Fairy Tale

by Stephen King

Only I was also the kid who put firecrackers in mailboxes, blowing up what might have been somebody’s important mail. I was the kid who smeared dogshit on the windshield of Mr. Dowdy’s car and squeezed Elmer’s Glue in the ignition slot of Mrs. Kendrick’s old Ford wagon when Bertie and I found it unlocked. I pushed over gravestones. I shoplifted.

There were other things that I’m not going to tell you about because I’m too ashamed.

The solution to my problem was obvious. If he was dead, he couldn’t tell anyone anything. Assuming Mrs. Richland’s ears weren’t as sharp as her eyes (and the two gunshots really hadn’t been very loud), the police wouldn’t have to come. I even had a place to hide the body. Didn’t I?

I hit him across the face with his gun. I could tell you I didn’t mean to do it, or I didn’t know I was going to do it until it was done, but those would be lies. I knew, all right, and it felt good. Blood burst from his nose. More trickled down from the side of his mouth.

I had plans for that hand, which will probably take me down even further in your estimation, but you have to remember I was in a fix.

I raised the gun. I could tell you it was a bluff, but I’m not sure it was.

I raised his gun, which I thought was a .22 automatic.

He walked, crying, sure he was going to be shot in the back of the head. Because again, it was what he would do.

I watched him go without the slightest regret for what I’d done. Not very nice.

I realized I’d expected frantic because it felt like I’d been gone a long time. In reality it had been less than three hours. A lot had happened

in those hours—life-changing stuff.

I needed to fuel up, because my day was only beginning. I had a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow. I would not be going back to school, and my dad might—probably would—be coming home to an empty house. I was going to try to find the sundial Mr. Bowditch had spoken of.

Soonest begun, soonest done, my mother used to say. Sometimes I couldn’t exactly remember what she looked like without checking her picture, but I could remember all her little sayings. The mind is a weird machine.

Every time I started to feel sorry for him, or guilty about what I’d done, I thought of him pressing the barrel of his little gun against the back of my head and telling me not to turn around, it wouldn’t be smart. I was glad I didn’t kill him, though. There was that.

And you have to remember I was seventeen, a prime age for both adventuring and foolish decisions.

With Polley’s .22 auto in my backpack, that made me a regular Two-Gun Sam.

And really, why would I feel bad about it? The poppies were beautiful and smelled even better. There was no harm in the shoe-woman; she had welcomed me, had comforted me when I broke down, and I wanted to see her again.

I caught up with Radar. I brushed through the overhanging vines and looked down on the poppies. Red carpet, I thought. Red carpet. We were in the other world.

Her feet, clad in the same red shoes (with the green stockings her look was quite Christmasy),

It crossed my mind—probably influenced by some horror movie or other—that we might be eating human flesh, but then I dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

Ordinary tea, I hoped, not something that would get me stoned.

I felt stoned enough already. I kept thinking that this world was somehow below my world.

“Everybody eats at the House of Shoes.”

I wondered where they had all come from, but I wondered even more about the object that held pride of place in the workshop half of the cottage.

It was an old-fashioned

sewing machine, the kind that runs by pumping a treadle. Written on its black casing in fading gold leaf was the word SINGER.

Over the door was a large wooden shoe, bright red, like the ones Dora wore.

Give to me your broken shoes For down the road you’ll find ones new. If you place your trust in me, Lucky will your journey be.

I had reached the end of my third look, where the road rose and went over a humped wooden bridge (the creekbed beneath it was dry), when I started to hear honking. Not cars but birds.

Red shoes. Dorothy outfit.

goose girl.

The goose girl had no mouth.

She used her other hand to hold mine steady, and the touch of her fingers felt like a low electric shock. I was smitten. Any young guy would have been, I think.

Such decoration suggested to me that it was a she. The next moment I became sure, because when the horse spoke, it was with a female’s voice.

She had a certain confidence, an air, as if she were used to having people—and not just farmhands—do her bidding.

I probably don’t need to tell you that it only took that hour for me to fall head over heels in love with her,

isn’t Star Wars just another fairy tale,

She had a way about her, as if she were used to being obeyed…

You are one of the whole people.”

“Whole,” Falada said. “Not gray. Not spoiled.”

“Never say his name lest you speed his waking.”

many years of the same few things. Sometimes I think I’d rather starve, but that would bring too much pleasure in certain quarters.”

I’d heard of curses—the storybooks are full of them—but

this was the first time I’d seen one in action.

or the night soldiers wil...

Elden, who was always good to her, is dead.

“Does the brother sell them?” Leah shook her head. “Why not? Stores usually make a profit.” “There is more to life than profit,” Falada said.

Shepherd? I realized—you’ll say I should have before—that what I was

thinking of doing wasn’t just crazy, it was selfish.

I was homesick. I had only been gone a few hours,