The Ogre and the Bowling Ball
Once upon a time there was a princess who desperately wanted an ogre; but it would have to be a real ogre. She’d visited the so-called Ogre Emporium, with its wall-to-wall displays of fat, semi-retired pro wrestlers dripping odorous green “muck” (predominantly: modeling clay and corn syrup). She’d strapped on her pink hip-waders and trudged through the bogs, blowing on her Dr. Bonaroo’s patent-pending Ogre Whistle and occasionally swinging an oversized net. She’d scoured the miscellaneous bins at mystical flea markets. She’d overturned every boulder she passed. She’d even collected cereal box tops and sent cash through the mail. But, none of her efforts came to fruition, and this princess still longed for an honest-to-goodness ogre.
She’d never been quite the same since "the pea incident."
One stormy evening, this princess was out walking her Chihuahuas, Even and Steven, when one of them suddenly disappeared down a nearby rabbit hole. This rabbit hole, it turned out, was actually an ogre’s nostril, and this ogre’s nostril, in turned out, belonged to a heavily congested pair. From a sneeze that sounded like something between a supersonic jet and the dropping of silverware, a wide-eyed Chihuahua shot past the forehead of the startled princess at impressive speed. The ogre, who’d been dreaming of mud, made minimal efforts in the way of apology. “Hurray!” the princess cried, offering him a moistened towelette.
She was, however, slightly worried by the ogre’s lack of crippling stink, as well as his reasonably ok fashion sense, which consisted of a plastic bag and could easily have passed as swim trunks. She blamed the weather. “We’ll see,” she thought as they ambled home.
“Toaster,” thought the ogre.
Upon returning to the palace, she settled the ogre into an ornate loveseat in the royal sitting room beside her husband, the prince, who was working under deadline on the latest edition of My Times, which he self-published and which generally consisted of feature articles documenting his daily travails of tightly sealed peanut butter jars and poorly fluffed pillows. Circulation: 1. On her way out, she heard him comment something about the irritating nature of small dogs, and shuddered at the possibility of the two of them getting along.
Pushing aside the various velvet-lined chests and pastel hatboxes filling her closet, she turned a handle that revealed a small hidden storage room. An expired can of whipped cream tumbled out. She shuffled through unopened packages of handcuffs, intricate unused swinging devices, massaging implements, and colorful, dusty unmentionables until, behind sealed boxes and bags and countless other things one hides from a sexually lifeless prince, she found what she needed. “Hurray!” she whispered, then set about preparing the ogre’s sleeping quarters in the guestroom next door. Removing mattresses and bedspreads and decorative drapery, until only the wooden frame of the bed remained, she placed a bowling ball in the middle of the slats and piled a threadbare blanket from the horse stables atop it, neglecting to leave a pillow. The removed bedding was then locked away, and the ogre was warmly shown in.
“Bucket,” he thought, admiring the linens.
In the middle of the night, the princess slowly snuck out of bed and, balancing on her tiptoes so as not to disturb her husband, who both slept and thought as soundly as a newborn, crept into the spare guestroom. “Are you asleep?” she whispered. The bold moonlight outside emphasized the monstrous outline of the ogre, a bowling ball wedged beneath his lower back, his head tilted backwards and out the window such that his nostrils formed birdbaths in the rain, his feet squeezed uncomfortably against the wall, and the threadbare sheet tickling him underneath his chin in the steady breeze. But he snored like a constipated lumberjack, and the princess could barely contain her glee. “Ogre, you asleep?” she whispered, pulling herself into a seated position atop his stomach. “Ogre, can you hear me?” she asked, pressing on his chest. Still, nothing. “Only a true ogre could sleep soundly on the bed that I prepared for him. I think I’ve finally found myself a real one!” Wearing nothing more than her royal bedroom slippers, she woke the ogre by yanking on his chin hairs. Then, surrounded by darkness and the smells of the forest, beneath a threadbare sheet, the princess found what she’d been looking for.
The next morning, over a quaint breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice and steaming muffins the princess had prepared herself, still enamored and unable to sleep, she broached the topic, commenting, “Wow, did I sleep badly last night. I must have dropped a piece of dental floss somewhere.” She quietly ignored her husband’s snickers. “How about you, ogre?”
“Hamper,” thought the ogre, out of habit, before continuing aloud, “Sometimes I feel like my head is confined to the small interior of a hamper. It feels like that: a small hamper.” He pointed at his own clammy forehead. “But, since you asked,” the ogre continued, “I’ve never slept more comfortably in a bed before, and, despite being woken up, my head feels like it’s been moved to a slightly larger hamper today. …Was that lavender in the sheets?”
“Hurray!” shouted the princess, mostly just wanting to rub it in. “I told you I’d find a real ogre. Now… eat him.” And she pointed at her husband, hoping to clear up any potential ambiguities regarding whether the ogre was expected to eat the prince, or vice versa, but the prince had already become distracted by the sincerity of his own advice column. “Wait,” she said, and then calmly walked over to where the prince was seated, crouching beside him. “Do you remember that first evening we met,” she said to him, “that stormy first night when you gave me a place to stay?” The prince cautiously nodded, wondering why the ogre was looking at him like that. “And do you remember those twenty mattresses and those twenty eider-down beds, and that small pea, and how much I suffered with lack of sleep that night, my back bruised and my head swimming in slow ripples of pain, my regal torso constantly provoked by an unknowable discomfort, all because of you and your clever little test? Do you remember that?” The prince, wondering if this was what his horoscope had meant, audibly swallowed.
“Well,” she added, “the truth is, I kind of liked it.”
The ogre, by this time, was uncomfortable. But, otherwise, his head felt enlivened and cleansed, as if his brains had sat beneath running water all night, as if this world he had woken up to was a new and greater world, the kind of world where one could reinvent themselves all over again, and he knew that he was no longer obliged to adhere to the expectations of ogres. He considered his breakfast options, however, along with his deep-seated aversion towards strawberry muffins, and swallowed the prince in one gulp. “Hurray!” cried the princess.
It was the happiest day of her life.
The prince was slowly digested, of course, still reading his advice column and (after being unable to find anything useful therein) vowing to write a scorching letter to the editor, and the romance between the ogre and the princess was short-lived, in no small part due to the princess’s capricious fancies. The ogre moved to the outskirts of Cleveland. The bowling ball, after being returned to its leather pouch in the princess’s closet, was never heard from again.
K. M. Weaver received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland and his MS in physics from Cornell University. His work has appeared in elimae, Foundling Review, Ratebeer.com, and Mid-Atlantic Brewing News. He is currently still unpacking after nine months of volunteering and traveling in Central America.