“Keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times, and enjoy the ride…”
Norm Steinmetz sighed. It had just been one of those kinds of days. You know the kind. The kind where your alarm doesn’t go off, so you’re late to work. And then when you get there, you find out you’re filling in for a co-worker who got hammered last night and never showed up. And then you find out that the co-worker had a mind-numbingly boring assignment. And you’re still forced to smile and act like you’re the happiest goddamn spinning teacup operator on the planet because this is the happiest goddamn place on the goddamn Earth, goddammit.
Norm had just pressed the big, tantalizing “GO” button for the 37th time that morning when he felt somebody tap him on the shoulder. He turned around, but nobody was there. Well, nobody he could immediately see, anyway. After looking to the left and right, because he was expecting another human being that was normal-human-being-sized, it then occurred to him that he should also look up and down.
Up was a really stupid direction to look, since if he couldn’t see the person when he looked directly in front of himself, there was a really good chance that the person would still not be in front of and also slightly higher than himself. Down, however, proved ever more fruitful. How this toddler managed to reach Norm’s shoulder was perplexing, seeing as how he was no more than three feet tall. The toddler, that is. Not Norm.
I mean, Norm was kind of short for a dude. Not, like, outlandishly so or anything, but enough that when he set up his Tinder, he definitely lied about his height. It wasn’t an egregious lie, only a couple of inches. Like, most women probably wouldn’t even notice. But it was still a lie, and Norm absolutely knew it.
Upon closer inspection, the toddler appeared to be wearing what looked like an old sack of grain. What were those called? Gunny sacks? Guinea sacks? It didn’t matter. What mattered more was the magnificently long, auburn-colored beard the toddler was sporting. Norm was beginning to suspect this was no mere toddler, and when the not-toddler spoke in a gruff baritone not unlike that of Liam Neeson, his suspicions were proven correct.
“Oy, what’re ye doin’ up here like yer one o’ the Tooties? Get yer arse back ta the changin’ room an’ get ready fer the next show!”
“Tooties? I don’t—”
“Yer no tourist and ye know it! Ye were hired ta act like a dwarf, and ye’ll act, guldurnit!”
“A dwarf?” thought Norm. “Just who does that guy think he is? I know I’m slightly below the average height of the adult American man, but…”
Norm’s thoughts trailed off as he realized the dwarf had grabbed his hand and was leading him away from the ride. The whole situation seemed a little suspect, mostly because the Magic Kingdom was notorious for their strictly regimented break schedules, and Norm was still 24.2 minutes away from his. The dwarf was alarmingly strong though, and Norm didn’t think he could break out of the literally bone-crushing grip his left pinky and ring fingers were in.
He briefly considered cutting those fingers off, since the bones were already pulverized, but he also knew that the second-most-important thing you weren’t allowed to break was character, and Norm correctly assumed that spraying passers-by with blood from an exposed artery would undoubtedly ruin the magic of their overpriced vacations. So, Norm let himself be led through the crowd, around to the very back of the park, where the dwarf stopped in front of a partially hidden door that, although it looked very much like an ivy-covered stone wall, was clearly more than just a wall because it had “EMPLOYEES ONLY” spray painted on it in crisp block letters, and it would have been dumb for a wall to announce that only employees could stand beside it.
The dwarf motioned for Norm to enter, and it never occurred to Norm that he could do an infinite number of things that weren’t entering the door. Thus, he entered.
The dwarf didn’t follow Norm, which didn’t strike Norm as odd. The whole situation was odd, so any normally abnormal behavior than an individual might exhibit in a normal situation would be considered normal in an abnormal situation such as this. As the door closed behind him, Norm’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting. He began to walk slowly down the empty corridor, looking for something that might clue him in as to what the hell was going on.
As he walked farther, Norm realized that the corridor was beginning to shrink. Or was he rapidly growing? He did remember to drink his milk that morning, but this was a little bit ridiculous, even for the amazing powers of TruMoo and its lack of artificial growth hormones (whatever those are). Norm hoped the REAL growth hormones the milk apparently contained were what was helping him now.
As he reached the end of the now-too-narrow-for-him-to-stand-up-straight hallway, Norm’s only option to continue was to open a small door. Unlike the one before, this one was definitely a door. It had a handle and everything. Before opening it, Norm put his ear against the door, and to his surprise, a muffled conversation filled his ear hole. He couldn’t make out any actual words, so he assumed it was English that was being spoken. Suddenly a man yelled, and then the room filled with laughter.
Deciding that laughing crowds were least likely to greet a stranger by bludgeoning him to death, Norm picked that particular moment as the most opportune one to open the door. He did so slowly, fearful that the laughing strangers were actually laughing about the last guy who entered that room and who they immediately pounced upon and tore limb from limb and then ate raw.
As the door opened enough for him to see into the room, he was relieved to observe that the laughing occupants were too preoccupied with a story that somebody was telling them to notice that their inner sanctum had been intruded upon. The man telling the story seemed larger than life, perhaps because he was being lit from behind by actual, genuine torches. Literally just burning sticks somehow attached to the wall.
That didn’t really seem safe. Or smart. There were no windows that Norm could see, and he remembered enough basic chemistry from high school (or was it physics?) to know that fire needs oxygen to breathe, so the people would eventually suffocate due to their poor lighting decisions.
The listeners of the story numbered seven in total. They were all grouped around the teller, almost on their toes in anticipation. It was hard to tell that they were on their toes though, since they were all short. Ridiculously short, in fact. As short as the first dwarf who had led him here. This couldn’t just be a coincidence.
Norm carefully swung open the door the rest of the way, and the man telling the story paused momentarily before addressing the intruder.
“Good, I trust you had no difficulty in finding us?”
The man’s voice was rather snidely, and his accent was noticeably more understandable than the crude Irish stereotype that the dwarf had spoken in.
“I trust you know why we’ve brought you here?”
“Actually, I have no idea what I’m even doing here. This goes against every ‘Stranger Danger’ PSA I’ve ever seen. What’s going on?”
“Well,” the strange, tallish-compared-to-the-dwarves man began with a drawl, “Who brought you here? It was a man not unlike these before me, correct? And you yourself are about the same height as them, are you not?”
“Hey, I’m only 1.3 inches below the national average, thank you very much. And what is this, the ‘Whose Line?’ questions-only game? And am I winning?”
“Fine, I’ll cut to the chase,” said the man, obviously annoyed. “We have recruited you as the Eighth Dwarf. I assume you’re familiar with the Dwarves to whom I am referring?”
“Well, yeah, but I’m pretty sure there were only seven of them. What do you need me for? Is it because eight is a perfect cube?” asked Norm, genuinely curious about such a drastic change to a classic fairy tale.
“I’m afraid those reasons are classified,” the man said, his lips curling into a small but eerily creepy grin. “Regardless, we have need of one of your… stature. And it was much easier to recruit from within than to find another civilian to brainw—I mean kidnap.”
“I’m not that short!” Norm insisted, rising to his tippy-toes subconsciously in an effort to prove his point.
“The matter is closed. You’ve come into this room of your own free will, which means you’ll find it rather difficult to leave.”
Norm spun around, and to his shock, there was a wall where the door that he entered the room from used to be. And he was sure this one was a wall, since the door before had so obviously been a door.
“What are you going to do to me?” Norm asked, his voice barely louder than one of those obnoxiously loud stage whispers.
“Oh, I’m sure that by the time we’re through, you’ll find the process to have been quite… pleasurable,” the man said, his eyes positively glowing with delight and malice and a strange magic that made them become quite literally incandescent. As in, they were red. His eyes were red. Not “lit up a doobie” red, but “oh my God, don’t run through that light, you’ll kill us all” red. Or in this case, “classic cartoon villain” red.
Norm wondered if his girlfriend could get a shade of lipstick like that at Bath & Body Works. As it turned out, that would be the last thought of his own Norm would ever have. It wasn’t a particularly bad last thought by any means, but if he could have had more thoughts, Norm probably would have wished for a slightly more exciting last thought, like driving a Ferrari through a farmer’s market, or having his heart pierced by the barb of a stingray, or actually getting to see a girl naked for the first time. Oh well.
… … …
“…From early mornin’ ‘til night, we dig dig dig dig dig dig dig DIG!”
As the mine cart carrying the group of riders passed, Norm turned back around from his singing to get back to work with his pickaxe. It was satisfying work, pretending to mine for diamonds while happy, smiling tourists got to watch their favorite fairy tale come to life. In fact, it was the only work he had ever known.
How long had he been here? 5 months? 5 years? It didn’t matter. All he knew was his name was Norm, or as his fellow dwarves called him, Nerdy. He was the one that completed their ranks. He was the one that made them number a perfect cube. Yes, life was good here in the happiest place on Earth.
Deep in the underground room, the mysterious man smiled. His slim, Gomez Addams-esque moustache quivered ever-so-slightly as he mentally congratulated himself for another successful hire. Yes, one more step towards total control had been achieved. The man stroked the pet mouse he was holding. The mouse gave a small squeak of approval, and the man let loose with a haunting cackle in a high-pitched falsetto that could only be described as murine.
-Josh Bodner, Guest Writer