Stutter-Butter
By: Adam Maloney


----------------pt 1-----------------

Once upon a time there was a little girl.  This little girl was very much like other little girls except whenever she tried to make friends with other perfectly ordinary little girls she would find that she could only look at her feet and stammer out nonsense words.  Because of this, all the other little girls would laugh at her and call her wicked names like Stutter-Butter and Glaudia the Garbler.  Some of the nastier girls would even prance around the little girl and sing songs about her and laugh and laugh.

All of this made the little girl so sad that she often would sit upon the ground and cry until the other girls got bored and bounded away.  The days were long and gray for the little girl, and she never went to any birthday parties or sleepovers or brownie scout meetings at all.  Instead she would come home, close her door, and dream.

Now the little girl's room was something of a peculiarity in the way of little girls' rooms.  While there was the regular cavalcade of stampeding unicorns and ponies printed upon the walls, there was not a stitch of furniture in the room (in fact, the little girl's mother had often tried to move furniture in, but during the night the little girl would manage to drag it silently into the hallway and would fall asleep on the floor).  The only thing in the room, besides the paintings on the walls, was a small switch of carpeting that lay directly in the center of the room.

This carpet was ancient.  More ancient that the moon and the stars according to the little girl although no one believed her for little girls have peculiar fancies.  It had been in the girl's possession since she was little more than an infant.  one day her mother had been clearing out the attic of their new house when she ran across the carpet.  To her it had looked like a worn out piece of rag, but the little girl took an instant liking to its moth-worn textures of interlacing gold, apricot, quicksilver, plum, and mahogany.  Since that day the little girl had never slept on any surface without having laid the carpet swatch down on it first

One day, after the other little girls had been particularly ghoulish at school the little girl sullenly walked through the front door of her house, slunk up the stairs, and vanished into the recesses of her room without more than a sniffle in the direction of her mother.  Now her mother, being a benevolent and caring soul who knew her daughter well, knew that the best thing she could do for her sad daughter would be to make up a tray of milk and cookies and leave it by the bedroom door, and, as she always did on particularly horrific days, she would leave a napkin in the shape of a heart under the cookies (the mother was very good at origami and could make spectacular and one of a kind hearts and other such things.  Happy was anyone who received her paper gifts of love).

The little girl could here her mother gently place the tray of cookies and milk outside the door and retire back downstairs, and she dried her eyes with her sleeves and opened the door and brought in the cookies.  As she ate her cookies and drank her milk, her tears fell from her eyes and soaked into the treats and the milk.

"What is wrong with me?  Why can't i make any friends?  Maybe I really am a Stutter-Butter.  I’m just a stupid, good for nothing, unlikable, unlovable, Stutter-Butter," she thought to herself.  Clutching her tray of half eaten cookies to her stomach she lay down on the carpet and gently cried herself to sleep.  A few hours later her mother crept upstairs to check on her sad little girl…but there was nothing there except for a tray of half-eaten cookies laying upon the moth-eaten carpet.
-----------end pt. 1---------------





----------------pt 2---------------

She was flying.

Or was she falling?

It didn’t’ really matter which it was, thought the little girl, because it felt wonderful.  It felt free. On she flew, through skies bursting with purples and oranges, blues and greens, clouds and suns and further she fell down through cumulous after cumulous until she could fall no more.  The world was an oil painting of hue and beauty and it felt warm in the golden strands of day.

The little girl laughed

After lifetimes of flight (or fall) her pace began to slack and gently, ever so gently, her toes touched upon solid ground.  This was no ordinary solid ground, however, for it appeared out of no-where and he step alighted upon a ponderous overhang above the swirling depths of infinity below.  The girl skipped forward humming to herself a little tune.  The girl skipped in the direction that she knew.  Through the haze ahead she began to make out lights, city lights, bustling take-off-your-hat-and-stay-a while lights.  

The city was massive.  Like some jungle of mortar and masonry it strutted out of the ground in imposing beauty with its streets weaving back and forth, between and around, and over and under each other.  There were smells.  Oh the smells.  Smells of cookies and candies, smells of suntan lotion and the beach, and smells of grass and of flowers.  Every smell she had ever smelled was there all at the same time.

So excited the girl was as she skipped through the streets.  A kindly gentleman called out to her as she passed by.  "Good day miss!  Might interest you in a pony ride today?  We've got a special here for free pony rides to all little princesses."

"I’m not a little princess"  the little girl exclaimed ashamedly.  "I’m just a Studder-Butter"

"Oh, is that so?  Well who went and conferred that title upon you?  Hmmm?"  The little girl didn’t quite know what "conferred" meant, but she decided that it must have something to do with nasty little girls who like to call people names so she said as much. "Well, we don’t have any nasty little girls in this town.  Only pretty little princesses.  So come on, take a ride."  The little girl did, and it was everything she had ever dreamed it would be.

Everywhere she went kindly gentlemen offered her free pony rides, free tea parties with wonderful furry friends, and sweets by the bucketful.  Her world became a glorious blur of sight and sound and taste and smell and, most of all, amusement.  At night the silver moon would sing to the skies a song of lullaby and during the day the golden sun would smile down upon the city imbuing everything with a warmth that held long after the peach and plum sky slid back into a silver summer night.  And the fireflies.  Oh the fireflies.  Millions and millions of fireflies every night that danced around her head as she giggled and laughed until, exhausted, she would lay down on the mahogany ground underneath the apricot and plum trees.  It felt as if she could last there forever

How long had she been there?  The thought crept into her mind one evening as she fell asleep.  "I shall have to ask one of the kindly gentlemen tomorrow."  But tomorrow came and there were games and festivities and the question evaporated from her mind like dew from a leaf.
Later the thought came again, then again, and then again.  It seemed that as though she would never remember to ask.

Remember.

What did she remember?

What did she remember each day?  Every day seemed full of kindly gentlemen, but that hadn’t been how life had always been had it?

One day this thought entered her mind as she rested in-between three legged races and she began to ponder.  "M-m-m-mister candy man?"

“Yes" he said

"H-h-h-how l-l-l-ong have iIb-b-been a p-p-p-p-pretty p-p-p-princess for?"

"Why your whole life my dear."

"Are y-y-y-you sure?"

"As sure as I am that the plum trees will grow full of juicy treats each day," said the candy man and he flashed a re-assuring smile and turned away.  But something didn’t seems right. No, something seemed quite askew actually.  The little girl couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she felt like she was missing something.

"Excuse me s-s-sir.  Why d-d-do y-y-y-y-you always c-c-call me a pretty p-p-princess?"

"Why, because that is your name of course."

"N-n-n-no, my name is...."

"is...."

But she couldn't remember.  In fact she couldn't remember many things.  Where was she from? How old was she? And what was her name?

She couldn't remember.  The only thing she could remember was Stutter-Butter.  Was that who she was?

Once again she tugged on the pant leg of a kindly old candy man.  With a toothy grin he asked her what was the matter.  "Um...I d-d-don't mean to b-be r-r-rude, but d-d-do you k-know who Stutter-Butter is?"

The man looked hurt.  "Why Studded-Butter is the most vile and wretched creature to ever walk the plains.  She was so hated that everyone has tried to forget her existence.  No one loved her.  No one cared for her.  She is a hateful creature indeed, hideous in visage and in mind.  Her countenance is so unbearable that to even mention her causes me great harm mentally and physically.  If you would excuse me I must go lay down for a bit now."

This Stutter-Butter intrigued the little girl.  "I can play three-legged race and eat jelly horses another day," she thought. "I need to see this Stutter-Butter for myself."  And off she wandered.  For days she wandered through purple mountains and sunny valleys.  Through happy golden fields and sleepy silver hollows.  Whenever she asked any of the kindly gentlemen she met about Stutter-Butter they always replied with the same descriptions and tried to dissuade her from looking further, but still she pressed on past winding streams and woven mountains.

Finally she reached a land of mist and mildew.  A land old that smelled vaguely familiar in an offensive way.  "Stutter-Butter is here somewhere, I just know it," she thought.

The mist pressed in ever closer and the strange smell became more and more suffocating until the little girl could barely stand it.  Suddenly she heard a hissing noise behind her.  As her eyes widened in fear she sensed something huge and leathery uncoiling behind her.  Slowly she turned.

The creature before her was indescribably horrible.  It appeared to be cobbled together with pieces of arms and legs, organs and bones, like some demonic patchwork pillow sewn by blind, three fingered beetles with a sense of anatomical parts but no sense of how they should all go together.  A scaled tendril slithered behind the girl and drew her in as the ghastly horror lowered its face to hers.

She screamed.

In comparison to the rest of the creature the face should hardly have been anything to scream about, unless you happen to be the little girl who was at that instant staring at her own eyes, nose and cheeks split open with the sweetest, most vile grin ever grinned by the devils of Hell.

"Whyyyy have yyyyou come?" it hissed into her ear.  The little girl was paralyzed with fear.  "Whyyyy did you leave yyyyour city of delightssss?  Whyyyy did you leave behind all the thhhhingssss i gave yyyyou?"

"Y-y-you gave me?"  choked out the little girl.

"Yyyessss.  I gave yyyyou comfort at night and a million gamesssss to playyyy.  I gave yyyyou happyyyyynessss when the world gave you nothhhhing but hate.  I gave yyyyyou everyyyyything yyyyyou ever wanted and needed.  But it wassssn't good enough wassss it?  Well too bad my prettyyyy little princessss.  It’ssss yyyyyoursssss now."  The vile creature's grin split further into the nether-regions of her face.  "Yyyyessss it'sssss yyyyyourssss for all eternityyyy."

"I am the onlyyyy one who lovessss yyyyyou.  I am the onlyyyy one who ever loved yyyyou, my uglyyyyy pinprick.  I am the onlyyyyy one who caressss, my vile little rat.  I am the onlyyyyy one who could love a ssssilly little, no good, hideousssss sssslug of a girl like yyyyou.  Yyyyyou're mine now, my slimy little toad, mine forever and no one will ever even know yyyyyou are gone."

As she spoke her face grew and grew and her splitting smile seemed to fill the whole world.  it was as though all of creation revolved around her giant, omnipresent grin that split eternity.

The little girl began to cry, for the creature was right.  She was a good for nothing ,slimy toad that no-one loved.  Suddenly the memories of the taunting flooded her mind.  The horrible chanting, mocking song bled through every other thought in her mind, and still the smile continued to grow.  The singing grew louder and louder until it rang from the mountains and vibrated the very air and ground.

And still the smile grew.


Weeping now, the little girl fell upon her knees in defeat - songs echoing through her mind and soul and then....

....and then her hand slid into her pocket.

....and then her hand closed and a warmth flowed out from her palm, up her arm, through her breast and into her blood.

"No!"

She said.

"No, you tell lies.  YOU are the wicked vile one.  YOU do not love me and YOU never have.  I am not a slimy slug nor am I a warty toad.  These things are YOU.  I am not a pretty princess either.  I only believed I was when YOU told me so when you looked like the kindly gentlemen."

“I am not Stutter-Butter, I am not a hideous, wicked brute.  I am Illumadia Thea Herkansan and I do have someone who loves me for who I am, silliness, toadiness, and stutteriness and all.

First there was a crack, then a pop, and then Stutter-Butter's grin splintered into a million shards and disappeared in a earth shattering howl of defeat....
--------------end pt. 2----------------






-------------epilogue-----------------

Illumadia opened her eyes and slowly things began to come into focus.  she lay on the floor of her room and blinked until the sleep left her eyes.

Curled around a tray of stale, half-eaten cookies was her mother, with deep valleys of tears and worry etched across her sleeping face.

Illumadia crawled over to her and snuggled herself in-between her sleeping mother's arms.  she wasn't sure, but she thought that she could see the lines begin to disappear and a relieved smile tint her mother's dried lips.  She laid her head against her mother's breast, feeling a love warm her more than any golden sun or silver moon ever could.  So they slept, two lights who had found each other once again in the darkness of night, shielded from the wicked world with the knowledge that between them was an unbending love.

And as Illumadia slipped into that blissful sleep on that bare floor her hand relaxed and something small tumbled out - something small and paper that still had cookie crumbs clinging desperately to its perfectly and lovingly crafted folds and gathers.  


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