Griff's Fairy Tales, Part 4: Learning Fear

There was a boy called Ute. He was unflappable and unscareable and bored. When someone asked him what he wanted to be when he was older, he would say this:

'Scared. I want to know how it feels to shudder with fear.'

Which made people around feel a sense of great unease. He was a funny boy, the kind you wouldn't trust alone with a beloved pet. You know.

There was an incident, one day, when his parents, sick of his constant pleas to make him shudder, sent him to a midnight bell-ringing lesson with his priest. The priest was a funny man, the kind you wouldn't trust alone with a beloved child.

Needless to say, the midnight bell-ringing lesson did not end well, with the priest spending a short time in hospital and Ute spending a slightly longer time in a naughty boys home. During this whole process, Ute felt annoyed, frustrated, and claustrophobic, certainly, but not once did he shudder with fear.

Upon his release, Ute travelled the world, attempting to learn fear. He ran with bulls, and received a nasty gash, he swam with sharks, he scaled buildings without ropes, then jumped off them with a tiny set of wings. It was exhilarating, all of this, but at no point was he scared. Ute began to suspect that he just wasn't the type.

One day, having wrestled an alligator, and while painting a sandwich board with a particularly inflammatory message that he hoped to don while walking through a bad part of town, an old man approached, and asked him what he was doing.

'I want to shudder with fear,' said Ute.

'Looks more like you're suicidal,' said the old man, stroking his hairy chin.

'Not really. Being close to death is supposed to make you scared, that's all,' said Ute. 'Not that it's worked for me, yet.'

'Close to death, you say?' said the old man. He sat down next to Ute, which took a good deal of huffing, puffing, and time. 'If it's closeness to death you're after, I'll tell you where you want to be. It's not for the faint hearted, mind.'

'Do I look faint of heart?' asked Ute, though he was, for the first time in a while, slightly less sure of himself.

'You look like a real nancy, if you don't mind me saying,' said the old man, 'but maybe that's just the fashion.'

There was an uncomfortable moment between them.

'Where was I? Oh, lovely, yes, death.' The old man shot a finger out, pointing beyond Ute to a large-ish house on a hill. It looked, well, evil. 'That there house. If you're going to learn fear, you'll learn it there, you mark my words. And if you don't, there's a prize for anyone who'd dare stay there for three nights on the trot.'

'A prize?' asked Ute, who was beginning to like the sound of this challenge. He would either earn a prize or, finally, shudder with fear.

'Yes, a prize,' said the old man, 'that's what I said. There's a man what owns the house and he's said he'll give a cash prize to whoever manages to stay there for three nights, and they can marry his daughter, Princess.'

'A dowry, you mean?' asked Ute. The prize was sounding less like a prize.

'No, a prize. He's old fashioned. You don't win many wives as prizes these days, more's the pity. Tis a shame because I lost mine.'

Before he could be sidetracked by talk of lost wives, Ute set out to find the house's owner and to meet his future bride. He found the owner living in an adjacent, much smaller house. Ute knocked on the door, which was opened by a kind-looking old man, who introduced himself as Mr. King.

'And here is my beautiful daughter, Princess,' he said, gesticulating behind him and an annoyed-looking girl. She was beautiful, thought Ute, in a bit of a manly way.

'Princess King?' said Ute.

'Don't start,' said Princess, and Ute was instantly in love.

'So this house of yours,' said Ute. 'I stay there for three nights on the trot and I get to marry your daughter and loads of money?'

'Pfft,' scoffed Princess.

'Oh, dear,' said Mr King, 'there was a bit of a typo in the advert. I said "marry" but I meant "go for dinner with".'

'Yeah, I'm not a whore,' said Princess.

'But the money is still the money,' said Mr King.

Ute thought about it for a moment. Princess was scowling at him, Mr King was smiling kindly, and looking old.

'I'll do it!' exclaimed Ute.

'Marvellous,' said Mr King, clapping his hands together.

'You won't last an hour,' encouraged Princess, 'weedy thing.'

And so, with adventure in his heart, Ute tottled down the road to Mr King's other house, the haunted one. It looked very much like your usual haunted house, except it was more of a two-up, two down affair. He entered the house, without the least trepidation, and set himself up in the main bedroom, excited at the prospect of a date with Princess, almost as much as his imminent encounter with fear.

Not much happened that first night. There was the ghost army, of course, and the flaming zombies, and the mummy that Ute had to wrestle for a good half hour. They were diverting, but not particularly scary. The only abnormality Ute encountered was extreme fatigue, having been kept up all night by noisy paranormals. Fortunately they, and he, seemed to rest in the daytime.



On the third night, the house tried to scare him with spectacle. All kind of ghouls came down the chimney. A flood of disembodied body parts burst through the door, dancing and clenching with rage. Normal-looking people sauntered in, whistling show tunes, before completely exploding, showering Ute in soggy flesh. It didn't even make him jump. He saw RatKings fight to the death, before merging to form a RatKing, the likes of which you've never seen, and angry as Hell. There were other things too: bigfoots, griffins, chimerae, things like that, but Ute was not scared.

The next morning, he want back to Mr King's house and knocked on the door. Both Princess and Mr King answered, looking shocked to see Ute still alive.

'Finished!' said Ute, unable to control the smug grin spreading wildly across his face.

'Um,' said Mr King.

'I'll collect my prize tonight,' said Ute, when I take Princess on our date.

'Hold on...' said Princess, but Ute didn't hear the rest as he trotted back to the haunted house to prepare himself for dinner with Princess.

He picked her up at eight, and she answered the door in a power suit and with a notable frog on her shoulder.

'This is my friend Frog,' she explained, 'he's coming too.'

'I'd rather he didn't,' said Ute.

'I'd rather I didn't,' said the frog, to Ute's alarm.

Princess huffed, and looked crossed, and shrugged her shoulders, and the frog fell to the ground.

'Fine,' she said, as she closed the door, to the tune of a grumbling amphibian. 'Where we going then?'

They found a restaurant in town. Ute was, he thought, a perfect gentleman. He linked arms with her on the walk, steadied her when she fell, accepted Princess's assertion that her fall may have been due to his inability to let her go of her arm, and in the restaurant he pulled out her chair. She was an excellent listener. She listened so well! He told her all about his pursuit of fear, a fear so intense that he would shudder. He told her about the old priest in the bell tower, and about each of the nights in the haunted house, and about all the ghosts and such he'd seen. He boasted (slightly) about how nothing could scare him, and how never once in his life had he shuddered.

After the mains, Princess leaned forward and said, with charm and a smile, 'I can't do this.'

'Beg pardon?' said Ute.

'You may be the most self-obsessed person I've ever met. You've not let me talk all night.'

'Well that's not true, I'm sure you-' tried Ute.

'Oh really? Tell me one thing about me that you've learned from our actual conversation,' said the beautiful, reddening Princess.

'Um... you like frogs?'

'Good one. Here's another: I'm a lesbian. I was just doing this to be nice to Dad, but nothing is worth this.'

She stood up from her chair.

'You want to shudder?' she said. 'Here.'

She picked a jug of ice water from a nearby table and flung its contents into Ute's face. It trickled all down his chest and back and even into his pants. He gasped with shock and shuddered with cold.

'You're welcome,' said Princess as she stormed out of the restaurant.

The other guests were looking at Ute now, wondering how he might react to Princess's attack. Though a huge array of people, an entire cross-section of the village, they were all surprised at what he did next. He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and smiled the biggest smile they'd ever seen.

Griff's Fairy Tales, Part 3: Mary's Child

There was this time, where some parents were poor, and they had this daughter and they gave her away. Rather than go through standard adoption channels, they decided to give their baby daughter to Mary. Jesus' mum.

So Mary took this girl, let's call her Judy, to Heaven to live. Actual Heaven. And that was fine.

When Judy was a teenager, Mary went on a journey, a cruise, and left Judy in charge of the thirteen secret keys and the twelve allowed doors and the one forbidden door.

'You can open the twelve allowed doors, with their respective keys,' said Mary, 'but woe betide you should you open the thirteenth door with its key, which is on the same keyring as the others. You mark my words!'

'I don't even wanna open that door anyway,' said Judy, which was a lie.

'Don't lie,' said Mary, as she swooshed her blue head dress behind her shoulder, picked up her suitcase and left to join her cruise for single mothers in the Bahamas.

Twelve doors later, Judy was extremely bored. Behind each door had been some extremely evangelical old men who'd called themselves 'the Apostles'. She got enough of that with those Jehovah's Witnesses, all banging on the gates of Heaven trying to tell her how to get in to Heaven, from the outside of Heaven. She never let them in.


Judy looked at the thirteenth key, and then at the forbidden door, and then at the key, and then at the door, and then at what was behind the door, which she had just opened with the thirteenth key.


It was just God, or the Trinity of God, or something. Judy was never quite sure about how that all worked. The Trinity was pretty, certainly, and felt very omnipotent, but was more or less the same kind of thing one always found in Heaven, and did little to quench her boredom. She began to feel guilty.

Mary returned from her cruise tanned and refreshed. The moment she saw Judy's face, she knew something was wrong.

'Did you open the thirteenth door, Judy?' she asked.

'No,' said Judy, staring at her fingers which were fidgeting mercilessly.

'Yes you did.'

'No I didn't.'

'Did.'

'Didn't.'

'Did!'

'Didn't!'

'Didn't.'

'Did! Oh. Balls.'

Mary was not pleased.

'You get of my Heaven, this instance,' she said, pointing her finger to the Pearly Gates.

Judy left Heaven, and went back to the earth that spawned her. She lived on the mean streets of London for a while, surviving purely on her wits and heavenly beauty.

One day a TV producer happened to pass by and, stunned by her beauty, an idea formed. Suffice it to say, she was the subject of a very successful transformational reality TV show and soon became a gossip magazine staple, bagging herself a footballing spouse in the process. Unusual among footballers, her husband Dean was a doting husband, and exceeded even his own faithfulness expectations. They decided to start a family.

On the birth of her first son Chesney MiddleName Sprouse, Judy was visited by Jesus' mum, Mary.

'You're a grandma,' said Judy, as she handed the baby over to Mary.

'Judy,' said Mary, 'can you admit that you opened the thirteenth door?'

'God, Mum,' said Judy, blasphemously, 'I wasn't even going to bring all that stuff up, I thought Chesney would, like, reunite us or something. No, I didn't open that bloody door. If I had, I would have told you, without you tricking me into saying it.'

And with that, Mary disappeared, Chesney in tow. Judy realised she may have made a mistake.

The tabloids were all over it. The police were suspicious. Judy and Dean's marriage hit the rocks. A year on, they tried again and had another boy, and they called him Nine Jeff Sprouse.

Once more, Mary appeared at the hospital.

'Where's Chesney?' asked Judy.

'He's in Heaven,' said Mary, 'not opening doors. Speaking of which, are you willing to admit now that you opened the thirteenth door, and we can put this whole sorry mess behind us?'

'No, because it didn't happen!'

Mary disappeared. Judy looked over to Nine's crib, and knew before she saw. Nine was gone.

'But I didn't blaspheme,' she said.

Again the police and the press were intrigued. Criminal investigations were launched. Suspicion turn from potential stalkers to Judy herself. Dean didn't look at Judy the same way again.

Somehow, another child was conceived. The baby was delivered in the presence of guards, who then stood outside Judy's room, peeping in through the door frequently. Nevertheless, Mary slipped in.

'What's her name?' asked Mary.

Judy shrugged.

'Judy,' she said.

'That's rather plain,' said Mary, scooping the baby Judy into her arms.

'Didn't seem much point,' said adult Judy, as she prepared for her third baby to disappear.

'Judy,' said Mary, 'stop being a whiny little bitch. Just tell me.'

Judy, knowing exactly what Mary wanted to hear, but finding herself so very full of rage and shame, said nothing. It was the silence of realisation, and that realisation was this: she had nobody to blame and couldn't bring herself to make things right.

Mary disappeared with baby Judy.

Adult Judy was arrested, there was nothing anyone could do. She refused to speak when interrogated, refused to profess any innocence, and eventually that convince a jury of Guilt, and it set a precedent.


As she was lead away to the cells, stripped of all her clothes and given the prison garments, she whispered, under her breath:

'I opened the thirteenth door. I'm sorry.'

She woke up in bed, her own. Beside her were three babies, and she recognised them all, despite their uniformly baby-like Winston Churchill faces, as Chesney, Nine and baby Judy. They were all a day old. Dean lay beside the babies. They had a very big bed.