This is what happens when most of your friends are blonde.

This is the product of me rereading old Arthurian legends. Couldn’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if Gwynivere was born in the 21st century. Enjoy!

Dear Diary,
Oh. My. Gosh. I have like THE weirdest boyfriend EVER. So we were walking down to get coffee and we passed that really dumb store with all the costumes in it. So then he sees a shield in the window and he’s all like “omg I so have to get that shield!” Except he didn’t say it that way b/c he’s always talking so formal like he’s a prince or something. He said something like “verily I much fetch yonder shield” and he sounded really dumb I laughed at him. I don’t really understand him half the time. Well I let him get the shield and he was geeking out over it. I was like WHATEVER! Just a shield arty! And he’s like don’t call me arty my names Arthur Pendragon. Like I care!
But he’s really a sweetie even if he is really weird. Plus hes like MAD hot so its ok. <3

Dear Diary,
Is Gwen Pendragon a weird name? Lol

Dear Diary,
Ok at school today we had a fencing instructer come to P.E. and show is the regular stuff like how to fence. Then he gave the sword to Arty and omg he ALMOST KiLLED the guy. Arty totally kicked his butt it was so cool. Lol it was so funny, the look on the instructers face. He was like HOLY CRAP KID and Arty’s like yeah I know right? He’s really popular now which is good for me too but he still talks confusing. Oh well he’ll get used to it. I know its probably like really hard for him cuz he just moved here from that town called Camelot. And like I never heard of Camelot but he says its somewhere in England. I guess he has an axent but idk sometimes. I guess maybe everybody in Camelot talks like they jumped out an old movie.

Dear Diary,
Arty is so cute when he gets romantic. He called me “milady.” And when I get upset or mad he calls me his “damsel in distress” and says he has to “save me.” ITS SOOOOO CUTE. <3 omg hes so dumb sometimes tho. Like ok get this in Camelot they didn’t have electricity or phones isnt that crazy!!!! So I had to teach him how to use the phone lol. So I talked to him last night and I didn’t understand half of what he said. He kept on talking about dumb stuff like steeds and jousts. And im like ENGLISH PLEASE. Whatever. He’s taking me to a Ren fair,and hes gonna kick some more butt I think they sword fight and stuff there. One of his geek friends was sitting at our table today and they wouldnt shut up about it. Anyways I get to buy a pretty dress and thats all that matters right?

Dear Diary,
Ok so Arty got on a horse it was wearing like some weird costume and he called himself a knight and I was thinking he was getting really carried away. There was this dude named the black knight and omg arty really didn’t like him. I guess the dude was from Camelot too cause he talked that way too. Anyways arty whacked him off his hourse with a big stick which is SOOOO DUMB but I just sat there and it was really hot and they had weird food and I was like HELLOOO IM ON A DIET HERE. Whatever. Arty gave me some flowers and said it was my nosegay and I had to hold im like THIS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A NOSE AND FLOWERS CANT BE GAY ANYWAYS but he didn’t listen he just walked around and talked weird to everybody. Oh wait im late for ballet ill write more later.

Ok then there was this sword that some idiot guy in big robes got stuck in a stone and idk how anybody could even do something soooooo dumb but he said that only the true king of England could pull it out which is weird because like wouldn’t it be the strongest guy that would pull it out? Idk. So Arty pulled it out…I mean like no big deal right? But he made it like SUCH A BIG DEAL and every bowed down and called him King Arthur and it was soooo weird. Turns out the winner of the contest gets to go on vacay to England and gets to bring one person, of course hes bringing me. Now he calls me his queen and I got a little crown and everything and he says he’ll get to show me around Camelot and stuff. So im gonna have like the totally bestest summer like EVER!

Zambonizambonizamboni.

I really like that word, and was rolling it around in my head and then i got an idea. It sort of has to do with my childhood. I’m going to just go with it, so forgive me if I ramble. What else are blogs for, anyway?

I fumbled with my gloves. The grey sky looked ominous – not that the people of New York City ever seemed to care about the weather. One drop of rain and they’ll whip out their mini-umbrellas from their designer purses and breifcases. Hint at snow, and they’ve already got their overcoats on. It was all part of the city mentality: be completely paranoid and prepared, but never let on that you are. Pretend to go with the flow, that way, when something crazy did happen, it was all part of the smoothness that was your life.

Well, those are the city people. I was from the Boroughs – not good enough for the city, but cool enough to walk around without looking like a FOB, or worse, a tourist. The key is to look at the ground. That’s how you can tell who belongs and who doesn’t. The regulars, the city folk, stare at the ground, careful not to ruin their shoes in dog doo and avoiding litter and hobos. If you look up, you can’t see those things. The tourists stare all the way up at the sky, marvelling at the skyscrapers. The New Yorker’s motto is “whatever.” Don’t care too much. Just look cool.

I guess I’m in between. I like looking at the ground; I try not to look too amazed at the buildings and billboards. But what I like looking at most are faces. You can tell a lot from peoples’ faces – what they won’t or don’t say out loud. Call me an artist if you like.

I have my camera in hand as I carefully step down the slick steps down to the skating rink in Rockerfeller Center. Skaters always have great faces- faces twisted in agony from the cold, contorted by anger or confusion, curled in happy smiles and babyish pouts. They don’t know I can see them better than they see themselves.

I snap one of the gigantic golden statue looming above the skaters, then stare at faces for inspiration. The face that stands out isn’t one of the skaters, but in the shadows: one of the personnel, mopping up a spilled cocoa. He looks deep in thought, like he’s rubbing out mysteries in the rubber. Then he hears someone call him – he sets the mop aside and starts talking to the person addressing him. It’s like I can read his face. His eyes shift away – I guess he doesn’t like the person he’s talking to. He’s Spanish, or Colombian. Then the person says something and his eyes light up like a kid on Christmas morning. He says something back and goes to another part of the skating rink.

I step down the stairs and come to the edge of the rink, watching the little drama play out. A crackly voice comes over the loudspeaker: “Will all skaters please leave the rink for fifteen minutes, we’re going to clean it up.”

My are still following my subject, who walks over and mounts the zamboni. His fingers grip the wheel and he revs the engine. I can tell he waits for this every day. This is his moment.

Everyone steps off, surrounding the rink. They watch impatiently, wanting back on the ice. He drives the zamboni onto the ice, and it’s like he becomes an ice dancer, a fingure skater – almost. He twirls the machine around, erasing everyone’s mistakes, the handprints here, the buttprint there. All the little scratches and indentations that marred this beautiful, shining slab are disappearing under his gentle touch.

I know I only can see this. Children’s eyes follow the zamboni, eager to get back on the ice. I realize he is erasing everything and letting his children, the skaters, begin again. The zamboni dance is invisible to everyone but me. His eyes glimmer, his hands twiddle with the steering wheel and turning the zamboni artfully, erasing everything and leaving the ice like glass. Then he pulls the zamboni out of the rink – it seems to me like a bow would be more appropriate – and he sinks back into the shadows.

The crowds pour onto the rink and start skating again and the Christmas music blares again. I walk back home, thinking, with the bloody remains of thousands of little stories on my hands, in my mind.

The snow falls again, and the city people already have their gloves and scarves and boots on before anyone notices. Except me. I notice. I’ve always noticed.

I can’t even find a word for this…

This is an excerpt for a book I’m writing. Hope you likee!

I reached up and touched the sword. I acted with a hesitance I did not feel or understand. I gripped it, growing in assurance, until I lifted the sword in front of me. My whole soul screamed to lash out, to run across the sky, to fight and win and kill and live, and still have space in myself enough to take on another hundred emotions just for the sake of it. I wanted to jump – my legs felt turned to jelly but I wanted to kick at something, to soar and never come back until, just maybe, after eternity had spent itself. I felt like exploding into very small pieces, just so I wouldn’t have to contain myself anymore – to spread myself out to soak in life, for if I stayed within myself I might never become…whoever I was supposed to be. Now there is this longing roar building up inside my throat, and what comes out is a beautiful song. It makes sense, this beauty from power. I scream; it is music. I fight; it becomes a dance. It is this essence, this transformation that makes me want to yell: “I AM WOMAN, FEAR ME!” And then I collapse on the ground – not in exhaustion or weakness – but finding utter satisfaction in my incapability, my unworthiness. I am reduced to nothing. I gain everything when I return to the dust I know I always was and will be. And in that, I am fulfilled.

Mountainsong (Chapter One)

Mountainsong

An Adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”

Copyright J.Rutter, blah blah blah 

 In the days when this world was young and all the creatures were newborn and wondering where to go, two humans fell in love and had many children. But although they loved each other, they fought so much that God Himself grew so bothered with His children that He stole their voices and gave them to some of the animals. Those humans could not speak anymore, and lost all forms of communication. Because the world was growing around them and the speaking humans ridiculed and hated them for being mute, the children fled to the mountains that held up the Eastern sky.

 

They climbed the mountains for many months until they came to a cave, in which they made their home. But human explorers discovered them, so they fled further and further into the cave until they were so deep in the mountain, and it was so dark, they could not see their hands in front of their faces. They stopped being able to recognize each other, and some became so mad they ran far away from the others, into the darkest corners of the mountain. But the remaining children grew up and had children of their own, and in a little time a great family of mute humans was formed. I am one of the great-great-great-grandchildren of those offspring.

 

Some other humans will say how there is no comfort to be had in cold and darkness, but that is because they know nothing. There is darkness, yes, but who is to say it is bad? It is a blanket, a mask that keeps beauty from being important. You cannot recognize people by touch or sight. We cannot speak, as I have said, And it is because of this that when our ancestors first came to the mountains, they began to listen harder to all the sounds around us. They listened for water, the tiniest drip-dripping in the background, listened for scurrying and scratching animals, listened to the beat of footsteps and hearts. They could understand each other by the quickening of breath if one was worried or excited, and the smallest drip of a tear did not escape their notice.

 

After our ancestors began listening for these, they realized there were many things we did not hear because we were not listening hard enough. So they listened to the darkness and heard whispers, heard whispers of those that had died long before in the depths of the mountains. They heard tendrils of silver and gold sing their shimmering songs, heard the water thrum in perfect syncopation (sp?) with their heartbeats. Were they connected to the mountain, they wondered? They wondered this for centuries, listening to the mountain for an answer.

 

And finally it gave them an answer – it let them listen to its song, the mountainsong. The mountain was a conduit, and yet an entity to itself. The song was very hard to understand. And to this day none of us understand the mountain’s song.

But our ancestors felt the mountain, touched its stones and pillars and walls, and understood that the mountain was like them, a creature that could sing without a voice.

So they knew that they, too, must have songs as well. So they listened to each other, and began understanding thought and emotion. They could not do this without the mountain as a guide, a conduit. They touched the mountain’s stone and could hear themselves in its song. They could hear their neighbors, hear young love budding like the strange underground plants they cared for, hear fears and wonders and desires and doom. They could not hide from each other, and everyone was exposed and began to understand good and evil. They formed laws and a government, and made my grandfather king of the mountain. He passed, and I became the daughter of a king.

 

My name is Essa, and I am dead.

Random short story

                         Elven Lullaby    

My little sister was four when she had her first epileptic fit. I remember how quiet it was when I walked into the room, how she was vibrating on the floor like a ringing cell phone on a table, how her eyes seemed fixed on nothingness. How after that it was a blur of me screaming, calling 911, the hospital room, Mom crying. My life changed then. Before it was just me, Mom, and Leah. After that afternoon I felt like I barely knew Leah anymore. Leah was so sweet, but she was different, like if you looked at her, you would think she had Down’s syndrome or something, and when she opened her mouth, she always said something you never expected.     

Like the day I was talking to her after reading her the stories from Anderson’s Fairy Tales. She never heard enough of elves – she was a little obsessed. I told her stories about elves, and she believed every word. Mom didn’t know, really – she was scared to lose Leah, because she had already miscarried two times, and I had almost died in the hospital when I was born. Mom loved us so much that she was very protective, especially of Leah. If Mom found out Leah believed in elves just as much as somebody could believe in anteaters or New York City, she would freak. She’s all for real-life stories about kids who did great things and saved lives. Those were the stories I grew up with. I hated them. I didn’t want Leah to have the same experience. So one night I whipped out the forbidden fairy tale anthology, and she was – well, it became our escape, from her fits and her special doctors and babysitters and therapists. I didn’t really know what I was escaping from, but I was hooked, too. When we finished the gigantic book, I got others from the second-hand bookstore down the street. The fantasy was so much better than our lives, it was worth every horrible day, just to know we could go home and have a story waiting for us.    

I had just finished Leah’s bedtime story, Cinderella – again. I closed the book with a dramatic, “and they all lived happily ever after, the end.” I turned off the lamp, tucked her in, and right before I left, she said,“Mandy?”

“Yeah, Leah?”“The elves sang me to sleep last night.” Her voice had a noticeable lisp to it. It made her seem even younger than her six-year-old self. “Oh really?” What was she talking about?“Yes. I opened the window, and right before I fell asleep I heard a lot of elves. They were singing me a song to help me to sleep, because I was afraid that I’d start shaking again. They made me not scared.”“Oh, sweetie, that only happens every once in a while. And if that ever happens, we’re right next to the hospital, you don’t need to worry.”“I know,” she snapped, which was unusual, “but I was really, really scared. And the elves knew, so they sang me a lullaby.” I could tell she really believed what she said. I kissed her goodnight – what could I say? ‘There’s no such thing as elves?’ It would have made her mad, which might have hurt her, I don’t know. I didn’t know anything about my sister except that she was innocent and didn’t deserve epilepsy or anything else that happened to her.     Leah brought up the subject of elves singing her to sleep a lot, but only around me. “Mandy, they only do it when you’re really scared or sad or angry. It helps you.”“Leah, listen. If there are elves out there, they’re not singing you to sleep. They have jobs and stuff, and they live in…” I was making this up, trying to make it seem like they were far away.”…they live in Germany.”“No they don’t!” Leah was indignant. “They live out in the forest in the back yard! I know because I went and saw them!”“It was just a dream, Leah.”She started crying then. I tried to calm her down, but it didn’t work. Leah started shaking.“Mom! MOM!”    Mom wasn’t there, she was out on a date with some guy from her work. So even though it was illegal, I dragged Leah into the car and drove the two miles to the hospital. Luckily it wasn’t any more worse than usual. Mom was called, she showed up a half hour later with this Tom guy, and everybody was freaking out. It turned out that Leah was fine in the end. It was just a minor fit. I did get fined for driving the car, which was stupid, but I didn’t care. I had been there for Leah, which was more important than money.     A week later we had another conversation about elves.“The elves sang to me again,” said Leah matter-of-factly.“OK.”“They told me to follow them into the forest,” she said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She asked my advice: “Do you think I should next time they sing?”“Oh, Leah, don’t you remember the stories? Some elves are good, and some are bad. What if these are bad elves? They might hurt you.”“But they are good elves because they sing me lullabies.”“They might be tricking you.”“No.”“Yes.”“No.”“Yes. If you want to go to the forest, you have to let me come. And we can’t go in the nighttime.”“Why not?“The Boogeyman would get us, of course.”“Oh,” she said, believing me without argument, and it seemed as if we agreed with each other.     The next morning Leah wasn’t in her bed, or anywhere else. I didn’t stop Mom from calling the police, but I knew where she was. It was a clearing in the forest we called it Fairy Hollow, and when we both were younger, we’d play there for hours. I ran faster than I had ever run before. Leah was there on the ground. She looked like she was asleep, but when I went and put her head on my lap, she was stiff and stone cold.  I went to the forest a week later, because I just needed to get out, out of the house without Leah, out of my life without Leah. I felt like going to where she died would make me feel different, resolved, and sure she was gone. I wasn’t really sure, I just knew I needed to. Like it was something I could do to reverse it, all my pretty stories that I had spun, lying like the Pied Piper, leading her to her death.     I came to the clearing, and the weird thing was that there were flowers everywhere. I had been there a week ago, and there were no flowers. But there were roses, lilies, daffodils, baby’s breath, jasmine and a million others, covering the entire clearing. It smelled amazing. It covered all the death and ugliness and sadness in a rainbow coat. I had no idea who had done it. I sat down and cried and picked some flowers and ripped them up because I was feeling so strange. This was so weird. How would anybody know where she died? I was the only one that knew anything. Even though the flowers were a show of respect, I guess, I didn’t like it at all. It was as if someone else had loved Leah, and that was strange to me for reasons I wasn’t aware of.     But really, I knew who it was. I was just kidding myself.     The elves had sung to her, and she went to them, and had a fit out in the clearing. The elves had sang her last song.     I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote, ‘are you real?’  I left it at the foot of a tree. The next day it was gone, and so were all the flowers but one. An oleander. I looked up its meaning on the internet: ‘Beware.’     I burned all my fairy tale books in Fairy Hollow, but it didn’t make any difference.        I hated myself. I hated myself for telling Leah about the elves, and now I hate myself even more because they weren’t stories, they were real. If I ever come across an elf, I’ll kill it just for being real.     Sometimes, when I feel scared or alone, I can just barely hear them singing a lullaby to me. And I’m going to keep on muffling my ears with my pillow, because maybe if I can’t hear them, they won’t be real anymore. I’m going to keep lying to myself, because from what I can tell, everything I thought was fake is real now. And I hate it.