Silly ol' me. I must never forget that Jhonen owns these characters, except for Dem, who is mine, all mine, mine mine mine!!! But to Jhonen we must be forever grateful.

Smirking Fairies and Seedy Fathers

            Gaz's heart skipped beat after beat. It had been fluttering in her chest since she and Dem had drove away from suburbia into the city, where the houses had been replaced by tall buildings and the soft lights of televisions and living room lamps were eclipsed by neon, just as flesh and bone were replaced by glass and wires. This is how Gaz liked it. Ever since she could push a stepstool and climb on it, she would sit on her window seat and gaze at the lights and the dimly hovering signs. To her, they were one step closer to Gameslave-topia.

When she was five, Gaz was convinced her father was actually a robot. His skill with machines, and the fact that she never saw him eat or sleep or sneeze or go to the bathroom, convinced her that he wasn't human. But that never lessened her love for him. The other fathers in the neighborhood were sloppy, boring dopes that snored and scratched their butts and then smelled their hands. They made her sick. Her dad was perfect: neat and clean and smart. And the Gameslave he gave her for her sixth birthday was his love letter to her, his promise ring, his heart. It said I'm proud of you; I'll protect you, better than any stupid card or quickly vanishing word.  Since then, machinery was the only aspect of humanity that interested her.

But on this drive with Dem, she stared more and more at the fleshly human beings they passed on the road. She wondered what the men in tattered jeans were saying to the women on the street corner; their shiny skirts horizontally bisecting their butts, their legs swelling out at the knee. Their ankles were the same thickness as the thighs of most women she had seen. She remembered Devi, the lady at the electronics store where she bought her batteries. Her thighs were the same thickness of these women's ankles. She was long and wispy, her bones made out of wire. These people were thick with muscle and rich with fat. And their clothes were all colors: turquoise, aqua, fuchsia…the only colors Devi wore were black and purple. And these women's chests! They bounced! Nothing about Devi bounced. Gaz realized for the first time how sad Devi looked sometimes, how scared—her forehead would wrinkle and her lips would curve down, and little white cracks would appear in her lavender lipstick. And sometimes her big brown eyes would get wet, like mud puddles, only Gaz could see her face in them when Devi gave her batteries, as if her eyes were panes of glass pressed over molasses. In Devi's eyes Gaz was always staring up under her palm fringe eyelashes, scowling.

Gaz could see little bumps sticking through the women's tissue paper shirts, like buttons. It slowly dawned on her what they were, and, though she tried to turn her face away, her eyes locked with those buttons as if they were eyes staring challengingly at her. Looking at those big, bouncing bodies, she marveled at how soft they looked, and thought of how deep her hand would sink in if she pressed one of them…

Deeply ashamed at the thought, Gaz turned away, her eyes smarting with embarrassment. She clamped them closed, suddenly reminded of that Mysterious Mysteries episode about telepathy. People can't read your mind, she growled at herself. Don't be stupid. Still, she ran through a level of Vampire Piggies in her mind until all thoughts of plump women's bodies was thoroughly smothered.

Opening her eyes, Gaz stared down at her own spindly legs and the way her purple dress lay flat on her chest, perplexed. These people were so different from everyone she knew. She wondered if they were…beautiful. She had never thought of that word before. The most attention she gave to it was when she studied it for a spelling test. But now it was repeating over and over in her head—beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.  She put her palm on the window as they slowed at a red light, and mouthed the word, feeling it fizzing on the roof of her mouth and inside her nose like an ice-cold Lemon-Poop Cola. She swung her head to Dem, and gazed at him. He was bobbing his head slightly, and she realized that the radio was on. Her eyes jumped from one part of him to another, like fingers picking cherries. His dried-cranberry hair fell between his shoulders, indistinguishable from his black jacket in the darkness of the car. Blue outlined his face, his freckles fading into the shadows swathing his face as if he was wearing a hood. His nose was a graceful slope from his forehead. His skin was the color of skim milk. One hand lay on the steering wheel, lit hot pink by a crimson light, making the skin look raw, the freckles magenta. She could see the outlines of his bones through the skin. They were like a bird's wings. His arms were cables, thin, but able to cradle someone as small as she was. His neck was as soft as powdered snow.

Her eyes stopped at his mouth. His lips pulled back from his small, sharp teeth every so often, and his tongue would flick out at the air. Looking at it, Gaz was surprised that it could turn sideways. Looking at it again, she saw that it was shiny with spit, and she crossed her legs, pressing the small of her back into the seat. She drew in her breath when he turned at her, smiling.

"You can turn your tongue sideways," she said.

"Can't you?" He grinned, then curled the sides of his tongue in. "You ever tried that?"

"No," she said, and tried to make her tongue contort without opening her mouth. Dem smiled. " Stick it out first," he said.  She obeyed, and felt a surge of joy when her own tongue folded in on itself like a sleeping bag made of meat. Even when she grinned the sides stayed a little wavy. Dem laughed, reached over, and ruffled her hair. For a moment Gaz's skin tightened, her veins and arteries bubbling as if every drop of blood whispered beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Then he pressed his fingertip onto her tongue. Gaz drew her lips in, and the sides of her tongue splinted Dem's finger. 

Beautiful, she thought. His finger feels beautiful.

She pulled her head back, and Dem's finger shone pink and blue with spit and neon. She frowned.

"Dem," she asked, "do you think I'm, you know, beautiful?"

He lifted her chin, and she gazed into his sharp blue eyes. He was smiling. "When I was young," he said, "my dad had this book of art on the coffee table. Actually, he still has it. My mother was an artist, and they picked it up somewhere on their honeymoon. People said my parents were bohemians, Gaz. Do you know what that means?"

"People from the land of Bohemia."

"Well, yes. But the people who said it meant my parents were eccentric. Weird, but in a good kind of way."

Gaz nodded. She decided that she was going to be Bohemian.

"After my mom died, my dad went kind of weird. That's something you and I have in common, Gaz. Did your dad pay more attention to you when your mom was alive?"

"I don't know. I was still in diapers."

            "I'm guessing he probably was," his hand lighted gently on the delicate bones of her shoulder. "Well, this art book, it had a picture in it of a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream, the play by Shakespeare. And there was a little fairy girl in the picture, who was peering down out of a tree. She had a round, soft face, and she had dark red hair, so dark it was fuchsia, and she had lavender wings. And she had tiny little hands, and tiny little feet, and she was just so casual on that tree branch. She straddled it like she a pony. But the best part was her face. One of her eyebrows was up, and she was all smirking down at Titania and Oberon, like What the hell are these people doing?" He laughed. "I fell in love with that little fairy girl, Gaz. She was so gorgeous, and when I saw you on the steps of your skool, I thought she had finally come to life, and she liked videogames."

            Gaz didn't know what to say. She wished violently that she had a similar story to tell Dem, that she had loved an angel or a sorcerer that looked just like him. Her new feelings for Dem, and the disappointment in her lack of a story for him, made her feel like crying. But she wasn't going to. She was going to be that little fairy come to life for him.   

            "Dem."

            "Yeah."

            " How did your father go crazy?"

            Dem sighed and bit his lip. For the first time in her life, Gaz wasn't too proud to beg. She had to know. "Please, Dem. I won't tell anybody. I promise."

            "I want to tell you, Gaz, but I'm not sure you'll understand. I mean, you can handle it, but…Jesus Christ, I was gonna bring you in the backdoor." He paused. "After my mom died, my dad started a business. And it's a seedy business, Gaz. You know those women on the corner? With the big tits?  And those guys with the tight jeans? Those are the type of people who work for my dad. He makes a lot of money, and he likes his work, so it's okay by me."

            Gaz stared at him. Was he afraid of what she would think? He didn't have to be. It barely surprised her that it didn't even bother her that he had said 'tits.' And, though she had never heard the word before, she knew what 'seedy' meant.

"I think your dad's going to be nice," she said.

            He turned and smiled at her, his grin sheepish and relieved. He lifted her hand and pressed it to his mouth.

            Gaz swore that between the softness of his lips she felt the firm little point of his tongue flick over her skin.