by mittfh
Copyright © 2010 Ben Norwood.
This one's even shorter than usual(!)
It's another cautionary (and potentially disturbing) tale set in nursery rhyme land,
but how many rhymes inspired this?
Warning: this tale contains a scene of mollusc genocide!
Miss Muffet / Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary / Mary had a Little Lamb / Tom, Tom the Piper's Son / There was a little girl
Polly put the kettle on / Jack and Jill / Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie / What are little boys/girls made of? / As I was going to St. Ives.
Mary Muffet had just finished decorating her garden with silver bells and cockle shells. The work had tired her out, so after a quick trip to the nearby paddock to pat her pet lamb, she sat on a nearby tuffet to eat her lunch of cottage cheese. Unfortunately, Tom Piperson was prowling around, looking for an opportunity to create more mischief. Amongst his many misdemeanours was stealing a leg of ham from the market the previous week. He'd received a beating from his father as a result, but that had evidently not deterred him.
On this occasion, he'd prepared a fake spider from some black material lying around the house, and had fixed it to the end of a fishing line. Spying Mary calmly eating her cottage cheese, he decided she'd be an ideal victim. Creeping up behind her, he dangled his "spider" to within her eyesight, which caused her to shriek and run away.
Now don't think Mary was a completely innocent party - although she could be very, very good on occasions (like today), she was just as adept as Tom as being horrid to others when she felt like it.
Seeing the latest round of mischief, the village elders had an emergency meeting and decided there was only one thing for it - hiring the local witch. Upon hearing the evidence presented against the two children, she proclaimed that the children were misbehaving because they weren't made of enough "nice stuff". Due to the severity of Tom's problems, she suggested that the only cure was a complete transformation into a sweet, innocent girl - and the same spell would do likewise to Mary. The elders were initially a little shocked at the suggestion, but when the witch mentioned they'd have similar temperaments to Polly and Suki (famed for their dolls' tea parties), as well as the twins Jane and Jill, the elders realised the transformations would make their lives a lot easier.
Just then, Jack Spratt piped up - "What about Georgie? I've heard he's been known to chase after the girls. Can you change him, too?"
The witch replied, "Only if you've got enough ingredients!"
"What do we need?"
"The spell is activated when they eat a special batch of sweets I'll prepare. So I'll need plenty of sugar, as much spice as you can spare, and a selection of the nicest, tastiest ingredients in your store cupboards."
Three hours later, the elders returned with the ingredients. Meanwhile the witch had scrubbed out her cauldron (her sister, who lived a few villages away, never bothered to clean hers and couldn't work out why her spells always failed...), half filled it with fresh stream water, and had brought it to the boil over a fire. She added the ingredients, then after stirring some more and reciting a few mystical incantations, ladled out the viscous mixture into bite-sized drops on a large sheet of paper. Once the drops had cooled, she divided them up into three bags - a large one for George, a medium sized one for Tom, and a significantly smaller sized one for Mary. She then instructed the parents to place the bags in the children's bedrooms - they would find consuming the contents irresistable - and in the morning collect up every unusual item they found in the children's bedrooms and bring them to the village centre. The reasons would be explained when they met.
The parents duly did as instructed, and sure enough the three children eagerly consumed the sweets, unaware of the drastic changes the sweets would cause overnight.
Tamsin, Mary and Gina all woke up in the morning, unaware of their previous identity or character. After breakfast, they quickly found each other and spent the morning braiding each other's hair before inviting themselves to one of Polly's tea parties. To the amazement of the adults (who were sceptical that the children's attitudes would change alongside their appearance), the two newly-minted girls and one reformed girl were the epitome of politeness.
Meanwhile, each of the mothers were examining their children's bedrooms and extracting various quantities of slugs, snails and what appeared to be non-human hair. They very gingerly picked up each of the 'intruders' and placed them in a bucket, before hauling their buckets (1/2 in the case of Mary, a full one in the cast of Tamsin, and nearly 2 in the case of Gina) to the village centre. The witch greeted them and explained that these slugs, snails, and dog hair tails were what had previously formed their nasty, boyish children. To prevent a return to their former character, the buckets contents would have to be burned on a fire, and any subsequent slugs or snails found in the village must be destroyed in the same way.
Epilogue: Just in case any other village children became tearaways, the witch's mixture had produced plenty of leftover sweets. In fact, So many, that seven village elders each had seven churns, each containing seven large bags, each containing seven small bags, each containing seven sweets...
Comments
Mucilagenous Mullusks
Look at that S Car Go. Sweet.
Portia
Portia
That's...
That's fudged up meow O.o Far be it from them to have any individuality and personality, why that would be CRIMINAL? Jeez mew I found this tale disturbing and kinda funny too, I'm guessing it's mostly humour but even that can be fudged up xD
I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Bisexual, transsexual, gamer girl, princess, furry that writes horror stories and proud ^^
I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D
Inspiration
Just in case anyone's wondering, I started off with the arachnophobic nursery rhyme. The illustrations on Wikipedia suggest it wasn't a real spider, but a prank by a boy. So I searched other nursery rhymes for a potential candidate (who would inevitably be transformed - heck, what do you expect from a story on a TG fiction site?). But the first character needed a first name - so in came two more rhymes. So once the ball was rolling, I just had fun seeing how many allusions to nursery rhymes I could squeeze into a fairly small collection of words, together with something vaguely resembling a plot.
Heck, the only reason I can turn these MMM stories out so quickly is because I'm having far too much fun to worry about character development or a coherent, well-rounded plot.
Now, has anyone worked out how many rhymes I ended up borrowing from to create this dose of insanity?
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Re: Rhyme Stew - A cautionary tale
I found twelve nursery rhymes from references in your tale, though some may be a bit tenuous! They are:
Mary, Mary Quite Contrary
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Little Miss Muffet
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Polly Put the Kettle on (including Sukey!)
Jack Spratt
Jack and Jill
Georgie Porgie
Old Mother Goose (the witch)
All Good Children Go to Heaven (seven)
Miss Jane had a Bag
Three Blind Mice (three bags)
Regards,
Dave.
This is whey too much for me
I don't like to be contrary but I suspect that I might have trouble carrying the posies and the pail of water.
Original and, if I'm not careful, sleep-inducing.
You do realise that you might just have unleashed the BCTS pun machine again, don't you?
Susie
Just be grateful...
I didn't complicate things further by adding tongue twisters, like Tom's dad...
Who? Well, if Tom is the Piper's Son, his dad must be Peter...
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
But if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Were they pickled when he picked them from the vine?
Or was Peter Piper pickled when he picked the pickled peppers
Peppers picked from the pickled pepper vine?
(That one gives you an alliteration overload as well!)
I could also have treated you to Betty Botter...
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter
The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter
And made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter makes better batter.
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better.
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Seek and Ye Shall Find
Anyone noticed the suspiciously large gap between the break and the main text?
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Old Mother Drea went to the website, looking for stories again..
She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones.
Dio benedica la mia bella amici
Love, Andrea Lena
Knowing you, 'Drea
You could make an entertaining rhyme of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary!
Susie
Rhyme Stew - a cautionary tale
Very cute. But what about boys to marry the girls?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Possibly...
I'm sure there are well-behaved boys (and untransformed girls!) in Nurseryrhymeland - unfortunately they didn't come to the attention of the village's lyricist :(
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!