Twisted Tales – Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective

Damn that rat! I am having a bad hair day, or rather an even worse hair day because I always have bad hair. It’s a curse that has followed me since forever.

I keep rat poison around the house and in the gardens too but one of these always sneak in. And, then, my hair go haywire, sniffing in all directions, getting tangled in the process, never remembering that they can’t leave my head to hunt it anyway.

My life is hell. Yours would be too if you had a headful of snakes for hair. I am Medusa and I’m still trying to hide these cursed ‘hair’ under an assortment of wigs.

I hate Athena. Just because I was slacking from my duties as her priestess, thinking of the time I had with Poseidon, she had to curse me. She could have simply fired me from the post. But no, she had to make a point. And now, I have to deal with hair that eat rabbits for dinner. And live for an eternity too.

Earlier, it was easy. I would simply petrify anyone who stared at my ‘hair’ longer than needed. But it became increasingly difficult when soldiers came calling to check if I had seen certain missing people and finding their statue in my garden shed. They could never pin the abduction/murder on me but my luck wouldn’t hold out forever. Also, now people have trackers on their phones, and sometimes in their cars too.

That’s why I started this business of fashion wigs. It gave me an excuse to have an unlimited supply of ridiculousy large wigs to hide my own head and adverstise my fare too. Getting rabbits to feed my snakes was also an issue, so I started a small rabbit farm on the side, increasing the products to guniea pigs, hamsters and hare. Of course, they are scared of me and never come to me easy. But then, who cares. They are not my pets. They are pet-feed.

Speaking of which, my ‘pets’ are now settling down. It seems like the rat has finally left the room. Nagina is even rubbing her head against my cheek, probably asking for a belly rub and Vipe is pointing his head towards the bag of treats.

Sigh! Don’t I love them all! I just wish they weren’t so much work…

Recently, my daughter asked me to check whether it was really Johney Flynn 👦 who drowned the cat 🐈(Ding-Dong-Bell-Pussy-in-the-well fame). All of a sudden, I started wondering how we can be sure of certain facts told in Nursery Rhymes.

I mean, the cat 🐈 could certainly not tell who threw her in the well and this Johney Flynn 👦 doesnot seem like a I-cannot-tell-a-lie kind of person. So, it is simply Tommy Stout’s word against his. Yet, through the centuries of this rhyme’s existence (first recorded in 1580 AD), we continue to blame him for being ‘a naughty boy who drowned a poor pussy cat’. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was bullied as a cat drowner and grew up to be an emotionally defunct serial-cat-murderer, seeking revenge for the unjustified blame.

Similarly, people speak of Humpty Dumpty 🥚 as a careless egg who sat on a wall and fell. Nobody cared to explain why king’s horses 🐎 and men 👮 were involved in trying to put it together. Was he a kin of the king? Was he a victim of a conspiracy? Did someone push him off the wall?

And what about Jack and Gill 👫? How did they fall? How can we merrily sing about someone breaking their head 🤕?

All these questions have taken away my faith from all the nursery rhymes I have ever read. I fear a conspiracy behind every story now. I am scared someday someone will tell me that Santa Claus 🎅 doesnot exist…

Tag: Twisted Tales

A Bad Hair Day

Pre-judice