Laika Pupkino ~ 2011

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I woke up. It was January 1st, a little after six in the morning. Whoop de doo, a new year…

An old man on a flight up the California coast tells the young stranger sitting beside him about a famous movie villain that had lived next door to him when he was a boy. An actor who was known for playing mad scientists and vampires, but in real life had been a remarkably kind and gentle man. And while his fame hasn’t endured the way Boris Karloff’s has, at the time even movie critics who panned the films he was in admitted that this startlingly ugly man brought a rare sensitivity to the types of roles he specialized in, as if he knew these monsters’ private pain.

Then the teller’s story takes a strange left turn. Claims about the actor’s suicide that---as preposterous as they might sound---would be nice to believe. That rather than drowning himself on that rainy day in March of 1941, Max Grosz had found his way to a second chance at life, and a very different sort of acting career that would win the hearts of a nation...

.

"Good. You're awake," said a girl's voice.

"Huh? Whah?" I burbled groggily at the pretty fish girl I saw hovering in front of me. She looked to be around sixteen and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid.

I was still in the beach chair in the seashell castle's courtyard. My legs felt fat and funny and there was something sitting on my chest. She said, "Please don't panic, but in order to save you from drowning we had to-"

Of course when she told me "don't panic" like this it's exactly what I did do, but only for a second. I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. Beneath these two beautiful breasts my waist narrowed and then flared out into girlish hips that were covered in pretty jade green scales, which continued down the long sleek shiny tail I now had for legs. I gazed down at it in amazement, wagging it back + forth experimentally. And this stuff floating around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like gold.

Somewhere in Heaven (probably downtown where all the freeways come together, near all the other government agencies...) is an office building about the size of Mount Everest, where angels with great ledger books keep the balance of our sins. When we do or think something bad it is noted in our account summary, and when we go to confession the priest gives us the bill for whatever we declare, and as we do penance our balance is brought back to zero. The Church is nothing if not well-organized.

I knew that the key to ever being able to behold that colossal building---and all the other  monuments, rides & attractions that Heaven has to offer---was in making sure you didn’t die when you were in the red. But certain thoughts and deeds of mine seemed too strange and terrible to ever admit to, so I confessed to invented sins that I hoped would be bad enough to stand in for those shameful wanting-to-be-a-girl ones. It was a pretty nifty little system I had worked out. Until that Sunday when I was twelve, when my whole clever scheme came crashing down around me!