• Once upon a time,…aw forget it. Stories that usually start with that also end with ‘happily ever after’. I would have titled this story ‘Happily NEVER After’, but it has been done and this story does not have a happy conclusion. Thus, I am off to create a fairy tale that doesn’t start with the stupid opening of ‘Once upon a time,’ because, perchance, it could happen twice and then I would be forced to start the story with ‘twice upon a time’ and that just doesn’t sound right to foreign ears.

    This one time, and this one-time only occurrence, there was a girl that went by the name of Aeris. She was as the town called her ‘the town flower whore.’ That is to say, she was wildly obsessed with flowers. So obsessed, that it eventually became harmful to her health and she died.

    But that’s a story for a different Lolita tea party. For it’s much too cheery than what I’ve prepared for you today. Although this tale isn’t as long as most, it is just as good, if not better, but that’s an opinion to be drawn up by your own scale on your own terms at your own pace and time.

    This story is about a girl name Mary. Or not. I lied. Ha-ha. I found that quite funny. Who would name a story ‘Mary Had a Stupid Lamb’ and not name the main character Mary? Well, I! I would not do something so predictable that you would guess Mary’s next move. No. The main character of this tiny plotline is not named Mary, but Emily. Now, as the title suggests, Emily has a lamb. Ha-ha. Got you again. Mary doesn’t have a lamb. She has a goat. How gullible are you people?

    Emily had a little goat named Pete. No, I don’t want the goats name to be Pete. My best friend Alyssa wrote a story about a homosexual goat named Pete that gets pregnant…that’s a long story for a different tea party. A story that makes you lose so many brain cells that we can’t even read it at a Lolita tea party.

    Anyways, on with this story. Emily had a goat named Steve. Now Steve wanted to be a pickle, but instead, God made him into a goat. Ah-ha! Jokes on you Steve…stupid goat.

    So one day, Emily was walking home from school, her bag was thrown lazily over her shoulder and her riding boots kicked up rocks and dust from the old fashioned dirt road. It was a hot afternoon and there was no mercy of shade, for there were no trees. Not even a pond to dip her toes in. There was, in fact, a fence that ran along once side of the road, and many, many goats and cattle grazed in the fields beyond it.

    Emily cursed the cattle farm the day they had sold her that goat. Steve had been the most adorable little runt one had ever lain eyes on. But it was a curse. All because Emily was a kleptomaniac and had to tangle with the wrong girl in school, which ended in Emily stealing some jacks in return for ten years of bad luck. And the proof was the dumb goat that her parents had bought for her.

    Steve was not just a regular goat. He was too stupid for his own good. He would constantly butter the wrong side of her toast and place his shoes on the wrong feet. Things most goats by his age knew how to do. When Emily found out that her goat was not so smart, she traded him to a witch for a lamb. This is how it went…you might insert that music you often hear when the picture of a movie ripples and a small amount of tinkling can be heard…

    That same day, as Emily strolled down the dirt road, her pure white baby-doll dress became shrouded in fine brown grains of dirt and sand by the time she had arrived home.

    “Emily,” he older sister scolded, a wooden spoon in hand. She waved it menacingly at Emily. “Go clean yourself up.”

    Before Emily could protest, in walked Steve. “Kuh-whack!” it grunted, not even having enough brain cells to make the correct noise a goat should make.

    “We must get rid of that thing,” Emily mumbled, stripping on her way up the stairs and leaving mounds of clothing to her left and right.

    And so, that night, Emily mounted the back of the goat with nothing but a small silver canteen, a jar of pickles, and a bucket of plump marshmallows.

    Emily traveled for two days and nights, stopping occasionally to pull Steve through the 24-hour drive-thru window at McDonalds.

    “Hello, can I take your order?” A drowsy voice asked from the paper cup that she held to her ear.

    “Yeah, do your job. You can take my order. I want a McChicken, fries, a large Coke…er…make that a large diet coke. I’m watching my cholesterol.”

    “Anything else?” the voice asked.

    “Yeah,” Emily began to giggle wildly. “Do you have any chili-cheese tampons?”

    “What?” the voice asked flatly, unable to understand what Emily had just ordered.

    “GIVE IT TO ME! GIVE ME MY FOOOOOOOD!!” Oh…no, no, no…as a writer I should not write things that to even my own ears sound dirty. But for now, we’ll just pretend that my backspace is broken…oh…no…

    So once Emily had gotten her food, she headed for the mountains. After a grueling two-hour trip, Emily and her stupid goat Steve made it to the mountain.

    “This is it,” Emily muttered, looking up the tall mountain. Rather randomly and harshly, Emily pushed Steve to the ground and yelled with her arms splayed wide open, “Wassup?! Wassup?! You like that?!”

    “THIS WAY, CHARLIE!” two girls yelled, dragging another girl along. “The magical leoplurodon said it was this way!”

    “Double you tea ef…” Emily muttered as the girls came to a halt in front of them.

    “Hi!” exclaimed one of the girls excitedly. She was dressed in an odd fashion for the date and age to which I have set this store.

    It was originally back in the olden days but then I had to add a McDonalds and to keep away from another cliché of calling it ‘Ye Olde McDonalds’, I had to change it. So who knows when a story such as this takes place. Perhaps time is not a factor. When does not exist in my story. Neither does how.

    But back to the way the girls’ were dressed. They were dressed in large traffic barrels with a tea cup tied to the side of their heads. And did I mention that they were brandishing twisty straws? Ha-ha. Not. You probably think I’m joking. But I insist that I am surely being fully honest when I say that these girls were dressed in traffic cones, twisty straws, and tea cups.

    “We’re off to candy mountain! I’m Apple Cider and this is my bestest friend in the whole wide world, Spatula! And this,” Apple Cider gestured to the scared looking boy behind them. He was dressed rather normally—in jeans and a Polo dress-shirt. “Is Charlie! And we—” She gestured to the group, “—are going to CANDY MOUNTAIN!”

    “No!” the boy whisper shouted, making slashing movements at his throat and shaking his head wildly before Spatula took his hand back. “My name is not Charlie! My name is Matt! They came into my house and—” but before he could finish, he jerked his hand away from the girls to catch them off guard and attempted to push them.

    “STOP!” The shouted, putting up one hand, palm toward him, the other on the side of the barrel instead of their hips—which could not be reached through the thick plastic. “Don’t touch us there!” They pointed to their left shoulder, then left hip, then right hip, then right shoulder as they shouted, “THIS IS MY PRIVATE SQUARE!” One hand at a time, they crossed their arms and then, at the same rate, uncrossed them, placing them on the side of the barrels, also while shouting “R-A-P-E! GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM ME!” With that, they threw their hands up in the air, grabbed Matt-slash-Charlie’s wrists and dashed up the side of the mountain singing, “Candy Mountain, Candy Mountain, you fill me with sweet sugary goodness!”

    “Well,” Emily muttered. “That was slightly to mildly creepy.” Except that it wasn’t like that at all. It was severely creepy, just Emily really wanted to get rid of Steve. She decided as she walked up the hill that Apple Cider and Spatula were the kind of people you just wanted to smack across the room and yell ‘What the heck were you thinking?!” Because I always find myself wanted to do that to myself…a lot. More times than I can count. Like now. I REALLY wanna know what I am thinking as I sit here a write this. But when I look into my mind all I see is the little brown monkey in red clothing clapping those dumb cymbals… and it won’t stop! Whoever said putting energizer batteries in there was a good idea should die!

    When Emily finally got to the top of the mountain, she met the Yolanda, the Screwed Up Witch of the South.

    “Welcome,” she hissed. “This is Petmart, where all our pets are relatively smart. Right now we’re having a sale. Buy two watermelons and get a free gumdrop air freshener!”

    “Hi,” Emily squeaked in one of those high squeaky sounds that make you want to beat whoever sounded like that with one of the melons that they had on sale. “Where can I go fro trade-ins?”

    “Oh,” Yolanda’s face fell and a dark shadow flitted across her face. “Pull around back, make sure you have all of your belongings off of your animal. They’ll wash and wax your animal and you’re free to pick out a new one.” Then she said quickly, “All sales are final, no refunds will be given. Do not trade in if you have a stupid or retarded animal. Side affects may include dizziness, fatigue, nausea, heartburn, ringworm, athletes foot, constant bleeding, low resale value on your home, loss of skin, the return of the black plague, and in some cases even death. Trading in your animal can especially raise the risk of heart attack, and the suicidal tendencies in 16-year-old poets.”

    “Okay…I’ll keep that in mind…”

    But she didn’t. Not-so-poor Little Emilie died that sunny day in the middle of a cornfield when Toaster Oven the Lamb with eyes as black as coal sucked out her soul and ran away, leaving behind Emily’s little sister Mary who sang, as she petted the little lamb.

    “Mary had a little lamb,” she sang sweetly. “Little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, its eyes as black as coal. Everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went. Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb sucked out a soul.”

    As I had warned you, this tale did not end in a ‘happily ever after’ kind of way, like most American tales. Or the Disney versions at least. Take The Little Mermaid. In the original, Ariel died. Oh how sad. But this story met all the requirements: it had magic, a witch, and a problem. Although the solution was a bit bitter, I’ve grown accustomed to darker endings because not everything in life has a happy conclusion and that’s just something we have to be prepared for. But my story was to give diversity to a sugar coated life full of happy-ending tales. Mine was one that was shunned to the corner…or at least given to much sugar before it was written…which could very possibly be the case here. In any case…Merry Happy St. Fourth of Hallowgivings!