Mason Beck Fiction

It’s that time of year, and it would be a shame not to share something in the spirit of the season. Since this site is meant to include fiction as well as tabletop gaming, I think it’s time to add a little story to the mix.

I tossed a few ideas around and settled on one I’m calling All the Friends She Needs. I’m aiming for something with a touch of Tim Burton, Coraline, Wednesday Addams, and maybe a bit of Sid from Toy Story mixed in.

It’s still a work in progress, far from finished or polished, but I wanted to share what I have so far. My goal is to finish it by Halloween.

I hope you enjoy this little preview.

All the Friends She Needs

Once upon a time, in a quiet little town,
There was a quaint little school for quaint little girls.
They played with their dolls and wore shining ribbons in their hair.

They skipped and they twirled and they jumped proper rope,
and giggled at boys from the other school in town.

But among them was a peculiar little girl,
who wore little black boots and a black woolen dress,
with a single black curl peeking out from beneath a little black hat.

She did not wear ribbons,
or giggle, or twirl.
She did not jump rope.

But knots.
Knots she could tie.

She tried to play dolls,
but the other girls would shriek,
“How creepy it is for just a head to be a doll!”

A witch! they cried.
A freak! they whispered.

But Mimsy didn’t mind.

In her little bag of heads,
she had all the friends she could need.

Their eyes never laughed.
Their lips never lied.
And with no legs,
never could they leave.

But then one autumn day, when the air turned to smoke,
and the trees lost their leaves like forgotten old cloaks,
a new girl arrived with a suitcase and scarf,
and eyes like the sky when it’s thinking too hard.

Her name was Annette.
She wore secondhand shoes,
and her secondhand doll had been patched up with thread.

“Hello,” she said to the other girls on the walk,
but their noses they turned and quickened their talk.

She sat by herself at the edge of the yard,
and ate all her lunch from a dented tin box.

But Mimsy sat too, just a few steps away,
and offered a friend with one glassy blue eye.

“Her name is Lenore,” said Mimsy, quite plain.
“She doesn’t talk much, but she listens just fine.”

Annette didn’t scream, or scoff, or turn up her nose.
She just brushed back the hair from Lenore’s dusty cheek.

“She’s pretty,” said Annette. “Did you make her yourself?”
And Mimsy smiled and said,
“With a little help from my friends.”

Every day after that, they’d sit in the grass,
and shared half their sandwiches, cookies, and laughs.

But the other girls watched.
And they didn’t approve.

Two freaks together?
This just wouldn’t do.