Rags to Riches:

A little bird stands on the edge of his nest. A little urge boiling beneath his fluff. He opens his wings for the first time and the wind offers a little push. And so he moves and swirls and spins until he stops, and when he stops, the little bird is high up—above the trees, above the clouds, above the world.

Riches to Rags:

The fat, regal, white cat looks down at the turtle with contempt. Such a sad tiny turtle in such a sad tiny tank—green, pungent, perpetually dank. What is this fat, white, regal cat to do with a turtle so sad?

He reckons that he would drive the tip of his claw into the back of the turtle’s elongated neck.

And so he stands on the edge of the tank with a measure of grace and positions his paw above the turtle’s head.

As he unsheathes his claw there’s a loud crack. The walls of the tank collapse under his corpulence and the white, fat, regal cat is now green, pungent, and dank.

The turtle, plastic, rolled under the sofa. Unfazed.

Person in a Hole:

Alberto had a single cow. He did not need more cows, or fowls, or pigs, because his single cow produced the silkiest, sweetest milk in the whole realm. All the milk Alberto could drink. All the milk Alberto could sell. The bestest milk, all his.

But on the morning of his birthday, he noticed something off. The bucket under his single cow was filled with pale, watery milk. Bitter milk. Sad milk. The bestest milk no more.

And day after day, the milk grew paler, and sadder, and more bitter until he could not drink it or sell it, or look at it without disgust. And day after day he grew to hate the cow, every day a little more until one day, in a blind, vengeful ire, he kicked the cow out of his home so that in the wild she would become bitter meat to vultures and monsters and wolves.

For many nights the cow walked through the mountains’ endless green. Never came the wolves, or the vultures, or the monsters, but there came three calves—each sucking on one teat, not minding the bitter at all.

Icarus:

The first mice were hungry until they found God. The second generation of mice basked in their fathers’ bounty. So did the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. God was generous and boundless—interminable rows of boxes filled with sweets and fruits and meats. Interminable columns of boxes scratching at the metallic sky.

The sixth generation of mice grew fat and plentiful, but the seventh did not. Without warning, God sprouted poison amid his bounty. Sweet, delicious poison that too smelled like treat and tasted like God. Sweet, delicious poison that made the mice thirsty and their blood thin.

In search of water, the seventh generation of mice died out in a field, away from God.

Cinderella:

A colorful worm finds a generous branch, one brimming with honeycomb and berry and sap. But before he could feast, a hand reaches and plugs him away.

The hand then proceeds to place the worm inside a sleek plastic bucket roughly 40 centimeters deep and 30 centimeters wide.

About 20 seconds after the displacement, the human behind the hand notices a sharp pain and a bright rash on his worm-picking palm. And so the human runs away, taking with him his blistering, reddened hand and sobbing something that sounded like “mom, mom, mom”.

Not human nor hand came back for the worm and so the bucket became his home—sleek, hot, berry-less home drying the worm under the sun until after countless bouts of desperation and thirst, the worm unstitched himself into a mess of color and white.

10 days later, a brown, fuzzy little moth flies out of the bucket and perches himself on a generous, berry-full branch.

Oedipus:

In the corner of a mountain made of steel, a fat green fly is caught in a web that took days to weave. The fat green fly sees the weaver and etched deep into his eight black eyes there is a hunger that feels old.

The weaver yields upon the fly and gorges on her right wing, his hunger quelled but not his appetite. He starts on the left wing and the mountain moves.

The mountain moves and a dimension of speed alien to both weaver and fly absorbs them both. The wind thickens—like water, like tide—and they are washed away from the mountain into a world of air.

In the air, the fly feels home and her instincts take over her wings. The left wing, manic. The right stump, useless. The fly pirouettes against the wind, towards the brush, and into the gaze of eight black hungry eyes.

Jean Racines

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