Fairy Tale Friday 18
Video rendition of this story here , thanks to Richard Skull!
Once upon a time, a slovenly man lay on a riverbank, robotically inserting nachos into his gaping facehole. He was fishing, which was exhausting with all the laying around, and following his much-needed snack hour, cast his line into the water.
His life had been plagued with failures, so it was with great surprise that he felt a tug on his line. He reeled, and danced for joy when he scooped into his net a fat, shiny fish, with heavy green and gold scales, and thick, curling whiskers around its grinning lips. But his dumb fucking jaw dropped wide open when the fish opened its slimy mouth and spoke:
"If you let me go," it said, "I will grant you one wish."
The stinking, heinous greasebag was dumbfounded. He looked at the fish, and wracked his brain for the one thing that would make his life make sense again if only a supernatural wish-granting fish would provide it. "I wish...I wish my hair was clean, and my toenails weren't so yellow, and thick." And he threw the fish back into the river.
He ran home to his shanty, where his mother stood on the front porch, with a cigarette hanging from her lower lip and her robe flapping open. "You went fishing and came home with NOTHING. You FAIL. You FUCKING. LOSER. What are we supposed to EAT?"
It took everything in him not to break into that asinine gibberish bullshit he talks when he can't communicate his drooly infantile thoughts, but he pulled through. "Mother, I caught a magical talking fish, and he granted me a wish for letting him go! Look! My hair! My toenails! All the fungus is gone!"
His mother clocked him across the jaw with a powerful left hook. "We
can't EAT your clean hair and toenails for DINNER, KEVIN. Now GO BACK AND GET THAT FISH or I will put my foot so far up your stanky ass you won't dream of manhandling little girls for a MONTH."
The Fisherman hauled ass back to the river and cast his line again. To his shock, he felt a pull as the magical fish again took his bait.
"My mother said I needed to come back with a fish for dinner or she was gonna decapitate me," he said, a pleading look in his eye, because even a semi-retarded blob with chunks of loose scalp in his hair and a rank, rashy neckbeard spattered with flecks of ranch dressing knows better than to goad a wish-granting fish. "Please - if I let you go again, will you help appease my mother, Shirley Anderson?"
"It is already done," said the fish. "Go home to the fictional character named Shirley Anderson."
He threw the fish and ran home, but instead of his urine scented house and littered lawn, the fisherman found a pleasant little cottage with fluffy curls of smoke rising from the chimney. He went in to find his mother, Shirley, sitting at a well spread table. There was roasted chicken, and little red potatoes, and on the windowsill a freshly baked pie was cooling. Best of all, his mother's robe was closed. But she was not smiling.
"HEY. FAILURE. What the hell is THIS? You get a magical talking fish, TWICE, and instead of wishing for something GREAT, you get me ONE GOD DAMNED CHICKEN DINNER and a MOTHER FUCKING PIE," she screamed, and smacked him across the back of the head so hard that his smudgy ladies' sunglasses flew off his porcine face and shattered on the floor.
"NOW GET YOUR FAT ASS BACK TO THAT RIVER AND WISH UP SOMETHING WORTHWHILE," she said. "Or I will perform upon you a VERY late term abortion."
Kevin ran back to the river, and found the fish propped up on its little fish elbows at the shore, waiting for him. "Let's cut to the chase, here" it said. "Tell me what you want and spare me another painful lip piercing."
Images ran through Kevin's mind. His mother peeing on him, and then shoving him in the closet. A lifetime of Doritos on parade. An endless stream of rejections; women giggling, and pointing at his little peen. An evil look came over him, and he said, "Make me HIGH EPOPT."
"Go home, it is already done," said the fish.
He ran home to find a palace of slack. Mirrors, which revealed not a shapeless, pimple studded snuffalupagus, but a stunning Adonis. An answering machine blinking with dozens of messages from people eager to hear his voice. A glorious spread of burritos served by an army of subservient Palestinians. And his mother was nowhere to be found.
"AT LAST! MY LIFE IS WORTH LIVING!!" screamed Kevin Anderson, lifelong failure.
And at that moment, his alarm clock buzzed, and he woke up. The basement walls closed in around him, and the mysterious tangy aroma of cats, where no cats reside, clung in his nostrils.
He turned on the oven, and put his head in.