'Sup.
This little piece was something I wrote in, like, two hours, nine hours before it was due in my eighth grade English class (I'm a freshman now.). My English teacher had given us a book by Vivian Vande Velde, an author who was raised near my town, and the book included different versions of the ancient story Rumpelstiltskin. After we had read a couple of variations, my class's project was to make our own version; the only catch was that it had to be related to something historically accurate. I chose to make my version about Prohibition.
I know that it's bad, and that it doesn't really make any sense, and that it sounds like the sort of romantic drivel written by an untalented, lovestruck teenager (I'm just giving an example; that wasn't really what I was like.). I edited it minimally, and only to parts that were cringe-worthy. The rest of it is solely, genuinely, my eighth-grade writing.
(I am a little bit happy with the literary archetype at the end, though, even though I didn't even know anything about archetypes in the eighth grade. If you can find it, I'll do absolutely nothing to reward you.)
Enjoy!
Once upon a time, before rehabilitation and support groups, there was Prohibition. Temperance-supporting women across the American nation believed Prohibition to be a simple fix of every problem that dealt with alcoholism. Men saw it as an ungenerous, unsuccessful banning of a very treasured item: liquor. One of these men was called Giovanni, who lived with a woman he knew so minimally that he sometimes forgot she was his daughter, named Maria. Alcohol was a beloved thing of Giovanni's, more beloved than his wife, who left him for the same reason, and his daughter, who in return had no parental guidance whatsoever. Because of this sad dependence on alcohol, the Italian man and his flapper, sixteen-year-old daughter were poor to the point of no return. The money that Giovanni once possessed was in the fat pockets of liquor store managers. But, then again, the Temperance movement banned their dear obsession, so these fat pockets' hosts were starved of their liquid addiction. Giovanni and the managers, after years of socializing over the counter, became friends with a common interest, and established their own team with the goal of smuggling as much illegal alcohol from Canada as possible. They quite conveniently lived in North Dakota, just south of the neighbor to the north.
Maria, poor Maria, was ordered to guard the stolen wares when her father was away bootlegging the illegal liquor. She would lock every door in the house and she would jam the doorknobs with angled chairs, then run to the basement where the place reeked of something that tickled at her throat and tear ducts. For days, she'd make the underground prison her home, consuming nothing but crouton-like bread and unprepared beverages in barrels. She never dared drink too much, for her father was quite protective of his 'gold.'
Yes, Giovanni liked to call his alcohol 'gold,' and the brewing of it 'the spinning of straw,' or the raw material that was alcohol before it was manufactured, 'into gold.' Indecipherable jargon concerning the illegal substance was famous among the team of bootleggers.
But one day, while Giovanni was away, she did drink too much. Luckily, Giovanni was still thousands of miles separated from Maria in the unfamiliar setting of Canada, delivering the illegal liquor back to the States. Still, Maria found herself addicted to the bitter substance that came out of her father's barrels, and this particular day, she sipped much more than she intended to.
Then she gulped.
Pretty soon, she had digested half of a barrel in an hour, leaving her mind addled and her stomach crying for more. The strange feeling in her head that accompanied the heavy drinking made Maria panicky, and due to anxiety (mostly the anxiety from how her father would react when he discovered she drank half a barrel of gold) she leaped from her stance up the dusty basement stairs, struggling to open the doorknob with such force that she almost sent herself tumbling backwards the way she came. Maria unfastened the protection of the angled chairs on the knobs after she escaped the basement. Then she ran outside. Leaving the wares unguarded.
It was incredibly bright, the strong June sun nauseating, migraine-like blindness disabling her sense of sight. Maria trudged down the sidewalk, breathing heavily, paranoia and frenzied eye-shading making her realize that people were staring at her with incredulous and ashamed faces.
"Another flapper," they said.
"Ridiculous!" they said.
Maria, not used to this sort of embarrassing public display, conveyed herself to the nearest alleyway. It was thin, a mere five feet wide, and was littered with dirt and debris. Maria found no discomfort in this location, with her new drunken thoughts intact, and simply lay on the ground, massaged her temples and found release in unconsciousness.
"Do you have any idea what she has done?!"
The slap of flesh on flesh suddenly shoveled into her restless sleep.
Maria could only hear a bustle of voices, all of older men with strong Italian accents. Maria knew these people.
The store managers....father's group....
As she thought of this, an incredible throbbing pain in her head banished all noise into nonexistence, replaced with a high-pitched squeal of something like a broken radio. She clenched her teeth, wrinkling all features of her face in pain, and groaned. This groan abruptly silenced the men surrounding her. She did not lay in the alley, but instead in a small, crowded room, men in suits looming over the girl under the tattered blanket on the floor. Everything was wooden, with stray nails hiding in the shadows, their potentials being to exert as much pain as possible on an unknowing human heel. Beams of the noontime solar torture, signifying that Maria slept for a full day, pulsed through thin, pathetic curtains. She lay on her side in the fetal position, groaning still.
"Awake," a tall man whispered. He was struck across the back of his head untimely, due to the uncontrolled annoyance of another man. Apparently, stupid obviousness was not accepted there.
With no preamble, the shortest, fattest man, the leader, approached the front of the mass and began speech. His voice reminded her of pickles.
"Your father has been arrested, Maria. Because..." he crouched to his knees, clenched his palm around Maria's shoulder, and leaned to her ear. "You," At this, he shook where he gripped with surprising force. "...have not done your duty." He thrust Maria's shoulder away from him, appearing disgusted with what he held. This alerted Maria, and she attempted to sit up. But when she did, the pain in her head climaxed, and she did not attempt any more.
Instead, she said, "Help."
"WHY?" the same man screamed. A hurricane of unbrushed teeth and preposterous stench stunned Maria, because the short, fat man was still not far from her face. "You are going to help us," he started, several octaves lower than his yell. "When your headache subsides, you will turn left at the door and continue down the hall to the end. There, you will see a very big room full of barrels. As your father says..." He chuckled. "You can spin 'straw' into 'gold.'"
And at that, the whole room was guffawing.
Maria grimaced at the laughter, and said, "Who are you?"
"I am the King," was the answer, and without further adieu, he lifted himself from his crouch, straining with effort, and exited the room with his gang of friends trailing behind him. Some stole last glances at Maria, winking at her with sick intentions.
But one stayed behind.
"Hello," he said. His Italian accent was not as strong as the others.
Maria made no gesture to greet him.
"I'm going to help you," he continued, unperturbed.
At this, Maria flicked her eyes open and observed the person who talked to her. He was not an older man, not at all. Without smarter evidence to support it, Maria immediately trusted him. He looked kind.
"How?" she muttered.
"You'll see," he said. A pleasant, heartfelt smile from him made Maria realize that he wasn't joking, thus reassuring her preconceived notions of trust.
After a few patient hours of curing the throbbing discomfort in her head, Maria decided she was well enough to listen to this man. She struggled to sit upright, and with the help of the young adult, she leaned up from the floor and sat in a measly chair, which creaked as she positioned herself even slightly. Forgetting everything involved with decent posture, she immediately pressed her elbow to the knee on the same side, smothered her face in her palm, and, again, groaned.
"Ay-yai-yai..." breathed the stranger as he shut the door. The concealing provided by the door dramatically decreased the rampage of noise occurring in the other rooms of the speak-easy.
Sarcastic Maria repositioned herself, so that her hand was on her neck, and asked, "What do you mean, 'ay-yai-yai'?"
The man bit his lip, pondered, and said, "You are never going to make it in here if you keep on groaning like that." He turned around from shutting the door, faced Maria, and looked her in the eye with surprising pressure. The stranger held up his palms in a criticizing pose, and continued sharply, "They'll get annoyed. Really annoyed. They'll--"
"Okay, I'll stop groaning," interrupted Maria. It came out a few decibels louder than she intended it to, and she realized her unnecessary defensiveness, for this man's intention was to aid her. Suddenly shy, Maria listened attentively to the noise that had been muffled by the door. Girls giggling, men drunkenly performing ballads that would drive any sober woman insane.
To cease the awkward silence that had imposed, the man said, "What is your name?" Because he was trying to avoid raising his voice again in his hurtful, merciless manner of teaching, the question came out as a mumble. Maria wouldn't have heard it anyway, because she was lost in her trance of listening to the noise beyond the room.
The man repeated himself, dictating loudly. This made Maria lose her sudden trance, and become very bashful indeed.
"I am so, so sorry. Uhh...Maria. My name is Maria." Her face heated involuntarily, and she bent her head so that her hair shielded a quickly reddening expression. She stared at the rough, callus-encrusted hands in her lap. Suddenly, she wondered what the man's would look like, which made her ask…
"What's yours?" Maria croaked.
She heard him resist, then mutter, "Rumpelstiltskivano."
"Wha!" she blurted. Maria, after she lifted her head in question, realized suddenly why he had resisted, and became even more bashful than she had been before. Embarrassed curses filled all thoughts in her head.
"I know," the shy-looking man returned.
An extremely awkward moment passed.
"Okay, Maria," Rumpelstiltskivano started, "I am going to tell you exactly what is happening to you."
The look of concern that Maria responded with made him regret the force in his voice that had returned. He winced. Rumpelstiltskivano overlooked the speech he was about to make, and thought he should restrain Maria somehow so that when she heard the news he was about to give, she would not bolt for the door. He approached in front of her chair calmly, crouched, and took her hands. The hands that touched Maria's palms felt familiar to hers. He began.
"You're in a speak-easy," he whispered. "You know what those are, right?"
Maria eyes widened. She nodded frantically, and Rumpelstiltskivano could feel her hands rapidly perspiring.
"The King expects you to make the unprepared alcohol, in the room he mentioned before, into decent beverages for the customers here. He wants you to brew it."
Maria attempted to fling his grip away. She bolted to a stand. His hands stayed put, and, because of this, so did Maria.
"I'm just like you, though," Rumpelstiltskivano yelled at her insolence. He was prepared for this kind of reaction from the girl, for it was identical to his own when the King had him in the same position as Maria was just then. One year ago, when he was Maria's age.
To this news, her body immediately stilled. She murmured, but did not say anything intelligible. For a few long moments they stared at each other, the girl unbelieving, the boy silent.
"He'll kill you if you don't, or if you try to run away," Rumpelstiltskivano delivered, with consistency that frightened Maria. The hands he held vibrated and lowered in temperature.
Maria furrowed her brow and asked, "Do you know how...how I..." she thought for a second, "..we...we can get out of here? Can we–is it even possible--"
Rumpelstiltskivano smiled, and said, "Yes."
"How?" Maria begged. She tightened the grip on her hands and asked the question again, even more desperately.
Rumpelstiltskivano bowed his head, and responded to Maria's feet, "I'll help you." He looked at Maria's face again. "I'll help you brew the liquor, and I'll help you stay out of as much trouble as possible." His expression hardened in seriousness, which made Maria feel strangely comfortable, like she knew he could protect her from whatever the King had in mind.
For the next three months, the pair worked at King's Speak-Easy. During the day, they brewed liquor, following the precise directions exactly so as not to upset their superiors, which was basically anybody above the status of homelessness. She and Rumpelstiltskivano remained silent during this tedious task. Both held the threat of execution close to their hearts, and did not dare rebel against their orders. Their brewing lasted from six in the morning to six at night. During the evening, Maria completely attached herself to Rumpelstiltskivano. She clutched his arm with both hands as they walked through the mass of Mafia men as they enjoyed their night of gambling, which the pair assisted with obediently, as well: preparing drinks, organizing bets. It was not during this time they could discuss, either. They had to wait from six in the evening to eleven at night for any chance of conversation. At eleven, both were sent to bed, and it was then that they talked. They laughed, they learned each other's pasts, they comforted each other when things had gone terribly wrong with business and they were punished. Rumpelstiltskivano kept his promise to Maria the entire time: to help her, and to keep her out of as much trouble as possible.
And, of course, they were the best of friends.
But there were rare times when Rumpelstiltskivano was not there in the evenings. He would sometimes help with the King in meetings, and he would brew surplus liquor that had recently been brought in. And Maria was terrified of these times. The second the clock struck eleven at night, Maria would run to the bedroom and hide under the shabby protection of a terribly tattered blanket. She did this because she was horrified of the consequences of Rumpelstiltskivano not being there. The men, the strange, ugly men. Crowded and smelly and disgusting. She was horrified of them, and of being alone. Rumpelstiltskivano had provided her with her first experiences of being cared over, and she was terrified of being separated from it.
This fear proved very realistic one night, when Rumpelstiltskivano disappeared after eleven at night. Maria sprinted to the bedroom and took protection under the blanket. She chanted to herself, "He'll be back, he'll be back..."
A creak in the doorway relaxed her somewhat, but as she saw the figure in the door, her muscles flexed, and she whimpered. The King, who had grown shorter and fatter and much less attractive, stood at the threshold of the doorway. He smiled, a hurricane of memories of their first meet rushing back to her: unbrushed teeth and preposterous stench, overwhelmingly stunning. His attempt at seduction made Maria queasy.
And the twenty-four hours later, one second before eleven at night, Rumpelstiltskivano returned. The second hand struck eleven, and Maria sprinted, crying, past Rumpelstiltskivano and into the bedroom. She was ready for him to enter the room, shocked and wanting to hear what had happened to make her so upset.
The story was unbearable for Maria to tell, but she told it to the very unhappy face of Rumpelstiltskivano. He was disgusted, shuddering with rage at their superior, the King, for taking such advantage of a girl so much younger than he. He screamed, and he kicked at a chair. He hugged Maria after he vented his anguish, and never wanted to let her go. And, slowly, as they hugged, Rumpelstiltskivano's hand drifted to Maria's stomach and rested there. It was the location that would, over time, stretch due to the King's unspeakable actions.
"What should we do?" Maria asked, her voice cracked and shaking. It was midnight, and every minute before then, she had wept. She now rested on the floor, laying on her back and staring at the structure of the ceiling.
"We'll...we'll...." Rumpelstiltskivano said, pacing beside her. He shook his head and stared at his feet. He stopped pacing, and looked down at Maria.
"I'm taking it. We're taking it, far, far away from here," he said, with an uncompromising sureness.
"But the King, Rumple...he'll have us executed for sure," Maria protested.
"I don't care about him anymore, Maria!" he shouted. "I don't care about anyone anymore, except for you and that baby!"
Maria sat up slowly, and stared at Rumpelstiltskivano in disbelief.
"...You really mean that?" she said.
"We're leaving here tonight. Right now," he stated, expressing that, yes, he really meant it.
And they did leave then, right then. The two prepared nothing; they simply stood up, held hands, and exited the bedroom door. The entire speak-easy was asleep, and all they had to do was exit. Rumple and Maria walked together, down the stretching hallway to the entrance of the actual bar. Maria turned her head and looked at her best friend. The excitement in her voice was undeniable.
"We're really leaving!" she whispered, her voice shaky.
"Open the door," he said, grinning.
Maria's hand shook as she lifted her arm and her hand touched the wooden knob...
"HALT!" screamed the King.
Both Maria and Rumple began a wild sprint as the door swung outwards, into the bar. The chairs rested upside-down on the tables, providing an easy run through the speak-easy. It was not difficult at all to outrun the King, Rumpelstiltskivano and Maria learned, and, as inappropriate as it may have been in that time of rush and adrenaline, they chuckled. Running together, it actually became a fun activity more than an adventurous, life-threatening sport. The exit door approached rapidly, and Rumple found humor in kicking down the wooden door heroically. The King panted, a deplorable distance behind them. Maria laughed loudly at her friend's action, and they ran outside.
Maria's first time outside in three months. Rumple's first time in three months and one year.
Like a refreshing shower, like a revelation. Both pairs of eyes darted straight to the moon, bright white light, a symbol of their freedom. The couple started towards it, hoping to jump up somehow and touch it.
They weren't even running for their lives anymore. They were running just because they could.
Rumpelstiltskivano turned around, ceasing the pair's sprint, and mockingly shouted into the dark, King-less void behind him, "I bet you didn't even know my name! For more than a year I've known you, and you don't even know my name!" His voice split with effort. He pointed at Maria's abdomen. "The baby's yours! The baby's yours if you can guess my name, ol' King! You old beast, you!"
Rumpelstiltskivano laughed with Maria, and they continued on, toward the moon, experiencing for the first time the joy of life.
The King really had shouted back Rumpelstiltskivano's name, but the running friends were in too perfect a mood to care.
It's bad. I know. :D
Did you find the archetype?
(It was the light of the moon, symbolizing new life. That could either mean the baby's life or the pair's freedom.)
If you did...
YES!
If you didn't and accepted the praise anyway...
You're a dirty little liar.