this immense calmness overcome me and flood through my body I decide to slowly open my eyes. I’m in a white vast 2-dimensional allusion. I’m on a soft mound of grass resting underneath a Pink and orange Truffula tree that smells like papayas and lemons. My skin is glowing like I’m Joy, from the “Inside Out” movie. Except I’m still me. My skin is just the same, just bright and I feel warmth, love, and wonder coursing through my body and mind. When I look up into the white nothingness the scene changes again. Now I’m looking at a beautiful night sky lit up by green, white, purple auroras. Shaped as beautiful people dancing to the music I can’t hear. I’m sitting up against the Truffula tree and peace overcomes me; a faint smile comes across my lips and I fall into a deep slumber. (End of scene)

Okay, Dr. M!! I see what you’re saying. This was a very enlightening experience. I can feel that peace and comfort right now. I feel safe and adventurous. Off to the next one I suppose.

Goodness, I’m writing these back to back. So I’m going to be on a roller coaster of emotions. Extreme fear, anxiety, wonder, enlightenment, and finally peace. It’ll just keep repeating. Rinse, Freak Out, Repeat. No matter, I’ve been putting this off long enough. I have 4 more stories to share. They’re all blending together so I better hop to it.

[fraudulence-paradox]

5/25/16

        I had a dream about her last night. One I’ve had before actually. For some reason I’m in K----y’s house and her mom tells me she’ll be right out. Her voice is normal, but somehow I can tell something is wrong. I’m just never sure what. The backdrop is all wrong too. I know I’m in her house, but something is wrong. The whole scene makes me uneasy. It may be the impossible geometry of how we’re standing on muddy dirt, even though I’m sure this is her living room, it may be how K----y always just appears, like the birthing of an orc, out of the shadows, likely from the mud, but this is where the dream always goes awry. I remember a text I received from her a few years back (in real life) where she told me that she’d gained some weight and didn’t want me to see her (I don’t really believe this—and even if it were true, I don’t think it would matter to me—but it stuck in my head somehow), but lo and behold, here she is in the dream. I think this is my subconscious’s way of making it okay that I’ll likely never see her again, because when I do in my dream she’s always hideous. In the particular dream I had last night, she is tall, and pear shaped. Shirtless, for some reason, but where there were well-proportioned breasts, there are scars, and clumps of cellulose. Her entire torso looks like a chewed up pile of pale gum. There are scars covering her. Stretch marks, and what appears to be evidence of a mastectomy. This monstrosity, perched on top of two proportionate, yet asymmetrical legs, which appear to be made of only cottage cheese, and opaque flesh-toned trash bags, as if someone filled two empty bread containers with different amounts of milk, and let them sit in the sun for days, until they finally became rancid enough to solidify and support the weight of the monstrous torso. Yet on top of this mess is her face, normal; untouched.

           At this point in the dream I still want what I presumably came to her house for. I want to have sex with her. With it. It disturbs me, but I wouldn’t say I have no idea why my brain makes this. I think it has something to do with our incredibly bizarre, wonderful, and first relationship.

           K----y was my first real girlfriend, after the whole Kr---- fiasco, it was nice to find a girl who wasn’t as manipulative, and seemed to really care about me. I was her first boyfriend too, which meant neither of us knew what to expect. K----y was my first everything. First kiss, first fuck, first hand holding. Our first kiss was in a movie theater, where we went to see The Lorax, our first date. I was 15, she was 14, so neither of us could drive. I remember her father picking us up, D--- I think his name was. He was a really cool guy. I don’t know if the stories he would tell while we were driving were true, or meant to impress or intimidate me. But they worked. Quite honestly, I would be absolutely fine with becoming like him. He seems to have done everything in the world. He has a job doing something secret for the government, I’m not sure what. His cover is that he’s a psychologist for the military, but I think it has something to to with government torture techniques. K----y told me once that for a year, while he was stationed in “Florida”, he kept telling her and her family about these cool lizards he kept seeing. K----y later learned that these lizards were only native to [redacted]. He was likely speaking in some sort of code to let his wife know where he was without officially breaking his clearance. K----y also told me once, that she had a distinct memory of being at the natural history museum with him around 2008, looking at dinosaur bones, when he received a call. It’s nature was regarding [redacted] being declassified, and how he and a lot of others may be in the public eye for something in them. I’m not sure if the papers were ever made public, but I put the pieces together.

           D---- R-- played piano, but only knew how to improvise, played Anne Frank’s father in his high school show, and told me that’s when he learned how to cry on command. He took K----y and me to the spy museum a few times, and told us how to best memorize your lore. He inexplicably knew Morse-code and several other ciphers by heart, and there was a lot about his life even K----y wasn’t allowed to know about. When he was young, he was heavily involved in a “ministry” that required him to cross the Mexican-American boarder several times a month to do god knows what just south of California. He also told me once that he was one of very few people in the world who knew the exact whereabouts of [redacted]. He was a sketchy dude, but in all the right ways. Basically, he’s what I hope to use my CYSE degree to become.

           But he picked us up that day, and drove us to the theater. It was my first time ever talking to him, so he didn’t try to impress me too hard. I guess he used his psych skills to deduce that the first time meeting your girlfriend’s father is intimidating enough without bragging about how dangerous and well connected you are. We got to the theater, and K----y and I took our seats. I have no memory of the movie whatsoever. Likely because I was so concerned with how sweaty my hand was, and how it was locked in hers, so I couldn’t wipe it off. Coincidentally, this was the same movie theater that several months in the future, K----y would give me two blow jobs in during a showing of Frankenweenie, but that day, I was worried about holding her hand. When the credits rolled, I knew it was time. I asked her if I could kiss her, because chicks dig consent, and she said yes. Then, we didn't kiss. We both looked at each other awkwardly, waiting for the other one to make their move, and neither of us did. We were 5 rows ahead of where future K----y would have my penis in her mouth, and we were worried about kissing before the lights turned on. K----y said, “what do we do?”, so I hit her with the suavest line I could come up with. “Well, let’s make like Nike, and.. just do it” and we kissed.

           The second our lips touched, I got a feeling a lot like how people describe meth. A huge dopamine rush that even now I look back on with envy. If kissing is a drug, it has the fastest tolerance of any of them. I’ve never felt such a rush in my entire life as I did the day I quoted a shoe company at my ex, and pushed my mouth onto her. This was really the beginning of a long string of lust filled relationships, where I chased the dragon that was that dopamine rush. I used to think about that kiss just to pass time. When I used to mow lawns with J---, sometimes in the gasoline scented afternoons I would forget about how big a hill was because I was so caught up in replaying that memory. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a physically intimate experience with anyone in the world that was quite like that moment. But I came close, and that was when I took her virginity.

           This was really the beginning of the end of our relationship, but I didn’t know that yet. From the first time she gave me a blowjob, or I fingered her we lost focus in any romance, and just chased sexual pleasure, but it what we had seemed fixable. But as soon as we started having sex, that was all we did. Really it was my fault. I kind of fucked up everything in that relationship, and I often wonder what things would be like if we never broke up, if we met at a time when I wasn’t so focused on fucking.

(Note from the future)

I don’t think I have that many regrets in my life, but if I have any, one of them is breaking up with her. It’s been almost 7 years and I still think about her at least a few times a month. Currently I’m even in a really good relationship with someone else, but I always wonder, “what if?”. I mean, there must be a reason things didn’t work out. And as the dream sequence from this entry, and future entries that will be posted will undoubtably note, the K----y I remember isn’t the one that exists any more. In my mind, she’s still the same person she was when we were dating… 7 years ago. But I know that isn’t her now. I’m not the same person I used to be, why should she be?

It’s more of a bizarre, chase for something that doesn’t exist anymore. When we first dated, we were both weird outcasts. Her, a quiet girl, sitting by pure chance, at my table in 9th grade history. Me, a weird, bombastic, eccentric nerdy guy. These days, I know almost nothing about her. I know she at one point worked at a grocery store near where I live, and I sometimes go there with the creepy, stalker, self-loathing hope that I’ll get a glance at her, but I’m not sure she even lives here anymore. The last thing I heard from her was that she was with someone she really loved; the way she talked about him made it seem like they would be married. Frankly, I hope that’s what happened. It’s what she deserves. But some horrible, degenerate part of my mind wishes that one day, I would wake up, back in 11th grade, and everything would go back to how it was. I was happy then. I was dating a girl whom no other has ever compared to, I had several close friends. I was depressed as all hell, sure, but at least then I was doing interesting things. I was in a few bands, I was at the absolute peak of my “making interesting art” phase, I even made short films all the time, and had aspirations about becoming a professional film maker. I was happy and naïve.

These days, I’m on what I consider the path to maximal happiness. I’m a Ph.D. student at a just okay university for my field, I just submitted a paper, and feel like I’m learning things at a depth I didn’t even know was possible, but something is missing. What K----y represents to me now isn’t what she is, it’s what I used to have. K----y isn’t just a girl I used to date. She isn’t a person whom I used to love, and a person whom I gave a piece of myself that I can never have back. She’s a symbol. And I know that’s completely unfair if she ever actually read this—no one wants to be someone else’s metaphor. I’d be fucking pissed if I was (well, I don’t know, maybe I’d be a little flattered that I lived in someone’s head rent-free, as they say). To me she’s a symbol of that happy, carefree time that was late high school. I was old enough to drive, but young enough not to have any real responsibilities. Maybe part of growing up is just accepting that your happiness peaked at a certain point, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

All of this is to say, it’s easier for me to personify the whole “spent youth” thing in someone I used to date—used to love—then it is to just accept it as it is. Many of the things I associate with her, I wasn’t even dating her for.  But loving her was just the most emotionally significant thing that occurred for me in high school, so it’s just what happened. I really do hope she’s happy.

When we broke up, I sent her a lengthy text message on my old keyboard-having phone. I wish I still had it, because I think it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever communicated to another human being (wow, pretentious much, [fraudulence-paradox]?). But the gist of it is something like:

 The whole universe started with the big bang

And there’s this theory that it will all end with a big crunch.

Time will reverse, and everything will go backward and everything you and I have ever done will repeat in reverse.

But then, it will get to the beginning, and the universe will start again.

So at some point, you and I will be back together, back in those first days when everything was beautiful

And even though everything happens again, and we just have to relive everything

I don’t think I would change a single thing

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Folklore Friday

Now, I’ve seen many variations of this story over the years, some shorter, some longer. But most of them keep the same main elements. I found myself sort of retelling this tale to my mom last week in my usual (slightly off-kilter) way, and figured “Ah what the heck, let’s do that for Folklore Friday!”

So here, with neither explanations nor apologies, is my “all in one take” retelling of one of the versions of The Golden Goose.

It starts, as a lot of fairytales start, with a family made up of one parent and three sons. And the older two are somewhat pompous fellows, while the youngest does not meet their arguably subjective measure of “intelligence” and is tormented. Sometimes the story gets moving because the single parent says “Alright, you three are too old to be living in my basement. Get a job!” and sends them off with a slowly decreasing quality of picnic lunch.

In this case, dear old ma or pa or whoever has been looking after these three just needs some wood for the fire. Off goes Eldest Brother, with some kind of wine and cheese meal that frankly, makes no sense if he’s just going to chop wood. He meets an Old Man By The Wayside archetype, who is...probably Gentry. I’m just saying. Hangs around the woods and causes misfortune for those who slight him. 

Or he’s just petty and lucky about it.

Eldest Brother does what most fairytale Eldest Brothers do: When the old man asks for food, he says “Nah,” and flaunts his fancy food.

And then promptly encounters a grave injury when inexplicably his ax turns on him while woodchopping. Mysteriously. No witnesses present to confirm or deny the presence or involvement of a mysterious man by the wayside.

-- a caveat, I do sort of wonder whether all these stories where the eldest two siblings meet catastrophe in proportion to how they treat people they perceive as beneath them might have been some kind of wish-fulfillment for narrators who saw themselves in the youngest sibling. Like maybe some epic sibling rivalries and “ahahaha I am eldest therefore I inherit the land while you must be apprenticed to Oldman Browne who drinks like a fish” kind of stuff was going on. Who knows. --

Somehow or other, Eldest Brother gets home without dying, and their parent is like “Oh well, guess I’ll send out Middle Brother.”

So off Middle Brother goes, with a slightly lower quality lunch and ax than his brother. Guess what he does?

Old Man by the Wayside turns up, asks for some food for a poor hungry traveler, and Middle Brother starts screeching about handouts.

You can guess how well that turned out for him.

Exasperated parent -- who should probably be more concerned about two sons with hatchet injuries and probably also a sudden inexplicable fear of old men in the woods -- sends out the third son, who usually has a very demeaning nickname, so we’ll just call him Tom. Now, I’ve noticed that in a lot of fairytales (and I’ve read a lot), female leads who aren’t old enough to marry win their adventures by being kind and thinking on their feet. Male protagonists, marrying age or not, seem to have a pattern of winning by a mix of thinking on their feet and sheer dumb luck. Like seriously, most of these guys have no business still being alive after some of the stunts they pull. All that to say, I always like when the male protagonist is also set apart by kindness. 

Case in point, Tom meets the Old Man by the Wayside who...apparently has nothing better to do than haunt the woods and test people’s manners. And even though his parent gave him like, a canteen half full of water and some stale bread, because he is definitely not the favorite child, Tom says “Hey, you look hungry, want some of my lunch? It’s awful, but it’s also food.”

And of course his Act of Kindness deserves a reward! Either that, or the Old Man is one of the Gentry and he doesn’t want to be indebted, so he’s making a trade. Or he’s just really eccentric and Tom happened to be the lucky contestant of the day. Whichever it is, the Old Man directs him to one specific tree, and says “just chop that one down. Forget about the others.”

Tom, apparently, sees no reason to question this.

So the tree is chopped down, and there’s an actual goose with feathers that look like they’re made of gold right there in the middle of the tree stump, like the Lorax, but as an angry metallic waterfowl.

Tom doesn’t question that, either.

But he picks it up, thinks, “Hey, this thing is pretty neat,” and decides to take his show on the road.

It is unknown whether his family ever got the firewood they needed. Tom was on a roll, apparently, and was off to seek his fortune. Which is fairytale speak for “I’m moving out.”

We’ll come back to Tom in a minute.

Now, in this little kingdom, we’ve got a king who apparently only has one kid, and it’s a daughter who doesn’t laugh, or smile. And the king has tried everything short of actually talking to her, no doubt, to solve the problem. The problem in this case might very well have been him not listening, but this is a fairytale king, and I’ve noticed that they do have the occasional tendency towards obliviousness.

In some versions, he takes drastic measures because he wants her to smile again. In other versions, he goes “Ahem ahem, I’m not getting any younger, and I’d sure like it if you got married.”

Probably both so he can put a male on the throne because oh noooo a queendom? *clutches pearls*. Or he could also just be the type who is obnoxiously pushy about wanting grandchildren. Frankly, it could be both or either.

“I know,” says the king, “I’ll put out a proclamation. Whoever can make the princess laugh will win her hand in marriage.”

Now, our girl isn’t going to take that sitting down, so she exercises what little control over the situation she has. “Fine,” she says, “But if he fails, he loses his head.” 

And the king considers this for a moment and says, “Alright, fair enough.”

That’ll deter anyone who isn’t really serious about this, at least. Might ruffle some feathers with the neighbors, though. But she isn’t outright disagreeing with the idea, so he decides to compromise.

(This part I have also seen in other fairytales, and I suspect the version of Golden Goose I saw with it was a combination of several similar Aarne-Thompson tropes)

This is low risk for the princess, as far as she’s concerned. She’s very good at keeping a straight face, and she’s not terribly concerned about the oncoming flood of power hungry nobles who think they’re funny.

“But dear,” says the king, “There’s so many nice men who could make you laugh if you really tried. You won’t know until you give them a chance!”

And every woman in a four foot radius who’s had to endure some guy telling them “You’d be prettier if you smiled” says “Oh honey,” in a pitying voice.

It’s okay, the king will figure it out later.

And this is where we jump back to Tom, who has kept himself busy in the meantime.

Tom, on his way around town doing who-knows-what, stops at an inn for the night with his golden goose that apparently has deigned to keep him company. And of course, a living bird with feathers made of actual gold is something that kind of tends to get noticed. So while Tom is sleeping, one ambitious maid (or stablehand, or innkeeper’s daughter, or innkeeper, the order varies by retelling) sneaks in like a creeper and tries to pluck one of the goose’s tailfeathers. Which, really. That’s just mean. 

Only, the would-be thief just...sticks to the goose. Like it spread epoxy on itself like a beauty mask before bed. Tom wakes up when the goose starts making a (justified) unholy racket and says “Huh. Well this is a problem. Let go of my goose!”

“I can’t,” says the maid, and Tom doesn’t seem to believe her.

Well, he’ll just leave, he thinks, and she’ll have to let go. Except she doesn’t. And the innkeeper’s wife sees her and says, “Hey! Leave the customer alone!” 

She reaches out to grab the maid and...sticks.

Apparently this is a Transferable Misfortune by way of tactile contact.

The innkeeper himself isn’t sure what’s going on, but this young fella is walking out the door with his wife and one of the maids in tow and that isn’t going to fly. So he runs out after them and tries to pull his decidedly disgruntled wife away and...

Sticks.

This goes on for a bit. A vicar, a sheriff, probably a couple kids, someone’s dog, probably, everybody gets stuck in the world’s most unconventional conga line. And all the while, Tom is pretty weirded out, but hey, it’s kind a funny, and serve them right for tormenting his poor goose. 

Said goose may or may not be entirely too smug about the whole affair. 

But of course, it’s awfully hard to get anything done when you’re dragging fifteen people in a conga line behind you, and Tom sort of wanders around for a bit, trying to figure out what to do. He doesn’t really want to leave his goose with these people, after all.

Which brings us back to our increasingly irritated princess. She’s put up with a lot so far. The addition of the “failure results in decapitation” fine print certainly narrowed down a lot of the contestants who were more interested in her father’s power than her. Or who would treat it like a game. But there’s been about three decapitations so far and ten guys in the dungeon anyway.

Oddly, six of those dungeon-tenants weren’t even trying to go for her hand in marriage. They just wanted to kickstart a comedy career. (Someone will smuggle them out later, when this brouhaha is over.)

The princess has had just about enough of all this nonsense, and at this point she’s pretty sure that absolutely no one in this kingdom understands her own, somewhat bizarre sense of humor. If she could find just one person with the same tastes as her, she’d give a political marriage a shot if she absolutely had to. At least they’d have something to talk about.

Well after about an hour, the most horrendous cacophony starts up outside. The princess looks out her window and sees a fella about her age towing some fifteen people and a couple animals behind him, most of them stuck walking in very awkward poses. He looks up and happens to see her staring at him.

“Help, please,” he says plaintively.

Castle folk are supposed to be educated, right? Someone here probably knows how to unstick these people from his new pet.

The goose hisses and makes several very alarming sounds, and Tom nods sadly. “Same,” he says.

And that’s what makes our princess laugh. Reportedly, she laughs until she cries, and the king is thoroughly bewildered -- both by the laughing and the Unconventional Conga Line outside -- but a deal’s a deal and he realizes he made a very foolish proclamation because he doesn’t know a darned thing about this guy who’s probably going to marry his daughter.

No one ever says how or if the people get unstuck from the goose. In other variations of the story from other countries, sometimes all it takes is Tom saying “goose, let them go”. Sometimes the bird is a swan, in which case, all the swans I’ve ever met were kind of mean and this one probably could’ve let those people go any time it wanted to. 

In other variations, the king says, “Wait! This guy is nobody, I don’t want the princess to marry him when I could pick someone of noble blood!” and devises several impossible tasks while the princess rolls her eyes and says “well now I’m gonna marry him just out of spite.”

Either way, Tom and the Princess usually end up marrying, and presumably happily ever after.

But if nobody ever got unstuck from the goose, and nobody addressed the guys the king executed for not making the princess laugh, then there was probably some unrest in that kingdom, so one hopes Tom and the Princess moved out.

The end.

[roscice]

Damn son I didn’t even know you tagged me

Uh so like @hamstorb tagged me for this get to know you better thing so like yeah here we go

RULES: answer some questions and tag some people

GENDER: famele

STAR SIGN: 🦀

HEIGHT: hell if I know but prob either 5’4 or 5’5

TIME: 6:19 AM

FAV BANDS: King No One, Atlas Bound, Tears For Fears, Glass Animals, Metallica, ABBA, Alt J, The Mountain Goats

FAV SOLO ARTITS: Lindsey Stirling, Marina and the Diamonds (I think she’s solo?), The Howl and The Hum (I think they’re solo??), Cosmo Sheldrake

SONG STUCK IN MY HEAD: either ‘Delovely’ from Anything Goes or Ark Patrol feat. Veronika Redd’s ‘At All’

LAST MOVIE I WATCHED: ok so everyone’s gonna hate this but The Lorax bc my science teacher loves it and it’s the end of the year so we’re just watching movies

LAST SHOW I WATCHED: if YouTube shows count then Emara. It’s really fuckin good y’all should go check it out

WHEN DID I CREATE MY BLOG: bro idk like 3-4 years ago

WHAT DO I POST: art, and I reblog mainly art and stuff I either find funny or cool

LAST THING I GOOGLED: google translate

DO I HAVE OTHER BLOGS: no (not right now at least)

DO I GET ASKS: no it’s a very empty ask box

WHY DID I CHOOSE MY URL: so I was watching the episodes of Detective Conan on Netflix and it was the one where the detective was handcuffed to the criminal and they were like fuckin around for the whole ep and I was like ‘haha’ so yeah

FOLLOWERS: like 30 something

FAV COLORS: blues, deep greens, reds

AVERAGE SLEEPING HOURS: uh like 10-6 so I get about 7-8 hours i guess (sometimes it changes and I wake up at 5 and suffer)

WHAT AM I WEARING: blue firefighter T-shirt that’s too big so I wear it for pajamas

DREAM JOB: artist or forensic scientist!

DREAM TRIP: man idk maybe Europe? Just like, a tour around Europe

FAV FOOD: idk but my fav dessert is either merangues or chocolate mousse

NATIONALITY: im American

FAV SONG: uh fuck Ark Patrol feat. Veronika Redd ‘At All’, Tears For Fears ‘I Love You But I’m Lost’, Metallica ‘Of Wolf And Man’, Alt J ‘Taro’, Glass Animals ‘Gooey’ And probably more but they change like every 30 seconds so whatever

I’m gonna tag uh fu. C k

@flora-tree

@plantpanda

Man I don’t know anyone else