A Boy and A Girl

I wrote this for English last year. The date on it is 6/15/09, so no wonder I never got back a grade for it.

Anyways, I don't know what I was thinking or what I was taking (just kidding: drugs kill!) but for those symbolism freaks out there, we had just studied "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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Once upon a time, in a land not far away at all, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was simply called “boy”, and the girl was named Paullina von Wiersnichzel. The boy was a lonely shepherd, who tended to the Royal Princess’s flock of snow-white sheep, and Paullina von Wiersnichzel was the Royal Princess. She held magnificent, lavish parties in her towering castle, and the boy was never invited. Anyways, he was always busy tending her prized sheep.

As time wore on, Paullina’s parties became even more magnificent and lavish, and the boy started smelling like sheep. He didn’t even bother taking showers anymore, since the smell had permeated his entire being. On clear nights, he would wonder if, after he died, if his spirit would have a faint sheep smell. As he did so, he’d look over at the towering castle, and watch Paullina dance on the balcony.

On the eve of Paullina’s sixteenth birthday (and incidentally the boy’s, too), Paullina’s parents ordered the entire castle staff to clean and prep themselves. The boy heard the edict and took his first good scrubbing in five years. He cleaned his armpits, lathered his hair, and shook the water out of his ears. After all the grime and muck was washed away, one could tell that the boy had grown into a very fine young man. His arms were sculpted from lifting sheep, his legs were works of art, and his face, oh, what a face for the heavens. But he still smelled like sheep, and he was still just a lonely shepherd.

When Paullina’s parents came to check up on everyone, they saw his striking face, and the body that followed, and promptly lost their minds. What was this, this—angel—that was among their midst? Surely, surely he was some rich prince from some far away land? But then they smelled his smell, and smelled his sheep. You’re good, they told him, and went on to the next person.

That night, Royal Princess Paullina von Wiersnichzel held the sweet sixteen of the millennium. There was dancing, there was laughing, and there were non-alcoholic martinis galore. Everyone went wild, and the Princess was presented with a birthday present of five hundred fluffy, prize-winning white sheep. At three in the morning, Paullina hugged and kissed every one of her guests goodbye. She watched them leave, then bade her handmaid to take her sheep down to the shepherd.

When the handmaid got down to the shepherd’s little cottage, she gave a gasp of fright.

There, on the ground the shepherd laid. A trickle of blood ran down from his mouth, but when it was wiped away by the handmaid, his complexion remained as beautiful as ever.

When the handmaid, the maids, the guards, the cooks, and the rest of the servants went to bury the shepherd, they found that his smell permeated through the nine feet of dirt. So, dressing him up in shells and coral and pearls, they threw “boy” into the ocean.