Color Me Wicked - Seasonal Fan Fiction

Elphaba got to her feet and surveyed her new surroundings. The twister had swept her up mere seconds before she managed to squash that little brat Dorothy with her perky breasts and howling little mutt. How unfortunate! How ill-timed and unfair!

The witch felt the old rage. When had things ever been fair for her? From the first moment she had been born cursed. Her mother and father had been horrified by the wretched color of their infant daughter's skin.  Her mother had tried at first to fix Elphaba's affliction.  There had been pills and creams and far more painful remedies. When her skin refused to respond to all treatments, her mother withdrew from her and turned her all her affections on her fair-skinned daughter. Under the cone of her parents' obvious disdain she had grown up isolated with only the volumes of books in her family's library for company.  Elphaba had read and re-read all the epic stories about heroes and villains. Alone in the dark, she had wondered which she was.

 In the early days, the school boys had been fascinated by Elphaba. She was smarter, faster and more skilled than any of them.  Later, her emerald skin and thick dark hair set her apart from all the other girls, giving her an exotic appeal for those growing male appetites. Overtime however, the cruelty of youth took over and the fascination soured into revulsion. Then there was that incident at boarding school. Elphaba had only been defending herself but in the end, none of that had mattered. Oz, in all its wonder, was an oddly unforgiving place. No matter. She was who she was. Green...and wicked.

Truth be told, Elphaba she knew wasn’t half bad looking under all that black and green. Her skin was still tight and firm and her figure was lush.  Most importantly she was brilliant, far more so than that sparkly, vapid Glinda! All the same, these days there weren't too many suitors ready to woo her emerald-colored visage no matter how pretty her dark eyes or how ruby red her lips.

How did they not expect her to go mad with the constant rejection? Sitting all alone in her tower with nothing to keep her company other than a legion of chattering, filthy flying monkeys? Elphaba was angry. She was lonely. She had just been about to take all that anger out on that loathsome little teenager when the black twister tore loose from the skies and sucked the witch into its whirling, keening vortex.

Elphaba looked around. The twister had deposited her in a park of sorts. There was a pond and a wide expense of open ground fenced by trees. Beyond the tree line was a village of modest little dwellings. The doors to those dwellings all seemed to open at the same time spilling out a number of strange beasts and beings who joined up in loud, little groups at the edge of the park. The witch ducked behind a large bush. This wasn’t Oz, one couldn’t be too careful!

Too late! She had been spotted by a grotesque little demon. It rushed over to her with stunted, ugly feet. It called out to her and she was startled to find she understood it.

“Hey lady! Hot costume!,” the little monster flashed some unremarkable teeth in her direction before sauntering off into the night.

“Hot?” Elphaba wasn’t even warm. In fact, the climate here was refreshing and almost chilly.

She took a few steps closer to the tree line, feeling emboldened by a stiff breeze that lifted her full shirts a few inches, tickling her bare knees. She crossed a wide, flat black river that felt as hard as rock under her heels. The witch approached the closest of the dwellings. A fat, glowing pumpkin sat grinning at her from the stoop. There was a thumping sound coming from inside the house and she could make out shadows moving around inside behind panes of glass.

The witch drew back, preparing to flee into the night when a door to her left flew open.

“Hi there. Great Costume! Come on in.” A large man dressed in red and yellow rubber ushered her inside by her elbow. The sudden contact sent shivers radiating down her spine.

Inside the place was dimly lit and smelled unfamiliar but not unpleasant. She flicked her tongue, tasting something sweet in the air about her. There were creatures in here too, bigger ones. Elphaba gazed into a sea of moving bodies swaying against each other. She suddenly felt very warm indeed.

“That really is an amazing costume,” the man in red rubber was speaking to her.

The witch turned to look at him. He was broad and dark, bare-chested under his bizarre suit. He shifted uncomfortably under her stark gaze. Ephaba leaned forward and sniffed. He smelled slightly rotten, like fermented fruit. He swayed a bit, unsteady on his feet.

“Fireman, " he said, somewhat embarrassed.

"I know....not much of a stretch.” He shrugged.

 Elphaba continued to stare. Suddenly the man reached out and touched her face.

“How long did that take? All that green? It’s really amazing.”

The man's eyes sparkled with that old, familiar fascination Elphaba remembered from long ago. The witch realized two things simultaneously; first, the man thought her skin was amazing and second, this man, this large and very fit man, had touched her.

Elphaba was suddenly, almost painfully aware of a burning need to be touched more. She stepped closer, ran her nails down his smooth flesh. She parted her full red lips and smiled. It was all the invitation the Fireman needed. He pulled the witch down the hall and whisked her inside a small dark room, closing the door behind them.

He wasted no time working his hands under her robes, parting the cloth to expose more of her green flesh. He moaned when she wantonly grabbed onto him, pressing herself against him. Elphaba bit back a raucous cackle. The fireman's hands entwined in her long tresses. He pulled her hair back and kissed her neck, her earlobe and at long last, her mouth.

Elphaba was overcome with a new sensation, a hot white heat exploded inside her and at last she did cackle, wildly and with great pleasure. The fireman collapsed against her briefly before falling to the floor in a heap. The witch smiled down at him, warmly and with a rare gratitude. She smiled as the green began to creep into his features and flow across his skin, staining it. His look of bliss abruptly changed to one of alarm as he too began to notice the change.

"What's happening..." his voice trailed off as his pupils turned into ebony pools, then dimmed.

The witch leaned down and kissed his emerald-colored lips. Sadly, she thought, he did not look as attractive as he had moments ago.

“Perhaps green just isn’t everyone’s color....” she thought, and started off into the night.

Stuffed Dates and the Siberian Snow Queen

In the hustle and bustle of a typical December, I have found exactly no time to write. I have watched a distressing amount of prompts pass me by as I struggle to keep my head above the volume of work on my desk. I almost welcome the lull that mid January will bring me as a true New England winter settles in. I tell myself I will get back to my submissions and deadlines then. We will see what the new year delivers...for now, I'm happy to find a little pocket of quiet before the onslaught starts today to get one or two entries out.

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1496 December 20, 2016
What's your favorite Christmas, Hannukah or Winter recipe? Does your family have a traditional recipe that is served whenever they get together?

To be honest, I'm not fully aware of how the dates came to grace our holiday table. It seems that they were always there, making their humble appearance between the rolls and cranberry sauce. It was my grandfather's thing, those stuffed dates. I remember watching him make them. I remember having him teach me to stuff them with just the right amount of peanut butter so that when you rolled them, they would get coated with just the right amount of sugar. When I was a child, I never ate them. The shriveled fruit held no appeal, not even covered in a healthy dose of sugar. He loved them though, and would pop them into his mouth, ever third or fourth one made. Then he'd place them, in a little glass dish, in the center of the table where they would stay untouched for most of the night. I never saw anyone but my grandfather eat them and maybe my grandmother, who would eat one or two mostly out of obligation I believed. For me, it was always the creation of the treat that I grew to enjoy, that connection to something that was just simply always done out of tradition.

After my grandfather passed on and my parents divorced, the holidays were very different for a long time. Then, my Uncle brought Christmas Eve back to my grandparent's house and those stuffed dates reappeared again on the Christmas table. I think it was a collaborate effort between my Uncle and I, a shared memory that connected us to man who was a complicated but central figure in both our lives. Making those dates feels like a way of honoring the father and grandfather that we both believe he wanted to be, even if he failed at times. As I watch my daughter making the dates now with her cousin, I am taken back to the days of my childhood when it was me that dutifully took the sliced dates from my grandfather to stuff with peanut butter. I watch Jaden take them now and delicately roll them in the plate of granulated sugar and proudly line them up in the glass dish. I started eating the dates at some point after my grandfather was gone. Over the years I've grown to like them. We don't make a lot, there are still only a handful of us that will eat them, but they get made without fail each year all the same.


"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 1015 December 20, 2016
Prompt: How would you like to ride in a “one-horse open sleigh” on snow and ice with the cold Siberian wind blowing at your face? Can you come up with a story, a poem, or an essay about it?

The frigid wind penetrated my fur coat like icy talons. I hunkered lower in the sleigh, drawing my heavy hood closed, restricting my vision but protecting more of my exposed face. There wasn't much to see anyway but a wide expanse of a frozen wasteland, stretching as far as the eyes could see. The Snow Queen's domain was devoid of color and definition, with the barren white ground meeting the ice blue shy, the horizon barely distinguishable. I closed my eyes briefly over my burning irises, felt a solitary tear slip free and slide down my cheek, freezing before it passed the tip of my reddened nose. I flicked in away with my gloved hand and cautioned a look at her, worried that she might have seen.

My Queen was a blindingly beautiful vision. She rode with her back rigid, her gray eyes intent on the path forged by the racing sled. Her long white hair whipped out behind her just as that of the albino stallion that dragged our sleigh in its powerful wake. Her skin was so pale, it was nearly translucent and the delicate veins in her hands looked like think lavender ribbons traveling beneath the flesh. She wore no fur over her dress, the gauzy lace hugged her curves and looked like it had materialized from the falling snow itself. The hands that gripped the reins were bare with the exception of a silver ring with a single, large sapphire stone. The jewel blazed and flashed each time she flicked the reins and called to the horse to hurry. Her lovely face betrayed no hint of urgency much as her startling beauty hid the great well of cruelty inside her.

The sleigh raced forward across the Siberian plains and the end of the world never seemed so far.