Relax, have a beard!
Several miles (or kilometers, for the metrically-inclined) outside a booming metropolis, there was a serene village. Nothing differentiated this town from most; it comprised a school, a library, a bakery, a butcher shop, a general store, and a rickety repair shop, the outward appearance of which lent absolutely no credibility to the “We Fix Anything” sign in the window.
Several miles (or kilometers) outside of the village, there stood a single house. It was not overly fancy, but it was far from shabby. The only human residents of this residence were a widow and her twelve year-old daughter, Clara. Having lost her husband to a wayward goat stampede several years earlier, the widow vowed to shield her glorious child from all potential harm. This was no small task, however, as scraped knees, stubbed toes, and bruised egos lurked in every shadow.
Convinced that the only solution was constant surveillance, the mother turned Clara into a prisoner of sorts. At first, she banned Clara from going anywhere near any open fields, for it was during a family picnic that the tragic stampede occurred. However, as months passed, Clara developed a great desire to explore, and it became apparent to her mother that Clara’s curiosity would lead her to dangers of all sorts and magnitudes. Consequently, the mother kept Clara in the house at all times and constructed a ten-foot (that’s about three meters) wall around the perimeter of the property. She installed a lock on Clara’s door that only could only be opened from the outside. But no matter the severity of her precautionary measures, the good-intentioned mother could not put her mind at ease.
And as much as Clara loved her mother, she desired even more fiercely to run and play in the fields with the other children, to go to school, to visit an uncle in the big city—anything other than whiling away her days in the confines of her bedroom. A series of childishly-conceived getaway attempts led the mother to nail shut every single window in the house and to always keep her daughter on a literal leash whenever they ventured outside their home’s massive walls.
Since she had no real friends to keep her company, the girl’s only playtime companions were a set of paper dolls she made before her mother decided scissors (even the round-tipped ones for children) were far too dangerous. At first, there was some controversy over whether or not to allow the paper dolls, because the mother knew firsthand (or firstfinger, more accurately) the excruciating sting of papercuts. However, seeing as the dolls were young Clara’s only real source of enjoyment, the mother made an exception, as long as Clara agreed to wrap tape around all of her fingers before playing with the dolls.
And what a doll collection it was!
And then there was Fred.
With flaxen yarn locks sprouting in every direction and a shiny red tracksuit made from the remnants of a mylar birthday balloon, Fred bore an eerie resemblance to Clara’s trampled father (especially after he was flatted by wayward goats). Fred was Clara’s absolute favorite.
As she delved deeper and deeper into the fantasy paper society, the legend of Fred grew and grew. Stories of his valor charmed Miss Greenhat; tales of daring-do captivated Percy Dangerpuss; and rehashings of his heroics caused Doctor Beardsley’s jaw to drop open with such force as to pop the beard right off his face.
It was no small coincidence, then, that Fred quickly became Clara’s favorite. At night, when she slept, Clara set Fred on her bedside table—a table with no sharp corners, thanks to the laborious sanding of her mother. And unlike the other dolls, she never put Fred into her pants pockets, as a safety measure to ensure he would never become crinkled.
One day, right in the middle of one of Miss Greenhat’s interminably tedious tea parties, Clara’s mother painstakingly unlatched the locks and entered her daughter’s room to inform her that they needed to go into town to pick up some groceries. Normally Clara jumped at the opportunity to leave the house, but on this day, Fred was just about to relate his thrilling escape from cannibalistic savages in the rainforests of South America. It was a story he rarely told—only when tea parties grew so unbearably tedious that reliving past tortures seemed more appealing.
“Do I have to go?” Clara pleaded.
“I can’t leave you here, all alone, sweetie,” her mother cooed. “What if an axe murderer jumped through the window while I was out?”
“The windows are all nailed shut,” objected Clara.
“He’s got an axe!” reasoned her mother.
“Oh. I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No, obviously. Now step lively, and I’ll let you toss a coin into the wishing well on the way, as long as you don’t lean over the edge.”
And so, a few minutes later, Clara stumbled along the path, tethered to her mother, who continually scanned the horizon for any indication of conspiratorial caprine activity. As they made their way down a grassy hill, they came upon a dried-up water well, its bucket rusty, its stones mossy.
Clara’s mother would not let her get closer than five feet from the well (about one and a half meters), for fear that Clara would tumble headlong into its murky depths. Thus, Clara always made it a game to try to throw her coin into the bucket from a good distance away. The day she made it, she knew, would be the day her wish came true.
“Hurry up, Clara. We’re in a bit of a hurry,” cooed her mother.
“I wish I could go to Miss Greenhat’s next tea party and that my paper friends would become my real friends,” she thought, winding up her coin-pitching arm. And with that, she threw the shiny copper disc with simultaneous comprehension and ignorance of physics.
Arcing perfectly through the air, the coin seemed to rattle around the rim of the bucket for an eternity before it plopping in.
“I made it!” Clara cried, elated.
“Good job, sweetie,” commented her mother, already tugging the leash.
The remainder of the day fell victim to errands, those insatiable gobblers of time. Clara and her mother scuttled about like ants. By the time they arrived back inside their walled fortress, Clara was so completely wiped out, she’d forgotten about everything except for plunking her head down on the pillow and drifting into dreamland.
When she awoke the next morning, Clara felt decidedly different.
“Goodness,” she thought, “all my stuff grew overnight!”
Indeed, everything looked huge to young Clara, but it was not because, as she suspected, everything else grew. It was because she had, in fact, shrunk to a size of just six inches during the night.
From her position on the pillow, Clara could hear people laughing.
“Is mother having company?” she wondered. “How unlike her.”
Cautiously, she wandered to the edge of the mattress and peered over.
From this vantage point, she could clearly see the source of the voices—Miss Greenhat’s tea party, which she’d forgotten to clean up the day before. Today, however, she didn’t have to fill in all the voices—the paper dolls were laughing and talking like real, live people.
Overjoyed, Clara cautiously descended the bedpost (she found it much easier than the time she attempted to escape out her window down the drainpipe), and ran over to the small table where the paper dolls sat. They were still the same (essentially) two-dimensional characters as always, but now they could move and speak of their own accord.
“The other day, I was in the giant’s pocket,” began Percy Dangerpuss, “and I found a whole jellybean! I think she stashed it specifically for me, since I’m her favorite.”
“Jellybean, you say?” asked Doctor Beardsley. “What flavor?”
“Percy, Doctor Beardsley,” interrupted Miss Greenhat, “Have I shown you the slideshows of my vacation to the islands? It’s a seven part series.”
Unless the island was made of jellybeans,” interjected Doctor Beardsley, “I’m not interested.”
“Now now,” clucked Fred magnanimously. “I’d love to hear Miss Greenhat’s island stories. I’ve been there myself, you know. Perhaps we can compare notes.”
“Oho! You’ve been there too?” purred Percy, “Do tell, do tell!”
“Um, excuse me,” ventured Clara.
“Good Lord, it’s the giantess!” shrieked Miss Greenhat before fainting.
“Doctor Beardsley! Help her at once!” commanded Fred.
“Why me?” he asked, his beard falling to the floor. “Oh shoot!”
“You’re a doctor! Do something”
“There’s something wrong with my stethoscope!” he shouted, holding up the glittery device. “You do something!”
While the men continued to bicker about who should help the fallen woman, Clara attended to her. She elevated the woman’s head and thought about putting a damp cloth on her forehead, but realized that it wasn’t a good plan to get a paper woman wet. Regardless, in no time flat, Miss Greenhat was back on her feet.
“Good show, Giantess!” lauded Miss Greenhat. “I’ve not seen such heroics since Mister Greenhat rescued that kitten from a tree ten years ago. I’ve got slides of that, by the way, six sets!”
“Seen ‘em!” everyone shouted in unison.
For the remainder of that enchanted afternoon, Clara sat doe-eyed at the party, enjoying paper tea and origami crumpets while the others chatted and attempted to divert the topic away from anything Miss Greenhat brought up.
“…And here’s a photo of some construction-paper workers who whistled at all the passing women. Such nerve!” droned Miss Greenhat, clicking the advance button, much to the chagrin of everyone present. Would her slideshow ever end?
“Clara,” Fred said suddenly, “why are you crying?”
“Crying? I’m not crying.” But she was—she didn’t notice the tears forming at the corner of her eyes until one rolled down her face. “Strange. I don’t really know. I can’t explain it,” she shrugged. “Is it weird to cry when you’ve never been happier?”
“Not at all, dear girl!” Fred was a suave one, indeed. “Hold on.”
After a moment or two of intense concentration, the paper man shed a single tear, which left a smudge all the way down his crudely drawn face. “See? I’m happy as a clam! It’s not strange at all! This calls for a celebration!”
Fred demanded music, and Miss Greenhat obliged with some paper LPs. They danced the afternoon away—even Percy, despite the childish scissoring that left him with two literal left feet.
“Clara,” a muffled voice came accompanied the rattling of a key in a keyhole. “It’s time for supper.”
“Oh no! Mom’s gonna freak out when she sees how small I am!” exclaimed Clara. “Everybody hide!”
They all scurried under the bed.
“Clara?” called the mother. “Clara? Where are you? Clara?” With each repetition of her child’s name, the amount of fear in her voice increased exponentially. “She’s gone!”
And just as fast, the mother fled down the stairs, leaving the door wide open. An unusual sensation gripped Clara, starting with her stomach and spreading outward to every extremity. And as the grumbling sensation in her stomach grew, so did Clara herself, until she had returned to her original size.
She crawled out from under the bed, worried she might have inadvertently squashed her paper companions. She had, indeed, mashed them flat as pancakes, but then again, they’d been flat to begin with. Sadly though, they were once again lifeless and dull, no longer moving or speaking of their own accord.
“How cruel,” Clara thought, “that the greatest joy in my life should be so fleeting.”
Meanwhile, she could still hear her mother thrashing around the house looking for her, so she ran out to find her and tell her that everything was just fine. A draft gusted through the doorway, sending poor Fred airborne.
“Goodbye Clara,” he whispered, as the gust sent him swirling through the air, before depositing him directly into the heat register.
Downstairs, Clara’s mom was positively furious. She hollered and turned red in the face and screamed and pulled out some of her own hair and she did it all out of a love so great as to be entirely unquantifiable. And once she was done yelling at young Clara, she locked her in her room again to teach her a valuable lesson.
“And you won’t leave here until I say so!” she shouted, slamming the door shut.
It took less than a minute for Clara to notice Fred was missing. She turned the room upside down looking for him, but to no avail. Banging on the door, she called for her mother to help.
“Mommy, mommy, Fred’s gone. He’s gone!”
“Let that be a lesson to you for leaving your room without permission!” And the mother resolved to ignore her daughter’s cries of distress.
And Clara sobbed, yelled, and banged on the door. But her mother resolved to teach Clara the real dangers of running away. She would ignore Clara’s pleas.
Twenty minutes later, the noise from Clara's room stopped.
“Excellent,” thought the mother, “maybe now she’s learned her lesson, and I will keep her safe forever.”
Little did she know, though, that just moments earlier, the heater set poor Fred aflame. It was a quick and painless death—unlike a real person, the slowest thing to burn was his hair, the burning remnants of which gusted breezily out of the vent, floating to the ground like orange autumn leaves.
In no time at all, sevral portions of the room were ablaze, and poor young Clara died of smoke inhalation before the tiny conflagration burnt itself out. The fire was quite small—she was not burned, and certainly would have survived if only she’d been able to open a window.