Science Fiction Tale

So... I don't know exactly what I was thinking when I first wrote this, or even when I wrote this, but I found this start to a short story on my computer and thought it worth sharing.

Science Fiction Tale

A crisis filled the land of Fairytale, and all the surviving heroes, villains and creatures of the stories decided to get together to fix the problem.

Hansel, Little Red, two of the Three Little Pigs, Anansi, Cinderella, Snow White’s Prince Charming, Belle, the Beast, the Frog Prince, two or three Kings, Rumpelstiltskin, a Evil Stepmother, a Wicked Witch, a Fairy Godmother and an odd assortment of talking animals were among the only remaining inhabitants who came to the meeting.

“Where’s my sister?” Hansel whined in a small voice. He looked suspiciously at the Evil Stepmother, but she was from a different story.

“Child, I regret that we do not know, but I worry for the larger picture,” the Frog Prince said. “Her disappearance is but a symptom in a larger disease.”

“I agree with the talking French cuisine,” said the Witch. “I propose we send out a party to find the source of this weirdness and stop it. I went to visit that girl up in the tower (a dreadful brat who refuses to cut her hair, but someone has to take care of the dear), and instead found a seductive foreign man who tried to bite my neck.”

It was the same all around the circle. Someone was missing or a setting vanished or changed or there were strange new creatures prowling where there shouldn’t be.

As Prince Charming explained it, “I know this enchanted forest like the back of my hand and I’ve never seen anything like those vicious wolves who replaced my Sweet’s seven during the full moon the other night.”

Murmurs of assent came from everyone. Then Little Red spoke up.

“I realize that I may look like an innocent little girl in an unfortunately colored outfit, but I’ve been around as long as any of you. If we’re to get to the bottom of this, I say we find Jack first. By my recollection, he disappeared right around when this began. What the Witch said is right; we need to send out a party to get to the bottom of this.”

Silence fell over the group as they nodded, wondering who would be sent as a member of the search party. To their surprise, it was scared Hansel who volunteered first.

“If it helps find my big sister, I’ll go,” he said.

“That’s the spirit, oh lord of bravery and honor.” Anansi spun his praise like it was one of his stories. “I too will volunteer myself to find the discordant strand of our land and retie it so we can once again play in harmony.”

A chorus of “I’ll go”s and “Yeah, let’s restring the forest”s rang from members of the crowd.

“It’s settled then,” began Little Red, “Hansel, Anansi, the Wicked Witch, Prince Charming, Belle and–”

“NO,” roared the Beast. Turning to Belle, he placed his misshapen claw upon her shoulder with a surprisingly delicate tenderness. “You can’t go. I’ll take your place.”

“Beast, thank you for worrying about me, and you can come with us if you want, but I am not staying behind.” From the way everyone’s heart froze in their chest at the tone of her voice, there would be no arguing; Belle would accompany the group.

The seven bade their farewells to the assembly, thanking each Fairytale citizen for their wishes (and in the case of the Fairy Godmother, spell) of luck as they exited the clearing.

The night transformed the enchanted forest. Knowing that anything could be lurking around each bend was enough to keep the group silent. They jumped at the sound of a cracking twig, halted at any unfamiliar echo.

Soon they came upon another clearing similar to the one they had just left. A great tent filled the space, producing a warm and inviting light. Anansi pulled them back a pace, whispering:

“I know this place. That is the tent of the Twelve Months. Watch carefully each word you say, they take offense easily and have been known to get their dreaded revenge at the slightest insult.”

Forewarned, the party approached the tent, but jumped back when a young man dressed in shorts and t-shirt stepped out. He greeted them without words and held the flap as they proceeded past.

“Well come,” intoned the matronly August. “We’ve been expecting you. As you well know Anansi, no one finds the Twelve Months without us seeking them first.”

“I-Indeed, Ma-Madam,” stammered an Anansi as red as Little’s hood.

A small boy in a snowsuit with mittens piped up from the corner.

“Tell ‘em a’ ready, August. I can’t stan’it when the circle’s broked like this.”

Indeed, four of the Twelve Months were missing from the ring of seats around the modest campfire.

“Alright, December,” turning to the seven, she smiled. “He gets a little impatient, but what can you expect when the year’s almost over?”

“Now, I know you seek Jack–” at the look of protest on Hansel’s faced she added gently: “and Gretel. Continue down on the path you were on. It will take you out of the forest, past two castles and over a river. Keep going two pastures farther and you will find that pesky peddler who gave Jack his magic beans, more than that we don’t know.”

Come daylight, the group left down the path exactly as the Twelve Months outlined. The first castle was eerily deserted, but the second castle was the defunct kind that usually harbored a dragon guarding a room full of treasure or a tower with a princess.

No fiery roar greeted them as they approached but looking from atop Prince Charming’s shoulders, Hansel described a “terrible lizard” just on the other side of the battlements, unlike any dragon he’d ever seen.

Crossing the river, they paused when they heard soulless moaning coming from below. The Wicked Witch paled and refused to take another step.

“Necromancy.”

At the look of confusion on their faces she explained.

“Forbidden magic, controlling the dead, unstoppable, run.”

They ran, and kept running past the two pastures, all the way to the peddler’s cart. He held no clues to Jack’s whereabouts, but he did point them to the famous beanstalk.

They climbed the magic beanstalk hand over hand, all the way to the Giant’s cloud castle. Only instead of a castle, they found a glowing metal orb. As they watched, three legs unfurled from its underside, creating a fearsome tripod. It lurched in their direction and they ran until they came to the edge of the cloud’s horizon. They had a choice, jump or face the mechanized monster.

Over the edge, they landed far sooner than expected. In front of them stood a sign of the kind that usually stood outside their towns and villas.

“Welcome,” it proclaimed, “to the land of Science Fiction.”

Gay Fiction

I've always been reticent when it comes to LGB fiction, as if there's something about it that drives me away. I've read my fair share and almost always come away from it with a question: Where are the voices that speak for me?



If you look at most pop-fiction for gay male youth, it's either the tortured angst of coming out or some slightly less tortured, teen romance. Looking at a lot of the literature for the older set, we come across pages written by the justifiably angry gays who spent the 70s and 80s fighting for visibility and the right to march in something as outrageous as a Pride Parade, now a little bit older, a little bit settled in.



A long standing in joke amongst my friends says I never came out as gay so much as I came out as Danny. That kind of intense romance was okay when my body was swimming in enough of its hormones that I even had crushes on a few girls. Having grown up in a culture where Pride Parades have reached enough mainstream appeal that they can be sponsored by Budweiser, I think I'm what's called the epitome of Millenial apathy, at least when it comes to a homogenized subculture that while I respect it's history, is the stuff of history books (or as is more likely the case, Wikipedia searches).



I'm among the first in a generation of fairies standing on the shoulders of giants, bears, self-styled trannies and assorted other woodland creatures to see at least hints of equality in America. Yes, the racial, class and gender divides meanwhile are even farther from equality, but from certain perspectives we're closer than we've ever been.



We're here, we're queer and we're not something you've seen before. We're the generation saturated in postmodernism from birth onward. I was part of a panel discussion my junior year of college on what it means to be queer in community and one of the panelists could barely answer our questions because of the contextual differences created by the age gap. The very fact that we could ask about a “queer community” at all was astounding.



It's not apathy that we face; it's a paradigm shift. There is an intimate connection between generation theory, activism and sexuality that I don't think current discourse has completely taken into account yet.



So again I ask, where are the voices that speak for me and those like me?



They don't exist. Or rather, they're out on the streets protesting the color/gender/class-blind ideology and practices of reactionary mainstream movements. They're in classrooms laughing at all the silly little boys and girls who still have this image of feminism as bra-burning and man-bashing, writing papers and quoting names like Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. They're homeless on the streets. They're on social networking sites like tumblr, aggregating information and resources and the occasional funny image so that others can stumble upon their tumblogs and make better sense of the world.



And really, when it comes down to it, do I want any other voices other than my own representing me? No, but I would like just once to find a story about a queer that I can relate to without being sickened by the cliches and stereotypes and heteronormative tropes and the bad writing. It's a wonder people even know what queer is since the literature is hidden away in academia rather than mingling with the masses and making itself known.

Follow Where You Will

Part 1 of a short story I started writing a while ago.

“And if I don’t mean what I say

Don’t take me for a liar

I’m the Pied Piper, the rebel town crier

Follow me down to the sea

Follow where you will

Follow me to madness, let the water stand still”

Their song amused me. It was a madness of strings and passion; an angry little rant against the religious and political structures so stifling to the freedom of thought the lyricist so clearly believed in, dressed in the metaphorical guise of the tale of the poor residents of Hamelin.

I stepped back from the crowd, feeling their energy as they cheered, crowded around the stage that had been set-up in the corner of the small café. There was joy here, and perhaps some misunderstanding. Wordplay has always been a hallmark of the political, cleverly disguising the real messages in plain view. The nuances of the message were probably lost on half the group, absorbed and ignored as part of the musical experience, but music itself has always been a message. We speak in code to share what we mean with plausible deniability so as to avoid repercussions should the powers in charge decide they don’t like what we have to say.

I nodded to the barista/bartender as I stepped through the door and out into the summer night air. It was early by most standards, the bars and clubs were barely half an hour past opening for the night, but it was peaceful as far as my eye could see. The moon hung on the very cusp of being full, a fat, white, perfectly round maggot marring the perfect darkness of the night sky. As if from nowhere I pulled out my trusty pipe and played a soft little tune, echoing and playing with the song I’d so recently heard.

At my call, they stirred from their hiding places. Thousands of beady little eyes looked on from the shadows, drawn to the sound of my pipe. They knew this sound as surely as they knew the scent of the discarded sandwich in the dumpster behind the Starbucks. It was ingrained in their little rodent brains the way sweet-looking forest fauna instinctively know the song of the helpless princess as she waits for her prince charming whilst lost in their tree-filled home.

With a hop in my step and a half dance, we twirled our way down the urban streets as I led the unwitting rats somewhere far removed from their metropolitan love-nests. Who knew I’d still be in the business of pest control after all these years?