the mysterious pink envelope

THE MYSTERIOUS PINK ENVELOPE: A FAIRY STORY

I

Lucille stood in front of the long mirror to open the pink envelope. It
had arrived two days ago and had been sitting on the battered oak
table. Her name and address were written on the front perfectly in
black ink. She had been afraid what it might say inside the mysterious
pink envelope. It smelt vaguely like tobacco, rather moist, and fresh
like a good shower with soap and her fingers as graceful as crystal
swans trembled a little as she ran them across the seal. Lucille jumped
as she cut the skin ever so slightly on the paper and a tiny trail of
pale red blood emerged between unnoticed folds of skin. She gently
sucked the wound with an optimistic sigh. Sliding her index finger
beneath the sealed paper she slid it along from one end to the other
and the noise in the silent drawing room was like the whoosh of a
firework. Blue paper pale like eyes was inside. It hadn't been folded
because it was so small a piece of paper. The new smell reminded
Lucille of cut grass and hosepipes, but a lot of things reminded
Lucille of these things lately.
Lucille's hair was fair and long to her back her body curved like a
chocolate Venus her eyes melted like butter in the sun her breasts rose
with every breath and she had bare feet when she read that one square
of blue paper:

"You are the most beautiful
girl
I have ever been without&;#8230;"

Clasped to her chest oh the smile! Rain hit the window and sounded like
a birdsong and there sneaked a flutter at the top of her thighs from
the flutterbugs and she looked deep inside the same pink envelope and
saw a glorious grassy knoll which she fell right onto.

II

But a knoll in an envelope? Lucille didn't think it was really her
place to question so she lay down on the grass and hummed to herself in
the sunshine. A few minutes later she felt something prodding into her
side. How frustrating, she thought on the grassy knoll in the little
pink charming envelope that had made her feel so beautiful. It was a
hot dog.
"What's all this?" asked the hot dog.
"Just a grassy knoll," replied Lucille rather curtly. She had just
been woken up after all.
"Not all this," the Staten Island dog said slapping the grass. "This
grassy knoll is ALWAYS going on here."
"If not all THAT then all WHAT?" asked Lucille, who was becoming more
interested in what the hot dog had to say.
"All this," it exclaimed, and slapped Lucille in the face. Shocked and
with thick red lips Lucille immediately put the hot dog in her mouth
before it even had time to belch its distaste. She dozed right back off
cheerily.
I think a semi-hour later she woke up, only this time the grassy knoll
wasn't grass anymore it was sharp jagged rocks, the sky looked like a
furnace and Lucilles' arms and legs had somehow become albeit beautiful
and perfectly formed and soft and gentle hot dogs. Surrounding her
eerily was a pack of singing sailors hats.

"Ho ho ho and a case of good rum" - they sang
"long might we drink it
so as we might forget the embarrassment
of being the all-singing
all-dancing
drunken sailors hats."

They offered Lucille the bottle because she looked upset and the
dancing and singing continued, feeling like everyone should clap their
hands. The hats, of course, didn't have any. Lucille brushed her hot
dogs together and moved about in the rocks.

III

"The rum keeps flowing
all night long
until we cant remember
anything at all."

The sailors hats seemed to be getting more reckless and Lucille didn't
like not being able to stand up because her legs were hot dogs. It was
an unusual sensation. The rocks which hadn't always been rocks looked
like they were breathing and moved about themselves in a revelation.
What are you doing? she wanted to ask the hats.
"What are you doing dancing and drinking like this? And where's that
lovely grass gone to?"
The sailors hats stopped all festivities at once and not one of them
said a single word in reply. "Listen to her," said one; "she'll never
understand!" sobbed another; "nothing the matter with her, look, just
got her perfect and delicious hot dogs for limbs!"; "we're the ones
suffering,"; "GRASS?"; "GRASS, she says!". Lucille managed to manoeuvre
herself backwards. The sailors hats threw the rum away so that it
smashed. Bottles screamed when they broke and Lucille watched the
pieces of glass turn into trees. They piled before the girl with the
hot dogs on each others brims and with one last lament:

"Oh oh oh; oh oh oh; oh oh oh&;#8230; what it is (to be
me-e-e)"

they plummeted off a tall rocky edge and Lucille screamed no you don't
have to&;#8230; but they had already fallen straight down onto the
heads of 1950's dock workers tattooed and laid and moving on with a
cargo of elegance and decanters - snuffle snuffle - and they kept their
gobs shut.
Lucille shut her eyes but heard a voice shout 'Jork' one side of the
stage and a telephone ringing at the other and it was raining she
seemed to be in a football field&;#8230; ack green grass::: ack
silver tipped mind balloon/// but what's this? An office complex? Legs
are legs&;#8230; good! Those dogs were making me hungry but my arms
are now&;#8230; forks? Ah it's Jork:::: THE CUTLERY AMALGAM.

IV

Behold me missy I have the head of a fork. That was Jork speaking
there. What hot rain there seems to be on this young football field, I
can feel it melting through my clothes, thought Lucille. An office
block with windows like this must be the commercial sector&;#8230;
hmm no football match but all the white lines seemingly in place and
then this darned tower.
"Behold me I said," Jork said disgruntledly, "your funny head cogs are
turning in solipsistic introspective philosophick philologick
rudeness."
"Pardon me?"
"Pardon maybe but ever really be able to forgive I don't bloody
balls."
"&;#8230;"
"Just ignoring me - JORK! - to think about the confusing nature of
your own temporary reality and a football field."
"But the field&;#8230;"
"The field makes the earth spin makes the earth spin makes the earth
spin and that tower that's the after-paradise stock-machine&;#8230;
share buying and spares&;#8230; currency analysis and whosoever
cares. Must toodle."
Jork kissed Lucille on the lips and had a fork for a head. He was a
cutlery amalgam and cut a fishhead. Don't know where he disappeared to
though. The telephone kept on ringing. Lucille thought it must have
been coming from the office. It wasn't because a man with a cell-phone
and a dark red suit was walking towards her and shouting jumbled words
and sentences into it. He wore sunglasses.
"&;#8230; watchplants scrummy scrummy tell the wife oooh a clock
handle gimme a ? sq. foot \% at 9.22 the $ my head shelf better get a
rebuild aching buffoon monkey surely a ten&;#8230;" and so on.
He stopped walking in front of Lucille. He seemed to be normal and
normal. However on the top of his head and the back of his head were
the same faces that were on the front of his head. Three faces how very
haunting, scoffed Lucille.
"PARADISE SHARE," he blurted::: cut to&;#8230; back of a
taxi-cab.

V

Lucille sunk into the leather seats of the taxi-cab. She looked down at
her body, which looked and felt normal, and thought about an explosion.
It was big and tore a house down and she relaxed a little.
"Hey lady," drawled the driver, "stop that." She looked up. In the
rear view mirror his face looked like the moon. "Stop that thinking
about explosions in my cab will ya?"
"And who might you be?"
"I'm the moon," the driver replied patronising in his tone. Figures,
she probably thought. "You're going to have a baby you know," the moon
told her. Lucille found this ludicrous. She had never had a physical
relation with a man.
"That's impossible," she said.
"No it's not," the moon explained, "you spoke to me just then and now
you are going to have a baby moon with me. Obviously, the moon doesn't
have babies in the regular way." Lucille looked concerned. Was she
prepared for a baby moon? He was a charismatic driver but sure had been
underhanded in his reproductive aplomb.
"Pregnant with conversation&;#8230; that's typical moon." And
Lucille felt a twitching in her stomach. Fuzzes like the labour's
starting&;#8230; it never feels like a pain as such, more like
swallowing a large mouthful of chocolate that wasn't particularly good.
She lifted her top to the bottom of her breasts and she hadn't worn a
bra that day. The driver tried not to look or hear what was going on.
Lucille realised the cab wasn't going anywhere but everything was
changing including the moon and the cab and the world was the lobby of
an expensive hotel and the brain trees were full size now towering to
the light fittings///there were hammocks from the branches inside
numbers tried to solve themselves a little boy cried and two girls
naked from the waist down were the LEAVES and looking at her navel
stretching out like a hand through cling-film a disc pushing through
Lucilles' stomach finally finally yes the brouhahaha over perfectly
safe rotating 2-dimensional moon hovers the back seat and says
"Daddy"::: "Son!" ack JUMP&;#8230;

VI

Ah the tennis racquet mountain&;#8230; what a place to find
oneself.

VII

Far above the clouds and far below the people at the very top of the
mountain of tennis racquets was a castle that looked like a person.
Lucille didn't know if she was going, coming or just standing around
feeling like a very old and tired leaf. Sometimes the wind made her
chuckle. It had no doors no windows and no brick structuring, but it
sure did have two sad blue eyes and a long nose that was secretly full
of rotten hair. Just like a person!
But E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y knows that people never live on mountains made
of tennis racquets, even with weeping eyes. The only thing that would
ever possibly, by any stretch of any humans' imagination, live on top
of all those sporting tools is a castle. Lucille remembered her mother
once saying something like that:

"Dear Lucille&;#8230; every cloud is silver throughout,
and beautiful too."

She wondered if she would ever get to talk to someone and walked to the
door that wasn't there in the castle that looked like a face. It was
dark dark dark and there were noises that made you feel a little sick -
skriiiiiingcht but shot through and frequencizerator - and pieces of
furniture were being sealed inside specialised water bubbles.
On an imposing throne on a fifteen foot flowing carpet that was
waiting for attention there sat a dignified dog. It had a human body
and smoked five cigarettes at once very quickly. Lucille felt 6 but
looked 59. In truth wherever that went she is 17. It must have been
left with our coats at the backwards door on the ceiling!
"Hum hum hum then dear-o bleak&;#8230;" he said. He was certainly
charming, thought Lucille. Before she could really open her mouth to
speak the dog raised a hand with a cigarette between each finger to
stop her. A gong was struck brutally.
"Flan to Hades," he parped out, "&;#8230;&;#8230; A
MONOLOGUE!"

VIII

THE MONOLOGUE FROM THE DOG(gy)

Children can be cruel. "You're a dog," they spat at me. "Look at your
long ears and wet nose, dog." The girls would stroke me, the boys would
beat me.
Well, who's laughing now? Huh?
It's me isn't it, you motherfuckers.
Why? I'M in the FUCKING suit.
Ever seen a dog in a fucking suit?
No.

* * * * * * * * *

Curses and oatmeal thought Lucille a bizarre leader a throne based
mammalian and such jowls flip flap. Bland d?cor though. Movewards! Out
the window::::

IX

::::straight onto a pile of teetering wardrobes at the feet of a man
who gave one proclamation:

"I have brain grass."

And he smiled in the way that provokes discomfort and there was dribble
on his lips and he peeled back his own scalp&;#8230; thick foliage
was a reaction gosh another alas!
Out the window::::

X

::::and bang what a commotion, straight into the arms of a handsome man
dressed head to toe in silk finery and smelling of flowers, such a
solid and reassuring jaw line like a jewellery box and no doubt strong
enough to save everyone especially a tiny girl like Lucille.
Fell into his arms and kissed spinning round on a grassy knoll he
swept her off her feet like a love broom some china was
somewhere.
"An unrecognisable happiness&;#8230;" Lucille bleated.
"An unrecognisable joy&;#8230;" he bleated.
The two lambs skipped and trundled into the setting sun that set
upwards into the electric sky, and the grassy knoll knew it was going
to change into something more&;#8230; comfortable.

The mysterious pink envelope closed itself on the battered oak
table.

FIN