99 Maab and the Rehab Spirit: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison

Introduction

Maab is my first FC to name herself. She was simply the Photobomb Fairie until she began to talk. When she called herself “Mab” the first time, someone pointed out that her name has been used by Shakespeare and others, and hardly original. It turns out that Mab is as common a name among Fairies as Taylor is in cheerleading.

No one remembers how the second A landed in the middle of her name, I’m guessing a typo. But Maab liked it and told everyone to call her Maab, and that she would hear it if you omitted either A.

Physically, Maab is four inches long, mostly iridescent green and is a very attractive mix of a Dragonfly and a Tinkerbell sort of person. Like everyone else, Maab moves at various speeds, but unlike the rest of us she is able to hop dimensions and seemingly disappear from common sight and yet still be “there” when captured by a camera–hence the title Photobomb Fairie.

Maab doesn’t do much dimension hopping nowadays because they do not serve Mai Tais and Gin Blossoms anywhere else but in this assortment of dimensions which constitute “reality.” For a four incher Maab can really put down a Mai Tai. That’s because she’s a “Magickian” (Maab’s spelling, and trust me she listens for the K), able to consume hundreds of times her body weight in alcohol without ever needing to pee. But booze affects her in other ways.

When buzzed, our little Magickian tells charming tales of her times back in Cottingley; when polluted, our little Magickian excels at gleaning criticism from silence and insult from conversations she is not a party to. These are not good things to have in a mind able to use a magick wand.

So one of us keeps track of Maab’s consumption rate and we listen for the little tells in her voice which precede her little acts of hostility. My pal Renfield is expert at de-wanding the Fairie, who usually gets sulky and verbally abusive until someone plugs Amy Winehouse into the Unsteady Jukebox beside the bar in my office.

Imagine Alvin and the Chipmunks singing:

“They tried to make me go to rehab,

But I said, no no no–

I know I’ve been black

But when I get back, you’ll know know know…”

Anyway she’ll just sing and sing and sing that, no matter what song is on the unsteady jukebox, until she passes out and either Renfield or I put her to bed in the cigar box located on the top shelf of my bookcase.

To date Maab has yet to follow through on threats to turn me into a Toad. I think that there are far worse things than being a Toad. One of those things must be someone who takes my decidedly non-pc attitude towards alcohol and drug use seriously. Then again, since all of you are grown ups who have noticed that this is a Feeble Fable and obviously not an attempt to ruin the minds of those rancid little creeps some call “the future,” there’s probably no need to add this part, but I’m going to anyway.

I now present a play within a play within a play:

Maab and the Rehabilitationist: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical

Our Cast of Players

Maab………………………………………………………………Herself

The Rehabilitationist Spirit…………………………………..Renfield

The Assistant Director……………………………..Flo the Trade Rat

Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ PILSNER PIGEON……………….Himself

And Introducing

Aristotle the Winged Iberain Ibex as “Toady”

“Yee-haw, drunk again,” said Maab the Photobomb Fairie. She was abed in a cigar box which had a quilt, mattress and pillow cut and sewn from fleece. She pulled the lid and sank deeply into the wild dreamworld experienced only by tiny drunk Magickians.

Maab found herself saddled on Toady the Winged Iberian Ibex. Toady was grazing in a field of magick mushrooms and not inclined to fly, despite Maab’s urgings to the contrary, until the hallucinations kicked in.

“Sorry, Maab,” said Toady. “I don’t fly until I see alligator lizards in the air.”

Still just as plastered to her tiara as she was in the cigar box, Maab lost her temper and began to rap on Toady’s horns with her prop wand.

“Insolence!” Maab screeched, “Get aloft anon, you dirty sonofabitch–No, no wait, I didn’t mean it. I love you, Ari, I love you…man…”

“Psst, Maab,” called out the Assistant Director of the Fable, Flo the Trade Rat, “His name is Toady.”

“Insolent rodent,” Maab bellowed. “I’m a profesh-null, I know my fucking lines…don’t feed em to me till I call for them…”

Time, made longer by an awkward silence, passed.

“LINE!!!” Maab finally yelled.

“Squ-wack–’Have you ever seen a grown man naked?’ The Captain, Airplane,” said Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon, who had wandered onto the set for no good reason.

At this point in the production all hell broke loose on the set. Everyone began shouting at once and Maab was alternating between threatening to turn everyone into a this or a that, and professing weepy, sloppy affections for all. And to make matters worse, A Rehab Spirit appeared and began substance abuse shaming the cast and crew.

“Silence!” The Spirit bellowed. For whatever dark reason, he’d manifested himself as Doug Neidermeyer, a card carrying uber-A-hole from the film Animal House . “You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Worthless and weak! An Ibex seeking to escape the cliffside of life via hallucinogens; a magick entity who conjures only chaos and verbal abuse; a supervisor who’s obviously gnawing on a peyote bulb and a perpetually polluted cartoon Pigeon who wastes his life finding wisdom in raunchy 80’s films…”

“Squ-wack, ‘My God, the boy’s deformed’–Cherry Forever, Porky’s…”

“That’s just what I mean,” the haughty ghost continued. “You’re too blasted to reference the right movie. Worthless and weak! Look at yourselves, you are all worthless and weak…”

The Rehab Spirit (a close relative of a spectre known as a “Prohibitionist”) went on and on, but all the while Flo had snuck off to the wand cabinet and brought back Maab’s tool of menace.

“If you would, milady,” Flo said, after climbing aboard Toady and handing the loaded wand to Maab, still in the saddle, who happily tossed aside the useless prop wand.

“It’ll be muh plesshrure, Ratty-girl ol’ pal oh mine. Help me aim this thing, would ya?”

It took three shots but Flo helped Maab turn the Rehab Spirit into a statue of Dr. Phil composed of horse manure.

Amoral: Gimme 12 Steps, Just Twelve Steps, Mister, And You Won’t See Me No More

Leila Allison