Dear Peter,

I wished, that night, I had followed you and Tinkerbell and forgotten all about Mama and Papa and the life I could have left behind. Why did I  remember Mama sitting in her rocking chair waiting? Why did I remember Papa smoking his pipe, watching Nana chasing her tail in the yard? Oh, Peter, you gave me the moon and the stars and I left you to chase city lights and street lights. 

I remember how you came to visit me a few times after I had left you, hovering outside my window like a ghost. I remember closing the curtains and pushing you to the back of my mind so that I didn't have to think about you. I remember telling myself that you weren't real and I remember the small little pink pills Mama would buy for me so that I stopped thinking about you. I remember the looks Papa and the boys gave me when I spoke fondly of you, looks of worry and distress. I stopped talking after that, they didn't understand.

I grew up Peter. I became the perfect woman just like how auntie wanted me to be. I married a rich man and had a little girl. I still take the same little pink pills Mama gave me. I wonder if you visit my little girl the same way you visited me. If you don't see me, it's because I'm not there. My husband told me that it would be much better if I stayed here in these four white and blue walls and in my pretty pink bed. There are beautiful purple flowers that lay in this delicate white vase beside my bed. Outside, there is a beautiful garden with a tree just like the one you live in. I'm not supposed to go out though, they say that I'm not well enough. 

I'm going to try flying today after I have had my another dose of those little pink pills. I can't float anymore like you taught me to, so I'm going to throw myself off the roof. I will float for a moment. But then, I will remember how I left you and grew up. I will fall. Maybe, you will be waiting at the bottom to catch me. Just like in my imagination.

With lots of acorns and love,

Wendy Darling

#twistedtales

When they warn you about these cases, they never talk about the fear. They talk about the press that will drag your words through the dirt in front of the whole world. They tell you about the lawyers who will twist your mind into impossibly knotted balls of yarn that you can't begin to unravel. They talk about the whispers that flood your ears and never leave you alone, even in the dark. But never, not once, do they mention the fear. The painstaking terror that pierces your soul when you see him across the court. The face that stalks the peace that you can even manage to get, with a smirk and a wink, calm as an untouched lake of pure moonlight.

I am not allowed to show my fear. They think I am weak enough as it is. The world has deemed my horror story a tale of true love. They all choose to see forced, unrequited touches as soft, caring caresses. They celebrate my attacker. They call him my hero. He claims to have saved me.

I didn't realize I was in need of saving. 

The press has renamed me. Aurora White was a victim. She was ignored by the world. She was laughed at, pointed at, and ridiculed. She seemed delusional. She was forgotten.

They have named the new me Sleeping Beauty. The beautiful princess in the fairytale of our time. The lucky one. The terrified girl, prisoner to a nightmare she will never wake up from. 

We are locked in a waltz, the prince and I. My lower body is on fire, agony snaking up my feet and legs where my lustrous green tail and fins had been. It takes every effort, all of my years of stringent royal training, not to scream soundlessly in his face and collapse.

I dance on knives.

His lips brush against mine and his hands grip me close. My strange human heartbeat thrums in my throat, where my gills were before they melted into smooth flesh.

I am a seamless knit of skin wobbling on two skinny appendages. Through the embroidered layers of my skirts, I scratch and scratch at scales no longer on my body. The prince, all grace and poise, takes my scratching hand, holds me to the warmth of his chest, and whispers into my ear reassuringly.

All around us are colors and movement; women in bright gauzy dresses drift like schools of jellyfish around men in tailcoats, straight-backed and proud.

At breakfast, I used red jelly and fingers to paint pictures of my family: me, my sisters, my father the Sea King, resplendent with trident and crown. I drew the merfolk and the palace and the carriages pulled by a retinue of plumed seahorses. It looked like blood spreading on the tablecloth.

The prince said: “What a pretty drawing, dearest.”

I shook my head furiously, silver utensils flying out of my hair, and pointed to myself, then to the tablecloth.

How could I convey to him the joy of warm currents, the gardens of bright anemone and coral, fish swimming in and out of open windows, and the chorus of voices singing the sun down?

Days pass and memories of my home slip away like water, the voices of the ocean grow fainter as I pace up and down the seashore.

The servants and courtiers whisper when I walk the halls of the palace. I hear whispers of “asylum” and hope this is a place that my prince will take me, like when he took me to visit the town.

Sebastian, faithful companion, bright red and festooned with parsley and buttery sauce, lies on a silver platter. His eyes are bubbled onto his stalks and watch me silently, disapproving even in death.

He had followed me then, scuttling in the shadows until cornered by a kitchen boy, although I had warned him to stay hidden in my room.

Prince Eric, seeing my distress, says soothingly, “Only a king crab, dear one.” And to the others at the banquet table: “Poor, sensitive creature. Ariel was showing me her love for ocean life only earlier this morning. Wonderful artist, this girl.”

I tuck a mini-trident into my evening gown, as they had persuaded me to relinquish the ones I wound into my hair.

He raises a wine goblet to me and turns to chat with the woman beside him.

The wedding ship. Revelry. The deck of the vessel is a blaze of white: the wedding party dancing around a spew of white banners and flowers. Prince Eric and his new bride are spinning in a waltz. The sun casts everyone in a golden haze.

I slide unnoticed from the railing into the waves and swim away from the hull of the ship, my body heaving, dying. And then my spirit is released like a breath of wind and escapes the pain-riddled ruin of my flesh, leaving the body floating in the waves.

I rise with the sea spray and foam. The prince and newly crowned princess, dancing no longer, stand entwined by the bow.

I brush a kiss, soft as mist, against his face. It is enough to know that he is happy and in love. It is enough to have loved him.

“Where is that red-headed whore who has so diverted your attention?” The Princess asks.

“Poor girl!” Prince Eric says. "Washed up on the shore like so much trash. She's a raving lunatic, you know.”

The princess laughs, raucous as the gulls hovering in the ship’s wake.

“I hear she collects cutlery for her hair,” she says. “And that she thinks she is a princess of the sea!”

The prince laughs with her. 

Pain worse than the knife gash of my missing fins and more encompassing than the loss of my voice and songs. The scream rises out of my soul, from the very depths of me, and the ocean answers. The sky churns black, flickering throughout with lightning, and the waves rise to meet it. The ship bobs up and down the swells like a lost bottle.

Screams from the ship, as the wedding party lurches up and down the deck. The prince shouts orders over their shrieks and the howls of the storm, the princess huddles with her maids, drenched and moaning.

With my last breath I whisper, “Father.”

The storm howls. The ocean is a maelstrom of broiling, black waters.

From the depths of the waters come tentacles, vast and familiar, that creep over the ship’s deck and clenches like a fist.

I sigh and close my eyes at last. 

It was swelling again. Not now, please not now. It seemed to have a mind of its own, it would just get big all of a sudden and wouldn´t come down. And as if that wasn´t embarrassing enough, sometimes something thick and wet came out of it. That´s why he had started to carry tissues everywhere he went. This was awkward. He was sure everyone could see it, and why wouldn´t they. It was massive. In some cultures big ones were admired, but he would have paid anything to get rid of it.

Oh good, now the girls were approaching. Perfect, just perfect, and there was no way to hide it, not in this outfit. He knew the girls alright. They were both pretty, but it was all disguise. They were really, really mean.

“Are you ok?”, Annie asked. He could see they were both holding their giggles.

“Sure, just fine”, he said, and could feel it grow even bigger. He touched it, and it was hard and just out of proportion.

The girls burst out laughing, and ran off. Now he was blushing as well.

This was the old days you see, when they didn’t tell you about human anatomy at school. Especially not the gross stuff. You had to learn everything the hard way, and it was mostly embarrassing.

And even if they had, they certainly didn´t tell you about wooden dolls´ anatomy. It took a really long time for Pinocchio to learn, it was lying that made his nose grow.

Every time he pushes the needle into his vein, Peter sees Tinkerbell's last moments. Not that he needs the drug for that; all he really has to do is close his eyes and he's back there. Nothing has felt right since that day, and of course now that she's dead, he's stuck here.

Here. Here is London. It's pouring rain, and Peter is huddled in the alley beside the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, getting soaked. It's late evening, and people are rushing past the alley mouth under umbrellas, hurrying home or to the tram stop. Peter hunches over, rain pelting the back of his neck. He wears a wool stocking cap all the time here; pointed ears draw too much attention, lead to too many brawls with other street boys.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, he is able to slip inside the Hospital and wander around and just curl up in a corner of the lobby for a few hours, before the watchman notices him and rousts him out again. From there, he always comes here, to the alley, from the mouth of which he can watch the front of the Hospital building and see who comes and goes.

Whenever he goes into the alley, he reaches into his pocket for the school chalk he stole from the parish school near Haymarket and makes a mark on the bricks of the alley mouth, above his own head, but eye level on a grown man. Peter, as ever, looks like fourteen-year-old boy.

The little needle trembles in his hand. He's running out of veins; he's blown the ones in his arms and ankles. He had to hide behind a stack of broken crates and garbage just now and use the vein in his dick. The drug slithers into him like a burrowing worm and he leans against the wet brick wall, growing oblivious to the cold, oblivious to the London sealing him off from Neverland.

Peter forces his eyes to stay open, even though his lids feel made of solid iron. He tries to watch the comings and goings at the Hospital, but it is no use. His long-lashed eyes, bright green - the most beautiful eyes a boy ever had, a man once told him - fluttered shut and there was Tinkerbell. 

Hook had torn her open from the neck, well, downward. Hook was a syphilitic maniac; Peter had been too busy binding up Smee to help, he thought she'd be able to fly away, tinkling her laugh as he swooped just out of Hook's reach. But Peter had been, for the first time, too late, and Hook too insane. 

How long ago now was that? He had an idea, but didn't want to think too much about it. Slumped against the wall, Peter waited, muttering to himself. He missed the Lost Boys, when he was coming down. He'd like to do this drug with them, he'd thought many times.

Peter hears a man's footsteps, a man's walking cane tapping at the mouth of the alley. Adrenaline suddenly pours into him, waking him, jangling his nerves. He pushes off the wall and faces the man.

It is Michael Darling. Thank god it is Michael Darling. He is older now, maybe twenty. They've met, many times. Michael looks over his shoulder, then quickly darts into the alley. 

"Hello, Peter," he says, his voice like a silk scarf. Peter just nods. Michael's look bores into him. Peter nods again and turns to face the wall. Michael moves behind him. The night air is cold on his ass, and the hot pain of Michael makes Peter feel frozen and burning alive at once. As always, Michael makes Peter tell him about Tink as he goes into him.

After, Michael Darling drops three ampules into Peter's outstretched hand and leaves without a word. Peter tucks them securely down the front of his pants. He retreats deeper into the alley, again behind the pile of crates and garbage. A fire escape overheard offers a small shelter from the rain.

Peter slides into sleep, into deeper oblivion. There she is, of course, waiting. How do I get back home, he asks her in his dream. He hears tinkling, like glass bells far away, and in his head it sounds like she is saying goodbye.