MEETCUTE on QUEST OF LOVE
A short story
The mirror fizzes and becomes a portal.
Inside the wasmirror I go. Inside the wasmirror slipping down into cool liquid glass, ogling the world through webcams, dancing across rooms full of piping-hot words and almost glutting on the piles of pixel STUFF and shapes. E’s bay, Amazon, the list of Craig.
I put STUFF into the tiny cage so that STUFF will come into my HOME from AFK in the brown boxes full of crunchy white.
“godswillbedone/fingerscrossed,” I pray, and a second time to weave the charm, “godswillbedone/fingerscrossed.”
The next day slaptapsound on AFK jolts me from wasmirror to stew beside HOMEopening and take the breaths (one-two-three) like the flicking numbers on the wasmirror clock (down down right to the right).
Then I open just a line-tab size of HOMEopening and there she is.
The most beautiful being I have ever seen.
Her blue vest and hat bluer than the bluest zon, her outspreading girth, upper jello arms, (oh-my-land what a looky) and she holds out the baby wasmirror for me to scratch and stares at me with fear, my green skin and vinetacular lockes doubtless hideous, ugly for her to behold, but hidden beneath the human hood and blanket combine I garb my drab, miniscule form inside; torso covering on mankind, it envelopes me like a long trailing gown.
“Thank you! Thank you much many! Much grace! Much gift!”
“You’re… welcome?” she says, hugging her tiny clipboard to her mountainous bosom. And I scratch-a-scratch the baby wasmirror with my sygic name and she trudges off to her vroomcage as fast as her thunderous legs will stomp.
Enamored. Enchanted. I cage more STUFF in the wasmirror, hoping to see her flat nose and great ears bedecked in plasticine pearls, hoping to smell the musk of trudge as she carries the brown boxes forth. And I cage and cage STUFF and more STUFF but each time it is not her.
I begin to fear and dread that she may have been like the glamor of my kind. Vaporous nothing, wasmirror squares, always changing and shifting. There and not there and not there and there.
And the fear forces a refresh in me. I update. If I happen upon her again, I will not HIDE WHO I AM. I will assume MY SELF. I will LET IT GO.
I rip the long hood and blanket combine into tattered fragments with my thin, birdlike claws. I rifle and paw through brown boxes and garb myself in what will no longer disguise or cloud or hide, I am a tab popping forward. I am no longer minimizing SELF!!!!!!!!
When I gaze her approach through tiny line of a HOMEopening, I notice she seems scared, dancing from foot to foot.
“VOILA!” I say, making the HOMEopening fully to display my newly LET GO SELF. My ears spring from holes in the red and white fur cap of my once master, I stretch a matching speedo about my loinplace, and a smile spreads jagged moons in my mouth.
“THE FUCK?!” she says, stumbling back.
“I AM MYSELF!” I say, aware of her wonder and awe, “I have LET GO! I am Meetcute!”
But she is already running, huffing for the vroomcage and I FREAK knowing that THIS MAY BE ALL AND IT IS NOT ENOUGH OF ALL. But helpless I am to follow, as AFK is fierce and bad.
In AFK place where lived I young the STUFF was hurt and fear and not good. So I stay inHOME now that big boss has let go. Wasmirror is enough for me and in wasmirror I watch. In wasmirror I find anything.
I watch my cutemet’s words through wasmirror as she talks and talks in chatroom with all time friend TABITCHA10 (who is much laugh).
RuthBaderWINsburg: i’ll tell you what happened today but m prety sure ur gonna think I’m crazy.
TABITCHA10: NAH GURL! What’s it?
RuthBaderWINsburg: i think i saw some kind of monster…
TABITCHA10: … SAY. MORE.
RuthBaderWINsburg: this guy opened his door and shit u not was… shit… musta been like one, two feet tall, green skin, green long hair, like a plant person or some shit.
TABITCHA10: …
TABITCHA10: ……
TABITCHA10: ……… No. Fucking. Way.
RuthBaderWinsburg: way.
TABITCHA10: ……… NO. FUCKING. WAY.
…
Meetcute73: sounds like not monster. Maybe friend.
TABITCHA10: uhhhm dude. Not cool. How’d you join the dm?
RuthBaderWinsburg: check your phone
And I wait but silent dots become nothing at all. Words stop like suddenly done rainfall. I am alone. And again I muse that THIS MAY BE ALL AND IT IS NOT ENOUGH OF ALL.
And I know what I must do.
Journeymanning I go: AFK with all the tools for QUEST OF LOVE. I cling to SEGWAY trunk, my armor NERF bright, brimming foam, my map a baby wasmirror. Brave the heat of AFK. Brave the watchful eyes of carrion crow. Brave the blackpocked rock trails and the vroomcages that vroom them with vigilant rigor.
And then I am on the dot and looking down the thin path at her AFK there, and I see it.
The great, black woofmaker sniffs and woofs and I swallow my fear and face it with Racket Of Dunlop. I am thrown and cast about, my armor mangled. Before I faint, I cutemet lady hover into view angelic, celestial much and many.
The room is bright and white and cold and full of KITCHENWARES. I smell human foodstuffs. I smell dog but not close *phew*.
They stand in front, both: Hyperionic. Vahallic. Olympian. Both ogre-large and tree-trunk-thick and though I am tied to creaky white chair with black tapestuffs I dip my head and avert my eyes.
“MAIDENS!” I moan, “OH MAIDENS! ALL WAS ALL AND ALL WAS NOT ENOUGH ALL AND HERE I AM, MEETCUTE HERE TO SERVE.”
“What. The. Fuck” she says, “What. The. Actual Fuck ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” Her face in hands.
“I mean,” says second maiden, “he’s kinda adorable.”
Second maiden... TABITCHA10? Mayhaps? She of dark skin and long rainbow locs.
“OH CUTEMET!” I say, “HOW MAY I SEE MORE OF ALL?”
My lady pulls her face from her hands and mumbles, “Start by explaining. What… are you?”
“I am fae, exiled of my people.”
“What for? Being a being a stalker incel pervert?!”
“For being too large…”
They say nothing. Then they snicker. Then they laugh.
This makes my eyes teary blurry and weepy sopped and they see, they see and stop laughing and placate with outstretched palms, say, “Oh god, sorry, sorry, it’s… yeah.” and “Not a joke I guess… whoops.”
Once the laughing stops cutemet says to MEETCUTE, “Why are you… stalking me…”
My mind is befuddled not by words but tone. I have seen on the wasmirror many human tales of love and marriage. I have watched their loveplays (SEXINTHECITY / PRETTYWOMAN) and heard their love ballads (EVERYBREATHEYOUTAKE / PRETTYWOMAN). I have beheld their hearts desires, seen them play out in live-time and in these tales and dramas and songs I have learned much of them and courtship ways and their hearts and I tell her, and (probably) TABITCHA10 as much, tell them that I know the rules of human courtship and love and desire. That I know the rules of “the hunt.” That I hunt for her for lonely hearts relief.
For love.
“Riiiiiight…” she says “riiiiiiiiight.”
(Probably) TABITCHA now puts her face into her hands.
And they tell me.
They tell me of the great electric spider and his WEB of lies. They tell me that the things I see and even do on wasmirror are not the same as the things in AFK and I am WRECKED with sorrow and shame and know that I have done a fail.
Much fail.
Much shame.
“FLAME ME!” I say, averting my eyes, “FLAME ME AND BE DONE!”
“Huh?” they say, together (albeit in different words).
“IT IS THE PRICE OF MUCH FAIL. TO FLAME MERCILESSLY. TO BE MADE OBLIVION. TO BE CANCELED OUT. FLAME ME.”
And they laugh again.
And I do not know why they laugh. But I do know that to laugh is not to rage and so laugh is good and I, glistening with nerves, laugh too and say, “WHY ARE WE LAUGHING!!!! HA HA HA!!!”
And they cut the ropes and in radiant merciful light, help me to my feet.
“Meetcute… so that’s your name right?”
“Yes?...”
“This is real life Meetcute… People are kinda… ok here. You know? Like we get it. You didn’t know what you didn’t know.”
“Did not know that I did not know.” I repeat, “That I was caught in spider’s WEB of lies?”
They nod. One fills a kettle.
“Just…” says cutemet, “don’t follow people home. That’s… kinda messed up.”
“I AM MESSED UP…” I say, eyes blurry wet again with sop.
“No. No. No.” she says, “You’re fine.”
They nod at one another, satisfied, and a wordless talk goes between their eyes.
“So… Now you’re here… so… we were uh… about to watch a shitty documentary about fake love and eat way too many salted caramels. You in?”
My heart refreshes much.
Refreshes many.
Refreshes good.
I love the words you craft. You are Masterwordcrafter!!