Fairy Tale

by Stephen King

I wish I had looked longer, but I don’t blame myself. You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you?

I turned to go and then he spoke again, but I don’t think it was to me. “A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.”

“Something about presents. You said a brave man helps but a coward gives presents.”

Child Roland to the dark tower came, His word was still Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.

“Time is the water, Charlie. Life is just the bridge it flows under.”

A simple woodcutter, he’d said to me not all that long ago. The fairy tales are full of them.

Here is something I learned in Empis: good people shine brighter in dark times. Help her, too, I thought. Help Dora, too.

But just as the poem says, I had miles to go and promises to keep.

tempus est umbra in mente is a better one. Roughly translated, it means time is a shadow in the mind.”

There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.

“When there is love, scars are as pretty as dimples. I love you, Leah.”

I said I would be happy to lie with her, if she would excuse any clumsiness, on account of me not having had the pleasure so far in my life. “Lovely,” she said, and began to unbutton her dress. “You can pass on what I teach you.” As to what followed… if it was a thank-you fuck, I didn’t want to know. And if it was a mercy fuck, all I can say is hooray for mercy.

It was very beautiful, as broken things sometimes are.