philcain

A fictional contemporary fairy tale written in response to the prompt “bear with me”, very loosely based on a true story, which is, of course, a spoiler.

Once upon a time, there was a man called Ken. Ken lived in a kingdom called America. He lived in a place in America called California. It was always nice and warm and sunny in California, when it wasn’t on fire that is.

To live in California Ken needed money. He needed a lot of money. To get this money Ken ran a business. His business was selling “door furniture”, which is what grown-ups call things like door handles, bolts and the like. Much of Ken’s door furniture was made of a metal called brass, which looks a little bit like gold. Ken noticed this and decided to call his business Goldy Locks, because it sounds a bit like a story for children. He and his friends laughed at this, because it was slightly funny and because they had drunk quite a lot of beer. Ken also thought a funny name might help him sell more door furniture. 

It turned out that the funny name did help him sell a lot of door furniture, or at least did not stop him. This meant Ken made a lot of money, more even than you need to live in California. Ken used his extra money to buy a big house and a car so big everyone would know for certain how much money he had. But now he only had half as much money because his wife left him over summer, just like that, over that one little affair. 

One day Ken came down the winding stairs from his office in the roof space, through the kitchen, into the back garden. Standing in the garden in his slippers and pyjamas Ken lit a cigarette and breathed the smoke into his lungs, like grown ups do. This made him feel a bit dizzy. He looked around and saw his wife’s bird table was on its side. 

“Strange,” thought Ken. “No bird I know can knock over a bird feeder. And there is no wind.” 

Ken went over and put the bird feeder the right way up again. It was one of those with a little roof. He tried to forget about it, focussing instead on his feelings of anger, regret and sadness about his ex wife.

Later in the day he went out for another smoke and found the bird table was again on its side. 

“Goddamn it,” he said, a word American grown ups sometimes use. 

This time he also saw that it was broken in half. And he also saw his wife’s wooden table and chairs were also in pieces in the flower bed. Then he looked in the flower bed and saw there were some very big footprints. 

“Fuck,” the thought, because this was not something that normally happened.

Ken was scared now, so scared he was unable to shout. Instead he crouched down and looked around him. He looked and looked, but could see nothing. But then, he looked once again, and he saw a big furry head sticking out from under the house. It was a big animal. It was sticking its head out of the entry to what grown ups call the “crawl space” underneath his house. For some reason Americans sometimes like to crawl under their houses. They like to store things there when there isn’t enough room in the house itself.

In this case Ken realised it was not another American person crawling under his house but an American bear! This bear was maybe 500lbs, or over 200kg for metric listeners. This was bigger than almost everyone he knew. Realising this made Ken want to go to the toilet very much. But there was a bear under his house which might eat him if he tried to go to the toilet. So Ken stayed where he was. The bear decided to stay where it was too, looking at Ken.

As it got dark the bear finally went down into the crawl space. Ken took his chance and ran into the house. He used all the high quality door furniture he had. Then he ran upstairs to the toilet and locked the door there too. 

While sitting there he tried to relax like he had learned to on Youtube. He breathed slowly and tried to clear his mind of negative thoughts. But no matter how hard he tried he could not stop thinking negatively about having a bear living under his house. 

“Is this normal?” he thought.

Before Ken flushed he had decided he would one day have to deal with the bear. For now though he decided that the first step would be to simply stop thinking about it. He did not know very much about bears, but he did know that bears liked food even more than he did. He decided the key was to stop eating at home. So Ken propped his shotgun by the kitchen door before going to Wendy’s for a burger with blue cheese, bacon, fries, coleslaw, ice cream and half a gallon of soda. He was very careful to wash his hands after. When he got home he had almost forgotten about the bear. 

So he carried on this way, simply going out for his dinner every night. After a few days Ken realised that having a bear under his house was less of a problem than he first thought. He added another rule, which was not to mention the bear to anyone who might make him think about it. Life was, if anything, better than before. Rather than being alone all the time he began making friends with the waiters at the restaurants he visited. Trying to avoid the bear also made him cut down on cigarettes. 

A few months later he drove home from El Compadre, the Mexican restaurant 300 yards away. He found his ex-wife’s car parked in the driveway. This was strange because she did not live at the house anymore because she hated him for what he had done. He went inside and called out her name.

“Kathy, Kathy!…,” Ken shouted, walking round the house. She probably would not guess there was a bear living in the back garden. 

“Kathy, Kathy…,” Ken shouted up the stairs, thinking she might be up there. He even ran up the stairs and then ran back down again.

He then went into the kitchen. She was not there either. But she had been cooking. This was one thing you should not do around a bear. It does not matter if you don’t know the bear is there. It makes no difference. Bears are not big on detail.

Ken then saw the back door was open. He was not feeling anger about his ex-wife leaving any longer. He just imagined her gone forever and felt like he ought to stop it from happening. He grabbed his shotgun from by the door and went out into the back garden.

“Kathy, Kathy…” he shouted, at the top of his voice, swinging round with the shotgun like in a film. He let off a cartridge into the night sky. Bears don’t like loud noises.

He thought he saw something running from under the house into the darkness, but who knows. He pulled the string for the porch light. 

There on the bench seat was Kathy, smoking a cigarette.

“What the fuck, Ken? Have you been drinking?”

“No, no, I’ve not drank, not since you left. Something spooked me. That’s all.” He paused for a second, propping the gun against the bench. “I am very happy to see you though.”

“I’m your ex-wife now, remember, Ken”

“Yeah, I remember very well,” Ken said, standing in front of her, arms open. “But it’s OK to be happy to see your ex wife, isn’t it?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is,” said Kathy, standing into his arms, not thinking about the pain he had caused her for now. After a few minutes, Kathy leaned back.

“What happened, Ken?” Kathy asked motioning with her head to the wrecked bird table.

“Nothing, nothing happened. I just realised something, that’s all,” Ken said and Kathy rested her head back on his chest. “Hey, let’s go inside,” Ken said, looking into the nigh.“Sure,” Kathy said. And went in and double-locked the door. ■