Viewers Like You

"Now me show you Elmo's friends!" babbled the furry red puppet. Three-year-old Suzy watched raptly. Her mother Susan winced and tried to focus on her book, but the puppet's shrill laughter made it impossible. Muttering under her breath to avoid disturbing Suzy's fun, Susan said, "I wish this show featured less of Elmo." A purplish mist roiled into the living room through the air return. Suzy looked at it and then at her mother, but before either could speak a deep voice said, "Grrrrrranted!" A muscular man appeared from the mist, smiling broadly.

"Now it's time for Indiana Elmo and the Last Who Said!" cried the red monster. "Who said that? Let's find out!" Standing at a cobwebbed tunnel, Elmo said, "The patient one will pass." He paused a heartbeat. "Okay, Elmo's done being patient!" Elmo ran forward and a scythe severed Elmo's head at the neck. Elmo screamed and blood shot everywhere. As the puppet flailed, Susan saw foreshortened fingers gushing red, lost in the red fur of the monster.

Suzy screamed along with Elmo. Susan turned on the genie in the fury, but before she could speak he said, "Buh-bye, now!" and burst into a fading purple fog.

A Bubble of Stillness

"Stop," he cried, "everybody stop!" So urgent was his cry that even the typically-imperturbable city crowd froze in place, each person staring at him. He was small, perhaps five-foot-four, balding with short-cropped white hair, and wearing an immaculate grey suit. He had a faint ethnic cast to his eyes, as though one of his grandparents had thought briefly about being Japanese, or Malay, or Filipino. For a moment, he commanded a bubble of stillness on the sidewalk. "I've lost a contact," he said. In the moment before the crowd's attention rolled into indifference, he added, "Ten thousand dollars to the person who finds it! Intact!"

People froze in place or lowered themselves tenderly into squats, as though dropping a heel or toe might cost them a potential windfall. The bubble of stillness expanded as others walked up and were quickly impressed into the search. No one noticed when the instigator walked out into the street and to a well-dressed woman on the opposite sidewalk.

"There," he said. "The traffic of a sidewalk at rush hour, arrested. Pay up."

She quirked her lips, half smile and half grimace. With a flourish, she wrote out a check for a hundred thousand dollars.

A Little Pinch

"There'll be a little pinch," the doctor said, "and after that, you won't feel anything. By the time we're finished, your tooth will be better than new." "Beh-uh? Ow beh-uh?" She looked up from the reclined chair, the cheap, sterilized sunglasses making the doctor and her assistant into shadowy creatures.

"Well, no more pain, for one thing." The doctor chuckled. "The thirty-three... no, thirty-five." Tool in hand, she continued. "But beyond that... have you ever wanted to be venomous?"

"Wuh? Eh-eh-uh?"

"Yes," she said as she worked. "Able to inject venom with a bite."

"Ai uh ayhk?"

She saw a smile through the doctor's mask. "Yes! Exactly like a snake. The gland I'm using is from the common rattlesnake. Not the strongest venom, but if you like it, we can always upgrade."

"Aih uhss ee-uh oh uh oooh ah-ahl!"

"This is better than a root canal? Clamp her."

Twenty minutes later, the patient rose full of righteous indignation. The doctor only shook her hand and thanked her for participation in studying the effect of fear and stress on dental operations, as permitted by the waiver. Exploring the tooth with her tongue, she found it felt entirely normal.

And somewhat disappointing.

Of Womanly Pursuits

When her mother died, Ella mourned, but she found happiness with her father. He raised her well but could only teach what he knew, which was nothing of womanly pursuits. Her father remarried, but her stepmother and two stepsisters thought only of themselves. Her father died, leaving Ella without income or prospects in a family that had never loved her. Years of cruelty and servitude pushed Ella to the brink. She fled to the woods, where woodland creatures returned her to health. She returned that night for her horse, a sharp knife, and her father's old hunting rifle. When her sisters next took coach to town, Ella took their money at gunpoint, smiling at their rage.

It became her living. She robbed only the arrogant, thoughtless rich, and robbed them well. Other disenfranchised women joined her. They called her the marauder princess, and through skill and her affinity for the forest creatures she evaded capture for years.

She so vexed the nobility that the prince entered her woods alone to forge a peace as princes do — through marriage. Long after the royal prince wed the marauder princess, the queen still disappeared for weeks every year, with her favorite rifle.

Nothing Up My Sleeve

"Now, if I can get the birthday boy up on stage with me, there we go. Now, there's nothing up my sleeves..." She flourished her tuxedo sleeves. "...But I think there is something in... your... mouth." Reaching into the ten-year-old's now-bulging mouth, she pulled out a scrap of denim. It kept coming, like the traditional magician's scarves, until she revealed an entire pair of jeans. The boy's jeans, which he was somehow no longer wearing. A dozen children laughed. So did some of the adults. The boy cried out, embarrassed, and fled the room.

The magician chuckled. "Always gets the crowd."

The boy's father walked up. "Why did you do that?"

"Ah ah aahhhh." She wagged her finger at him. "A magician never reveals her secrets."

"Not how, you jackass, why?"

"Sorry, can't. They'd kick me out of the union." She winked at him.

He shook his head in befuddlement. "Get out."

"Aren't we—" She cleared her throat and held out her empty palm. "—forgetting something?"

"Invoice me." He hustled her out the front door and slammed it behind her.

"I've gotta stop working children's parties." She took out the man's wallet, dropped his pants, and walked to her car.

Demonstration of Expertise

"So you see, Ms. Colm, I'm afraid we won't be able to offer you a loan." The bank officer set down his pen. "Ms. Colm?" She held her fingers in front of her face and pinched them together, making a squelching noise with her mouth. "What are you doing?" "Squishing your head." She returned to the process of squishing his head.

"Well, fine. But that doesn't—"

"Bew, bew." Ms. Colm pointed her fingers at him, then opened her hands wide. "Boosh! I just blew you up with lasers," she said.

"Please stop that," he said, but Ms. Colm changed to airplane noises and the rat-a-tat of an old biplane.

"He's going down in flames," she muttered. "Eject, eject! Oh, the humanity!" She leaned over the desk between them. "You failed to eject in time and burned to death in the wreckage."

"I see." The banker typed on his computer for a minute while she made distressing faces at him. Printing out a form, he slid it across the desk. "Ms. Colm, based on a demonstration of expertise, I've reevaluated your loan request. You are approved." She held up the paper triumphantly. "Good luck with Making People Uncomfortable, Inc.," he said.

This All Ends at Midnight

While the girl danced the night away at the ball, the footmen — formerly lizards — and the coachman — formerly a goose — waited with the coach. One footman looked thoughtful. "What was it she said? About midnight?"

"What, the fairy lady?" asked the other footman.

"Right."

"Said this all ends at midnight."

"The party?" He shook his head. "The magic? So... we'll be lizards again?"

"I was a goose," threw in the coachman.

"Right. But I spent every day skittering around looking for insects, terrified of every passing shadow."

"I was a goose," said the coachman.

"Yes, fine! But really, we lose all this?"

"All what?" the other footman demanded.

"I'm human! I can think, and gaze at the stars, and probably eat food other than bugs."

"I like bugs," said the other.

"That's..." The footman pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's not the point. For the first time, I want more. For the first time I know there's more to want! And it'll all disappear! The knowing, the wanting, gone in an hour? Every minute is... it's unimaginably precious." He stared into the distance with dread.

"I was a goose."

The footman couldn't muster a response.