Mrs. Beast Read online

  Mrs. Beast

  A Novel

  By

  Pamela Ditchoff

  ALSO BY PAMELA DITCHOFF

  The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies

  Seven Days & Seven Sins

  STAY THIRSTY PRESS

  An Imprint of Stay Thirsty Publishing

  A Division of

  STAY THIRSTY MEDIA, INC.

  staythirsty.com

  Copyright © 2009 by Pamela Ditchoff

  All Rights Reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected]

  Atten: Permissions.

  Cover Design: Jason Mathews

  Pamela Ditchoff

  MRS. BEAST

  Chapter One

  Shortly After Happily Ever After

  Within the alabaster walls of Palace Fleur de Coeur, alone with her husband inside the Great Hall, Princess Beauty faces away from Prince Runyon, the back of her tulle and silk gown hiked up at the waist. Her cheeks are blushed with the modesty she surrendered to grant the Prince’s request. She imagines that at this moment her countrywomen are gazing out cottage windows wearing Bruegel grins of utter contentment on their broad, flat faces, a babe underfoot, another on the breast as their husbands sow spring fields. Beauty sighs wistfully and prays this embarrassment will be compensated by a child planted in her womb. Runyon, the Prince, has only twice bedded his wife since their wedding night three months ago.

  He reclines on a brocade divan; a halo of wheat blonde hair frames his angular face. He yawns and exhales with exaggerated boredom. "Now, I want you to bend ovah."

  Beauty hesitates and bites her cherry pink lip. She gazes about the hall as if she may find an answer in this room where she spent so many happy hours dining and dancing with her beloved Beast. But she finds neither comfort nor magic anywhere within the once-austere and elegant Great Hall. For now, hundreds of candles light dozens of chandeliers, Persian carpets lay wall to wall beneath red velvet love seats, and pots of scented civet fat vaporize in corners. Nude statues cast in lewd poses are staggered throughout the Great Hall, full-length mirrors line the walls, and a portrait of Prince Runyon hangs above each mirror. In the room's center is Runyon's divan swaged in yellow silk, from which he claps his hands and whines, “Well? How wong do you propose to keep me waiting?”

  Beauty gathers her lustrous chestnut curls and obeys his request. She closes her eyes and pictures the last time they'd mated when he was still the Beast and they had rolled and growled on a secluded moss bed like two badgers: the scent of his musk bag stinging her nostrils, his coppery fur clutched in her fists, the exquisite moment his fangs gripped her clavicle muscle.

  Beauty's back begins to ache, but she's determined to please her husband. After all, Runyon had granted her request to spend a day together without the company of his fawning entourage. Since his transformation occurred, Dukes, Countesses and royal-wanna-be's constantly drop by the palace, buttering up Runyon with the finesse of a patissier.

  "I shall be gweatly pweased if you will try wiggwing that thing," Runyon says in the manner of speech affectation popular with vain and bored nobles.

  Beauty has not been schooled in the art of seduction, and had no such need when Runyon was his beastly self. However, she did promise to love, honor, and obey, and although fairy tale beauties are modest, they're also blindly obedient to husbands and fathers. She swallows the lump of pride rising in her throat and does as her husband commands.

  Muted waves of tittering and sniggering fill the Great Hall. A pair of mirthful eyes twinkles behind the holes in each of Runyon's portraits. They are not alone after all. Beauty snaps upright, then collapses in a faint.

  * * *

  Outside the walls of Palace Fleur de Coeur, northwest beyond the rose garden, is the last twenty miles of French fairy tale countryside that ends with the Deep Icy River bordering Grimm Land. In the dense forests of Grimm Land, angst clings and spreads like lichen. Roaming and skulking among the trees are animals capable of speaking, granting wishes, and swallowing children. The place is lousy with frogs, witches, giants, dwarfs, elves and goblins, but fairy tale beauties are rare as sixty carat diamonds. Sharp objects, to which beauties are particularly vulnerable, abound: knives, axes, spindles, and thorns.

  Grimm peasants and gentry dwell in burgs and villages below hilltop castles where kings exact impossible promises, queens plot infanticide, princes await adventure, and princesses await princes. And in her Art Deco Palace atop Grimm Land's Glass Mountain, the highest and least accessible point in all of fairy tale domain, Elora the Enchantress is watching as Beauty falls to the floor.

  * * *

  "Bricklebrit!" Elora curses, and Croesus, the Ibizan hound curled at her feet, spits three gold coins from his mouth.

  Elora woke at noon in a mean mood. Head fuzzy, tongue furry, she regretted that third goblet of punch. Last night was the Vernal Equinox and, as the most mystical enchantress of the realm, Elora had been obliged to entertain Grimm Land's magic minions. The Gingerbread Witch sat in Elora's Duncan Grant chair, stinking of singed flesh and fuming over Hansel and Gretel devouring each new candy cottage she built. Rumpelstiltskin crabbed on the shortage of nubile miller's daughters while nervously picking dog hair from the Velcro strip that bound his two halves together. Old Mother Gothel, a blonde braid big as an anaconda wrapped around her neck, climbed Elora's stainless-steel winding staircase chanting, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair." Godfather Death, reeking of cave dirt and candle wax, silenced her by drawing a lit taper from his trench coat, holding his fingers over the wick, and fixing her with a stony glare. The Nixie of the Mill Pond, her voice a saccharine breeze, insisted something be done about, "The goddamn fairies pissing in my pond." The Thirteenth Wise Woman still held a grudge over Sleeping Beauty, and the twelve others debated the definition of virtue. Is wealth a virtue, is beauty a virtue, is sweetness a virtue; can casting a spell be virtuous?

  If they hadn't all been whining and griping, Elora wouldn't have laced the punch with powdered toad skin. She told them if they spent more time on quality control and less time flapping their gums the answers would be plain as the wart on Mother Gothel's nose. When the punch kicked in, the Gingerbread Witch blew smoke rings from nine orifices. Mother Gothel tied the braid to the railing and swung around the room hooting like a Gibbon. Rumpelstiltskin unfastened his Velcro to show off his scars to the Pond Nixie. Godfather Death brought in the Bremen Town Musicians and led the Thirteen Wise Women in a conga line.

  It was last night's debate over whether a spell could be virtuous that had prompted Elora to conjure up Palace Fleur de Coeur, witness the debasement of Beauty, and curse, "Bricklebrit."

  Elora snaps up a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, stares into the crystal ball, and a sneer curls her blackberry lips.

  * * *

  Unconscious on the Great Hall floor, Beauty dreams of roses, she can smell the Floribunda branch her father picked from the Beast's garden. She hears his voice: Beauty, take these roses; they will cost your poor father dearly. Then he sobs out the story of his encounter with the Beast and the price to be paid. She hears her sister Violet's voice: See what this measly creature's arrogance has caused! Why didn't she settle for the same gifts as ours? Now she's going to be the cause of our father's death and she doesn't even cry. Beauty feels anew the sting of her sister Daisy whipping the rose branch against Beauty’s bosom, the thorns drawing three drops of blood.

  (The Grimm psychologist claims that a small amount of bleeding, three being the number associated in the unconscious with sex, prepares little beauties to accept this precondition for conception, because only after the bleeding of menstruation and hymen breaching, is a child born, so bleeding is closely con
nected with a happy event.)

  Beauty twitches as pain tugs her into consciousness. Her eyes open on the Great Hall ceiling and a blur of faces encircling her supine body. Prince Runyon is grinning, the tip of his tongue protruding from between his teeth, his eyes crossed in concentration.

  Ouch! A thorn is stuck in my skin, Beauty groggily surmises. She rolls her eyes down to the source of her discomfort and sees Runyon puncturing her breast with an inked-dipped needle. He pauses and meets her widening eyes.

  "Do keep still, darwing. Only thwee wetters to go."

  Beauty elbows to a sitting position as Runyon's entourage simpers in admiration. "Such an artiste! Do me next!"

  Beauty wets the hem of her petticoat with tears of humiliation, dabs her breast with the moist satin, reads the three letters and does precisely as they suggest: RUN

  * * *

  "No doubt about it-- a spell can be virtuous. The spell I cast on that prince was a stroke of virtuosity." Elora raps her scarlet nails over the crystal ball image of Runyon and his laughing entourage as Beauty flees the Great Hall. “Remember the day I made Runyon run?” Croesus bobs his head with enthusiasm and Elora scratches his ear.

  When Elora first met Prince Runyon, she was reconnoitering the southern boundary of Grimm Land on a path alongside the Deep Icy River. She wore her toothless, red babushka-headed, bent-with-arthritis, bow-legged, sack-of-sticks-on-back, crone body; easier to sneak up on those deserving of a good zap when disguised as one of the meek and lowly. She had just changed a smart-mouthed brat into a speckled salamander and was stepping jauntily around a curve when Runyon rounded the same curve and knocked her flat.

  "Watch where you're going, haag!" Runyon sputtered.

  Elora lay on her back, spindly arms and legs flailing like an overturned beetle. "Help an old lady to her feet, Deary," she croaked in her most pitiable voice.

  "Happy to obwige," Runyon leered and hoofed the old gal in the ribs, sending her bouncing down the riverbank. Upon the third bounce Elora changed to her natural state. She waited for Runyon at the next bend in the path, and when he saw her, he stopped dead in his tracks. Whistling like a cartoon wolf, he lasciviously took in her knee-length hair, blue-black as raven's wings, eyes just as black with iridescent flecks of silver, and five feet ten inches of curvaceous porcelain flesh wrapped in a Versace body suit. Elora sauntered up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck and stuck her tongue in his ear.

  "I sure would wike to get in those pahnts," Runyon panted, kneading Elora's tush.

  Elora ruffled his hair. "That's just what I need," she whispered, twisting a blonde curl around her finger, then screamed in his ear, "two assholes in there!"

  Runyon staggered backward, covering his ear. He saw Elora's lips moving as if she was throwing kisses, and faintly heard her words: "Bricklebrit, Bricklebrit, Bricklebrit."

  She aimed an index finger at Runyon and growled, "You bruised my ribs, you sebaceous wad of maggot cum." Then the beastly transformation unfurled in time-lapse photography speed: coarse, copper-colored hair sprang from each pore; his skull expanded to the size of a buffalo's; his eyelids retracted, exposing horrific peeled-grape orbs; his nose spread to the likeness of a purple cauliflower; his mouth stretched into an ear-to-ear gash, displaying jagged teeth sprouting from bright blue gums; his neck disappeared, setting his boulderish head atop a humped back and barrel chest; his arms lengthened, his legs shortened, his hands and feet tripled in size.

  Runyon the Beast ran like mad and dove into the Deep Icy River. As she watched him swim, a sly smile crept over Elora's blackberry lips. She aimed her finger once again, and when the Beast crawled onto the French fairy tale bank, another part of his anatomy had tripled in size. He shook the water from his fur and gaped at his pendulous appendages.

  "A tribute to my exquisite sense of the ironic," Elora chuckled. "Listen up, beasty boy. Five miles southeast, in the Kingdom of Fleur de Coeur, is your new palace, spelled to provide you with comforts. Any meal you desire, ask, and it will appear. Request a tune and instruments will play. There's a magnificent rose garden and hundreds of books to take up your leisure--you'll have plenty. You also have the power to change back to your obnoxious royal self if you can find a woman who will love you as is and agree to become your wife. But you can't reveal your true identity. Oh, and on your bedside table is a magic mirror; anything you wish to see will appear on its surface: your parents when they assume you're dead; your friends carousing and gambling; your lovers, slick with passion in the embraces of others; the bustling cities and serene villages you cannot visit. Every time you pick up that mirror, you'll see the beast you truly are, and, simply for my amusement, you have to phrase your requests in rhyme. Bonne chance, bebe."

  * * *

  The mirror is the last item Beauty packs. She has already packed three gowns, two petticoats, one pair of bloomers, four hats, two pairs of gloves (one lace, one leather) and four pair of shoes into a large portmanteau. She hasn't a clue where she'll go, but go she must. Up until now, she has forgiven Runyon's eccentricities, believing his loving, beastly self would eventually emerge. However, tricking her into exposing her derrière to his voyeuristic entourage was unforgivable.

  Overcome by a spasm of nausea she presses the cool mirror to her forehead. After a moment, she opens her eyes and five letters shine before them. She moves the mirror away from her face and they disappear. Placing it to her forehead once again, the letters reappear: ELORA.

  "Elora is the enchantress who changed Runyon into the Beast. I broke her spell with a vow of love. Perhaps could she change him back to my beloved Beast?" Beauty whispers. Even though Beauty has never been outside a twenty mile radius of her home, she believes she might find Elora with the mirror to guide her.

  "Yes, I'll have an adventure, a genuine quest, bold as any knight or prince." Enamored by the thought, Beauty sighs. "I'll ride Vixen, Runyon's Arabian mare, travel by day and sleep by a campfire. I'll ford streams and climb mountains, my love for the Beast surmounting every obstacle."

  * * *

  Croesus releases a doggy sigh in response to Beauty's declaration of love and receives a firm thump on his head. "You're fogging up my ball," Elora mutters. "You know I detest sighing, and most especially Beauty's sighs."

  Elora has made it her business to know the character of every being within the fairy tale realm. Since birth Beauty has demonstrated character above and beyond the norm of a fairy tale beauty, so Elora has taken a special interest.

  “There was something different in the atmosphere the day of Beauty’s birth that made me travel to her dwelling; a yellow and lavender layering of the sky, the scent of mint, and the appearance of three white Ibis flying east.” Elora snaps her fingers and conjures up the day of Beauty's birth within her crystal ball.

  Beauty's mother, Antoinette, lies beneath an eiderdown quilt upon a massive mahogany bed. Her face is as pale and wet as skim milk. Her daughters, Daisy and Violet, aged six and eight, are in their mother's dressing room dusting themselves with powder, rouging their cheeks, and fighting over the contents of the jewelry box. Marcel, a prosperous merchant, waits outside the large double doors for the squall of his third progeny. The baby does not squall, not as the midwife bathes her, nor when she lay her on a bed of rose leaves, cleans her mouth with honey, wraps her in ermine skins and calls for the father.

  Marcel jumps at the sound of his name. Violet and Daisy gallop down the hall in a cloud of talcum as their father holds a finger to his lips to quiet them. When he turns his back to open the doors, they stick out their tongues. Marcel perches on the bed and his usual indifference to infants is stymied when Beauty lifts her long lashes and trills like a pigeon. His heart goes flip-flop.

  She's a little beauty Antoinette croaks with her dying breath. Marcel falls to the floor, weeping and tearing at his beard. Violet and Daisy, their beady eyes gleaming over the foot board, exchange a conspiratorial glance. Swift as a pair of weasels, they grab little Beauty and hightail it for the door
.

  Elora elbows Croesus as the scene follows the sisters out-of-doors, and her own image appears in the crystal ball. "Not bad, huh, hound?" Croesus nods and watches as Elora pops out from behind a willow tree in her seven-year-old, carrot-topped, knock-kneed, front-toothless, freckle-faced girl disguise. Daisy and Violet are momentarily diverted from dangling the wailing infant Beauty over the backyard well.

  Go ahead, the disguised Elora shouts, throw her in!

  Daisy releases Beauty's leg and Violet, gripping a plump ankle, swings the baby behind her back. Hey, you can't tell us what to do. She's ours.

  Daisy takes three steps toward Elora with clenched fists. Get lost, toad face. She picks up a stone and throws it at the girl enchantress. I hope a big bad wolf eats your guts.

  Violet drops Beauty on her head to join the stoning. Elora retreats slowly, her skinny wrists deflecting stones like Wonder Woman’s bracelets. Once she spies Marcel on the threshold screeching, Where is little Beauty? Elora vanishes into the forest.

  "What rotten rascals they were," Elora grumbles over her crystal ball and stomps her size 9 Bruno Magli boot heel squarely on Croesus' tail. The hound yelps and scurries under the bed. "How satisfying it would have been back then to change Daisy into fox and Violet into a chicken. But what's life without intrigue? Boring. Now, let us see if Beauty has ceased her inane sighing and gotten her arse in gear."

  * * *