Betrussica
Once there was a little girl named Betrussica. It was her parents that had given her such a stupid name. She had lower than average intelligence, and her face was pudgy and homely. Her parents dressed her in elaborate clothing of the sort found among the children of aristocracy in Europe in the nineteenth century, but her round figure and listless face gave her a dumpy appearance. Children and adults alike would make fun of Betrussica, but she never showed any emotion at this; she would simply look back at the people with a dull expression.
Later, Betrussica became a great traveller. She traveled to Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. She became a very famous little girl, but in spite of her travels and fame she still looked out at the world with dull, disinterested eyes, her tongue sometimes resting on her lower lip. Her flowing gowns would trail behind her as she walked thru muddy, rainy days with a battered teddy bear under one arm. It was in Singapore that the teddy bear lost one of its eyes. When she visited a new town, the locals would come out and take Betrussica's picture, because such a dumpy little girl in strange clothing was a novelty to them, and because they had seen her on television.
Betrussica had one friend, a little girl named Atrocia. Betrussica and Atrocia would sometimes color books together, although Atrocia had a troublesome tendency to drool on Betrussica's coloring books. Betrussica didn't care about this much, since Atrocia let Betrussica use her crayons. One day some older boys came and broke all of the crayons in two, just to be mean. Atrocia and Betrussica looked on with heavy-lidded eyes, saying nothing as the boys did this. After the boys left, Atrocia and Betrussica did their best to continue coloring with the broken crayons.
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One day, the little girl named Betrussica flew to another city in a jumbo jet. She sat next to a thin, sweaty, nervous-looking man in a rumpled business suit. When the flight attendant came around to make sure that seatbelts were fastened and that tray tables were in their upright "locked" position, she noticed that Betrussica did not have her seatbelt fastened.
"Excuse me, young lady," said the neatly uniformed flight attendant in a friendly tone. "Please fasten your seatbelt; it's time for us to take off."
Betrussica just kept her chubby hands around her teddy bear and looked at the flight attendant with her tongue on her lower lip. The flight attendant's lips pursed in impatience, and she reached over Betrussica and fastened the seat belt for her, tightening it gently over Betrussica's elaborate 19th-century gown.
Shortly after takeoff, the man next to Betrussica grabbed the motion sickness bag from the back of the next chair and was noisily sick. Betrussica watched him with her dull, half-closed eyes. When the man was finished, he looked very embarrased, but Betrussica said nothing and just stared blankly at him. The man pressed the button for the attendant, rolled down the top of the bag, and handed it to the attendant.
When lunch was served, Betrussica ate noisily and messily, chewing with her mouth open. Applesauce dripped off the tray and onto her dress, and corn and peas were all over the seat, floor, and tray table. Betrussica ate some of everything except the fish, because she did not like fish.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, both pilots had the fish because neither one liked Beef Bourgignon. They actually weren't supposed to do this; there was a regulation against pilots having the same meal, but the pilots and flight attendants on this flight winked at it. Naturally, the fish was in fact contaminated with a dangerous microorganism, and soon both pilots and half of the passengers were vomiting and then unconscious. When the passengers learned of the situation, there was a panic in the cabin, and people began screaming and shouting. A man gathered several passengers and organized a prayer group to do a faith healing on the pilots, but the pilots remained slumped on the floor.
When Betrussica finished coloring the next page in her coloring book, she took her teddy bear in hand and waddled thru the confusion to the cockpit, stopping now and then on the way when one of the frantic passengers accidentally stepped on her trailing gowns. With her tongue on her lip as always, Betrussica stepped clumsily over the unconscious pilots, took the controls of the plane, and calmly began to land it. She had to sit on her teddy bear to raise herself high enough in the seat. When the flight attendant came in and saw what was happening, she was shocked, but Betrussica seemed to know what she was doing, so the flight attendant just asked her name and left her alone.
As the airplane descended thru 10,000 feet, Betrussica turned on the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign. The flight attendant took the PA handset and announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the little girl named Betrussica has illuminated the FASTEN SEAT BELTS light. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts."
Betrussica brought the plane to an expert landing, except that she kept burping while doing so. When the plane had landed, all the passengers who were still conscious cheered for her. Betrussica taxied the plane to the terminal, shut off the engines and then resumed coloring her book on the floor of the cockpit while rescue workers entered the plane and carried the sick passengers out to medical care.
The mayor gave Betrussica a medal for her heroic deed. At the ceremony, he looped the red, white, and blue ribbon over Betrussica's head, but Betrussica just looked at it stupidly and seemed not to notice the people applauding. Later, when Betrussica and Atrocia were coloring books again, the medal kept dangling down and getting in the way of the page, but Betrussica was so bad at coloring that it didn't make any difference.
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Once there was a man named Mr. Smith. He was an American businessman, an executive for a major international music company. Mr. Smith dressed in a gray suit and a white shirt and a red tie, and he looked exactly like every other American businessman.
Mr. Smith had a 14-year-old daughter named Bernice, who was a rather attractive young woman. Mr. Smith lived for part of the year in France working with a French subsidiary of his American corporation, and Bernice was enrolled at a school for children of Americans living in France.
One day, Mr. Smith found out that Bernice had been invited to go boating alone with a 22 year old male college student. Mr. Smith forbade Bernice to go. Bernice was so annoyed that she put some LSD in her father's coffee to get even with him. Mr. Smith unwittingly drank the coffee and then set off for work on foot. When he was partway to his office building, the LSD kicked in, and soon Mr. Smith was wandering aimlessly around Paris, gazing with an oddly fascinated expression at all of the automobiles, which looked uncommonly like smiling rabbits.
By late morning, Mr. Smith had made his way into a section of town frequented by tourists of an especially dull sort. He happened to meet the little girl named Betrussica, who at that moment was walking away from the Eiffel Tower with her teddy bear under her arm. The two might have passed each other without incident; but just as Betrussica was passing Mr. Smith, she burped.
Mr. Smith stopped, stunned. Betrussica's burp echoed and bounced about in Mr. Smith's LSD-enhanced brain. That burp was the most beautiful, musical sound he had ever heard in all of his years in the music industry. It brought tears to his eyes. That burp- so fleeting, so delicate- held within itself all of the unplumbed mysteries of the universe. Mr. Smith stared at Betrussica, taking in the teddy bear and the elaborate gowns. Surely, this all had a meaning. Surely, this strange child had been sent by God to bring this important message to humanity. She had clearly been sent to Mr. Smith since he had the ability to make her message- this wondrous burp- be heard by all.
"My dear child," said Mr. Smith, sinking to one knee and getting his grey suit knee dirty on the sidewalk, and clasping Betrussica's chubby hand. "You must come with me to my company's recording facility! This sound, this work of art that you have uttered must be heard by all!" Betrussica just stared dully at the man, but at the man's urging, she shuffled along to the man's offices with him. Betrussica was not worried; she could always clobber the man with the teddy bear if anything bad happened. As they walked, the man asked Betrussica an endless stream of questions on senseless topics, not seeming to care whether Betrussica answered or not; the only time that Betrussica answered was to tell him her name. Passers-by looked with indescribable expressions at the strange pair-- a raving, English-speaking American in a business suit with a dirty knee, and a dumpy little girl in rumpled but regal gowns carrying a battered teddy bear with only one eye.
Upon entering his offices, Mr. Smith began giving rapid-fire instructions to all of his employees, who had never before seen this particularly uninteresting American behave with such animation. Within a few minutes, Betrussica was posing for the cover photo of the CD which had not yet been recorded. Soon a graphic artist was designing the art for the cover. The professional lighting and deep royal blue studio background did not improve Betrussica's appearance; rather, they just served to emphasize the homeliness and dumpiness of Betrussica's face. Her image stared stupidly from the CD cover, but the formal script letters spelling out "Les Chansons de Betrussique" in gold foil actually matched Betrussica's old-fashioned, artistocratic gowns quite well. The artist looked critically at his own work, wondering whether he should airbrush the teddy bear away.
Meanwhile, Betrussica was led into a recording studio which was quickly made ready at Mr. Smith's orders. Betrussica was introduced to Mme. Ramoneur, a bony, aristocratic-looking, middle-aged woman in a black dress with her hair pulled severely into a tight bun. Mme. Ramoneur was a professional voice coach and had been hastily appointed to help Betrussica. A microphone was quickly set up, and a box was brought in for Betrussica to stand on. Mme. Ramoneur helped Betrussica onto the box. A man behind a glass window started the digital tape recording and waved to Betrussica to begin.
Betrussica just stood on the box and stared at the microphone with her nose slightly wrinkled, making no sound at all.
Mr. Smith, who was watching from behind the glass window, was nearly dancing with impatience. He waved at Betrussica, soundlessly imploring her to begin.
Betrussica continued to stare at the microphone, taking no action in response to Mr. Smith's antics.
Mr. Smith raced from the control room into the studio, waving his arms. "Betrussica!" he cried. "Burp! Burp as you did before!"
Mme. Ramoneur looked at Mr. Smith with mixture of shock, horror, and anger. "Burp!?" she demanded, quoting the American's English word, which she understood. She launched into a tirade of French which Mr. Smith could not follow very well, but the obvious meaning was that Mme. Ramoneur was quite offended that a voice coach of her caliber should be asked to assist when a deranged American wished to record the burp-- burp!-- of a strange little girl with a stupid expression who was wearing inappropriate aristocratic gowns and who was carrying a teddy bear that looked like it had been dropped in a mud puddle (which, in fact, had happened several times).
Mme. Ramoneur stormed from the studio in a huff. Mr. Smith took one dismayed glance at Betrussica, who was still perched on the box; and then he ran after Mme. Ramoneur, calling her name. The recording engineer threw down his headphones in disgust and left as well, leaving Betrussica alone in the studio.
Betrussica stood on the box for several minutes, doing nothing. Presently, Betrussica clumsily climbed down from the box and waddled across the studio to a black grand piano. She pulled the bench out, scraping it across the parquet floor, and clambered up onto it. She stared blankly at the keyboard, her nose needing a handkerchief.
Presently, Betrussica wiped her nose on her ornate lace sleeve. Then Betrussica put her chubby fingers to the keyboard and unexpectedly played a breathtakingly beautiful rendition of Rhapsody in Blue. The finest pianists which had ever recorded in that studio would have been speechless at the phenomenal talent of the little girl named Betrussica.
Unfortunately, nobody except for the teddy bear was there to listen to Betrussica's performace. When she had finished, she climbed down from the bench, picked up her teddy bear, and started walking out from the studio. Betrussica's gown got caught on the piano bench, and she turned and stared blankly for a full minute before grasping the gown in her clumsy fingers and freeing it from the bench. As Betrussica made her way out of the building, she passed the graphic artist who had been designing her CD cover; he glared silently at her since all of his work had been wasted. Betrussica looked at him expressionlessly from her heavy-lidded eyes.
Presently Betrussica started waddling along again. She left the building, and continued on her world travels. Perhaps she would put out her chubby thumb and hitchhike to Belgium.
Satanica
Once there was a little girl named Satanica. Her eyes glowed red with flickering flame, and she had long sharp fangs. Other than that, she was a very sweet little girl. She was very traumatized when children and adults ran away from her screaming. There wasn't the least little thing evil about her; she simply had the misfortune of having flaming eyes and fangs. It wasn't her fault. Why should she be treated so mean just because of her appearance?