Beautiful Rem

Pink cherry blossom petals gracefully flutter to the ground. A little girl stares at this beauty through a window. She’s desperately longing to be out there in the sun with the summer breeze blowing through her dress. She looks down at her perfect white shoes and knows that that’s a privilege. ‘You’ll get your new shoes dirty!’ her mother would yell. She would like to say that her shoes aren’t really new anymore because she got them two Easter’s ago, but she knew that a painful smack would be given to her after the smart-ass remark. She sighed and went back to brushing her hair.

“Four hundred seventy six, four hundred seventy seven, four hundred seventy eight, four—“ She stopped and peered out of the window again to see a tall man sitting under the cherry tree. He was very young and handsome, like all the prince charmings are supposed to look like. She decided that she would like to see him, smack or not. She tiptoed out of her pink frilly bedroom and opened the patio door. She ran out onto the grass to the man under the cherry tree.

“Hello sir,” She said curtsying to him in a white lace dress.

“Why good-morning little girl” he said with a grin a little bit too wide for a child.

“Are you a prince or a knight, here to take me to a land with castles and faeries?” the little girl asked, trying to cover up her excitement.

He ran his perfect fingertips through his long hair and said, “Yes, that exactly what I’m going to do.” His once beautiful green eyes turned a sickly rusty red. The little girl shrieked and tried to run but he scooped her up and they disappeared. The petals still fell, fluttering peacefully in the summer breeze. No trace of sinister doings.

I woke up with a start. That dream has been haunting me for weeks. Because I specialize in immortal to mortal crime I tried to figure out if it was true. I soon discovered that the dream was true. Or at least some of it, and when I looked it up more many other children had the similar kidnapping experiences. I needed to write my thoughts down so I don’t forget them. I picked up my pen and started to write.

These kidnappings have been happening to little girls and boys for hundreds of years. Taken away by beautiful people. That story was in 1907 in a small French home. I’ve been working to find these people all my life. I’m a detective of sorts. I’m not really human, I’m an elf. These faeries take innocent humans into the Rem, and that’s a no-no.

The Rem is an entirely different world. We are every fairy tale you’ve ever heard and more. We’re not sugar and fun but we’re not the essence of evil either. We are a lot like humans, mentally. Humans have incredible smarts, and we have magic and trickery. The creatures of Rem always say that humans are weak and powerless, but what would we be without magic? But I digress.

For the past four hundred years, we have come up with rules for the creatures of Rem when they visit the mortal world. (We like to call it Brain, or even Einstein) There was a time where all the creatures of the Rem did what ever they like on Brain and they scared and amazed the mortals. That’s how the faery tales came to be. But because of witch trials and similar hangings the humans were hurting themselves because of our chaos. So here are the rules: Never show your real self to humans. Wings and horns kind of scare them. Don’t charm or use magic on them. And never, ever, under any circumstances take a human back to Rem.

My job is to find and punish the creatures that disobey these rules. My current investigation is my hardest one yet. I’ve heard thousands of stories, all very much alike. They’re always children between four and fifteen and always beautiful kidnappers. So far I have no leads. Creatures of the Rem can make themselves look like any thing they wish. Those beautiful monsters could be ogres for all I know. Or maybe they’re pixies, or brownies, ore even trolls! Anything you look at could be a creature of the Rem. Gypsies are vardlays, they’re bird like people. Vardlays have thin feathers all over their body and bright golden eyes. They have wings but they generally are the shape of humans, and they love to migrate… Most of them are in Brain now, they don’t like Rem. They say it’s too crowded.

A football player named Randy Moss is an elf that’s why he’s so quick. Penelope Cruz is a faery, who else would date a guy with a last name that sounds exactly like yours? Faeries think that’s hilarious. Most Librarians are Brendwicks. Brendwicks are worm like creatures. They absolutely love human literature. Bookworms…

Manatees actually are mermaids, except now they aren’t allowed to show their true self. That’s probably why there’s not so many manatees anymore, the mermaids left. Mermaids are very vain so when men don’t think they’re beautiful they get very upset.

Well, I’m on this quest to find these fiends, and I’m stumped. I have no suspects and all witnesses are dead or missing. All I have are a couple of incredible stories.

I finished this entry into my journal and twirled my blonde hair around my finger. I sighed; it’s feels as though there’s no hope. My parents disapprove of my occupation and it seems like I’m going nowhere. Because what I do, most of the creatures of Rem hate me. And because of this job, I never get to see my family or friends. I just wanted to be a hero to the humans, but I’m no closer to helping them than when I started. I rubbed my eyes and scratched my head. I’ve looked over all the witness accounts and no special characteristics came up except one, the one with the little girl and the cherry tree. The creature’s eyes turned red. I know there’s a lot of human stories with monster with red eyes, but there’s no red-eyed creatures in Rem. Also, why would he show her his true self?

I crawled into my moss green bed and pondered these thoughts until I fell asleep. I dreamt of thousands of blood red eyes glaring at me while little girls in white dresses skipped around me singing horrible gory songs about the murder of their dolly’s.

I woke up drenched in sweat breathing heavily. I pulled the wet sheets from my body and got out of bed. The sun was shining brightly through my window. It deceives me so. Outside it seems like spring, lovely and warm. But I know that the second I start skipping outside icicles will be hanging off me like Elvis’s frilly shirts. I yawned and smiled a little at the thought of me in an icicle Elvis suit singing “Blue Christmas”.

“Yeah, baby” I said. My lip curled and I shot my teddy bear with my fingers. I shook my head and walked into the kitchen to eat some cheerios.

You might be asking why an elf knows so much about human life and culture. Well, I’ve always been intrigued by humans. You could say I’m a little bit nerdy. I know all human history and all it’s wars, disasters, and superstars. I watch the history channel and VH1 on my free time. I’m fascinated by humans in every way; from the way they build buildings to the sky to how they think. How pretty much all of them are the same but entirely different at the same time.

I flipped through the channels for a while, eating cheerios, before someone knocked on my door.

“Nevelyn, let me in!!” a growly voice yelled from outside.

“It’s not locked!” I yelled and I heard a mumbled ‘oh’ and a man walked into the house.

“Hello Gretch,” I said smiling at him. He grimaced. The fat tubby human he once looked like morphed into a tall dark haired faery.

He had dark brown eyes and chiseled features. He was extremely handsome, like most faeries. His dark brown hair fell in strands over his puppy dog eyes. He was my partner against crime. He didn’t like it too much because he hates humans. But he gets good money, more then me, which gets me pretty angry.

“It’s Glevengretch,” He said his eyes closed in frustration.

“That’s ugly. Gretch is still ugly but better then Glevengretch!” I spat out the name in over exaggerated disgust. I’m not sure, but I’m assuming in faery culture, that the more beautiful they are the more ugly name they get. He rolled his eyes and sat down next to me.

“What is a sponge talking? From what I remember humans use that to clean…” He asked after a brief pause. I looked up at the T.V. that was showing Spongebob.

“Because he’s funny,” I answered. He cocked an eyebrow at me but then shrugged. We sat there in silence.

“Why are you here?” I asked him.

“Actually I was here for a reason but I forget now.” He said thoughtfully.

“And I was thinking you were here just because you loved me!” I said fake crying.

He patted my back, playing along with my act.

“It’s okay, I came here for a real reason, but more just to see you.” He pulled my chin up his face and he looked into my eyes. He kissed me. I guess he wasn’t just playing along…

© 2008 Brenna Joyce