WHITE MAGIC
G.W. Cox

As we pass into the office building's frigid air, kids gawk at my beard and scuttling bowed legs, saying, “Owee.” Their mothers point at me and coo, “Oh look, how cute, a dwarf,” like I'm not even there. My wife strides in front of me, yelling, “Watch out! Watch out!” adding a barker’s call to our circus atmosphere.

We pause beside the elevators. I catch my breath after that gauntlet of children acting as trolls in the building's automatic doors.

The air conditioning gives me a sniffle. I used to be Sneezy but now I’m on Benadryl, which makes me sleepy. The elevator opens, we enter and rise, and I think, “Now I’m higher than you little shits.”

I remember how things used to be, Snow comatose on the dining table, restless under an aura of sultry sleep. How I would climb the three-legged stool to be next to her. I would touch a silky fold of her sheer gown, dream about her pale skin below her belly button. My head would loll on her breast sagging atop her ribs. I would fall into a contented sleep.

My wife, again acting the fullback, pushes her way into a modern pink and blue waiting room with houseplants in every niche. I pull myself onto an armchair beside her and slip into the revelry of things past. I relive my white magic, the web cast by a gift of a scented handkerchief back when she'd lift my toque and pat my head. Well, it looked like a pat but I knew it was a stroke. I used to hide in the bushes and delight in the choruses she had while frolicking with the forest vermin.

~

During the big sleep, I peeled Sleepy off her, kept Dopey away from her nail polish, stopped Grumpy from evicting her, shamed Bashful back into his corner, slapped Happy away from her feet. Then came my big mistake: I told Doc to get a second opinion. He brought in the prince who rode off with her.

My wife and I are led to a conference room. I'm helped onto a chair and shunted to the table, just like the dining table of a happier life, singing, comradeship, rewarding work and a heart-melting Snow White.

Once you've slept with the fairest of them all, all that’s left is only the rest.

“Now what can I do for you?” the marriage counselor asks behind a tight, thin-lipped smile.

© G.W. Cox

Late of the fourth estate, G.W. Cox (gwcox2@comcast.net) now submits and is accepted or rejected—the story of his life, an ongoing fiction not to be missed or messed with. His stories have appeared in Gator Springs Gazette, Literary Potpourri, Opium Magazine, Snow Monkey, Sweet Fancy Moses, The-Phone-Book.com and Vestal Review. In 2004 he received Pushcart nominations from Vestal Review for Clawd and from Gator Springs Gazette for The Boy in the Blue Suit, originally published in Literary Potpourri.

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