Lorenzo Buford


The Whore of the Heavens (A Novel)

A Fairy Tale: Another Sleeping Beauty

I exist in fairy tales; not that mine was a classic, but it has been woven in and out of centuries and has been diluted.

It is a telling. It is when one must pay attention to the B side of a coin. Or pay attention to the song that isn't heard on a recording but comes from within from a place you cannot imagine; or feel the One that touches your heart from a place that is not bound by archontic time; it is the path you want to take through a dark wood when your nature is calling but you decide to take a cab.

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen. The king was a factory worker at the steel mill; and the queen took in ironing until she found herself about to give birth to their second child. The first was a boy but that's a different story. This was a blessed event even though this child was fated to be exiled from his true home.

Meanwhile down the road a spell lived the four fairies, Loretta, Fretta, Etta Mae and Suzanne.

Loretta to the other fairies. "Girls, mother feels a feelin'. And you know it's been a while. I think somebody's about to give birth to one of us."

Fretta to the girls. "This must be the big one. It says it right here in the lines in my right hand."

Etta Mae replying. "We must prepare our gifts."

Suzanne: "I'm not shopping for any gift. Salesclerks have bad dispositions. And I'm not supporting sales taxes that will feed the greedy and not the needy."

Loretta giving Suzanne face attack. "This is not a time to get cheap."

Meanwhile, this is the scene change. There's this bitch, I mean witch: She's working big bucks out of this old man who has set her up in his big house. Her name is Momma Girl.

Now Momma Girl likes to dress in lingerie, black with edible panties. Well, you get the picture. She had melon like breast, ripe, two nipples on her right breast with one nipple bandaged for repair. Her men would say her nipples were like chocolate drops. But you know men will say anything to suckle a breast. Anyway, Momma Girl isn't cheap but she's negotiable.

Momma Girl commenting. "Momma feels an itch that needs scratchin'. Feel like there's a party and I'm not invited. Momma hates not being invited. Not neighborly."

Momma Girl had this cat. This cat was named Meow Meow. The cat could talk. Cat had a wicked wicked tongue but that too is another story.

Meow Meow dropped the 411. "Momma Girl, you are in trouble girlfriend. This here baby that's getting' ready to slide into the scene, can work a mojo that would make a blind man see, a lame man walk and put us in the unemployment line."

Momma Girl stood like this with hands on her fleshy hips and nails digging into her flesh until there was a trickle of blood.

"I hope this heifer gets it right this time. She's working my one good nerve. Momma's tired."

"But we've had a market on the I‑hate‑you‑business," said Meow Meow.

"I'll have to wear my black hat special for this one. Now where is my broom? Oh wait. We don't do brooms here. We ride chairs."

Anyway, while Momma Girl is stretching out her confusion; the baby is born.

The King looks and says, "Well, it's not what I had in mind."

The Queen. "I don't think I can put it back."

The King is scratching his lower nature. "I wanted a princess. Something I could get my hands into but this, how are we going to be able to market a rock and make some money."

The Queen who was always the one behind the King's ideas said, "We could use it as a role model, and tell everybody the advantages of having a pet rock. It could be the rock of ages, like a foundation stone. I was thinking I need another paperweight."

The King still scratching, "Well, you had it, you can name it, "Rock."

Suddenly, there was a popping sound, a flash of light and the room went dark. "We are here. We're near. We're four fairies dear," said Loretta, Fretta, Etta Mae and Suzanne in candy stripper uniforms. They were in disguise.

"Hi, we heard of this miracle birth and bear you gifts."

"You must be some of the king's relatives. Always did think they were more than they are and too much sugar in the bowl."

"We have gifts."

"For a rock," the Queen said?

"S/he only looks like a rock," said Suzanne stepping behind everyone.

"We see with different eyes," said Loretta. "I gift her with eternal beauty and may youth always be in her dance."

"So now the rock is a she he or a he she. I told you diet soda wasn't good for you," said the King.

Fretta waving her arms in the air declared, "The gift of song that can right a wrong, I awaken in you."

Etta Mae not to be outdone did a spiral dance as the words seem to rain on the baby. "May she have the eyes that see all things and nothing is hidden."

"Well, I've never," said Momma Girl walking in wearing a Warden's uniform. "Sorry to disturb you, we got a couple of loonies out of the bin. I have been looking everywhere for them," she said distastefully to the four fairies. She notices the rock. It is silent. "Oh, what a cute little girl rock. So I see there's a party and I'm not invited."

Etta Mae: "The trash has been taken out. Isn't there an alley you still need to discover?"

Fretta. "Your invitation got lost in some male probably."

"It's not nice to work against Momma Girl."

Lightning is heard in the background.

Momma Girl continued her dramatics, "I just love side effects. For my long suffering of not being invited and for chasing loonies, I curse this baby that when she gets to be an adult she will die from experiencing the pleasures of a man and therefore, be condemned to hell for eternity."

The King scratching at his other head commented as he thought a man of his stature should comment after chugging a beer, "Wait a cotton pickin' minute. I pay taxes."

The Queen was fidgeting in her chair. "I think she's drunk, I smell liquor on her breathe. Your side of the family always thought I wasn't the right shade of color; they are the ones with peculiar ways. Nurse. Nurse."

"And to show you I can be considerate, you can keep these loonies as my going away present," said Momma Girl laughingly.

There is a popping sound. Lights go off.

"Pay the electric bill," Etta Mae screams out. "We need light. We need light."

Suzanne claps her hand and that turns on the light. The baby, who still looks like a rock, started crying. "I don't like it when a stone is crying."

"What are we going to do now," the King and Queen said in unison.

"Become a sculptor and make a statute that doesn't look like either of you, maybe it'll fool the curse," said Etta Mae. "Better yet, make it into a statute with a torch; so it can see what alleys to stay out of especially when Momma Girl is working."

"This is your doing," the King cried out. "I should have married my own kind. This is what happens when you look at something different and think it can bring you what you don't have."

"I gave up my identity to be with you and look what it got me, a rock named Rock."

"Let me have him," Suzanne said snatching the rock. "Oh sweet child, many will come to you, wanting to bring the tired, the hungry, the lost, the crazy, the dark, the light."

"Enough already I'm tired just listening. You want to blacken this rock with people's misery. Folks got to carry their own cross; don't go making one for this rock," said Fretta. "Bad enough everyone will want it to be a rock instead of a pearl; all the suffering this rock will endure because folks rather piss their problems out on someone else."

"Excuse me," said the King, "Excuse me, point of order. She is a he?"

"I thought that diaper smelled funny," said Loretta.

"I haven't given my gift. I can't undue the curse but I can affect its outcome. S/he will become a man. Because of the spell Momma Girl weaved, another sex can deceive the spell so the woman into the wilderness hides until the man sings the light and lifts his veil of the night and sings his truth, his inner light than Death will become the Life," said Suzanne.

"What does that mean," asked the King?

"Go on girl," said Fretta Mae.

"Well," said Suzanne, "Since this is the condensed version of a fairy tale, this stone that is crying is Creation. When the light rises from a sleeping eye and death from sight is torn than the perfect female consciousness in a male is born."

"I knew that," said the King scratching his other head, the one on his shoulder.

Lights faded on everyone as the rock took shape as a man.

 

 

 

 

 

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