This week’s tale is brought to you by the small wooden coaster on my coffee table… it believes in you, and it offers you its wisdom.
Finding the Prince of Hearts
Aaron Benson
When they called Harry the Prince of Hearts they didn’t mean it literally. Instead they meant that he slept around. Unfortunately for Harry, when they called Lizzie the sort of woman who could make someone lose their way, they meant it quite literally.
Now Harry was lost.
He had snuck away from Lizzie’s apartment confidently enough, but now seemed to be lost in some sort of empty city which followed its own rules. One of those rules, for example, was to not miss a light at a pedestrian crossing.
Harry had missed a light at a pedestrian crossing.
That was several weeks ago. Once you missed a light, it seemed, there was no knowing how long you might have to wait. Last time it had taken about a week. You could backtrack, but another rule of the city was that you could never look back, so you ended up having to walk backward.
Harry walked backward and tripped over. He looked back.
Now the pavement behind him was gone, replaced by nothingness. And in front of him were the pedestrian lights which stubbornly remained red. Last time he’d tried to cross the road anyway and found that, whenever he tried, his legs refused to even move off the pavement.
So what could he do?
As he stood, wondering, another person appeared on the pavement beside him. At first she looked like Lizzie and Harry threw himself to the ground in terror. But when he studied her more he realised that she had many different features.
“Who are you?” he asked, rude despite being ecstatic to see another human being.
“I’m the sort of lady who helps people find themselves,” she said with a smile.
Harry held his hands up before him. “Then please, help me find myself.”
She winked at him. “Well you lost yourself by sleeping with someone. I guess you might find yourself the same way.”
And so Harry slept with her.
Afterward he felt his knees growing weak and he began to tremble. A deep melancholy settled over his heart. In all his time lost here, he’d never felt so low.
“What did you do to me?”
The woman smiled. “I may have lied about who I am. I’m the sort of person who can only be happy by making other people sad.”
And she walked away, laughing to herself.
Harry hugged himself around the knees and wept. But gradually, his sobs subsided. And then, even through the sex induced depression, a sudden ray of happiness shone.
He stood up and then stepped off the kerb onto the road-
And stumbled back as a car honked its horn at him. He tripped over onto the sidewalk, but even as he fell he was smiling. Because, around him, he could see dozens of amused, worried and uncaring faces.
He was back.
Harry had become the sort of person that has to lose himself to find himself.
—
Aaron lives in a fantasy world which rarely seems to make sense. He finds this less inconvenient than you might think.
