SHORT FIC: Shiny Town, by Harper Kingsley #HarperWCK
I wrote this on Twitter a tweet at a time.
Here’s my point of reference:
and here’s the tweet thread: https://twitter.com/HarperKingsley0/status/1547633608357134336.
SHINY TOWN
The Mayor of Shiny Town stood in his pressed trousers with the red suspenders, heavily embroidered vest, and blazer to survey the townsfolk going about their day. Each person was made distinctive by the clothes they wore.
The clothes they couldn’t remove.
Ever since that weird kid with the staff had passed through, nothing had been the same.
The kid had said their town was called "Shiny Town," and Shiny Town it had become.
They hadn’t had any rain in close to two years now, yet everything remained green, though oddly plastic.
Food had an odd taste to it now, even the things that came from cans.
The Mayor wondered if it was the food whose taste had changed, or if it was that his own taste buds had been changed with the odd metamorphosis he’d been forced through.
They’d all been transformed by that weird kid, from the oldest elder to the smallest of infants. The Mayor tried not to think of Little Sweetheart, as the kid had renamed her, the baby that hadn’t grown a single millimeter since The Change.
There was quiet speculation that Little Sweetheart was never going to grow up. She’d stay a 7 month old baby until she died of old age. Never gaining enough awareness to realize the hell they’d been trapped in.
Sometimes the Mayor envied Little Sweetheart her ignorance. Most times he wallowed in the unrelenting pity of the situation.
There was a lot of self-pity on his part, and while most times the fixed cheery smile that remained on his face was close to what he felt, there were darker times when he wished that he could frown. That the huge glossy orbs his eyes had become could cry.
But he wasn’t allowed the freedom of tears. No one was.
The kid had wanted cheery people, and that’s what they became. The cursed inhabitants of the now-named Shiny Town.
Sometimes the Mayor tried to think of his old name. His old life. His old self.
But it wouldn’t come. Had actually faded more in the last two years, until the things he’d yearned for on first becoming different were no more than memory shadows.
He’d see his name written down, and his eyes would blur over the letters, his mind unable to hold onto them.
He was the Mayor of Shiny Town. It was the sole identity he was allowed, the curse tightening around his mind whenever he tried to remember who he really was. Had been.
Likely never would be again.
Sometimes he looked in the mirror at his own cartoonishly huge eyes and the whiskers that refused to be shaved, and he hated that nameless child that had so-carelessly waved around such powerful magics and changed everything about him and the rest of the town.
He would try to find glimpses of who he used to be, and they seemed lesser everyday.
He was fading away from himself. Dying while still walking around with a body and a voice. Forced to follow the scripted phrases the kid had BURNED into him.
"Welcome to Shiny Town. I’m the Mayor and I’m here to help you."
"Please follow me and I’ll introduce you to the most important people in our town. We’re so glad you’ve finally come, Great Hero. We’ve been waiting for you to come save us."
"The monster has been attacking us for many a night. Good thing you’re here to take care of it."
And the Mayor tried not to think about "the monster," or what the kid had done to it… him? her? Whoever that poor thing had been before the Change.
A part of him was glad not to remember who the monster had once been. Though the searing ache in his heart made him fear the monster had been someone he’d loved.
Someone he could no longer remember, as he was forgetting himself.
He’d touch the clothes in his closet… the dresses, the pretty shoes… and it hurt to know he’d once been different. Happy.
Until that kid had come to town.
/END?
