Until recently my friend Nick had a website called ThatsBullroar.com, where he would post humorous essays and stories written by his friends. Several weeks ago, after a less enthusiastic response than he had hoped for, he decided that he no longer wished to continue. I for one am sad to see it go, partly for selfish reasons. On the one hand, I hate to see my friend give up on something that he has put a lot of time and effort into, something that he once held high hopes for. On the other, more selfish hand, I submitted several stories to That's Bullroar, a couple of which he published, and both of which are now unpublished in any form.
Not wishing to see my work entirely gone from the internet, I have decided to put both stories that I wrote for him here in my online journal. I'll reprint the first today, and the second will follow later in the week.
Beauty and Kevin
After Beauty kissed the Beast, and he stopped being a Beast completely, she was faced with the problem of what to call him. She had grown used to calling him Beast, and would have been happy to go on calling him that forever had he agreed to it. But Beast did not agree to it. He hated any reminder of his hairier days, and at the mention of his old name he would blush and go all quiet. One night in the heat of passion she had called out his old name and he had stormed out of the room. For both their sakes, she decided to call him Kevin.
One spring morning as Beauty and Kevin were walking in one of the many gardens surrounding their castle and came upon an elderly beggar woman. She was very sick, and though Kevin wanted to let the servants take care of her, Beauty insisted on nursing the woman herself. They took her in, and Beauty bathed the woman, afterwards bandaging her many sores. They were large sores, oozing with a strange blue pus, but Beauty would not allow her altruism to be overcome by mere pus, which is, after all, merely the body’s way of fighting infection. Pus or no pus, she bandaged on.
She took sole charge of the woman’s health, allowing none of the servants to even set foot inside of the sick room. Everyday she bathed the woman and changed her bandages. Everyday she fed her hot tomato soup and read to her from one of the many books in Kevin’s library. One day as she came to the end of Daphnis and Chloe, the old lady at last succumbed to her strange illness.
Beauty was much upset by her failure as a nurse, and particularly disappointed that the woman had never achieved sufficient consciousness to explain herself, who she was and how she had contracted her dreadful disease. Unable to unlock the mystery of the old woman’s origin or save her from her illness, Beauty set about preparing the funeral. The woman was interred in the garden where Beauty had first discovered her, with Beauty, Kevin, and ten of their servants in attendance, the others remaining in the castle to prepare the reception. Beauty herself gave the eulogy, which was brief but heartfelt, and they sang Amazing Grace, which always made Beauty cry. At the reception there were watercress sandwiches and punch. Beauty felt a sense of peace, knowing that she had done all that was within her power to help another of God’s creatures.
**********
Soon afterwards, Beauty noticed spots of coarse dark hair growing on the backs of her hands. At first she waxed these hairs, but as time passed and they grew thicker, covered more of her skin, wax became too painful. A day after she stopped the wax treatment Kevin, who always liked nice smooth skin, realized that something was afoot.
“Baby, what is going on with your back? And damn, your legs too. You stop shaving?”
Beauty confessed everything to him, about the thick hair and the wax treatment that had grown too painful to continue. She told him of the burden her beauty placed on her, a burden already difficult to shoulder with smooth skin, and nearly impossible with a hairy back.
“What if I can’t make it go away? If I have to go through life as a freakish hairy woman I’ll just die, I know it!” she told him.
Kevin vowed to do everything in his power to help her, as she had helped first him and then the old beggar woman. Not out of a sense of obligation, but out of deep love and concern he sent word the next day to every doctor in the land, asking for any news of blue pus, or instances of sudden and unexpected hairiness.
Every doctor in the land was bewildered.
“Blue pus, eh? That’s very odd. Let’s try bleeding her. Sherry, get my leeches, stat.”
“Covered in hair, huh? Have you tried waxing? It really is thick, isn’t it. Gross.”
“Have you given any thought to a veterinarian?”
Meanwhile, Beauty began to notice more changes. Her muscles began developing at an astonishing rate, the sinews bulging from beneath her skin. Almost overnight she acquired tremendous strength, and once while playfully scampering in the orchard with Kevin knocked him unconscious with a thrown apple. Her senses grew sharper. High-pitched noises sent her into fits from which the servants would all flee for fear of their mistress’s new claws, and she began greeting people with a sniff of their crotch. She developed a taste for raw meat, and sometimes when eating it would make unlady-like guttural noises in the back of her throat. By August she had doubled in size, and was eating an entire cow every day, half for lunch and the leftovers for dinner.
One early September day, after every doctor in the land had failed to improve or even diagnose Beauty’s affliction, Kevin, after first finishing his lunch in the dining room, went out to the stables to have a talk with Beauty, who was just sitting down to her midday meal.
“Baby, I am sorry, but this is not working.” Beauty, unable to hear him over the noises of her own feeding, continued her assault on the cow.
“Beauty, sweetie, I can’t take this,” Kevin shouted, “We’re gonna have to split up.”
Beauty looked up from the carcass bewildered, a length of entrail still hanging from her furry mouth. “Come again?” she grunted.
“I’m sorry, baby. I mean, I love you and everything, but I can’t stay married to someone who is not human. I’m young and good-looking. And I need to think of my line, you know? I can still find a nice human girl and have human kids. Our kids would be all furry and shit.”
“But I’m still the same person,” bellowed Beauty, “I fell in love with you when you were a monster, because I knew that beauty was only skin deep and that inside you were a special person!”
“Right. And since I am special, don’t I deserve a wife without ticks? Who I can eat dinner with and not feel nauseous? Who isn’t going to bare me little werewolf babies? Be practical. You know I like a petite woman with a slender waist and wide hips. Do you want me to stay with a big, muscley she-bear? Do you want me to be unhappy? Let’s be fair, baby.”
So, broken-hearted, she left the castle to live in the nearby woods. At first it was a lonesome existence, but as the days wore on she began to forget Kevin. Alone in the forest she slowly grew to be content, preying on deer, rabbits, and the occasional lost child, she found true happiness. She took pleasure in simple things- baying at the moon, the looks of terror on the faces of travelers as she jumped upon them, lying on a rock and basking in the sun after lunch. One day she met a bear and mated with him. She bore four cubs, all mostly bear, and proved to be a good mother. Several years later when, her cubs grown, she was killed by a group of hunters and mounted on a tavern wall, she had no regrets. She had lived a good life.
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