This week I thought I'd clean out all the old stories I have no intention to use anymore and put them out by the curb. Here's one, on a topic about which I had no business writing, given that I have no kids of my own.
MINOTAUR
It was the two hundredth day of the two thousandth year when the orange lightning crashed and Minotaur Baby was born.
He came out backwards, so his head was Very Surprising. The doctor wrapped him in a blanket of breathtaking blueness, and handed him to Father.
“Oh,” said Father, looking down into Baby’s inky eyes. “He doesn’t look like I thought he would.”
“They never do,” said Mother.
“It’s just...” said Father, “I didn’t realize we’d have a Minotaur Baby.”
“No one ever does,” Mother said.
They brought the Great and Heroic Minotaur Baby home to the castle. They fed him milk and honeyed peaches, and burped his strong back. They put him to bed, but he would not sleep, and he mooed for forty days and nights.
His moo was like a beautiful car alarm.
“It’s hard,” said Father, “when you have a Minotaur Baby.”
Mother nodded. “No one has ever had it so hard.”
On his second birthday, Minotaur Baby magically transformed into Monkey Monkey Baby. With two heads he could cry and ask questions at the same time. He could Talk and Talk. With the speed of a rabbit and cunning of a fox, he could knock over lamps and put a sandwich in the stereo. Swift, clever Monkey Monkey Baby.
“Sometimes...” said father, “...sometimes I wish our baby was still a Minotaur Baby.”
Mother nodded, and cleaned up the pudding.
Years passed, and Monkey Monkey Baby turned into Perfectly Normal Boy. Boy played sports and liked to draw. He learned a great many things in school. Sometimes he was bull-headed, and sometimes he got into monkey business, but mostly he was normal. Perfectly Normal Boy.
"It'll all be easy from now on,” said Father. Mother agreed, and they both nodded and smiled, because they had never done this before.
On his sixteenth birthday, Perfectly Normal Boy began changing into 300 Pound Werewolf. He grew hair where there had been no hair before. He could be mean and moody, and didn’t like being around Mother and Father. He liked to howl, and he liked to run in packs of other Werewolves. Sometimes he was still Perfectly Normal, but mostly he was a 300 Pound Werewolf.
When he was eighteen, and his parents could stand it no longer, 300 Pound Werewolf went to live in another town. Mother and Father made sure he knew how to get there. And they made sure he knew how to get back, too.
While he was away, he stopped turning into a Werewolf. He grew and grew, and became a Giant. He was strong as a forest and smart as a library. And he was Homesick.
As he drove home to visit Mother and Father, he wondered what they’d talk about. He was so different from them, after all.
But his parents were giants, too. He hadn’t remembered.
“I’m sorry I used to be a werewolf sometimes,” said the Giant.
“That’s okay,” said Mother. “We always loved you.”
“Even when I was a two-headed monkey?” asked the Giant.
“Even when,” Father said.
One day the Giant fell in love with a beautiful Giantess, and they got married. Soon, there was a baby on the way.
“I hope he has your eyes,” said the Giant to his wife.
“I hope he has your smile,” said the Giantess to her husband.
And they hoped and they hoped.
But they had a Minotaur Baby anyway.
