Fable of the Month: The Hole

Well, it's Friday the 13th and I haven't got anything much to say, so I thought I'd post the "Fable of the Month." This is a silly little story I wrote as part of a class exercise years ago. I'm not going to let the fact that it isn't a fable and it isn't very good daunt me. The paintings are by Degas.

THE HOLE
by
Katherine E. Rabenau

Miranda was ecstatic! Her hair was piled atop her head with all the elegance of a grand dame. Her eyes were huge and mysterious in exaggerated stage make up, and her soft pink tutu was a child's dream. She was a fairy princess! No, better. She was an honest-to-God ballerina, about to make her debut - at Lincoln Center, no less! The day was magic. Everything was magic. She was magic! In a short time her cue would come and she would float onto the stage and...

It was just at that moment that she saw the hole. It was only the size of a dime, high up on the thigh, where the skirt of her tutu would probably cover it, but in Miranda's mind, it was enormous, with huge gobs of flabby cellulite flesh pouring out like lava, in grim, wrinkly waves. It was a nightmare. It was a horror. It was beyond ugly. And there was no time to change. The cue she had anticipated so eagerly was now a thing of dread. From ecstasy, Miranda had lunged directly to despair. Shame washed over her. Her glorious hair, her lovely face, her grace and talent became as nothing next to THE HOLE. In her mind's eye, it grew larger and larger with each passing second. How could she go out there looking like this?!? Would that vast sea of faces see her? No! Their eyes would be riveted to the damned HOLE. It would glow out at them like a beacon, a wrinkly, fleshy horror, and all else would be lost in its hideous glare.

"I can't go on," she moaned. The humiliation would be too much. It was too awful, too inconceivable. There was no God, no justice. All her training, all her work, her dreams, sunk into a cursed little hole in her damned tights. The injustice! "I can't go on," she moaned again. But of course she had to go on. The ballet had already begun and the others were counting on her. It would be torture. It would finish her career, but go on she must.

"Two minutes," came the voice of the stage manager, and suddenly she heard the sweet call of the music pulling at her feet, and then came her cue. All else was forgotten and there was nothing but the music and the dance.

THE END