Fiction: The Fairy Tale Machine

Read More: A brief Q&A with Gwendolyn Paradice

Maggie’s parents found her at 5:30am, in the kitchen, watching cartoons, eating gummy worms, and writing her Christmas wish list. She’d scribbled with red and green marker in too large letters, some of them backwards and upside down, in one of her father’s legal pads. She held it up to show off her work.

“Chicken,” Peter said, “that’s not for playing. That’s for work.” He took the legal pad from his daughter, tore out the open sheet, and handed it to Kacey. “At least she didn’t write over my notes. Jesus Christ,” he muttered, examining the rest of the pages.

“Language,” Kacey reminded him. She took the bag of gummy worms away from her daughter and asked, “what are you doing awake? The sun’s not even up.”

“I had nightmares.”

“Why didn’t you come get us?”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of the dream.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t get out of the dream?” Kacey looked at her husband.

He shrugged his shoulders. Started running water into the empty coffee pot.

“I couldn’t wake up,” Maggie said again. “But then it was okay because the dragon was a nice dragon this time and we went bowling.”

Kacey motioned her husband out of the kitchen, down the long hall at the front of the house, and into their daughter’s bedroom. “What did you do?” she asked, sitting on the still rumpled quilt and checking the Fairy Tale Machine’s settings.

“Nothing. I put the electrode things on her. Started the story. All normal.”

Kacey scrolled through the options menu. “There is no bowling in ‘Mimi and the Dragon’. We should get her off this thing. The skin under her eyes is… translucent. Like it’s starting to bruise. I told you this whole thing was a bad idea.” The Dream Log recorded Maggie’s Fairy Tale session at 14 minutes and 23 seconds, pretty much the average time, and one that would have ended hours ago.

“She had a nightmare. Kids do have bad dreams. It wasn’t the machine. If there’s no bowling in the story, then she wasn’t in the Fairy Tale.”

“I don’t want her to use it anymore,” Kacey said.

“She’s going to throw a fit.”

“And I’m the one who will have to deal with it, won’t I? Because you come home just in time to put her to bed and the you’re gone in the morning before she wakes up.” Kacey unplugged the Fairy Tale Machine and tucked it under her arm. “And since I’m the one getting phone calls about her falling asleep at school, I get to decide what to do about it.”

Peter looked taken aback. “When did you get called?” He followed her out of Maggie’s room and into their own.

Kacey slid the Fairy Tale Machine under their bed. “Tuesday,” she admitted.

“Look. I have to get ready for work. We’ll talk about this when I get home. I’ll be home earlier tonight. I promise.” He kissed Kacey on the cheek.

She folded her arms and said, “I’m going to call MiStory. Or ask Catherine if she’s having problems with hers.”

It was Catherine’s turn to take the girls to school, but as usual, she arrived early so the two mothers could have coffee in the sunroom while Maggie and Liisa ate real breakfast cooked by Catherine’s nanny in Kacey’s kitchen.

“Do you have any Kahlua?” Catherine asked, opening cabinets.

“Depends on if you’re driving.”

“When’s the last time you knew me to drive anywhere?”

Francine, Catherine’s nanny, also functioned as a chauffeur when it suited Catherine. Francine picked Liisa’s birthday presents too. Kacey knew this because last month the nanny had called Kacey and asked for suggestions. Kacey had mentioned the Fairy Tale Machine, but only because it was the night after Peter had brought it home—a surprise he said, more in apology to Kacey than his daughter. The sudden appearance of the machine, combined with their daughter’s excitement, hadn’t given Kacey any time to think the suggestion through. It just seemed like an easy fix to the dilemma of what present to buy.

Catherine poured both the mothers spiked coffee. The daughters had been discussing their holiday wish lists but the conversation had turned into speculating how Santa got into homes that didn’t have chimneys. Francine was making eggs and bacon.

“Are you having any trouble with Liisa?” Kacey asked as she closed the French doors behind her. The two women sat at the bistro table, turned half towards each other and half towards the picture windows overlooking the yard.

“Not anything out of the ordinary. Some pouty bouts lately. Screaming and pounding fists at time out type things. Why?”

“Maggie has been so tired lately. I think the Fairy Tale Machine is affecting her sleep.”

“Ours is just fine. Knocks Liisa right out. I’d ask the other mothers, but you know how that goes.” The comment was punctuated with a swing of the mug and a sloshing of coffee onto the table.

The thing about their neighborhood was that everyone gossiped. At first Kacey thought Walnut Grove would be a great place to start a family. Nice houses. Money. Good schools. But as Maggie aged, Kacey began to see things she didn’t like. The stroller walking club excluded moms for petty reasons such as a lack of promptness when also having to deal with tantrum children. Judgement was passed about any holiday decoration. Festive wreaths and garlands were met with approval; blow up lawn ornaments and “creepy” Halloween decorations were not. The politics of the booster club and the obvious jockeying for power in organizing and running unnecessary fundraisers had even led Susan Yee to seek treatment for anxiety.

Kacey had learned to stay as far from the game as possible. In addition to the cattiness of the other mothers, Kacey had been on the receiving end of a certain amount of latent racism. The mothers were always asking where Peter was when they never enquired to each other about the whereabouts of their husbands. The number of times she’d been told her daughter’s “mixed blood” skin was “a beautiful color,” combined with observations on her daughter’s hair and “how well she spoke” was enough for Kacey to put as much distance as she could between herself and the women of Walnut Grove.

Catherine was Kacey’s only other mom friend now, the two thrown together because Kacey’s last straw was another mother’s suggestion that Maggie ‘just go as Tiger Lily’ for Halloween, and Catherine had been chastised too many times for being day drunk and a “danger” to the children.

Kacey took a sip of her coffee and paused before she asked the next question. “Have you ever tried it? The Fairy Tale Machine?”

In the silence the heater kicked on. Kacey felt a warm current of air around her ankles.

“Why do you ask?”

Kacey knew from the way Catherine looked away from her that the woman had. “Just curious. It would only make sense for us to try it, right? If our daughters are using it? To make sure it’s safe?”

“Have you tried it?”

“No.”

“Well, then neither have I.” Catherine winked.

Kacey waited for her to continue. The girls squealed from the kitchen.

“Fine,” Catherine relented. “There have been times when I’ve been bored and went through a story or two.”

Kacey was relieved, but she tried not to show it. “And what did you think?”

“That it’s better than doing nothing all day.” Catherine said it flat. Then Catherine softened her voice. Looked out the window. “I like the princes,” she said. “I used to believe in Princes.”

Peter’s secretary called not more than five minutes after the girls, Catherine, and Francine left. “He’s angry,” she whispered to Kacey. “Left the notes at home. Can you check?”

Peter had left the legal pad on the kitchen cabinet next to the fridge.

“Damnit!” the woman exclaimed, and then, “Sorry, that was rude. It’s not your fault.” Anne relayed this information to Peter while Kacey waited. She couldn’t make out what her husband was saying but his voice was raised.

“If it was that important he wouldn’t have forgotten it,” Kacey said loudly, hoping her voice carried through the receiver on the other end.

Anne began to whisper. “He’s under a lot of stress, Kacey. This is a big case. We win this and they might have to change city code. Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually get people to comply with the ADA? Can you drive them up here?”

“The notes? You want me to drive an hour to the office, and an hour back, for some notes he should have brought to work in the first place?”

“Please? Or maybe just scan them? Email them?”

“Fine. Yes. I’ll scan them.”

“Thanks, Kacey. You’re a lifesaver.”

Kacey didn’t stop at one coffee and Kahlua. By 11am she was tipsy and had two paper cuts because she had to feed each sheet of trial notes into the scanner by hand and she wasn’t very good at it. Now snow was starting to come down.

She was on hold with MiStory’s customer service, listening to an audio tale about a little boy who had a magic lasso. She knew it was one of MiStory’s copyrighted originals. Maggie hated the story because it was “boring” and it had no girls.

While she waited, Kacey thought about what Catherine has said. I used to believe in Princes. There was a time in Kacey’s life when she believed too. When she first met Peter, just out of college. She was struggling to make a living teaching fifth graders with a nightmare of student loan debt behind her and then he said he could take care of it. She could stay at home with the children and write or read, and wasn’t one’s own children more important than another’s anyway? But then Peter was never really comfortable with the baby, and Maggie had become Kacey’s responsibility, and as Maggie grew, Peter’s firm grew too, and then he was partner and then there was rarely any Peter at all.

“This is Louisa, operator 7264. How can I help you today?

Kacey fumbled over her words, her thoughts jumbled by the sudden voice on the other end of the phone.  “Hi, Yes. Yes, I was wondering…. I have a question about the Fairy Tale Machine.”

“Are you an owner or prospective buyer?”

“Owner.”

“Can I have your serial number please?”

“The what?”
“The serial number. It’s located on the bottom of the device. It should be fifteen digits long.”

Kacey carried the phone into her bedroom and pulled the machine from under the bed. She sat on the floor and repeated the numbers she found.

“Mrs. Pearce, thanks for confirming that. What I can help you with?”

“I’m wondering about the people who write the stories. Or maybe the programmers.” Kacey surprised even herself that she wasn’t asking the question she’d called with—if the machine could interfere with sleep quality.

“Well the DreamWeavers are part of our trademark secret system, but I can try to answer your question.”

“I’m wondering if…. When they create the fairy tale worlds, are the worlds limited to the narratives of the stories?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Like if, say in ‘Mimi and the Dragon’…. I mean the story starts with Mimi and her mother baking pies. So they’re in the house. And then the dragon comes because the pies smell so good… but Mimi never goes anywhere. What I’m wondering is, if my daughter decided to leave the house in the dream, theoretically, could she? Could she go into the forest, as Mimi?”

“I don’t think so ma’am.”

“Because my daughter’s been asking questions like that,” Kacey lied.

“Has she tried it?”

“No? I mean, I’m not sure.”

“Honestly ma’am, the system is designed with her sleep cycle in mind. The Fairy Tale machine has been tested for safety. An arduous process. I can’t imagine a flaw like that exists.”

“Is there someone else I can talk to?” Kacey didn’t think she sounded confrontational, but the operator’s tone changed.

“I can check. Please hold a minute,” she quipped.

Kacey was thrown back into the magic lasso story at the minute the little boy was chasing the tornado.

Ten minutes later, with no higher-up on the phone, Kacey ended the call.

She put the Fairy Tale Machine on her nightstand, plugged it in, and flipped open the little compartment on the side that housed the electrodes. She opened a new pack and stuck them to her temples, then wiggled under the sheets, turning on her side to scroll through the options on the screen. She started by scrolling through the familiar MiStory tales: “The Princess and the Ogre,” “The Dancing Birds,” “Chocolate Mountain.” But the descriptions were boring and the plots transparent, so she started looking for the stories her mother used to tell her: stories about the Little People, or the First Fire, or, if she has been bad, maybe even one about the Raven Mocker. None were listed, and so she thought back to the movies her mother used to bring home, rented from the public library. The first story she recognized was “Sleeping Beauty,” and it was number 114 on MiStory’s list.

She pressed play and closed her eyes, listening to the narrator’s soft voice: “Once upon a time, in a land far away….”

When she awoke in the dream, she wasn’t Sleeping Beauty. She experienced the narrative through the backstory the narrator was giving, and through these eyes she witnessed the little girl’s christening and the entrance of the evil fairy and the curse she laid. Then there were vignettes of palace life: riding horses, trying on dresses, playing children’s games with balls and sticks, feasts at long tables, nights spent looking out her window at the forest beyond. Finally, Sleeping beauty pricked her finger on a spindle.

Kacey felt the vague sensation of being carried and heard her “parents” conversing with the good fairy. Then she was a faceless, nameless person flying through the hallways and rooms of the castle. Women in dresses were asleep in chairs and on the floor. A pageboy was slumped against a door. Even the dogs were passed out, kicking their legs in their own dreams inside dreams.

Double doors thick with scrollwork opened to reveal Sleeping Beauty’s chamber. She wasn’t a women, but a child, blonde halo of hair on a silk pillow, sunlight streaming through stained glass playing colors on her face, arms folded and hand crossed at her waist.

Then the scene went fuzzy, white.

Kacey awoke and tried to sit up, but it felt like moving in honey with feet made of stone. She fought it. Swung her legs out of bed, and crumpled to the floor. She pulled herself along, towards the doors that led out into the rest of the castle. The farther she got from the bed, the easier it became. By the time she reached the maid hunched over in the alcove off the bedroom, she could stand. And then she could walk, and then she could run.

She found herself poking people’s faces and setting hats at odd angles. She put a pliant cat in the hands of a guard and switched a man’s shoes with a woman’s. She found a man she especially didn’t like the look of and pulled down his pants, leaving him in just his bright blue tights.

Then she found herself in the library. All of the books were conveniently MiStory titles. She picked out “Mimi and the Dragon” and was thumbing through it when she heard the door creek and a paralysis took her over. She panicked, dropping the book. The inability to move, to even stand, sent her to the floor, stiff as a board, hands folded neatly over her stomach. The prince stood over her, smiling with too white teeth. He bent down onto one knee and his face moved towards hers. She closed her eyes, and woke up screaming.

Kacey didn’t often remember her dreams. In the early months of her courtship with Peter, often they’d wake and he’d recount something he remembered about his. Sometimes it was just bits and pieces—a room, an object—but other times he recounted entire narratives with their wild twists and inconsistent plots. It made Kacey feel like she was missing out on something, not being able to recall her own.

Now she showered, trying to scrub the feeling of the dream off her cheek. She didn’t like how easily it all came back to her: the colors of “her” bedroom—pink and gold—with its plush chairs and pillows, the sound of her feet thudding on cold stone, the individual faces she could still picture—the frown lines and wrinkles, freckles and shapes of lips—and she especially didn’t like the Prince, who had found her—how?—and sent her into a panic with his control of her body.

She put her wet hair up in a bun and dressed in clean sweatpants and her robe. Put on fuzzy socks and her slippers. Laughed at herself in the mirror, thinking that if the other moms could see her like this—middle of the day and completely unmade—they’d think she’d lost her mind.

When Catherine brought Maggie home she said Kacey looked like awful. “Are you getting sick?” she asked.

Kacey didn’t want to admit the mid-day hangover, especially not to Catherine, so she said, “yeah, I’m not feeling too hot.”

“You want us to take Maggie tonight?”

“Really?” Kacey asked. “Maggie’s never slept over at someone’s house before….”

“We used to have slumber parties all the time. It’s no biggie. She gets freaked out or wants to come home and Francine can bring her back. Right, Francine?”

The nanny was standing behind Catherine holding Maggie’s backpack. The girls were in the front yard trying to make snowballs from the dusting that had collected.

“Besides,” Catherine added, “it’s Friday. Friday Funday. We can do makeovers and eat ice cream and watch a movie. I’ll take good care of her. I promise.”

“You know what? Yeah. Let’s do it. I’ll get a bag together.”

Kacey tried the Fairy Tale Machine again, but she wasn’t tired and spent twenty minutes with her eyes closed laying in bed listening to the whole Sleeping Beauty story without falling asleep. It disturbed her. The story she heard was not the story she experienced when hooked up to the Fairy Tale Machone. At least, not the end of it.

At 5pm she started making dinner. Flank steak and green beans almandine. She stared at the fridge where Maggie’s school drawings were hanging. They were all from MiStory originals. There was a tree with a face in its trunk, an orange ogre with green teeth, a unicorn with a rainbow tail. Each piece of white paper held to the door with a magnet bought years ago when she and Peter were on their honeymoon. Back then, when Peter was still finishing law school, magnets were the only souvenirs Kacey felt she could splurge on.

When Peter came home he set down his briefcase and looked at the table, set for just two people. “Where’s Maggie?”

“At Catherine’s.”

“Catherine? Isn’t she one who—”

“Maggie’s spending the night there.” Kacey sat down and picked up Maggie’s Christmas list from the table. She held it out. “Did you look at this?”

“Spending the night? Isn’t she a bit young for that?”

“It’s all MiStory shit. All of it. Everything she wants. Coloring books. Stuffed animals. They make movies now too.”

Peter hung his suit coat over the back of his chair and took the paper. “Don’t you think her first night away with a friend is something we should discuss ahead of time?”

“Like buying her a Fairy Tale Machine was discussed ahead of time?”

“That’s different.”

“You’re right. But I just assumed we weren’t making joint decisions anymore. I mean, we had talked about bringing Maggie up and not spoiling her. Making sure she knew what was appropriate, that she wouldn’t end up being some rich brat with a sense of entitlement. But then you went and bought a five-hundred-dollar Fairy Tale Machine to make up for never being home so I assumed I could give her permission to sleep at Catherine’s since I never get a break.”

“Kacey. Don’t be like that. She’s a kid. One thing won’t spoil her.”

Kacey reached across the table and picked up the green beans. “So I guess all those long nights have been you secretly going to parenting class? You’re in the know now?”

“Stop it. I’m tired. I don’t want to fight.”

“We’re not fighting. We’re talking.”

“I have to get up in less than six hours.”

“Work on a Saturday. You know, if we’d bought the house I wanted you wouldn’t have such a long commute to work.”

“And Maggie wouldn’t be in the best school.”

“Well why don’t we just pay to put her in private school? We got so much money to throw around….” The green bean dish clattered on the table.

“You said you wanted her in public school.”

“You don’t get it. You just don’t get it.”

“I’m not doing this right now.”

“Then when?”

“When the trial’s over.”

“You know what? Since the trial is taking up all your time….” Kacey got up and crossed the kitchen, pulling a Tupperware container from the pantry. She filled it with steak and green beans, snapped the lid down, and handed it to Peter. “Since you have to get up so early and go to the office, I’ll save you some time and you can just take dinner back there so you can work as long as you want and sleep on your sofa.”

Peter looked at her. He put his coat back on, took the container, picked up his briefcase, and left the house.

Kacey poured a glass of merlot. After her second glass she left all the dishes on the table and went into her daughter’s room.

She sat on the floor next to the bookshelf and pulled out a tome her mother had bought years before Kacey was conceived, only a few months before hospice, saying that one day it would be useful when Kacey had her own children.

The book of fairy tales was bound in green cloth with gold lettering. She opened it, checked the table of contents, and flipped to Sleeping Beauty. […]

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