Fantastical Tendencies
I/I
She sat with her toes against the pale pink carpeting of her bedroom. She positioned her bottom on her heels and her eyes appeared to be permanently attached to the television set on her floor. Her flaxen hair was weaved with ribbons that matched the color of her room, a shade defined as a slightly less harsh version of Pepto-Bismol which could cause the eyes to strain upon entering the little girl’s paradise. She ran her fingertips over her fingernails at a steady but slow pace.
The girl was just shy of seven years old and could repeat every line in the movie that she was watching. To say that she liked the movie would be a complete understatement. She watched it numerous times in one day. The character’s names and faces were seared into her skull. The exact inflection in each of their voice, the clothes that they wore in every scene… all of this could be readily summoned if need be. She kept the box that the movie came in up high on a shelf so that the dog wouldn’t ruin it.
She absolutely and totally adored the movie. She loved the scenery of forests and castles nestled in them. She loved the accents with which they spoke. She loved the luster of the knight’s armor and the putrid fiery breath that shot out of the dragon’s mouth. But her favorite part was the princess.
The princess was everything that she ever wanted to become. The princess wore beautiful clothes in colors like salmon and periwinkle. Her hair was neither too curly nor too straight. Her countenance was regal but inviting. The way that she spoke, she acted as if she could command anyone to do anything for her. And this was because she could. She was the princess and one day she would become Queen and rule the kingdom.
After the movie was done, sometimes the girl would play with her brother. She would climb into the lavender dress that her grandmother gave her for her birthday, and she would put on a plastic tiara, beset with rhinestones and sequins, and she would lie down on the couch and wait for true love’s kiss. This meant that her brother would have to lean down and grudgingly peck her cheek before removing his lips the instant they met her skin and wiping off the poison of the contact with the back of his hand. But, of course, this took place after he had defeated the dragon, the role which the dog was graciously given.
When the girl turned ten, she had cut down the amount of time that she spent watching the movie to once every few weeks. She had let her hair grow longer like the princess’ hair had been. She let her nails grow as well, and she painted them a dainty shade of pink. She didn’t pretend to be a princess very often anymore, because her brother wanted to play football instead of staying indoors with her. However, on the rare occasion that there was a rainy Saturday afternoon, he would usually, after much pestering on the girl’s behalf, cave in and play it with her.
Her grandmother got her a book to read about princesses for her birthday. It was old and the binding was frayed, obviously belonging to several people before it had been given to her. She put it in the very corner of her bookshelf and picked up the newer, shorter books that she had received. They were all about princesses too. They always ended with: “And they all lived happily ever after.” That part always made the girl smile, because in the end, everyone was happy. She would read that to herself when she had nothing else to do, because somewhere inside of her, it made a little place feel like it was glowing. And she didn’t know why it happened, it just did.
When she was thirteen, the girl started learning about real princesses in school. Many of them were unhappy young women who were fond of decapitating old friends that had become bitter enemies. She found out that dragons never have and never will exist. She learned that when princesses got married, their parents arranged the wedding to create alliances. They weren’t rescued by a knight in shining armor. They never found true love.
She only watched the movie once every couple of months. She was too busy spending time in front of the mirror. She tried to straighten her hair to make it look neater, but would end up wetting it again because it looked too flat. She would redo her eye make-up three or four times in order to spread it evenly. She would apply coat after coat of nail polish onto her nails to ensure that they would never chip. No matter what she did, she would sit unhappily in front of her vanity and tell herself that her hair would never look right and she would never be beautiful.
Her grandmother didn’t buy her anything for her birthday because she had a massive heart attack at the grocery store around a month before she became a teenager.
The girl didn’t wear pink to the funeral and she didn’t care. She didn’t know if she really wanted to wear pink anymore, but soon she continued dressing like she always had. She went to her bookshelf and removed her grandmother’s present from years before. She didn’t read it, though. She held it close to her chest for several long minutes and then returned it to its home where it was isolated from the rest of the bookshelf, which was now lined with novels.
By the age of sixteen, the girl had almost completely given up watching the movie. In fact, she only popped it in on the rare occasion that she was sick enough to stay home from school. Being sick meant having to go to the nurse to be sent home, or even worse, the doctor’s office. The moment that an adult found out, everything was ruined.
It had started around the time that they had to put the dog to sleep, when she began going onto the internet and searching ways to lose weight, her average body mass creating a block in her image. She pulled up websites about low fat diets but none of them had results quick enough for her liking, so she pulled up websites that she was very careful about. Websites that she would close when her parents came into her room. Websites that made her itch with nervousness as well as excitement.
The girl turned nineteen alone in her college dorm. Her roommate was out with her boyfriend as usual. She didn’t tell anyone it was her birthday because she didn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to herself. She didn’t bake a cake. She hadn’t tasted frosting in years. She hadn’t tasted any kind of food in two days. She drank small sips of water and every so often chewed a piece of gum.
She was the result of three years of laboring effort. Days without eating much of anything, weeks of exercising, breaths wasted on repeating to herself, “You’re disgustingly obese.” The hard work had all paid off. She was a walking skeleton. Her personality was weaker than her bones. Despite the fact that she consisted of emaciated remains of her former self, she still counted the ounces she had yet to lose.
She sat on the couch and turned on the small television set and saw that her movie was on. She saw that the knight in armor looked like a man in a trash can. The special effects used to create the dragon were hopelessly dated. She noticed that the beautiful background was nothing more than a studio backdrop.
But what broke her bony, little heart was the princess. That princess, whom she had dreamt about becoming for much of childhood, wasn’t in any way thin. If she bent over, you would not be able to make out the gnarled knobs of her spine. She was even a bit chubby in some places. The girl shut off the movie instantly, disgusted—ashamed even—for wasting so much of her time mooning over it.
The girl decided to unpack the few belongings that had remained in boxes for the first few months of her studies. She removed movies, albums, and books from the standard, ugly cardboard boxes that she wanted out of her room. Eventually her fingers fumbled over an ancient book with a dreadfully tattered spine. The pages were yellowed and smelled odd. The girl turned the book around and saw that it was the long-since forgotten book that her grandmother had given her for her birthday nine years ago.
She closed her eyes and opened to a random page. The title of the story she chose was well-known: The Little Mermaid printed across the top. Her eyes scanned the letters, her mind comprehended the syllables, and her mouth moved along with the words one by one across the page. She read it out loud, but hushed the story to herself in a whisper. She read about how the mermaid saved the prince’s life when she went up to the surface. She read about the mermaid’s intoxicating beauty and her completely blind devotion to the prince. And she continued to read about how the mermaid traded in her voice for feet that caused unbearable pain every time she moved, but she still danced for the prince. She discovered that the mermaid would turn to sea foam if the prince married someone else. The prince did not love the mermaid, and so he got married to the princess that he loved.
As the pages turned, the horror on the girl’s face grew. The story revealed that the mermaid’s sisters gave her a knife and told her to kill the prince so that she could return to her true form and save her own life. The mermaid couldn’t do it. She loved the prince too much and she cast herself into the ocean to turn into sea foam. The girl’s eyes squeezed shut.
She opened them again, and to her dismay, the magic line had not appeared at the end of the story. There was no “happily ever after,” etched in. Not for the mermaid. The mermaid was not the princess, no matter how hard she tried.
This fairy tale was real.
The girl was just shy of seven years old and could repeat every line in the movie that she was watching. To say that she liked the movie would be a complete understatement. She watched it numerous times in one day. The character’s names and faces were seared into her skull. The exact inflection in each of their voice, the clothes that they wore in every scene… all of this could be readily summoned if need be. She kept the box that the movie came in up high on a shelf so that the dog wouldn’t ruin it.
She absolutely and totally adored the movie. She loved the scenery of forests and castles nestled in them. She loved the accents with which they spoke. She loved the luster of the knight’s armor and the putrid fiery breath that shot out of the dragon’s mouth. But her favorite part was the princess.
The princess was everything that she ever wanted to become. The princess wore beautiful clothes in colors like salmon and periwinkle. Her hair was neither too curly nor too straight. Her countenance was regal but inviting. The way that she spoke, she acted as if she could command anyone to do anything for her. And this was because she could. She was the princess and one day she would become Queen and rule the kingdom.
After the movie was done, sometimes the girl would play with her brother. She would climb into the lavender dress that her grandmother gave her for her birthday, and she would put on a plastic tiara, beset with rhinestones and sequins, and she would lie down on the couch and wait for true love’s kiss. This meant that her brother would have to lean down and grudgingly peck her cheek before removing his lips the instant they met her skin and wiping off the poison of the contact with the back of his hand. But, of course, this took place after he had defeated the dragon, the role which the dog was graciously given.
When the girl turned ten, she had cut down the amount of time that she spent watching the movie to once every few weeks. She had let her hair grow longer like the princess’ hair had been. She let her nails grow as well, and she painted them a dainty shade of pink. She didn’t pretend to be a princess very often anymore, because her brother wanted to play football instead of staying indoors with her. However, on the rare occasion that there was a rainy Saturday afternoon, he would usually, after much pestering on the girl’s behalf, cave in and play it with her.
Her grandmother got her a book to read about princesses for her birthday. It was old and the binding was frayed, obviously belonging to several people before it had been given to her. She put it in the very corner of her bookshelf and picked up the newer, shorter books that she had received. They were all about princesses too. They always ended with: “And they all lived happily ever after.” That part always made the girl smile, because in the end, everyone was happy. She would read that to herself when she had nothing else to do, because somewhere inside of her, it made a little place feel like it was glowing. And she didn’t know why it happened, it just did.
When she was thirteen, the girl started learning about real princesses in school. Many of them were unhappy young women who were fond of decapitating old friends that had become bitter enemies. She found out that dragons never have and never will exist. She learned that when princesses got married, their parents arranged the wedding to create alliances. They weren’t rescued by a knight in shining armor. They never found true love.
She only watched the movie once every couple of months. She was too busy spending time in front of the mirror. She tried to straighten her hair to make it look neater, but would end up wetting it again because it looked too flat. She would redo her eye make-up three or four times in order to spread it evenly. She would apply coat after coat of nail polish onto her nails to ensure that they would never chip. No matter what she did, she would sit unhappily in front of her vanity and tell herself that her hair would never look right and she would never be beautiful.
Her grandmother didn’t buy her anything for her birthday because she had a massive heart attack at the grocery store around a month before she became a teenager.
The girl didn’t wear pink to the funeral and she didn’t care. She didn’t know if she really wanted to wear pink anymore, but soon she continued dressing like she always had. She went to her bookshelf and removed her grandmother’s present from years before. She didn’t read it, though. She held it close to her chest for several long minutes and then returned it to its home where it was isolated from the rest of the bookshelf, which was now lined with novels.
By the age of sixteen, the girl had almost completely given up watching the movie. In fact, she only popped it in on the rare occasion that she was sick enough to stay home from school. Being sick meant having to go to the nurse to be sent home, or even worse, the doctor’s office. The moment that an adult found out, everything was ruined.
It had started around the time that they had to put the dog to sleep, when she began going onto the internet and searching ways to lose weight, her average body mass creating a block in her image. She pulled up websites about low fat diets but none of them had results quick enough for her liking, so she pulled up websites that she was very careful about. Websites that she would close when her parents came into her room. Websites that made her itch with nervousness as well as excitement.
The girl turned nineteen alone in her college dorm. Her roommate was out with her boyfriend as usual. She didn’t tell anyone it was her birthday because she didn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to herself. She didn’t bake a cake. She hadn’t tasted frosting in years. She hadn’t tasted any kind of food in two days. She drank small sips of water and every so often chewed a piece of gum.
She was the result of three years of laboring effort. Days without eating much of anything, weeks of exercising, breaths wasted on repeating to herself, “You’re disgustingly obese.” The hard work had all paid off. She was a walking skeleton. Her personality was weaker than her bones. Despite the fact that she consisted of emaciated remains of her former self, she still counted the ounces she had yet to lose.
She sat on the couch and turned on the small television set and saw that her movie was on. She saw that the knight in armor looked like a man in a trash can. The special effects used to create the dragon were hopelessly dated. She noticed that the beautiful background was nothing more than a studio backdrop.
But what broke her bony, little heart was the princess. That princess, whom she had dreamt about becoming for much of childhood, wasn’t in any way thin. If she bent over, you would not be able to make out the gnarled knobs of her spine. She was even a bit chubby in some places. The girl shut off the movie instantly, disgusted—ashamed even—for wasting so much of her time mooning over it.
The girl decided to unpack the few belongings that had remained in boxes for the first few months of her studies. She removed movies, albums, and books from the standard, ugly cardboard boxes that she wanted out of her room. Eventually her fingers fumbled over an ancient book with a dreadfully tattered spine. The pages were yellowed and smelled odd. The girl turned the book around and saw that it was the long-since forgotten book that her grandmother had given her for her birthday nine years ago.
She closed her eyes and opened to a random page. The title of the story she chose was well-known: The Little Mermaid printed across the top. Her eyes scanned the letters, her mind comprehended the syllables, and her mouth moved along with the words one by one across the page. She read it out loud, but hushed the story to herself in a whisper. She read about how the mermaid saved the prince’s life when she went up to the surface. She read about the mermaid’s intoxicating beauty and her completely blind devotion to the prince. And she continued to read about how the mermaid traded in her voice for feet that caused unbearable pain every time she moved, but she still danced for the prince. She discovered that the mermaid would turn to sea foam if the prince married someone else. The prince did not love the mermaid, and so he got married to the princess that he loved.
As the pages turned, the horror on the girl’s face grew. The story revealed that the mermaid’s sisters gave her a knife and told her to kill the prince so that she could return to her true form and save her own life. The mermaid couldn’t do it. She loved the prince too much and she cast herself into the ocean to turn into sea foam. The girl’s eyes squeezed shut.
She opened them again, and to her dismay, the magic line had not appeared at the end of the story. There was no “happily ever after,” etched in. Not for the mermaid. The mermaid was not the princess, no matter how hard she tried.
This fairy tale was real.