Entry #28

Faery Rings and Broken Dreams
by Jaye Wells


I grew up in a faery forest near a stream. My childhood was typical—playing "hide and go faery" with my friends and riding lightning bugs for amusement.

Eventually, I grew bored with forest life. Despite their misgivings, Ma and Pa sent me off to the city with a little money and a warning to avoid stray cats.

The city is a hard place for a young faery. I had my fair share of run-ins with territorial faeries, who didn't appreciate me poaching on the city's few green spaces. Left with no options, I took to living in anemic monkey grass bordering a parking lot.

A faery who called himself "Manroot" eventually took me under his wing. I was too naïve to know the name alone should have scared me off.

Manroot introduced me to the "medicinal" uses of plants. Cannabis, shrooms and poppies became cash crops. We sold our wares in flowerboxes, the faery slums.

Opium became my mistress. I ended up turning tricks to get high, which led to faery porn. Manroot got rich, but all I got a bad case of the weevils in my undercarriage.

After Manroot moved on to younger flesh, my parents got worried and traveled to the city to find me. They found me stoned out of my gourd in a discarded fern by a dumpster.

I'm not proud of the things I've done. Every day, I sit on a rock in the forest clearing, hoping the sun will wash away my sins.