The Pixie Purse
I’d noticed it lying on the floor for days, but I ignored it. I thought it was gum wrapper, or some other piece of trash. When I finally picked it up, I realized that it wasn’t just some wadded up paper. It was a tiny little purse, about the size of my thumb, maybe a little smaller.
At first, it appeared to be an accessory for a Barbie doll, but as I looked at it, I could see that it was too well made to be a toy. I got out a magnifying glass and studied it more closely.
I could see tiny stitching and embroidery on it, as well as a zipper. I took tweezers and ever so gently, pulled on the zipper and opened the purse. Inside, I found clothes; a pair of doll-sized shorts and a halter top. There was also a pair of tiny panties. They were also too well-crafted to be doll clothes.
I couldn’t imagine how the purse ended up on my bedroom floor. I went back to examine where I’d found it.
There was a rather large gap under the bedroom door and the purse had been just inside, about eight inches from the opening. I closed the door and realized that it matched the depth a cat’s paw could reach.
My cats were always losing things they played with, like the plastic rings from milk jugs. I would find them under the couch about the same distance in. They were probably playing with the purse and pushed it under my door where they couldn’t get at it anymore.
But that still didn’t explain where it came from.
Struck with new inspiration, I grabbed a flashlight and went to the couch. I knelt down and put my face on the floor, my eyes following the beam of light as I looked under it for something that might help explain the purse.I didn’t expect to find anything, but I was wrong. I found what looked like a tiny brown shoe. I lifted the front of the couch and reached under. When I pulled the shoe out, I saw that it wasn’t really brown; it was covered with some kind of syrup. I looked more closely and realized there was still a little foot in it. And it wasn’t syrup. It was dried blood! I dropped the shoe in shock and disgust.
Fester, one of the cats, eyed the shoe where it had fallen. I snatched it back up before he could get it, holding it gingerly between my thumb and index finger, and took it into the master bathroom where the purse and clothes were on the vanity, and where Fester couldn’t get to it.
I fumbled for the magnifying glass, unable to take my eyes off of the shoe. It was a sneaker and like the clothes, it too was well made. It looked like it was real.
I sat back on the edge of the tub, thinking. It seemed that there had been some kind of tiny creature in my house. There was nothing I could think of that fit the description except maybe a pixie. I mean, not unless you believe that dolls are able to come to life or something. Given the choices, I’d rather it was a cryptozoological creature that had yet to be discovered. It seemed less crazy.
And while neither the purse nor the shoe was evidence of the existence of pixies, the foot within the shoe had some real potential. I took the tweezers and the magnifying glass and carefully untied the shoe. I used the tweezers to spread out the strings and then tried to pull the foot free. There wasn’t much to grab onto because it had been chewed off right at the top of the shoe, but it finally came out.
It smelled bad, like rotting meat, and I could see that it looked exactly like a human foot would, except in miniature.
It was a real pixie foot in a real pixie shoe. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened to the owner. There was probably the better part of a pixie corpse digesting in the stomach of one of my cats.
And then I remembered that the purse had been on my floor for several days before I bothered to pick it up. That meant that a pixie wasn’t digesting; it had already been digested. I ran to the litter box.
I picked up the scoop and started sifting. It didn’t take me long to spot a small, white bone sticking out of a dried lump of pooh.
I grabbed a baggie and filled it with the cat poop, ignoring the piss that was stuck to the bottom of the litter box. I should have just cleaned that out too, but I didn’t. I might need to come back later to look for more evidence.
I took the bag back into my bedroom and placed it on the vanity next to the pixie purse, foot and shoe. I thought about examining the shit more closely, but that’s where I drew the line. I didn’t really like cleaning out the litter box, and the idea of playing with cat poop was beginning to gross me out. I would just keep the litter. Maybe some university would want to examine it, once I proved to the world that pixies existed.
I looked up at the clock. It was getting late and I was tired. I put everything in a shoe box and closed it up. I didn’t want a cat sneaking in during the night and leaving me with nothing but a baggie full of cat poop.
Once I was sure that everything was safe, I flipped the light off and landed in bed, falling asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.
#
Something woke me up in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes and glanced at the clock without moving my head. It was almost two-thirty in the morning. I listened, trying to determine what it was that had awakened me.
Everything seemed quiet and I was just starting to drift back to sleep when I heard a loud crash out in the kitchen. Damn cats. They were probably up on the counter, knocking things off. Why I ever let my sister talk me into taking her cats when she moved, I’ll never know.
I got up and opened the bedroom door, expecting to see cats scatter like cockroaches, but what I saw was something quite different.
Fester, the only male cat and by far the most mischievous of the lot, was tied to the top of the kitchen island. There were little strands of thread thrown over him like it was rope, reminiscent of when Gulliver was captured during his travels.
I reached over and flipped on the kitchen light, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. That’s when I saw the little folk. They tried to hide at first, but came out after only a few seconds, showing themselves to me. Most of them were on the kitchen island, helping to hold Fester down, but a few of them hovered in the air above.
I don’t know if they were rightly called pixies, but they were miniature people with dragonfly wings. They stood about five inches tall. They all seemed timid, save for one male who walked over to the edge of the island and glared at me. I wondered if he might be their leader. I slowly approached the island, trying not to frighten them.
The male was dressed in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, complete with boots, belt and a hat. A female came up to him, her eyes red, as if from crying.
Fester let out a long, low meow of anguish, and one of the pixies popped him on the nose with the butt end of a pixie spear.
I looked down at the male and shook my head. I couldn’t just stand by while they tortured my sister’s cat, even though I didn’t really like him much. The pixie leader was clearly trying to communicate with me, making a series of hand gestures that I was only able to understand in the most rudimentary way. If he was making any sounds to go with his gestures, I couldn’t hear.
An idea struck me and I went into my bedroom and got down the shoebox. I gathered up the miniature purse and shoe, leaving the foot and cat poop behind. I thought that seeing dead-pixie body parts might be a little too much for the creatures.
I took the items to the kitchen island and put them down in front of the pixie couple. The female immediately fell on them, shaking visibly. She was definitely crying now. It occurred to me that she was probably the mother of the pixie whom Fester had eaten.
The male looked up at me, tears glistening in his eyes as well. He just nodded his head. I took it as a sign of thanks, but apparently the gratitude only went so far because they weren’t making any move to free Fester.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
I didn’t know if they understood my words or not.
“But I need you to let Fester go,” I continued, pointing at the cat.
They seemed to understand that because the male’s eyes turned hard as he glared at me, shaking his head defiantly.
It appeared to be a standoff. I didn’t want to hurt the little guys, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my cat to them either. I didn’t know exactly what their intentions toward Fester were, but I was pretty sure they were going to kill him, perhaps even torturing him for good measure.
I didn’t see that I had a choice. I walked around the island to the sink, picked up the flyswatter, and turned back toward them.
The male had moved around to the edge closest to me, his eyes now fierce with displeasure. I pointed again at Fester and shook my head no, brandishing the flyswatter for emphasis.
I didn’t want to have to use it, but the pixies weren’t giving me a choice. Maybe if I swatted a couple of them out of the air, they would relent.
The male turned to the other pixies and made some gestures. I still didn’t hear anything, but I felt sure he was telling his companions that they had to let my cat go.
I was wrong. The pixies suddenly sprang into a flurry of activity, flying up like a swarm of angry bees. A sinking feeling came over me. They weren’t freeing the cat. They were attacking me.
I took the swatter and started swinging wildly. The flying bastards were fast, skirting around me like hummingbirds. There were so many of them, I wasn’t able to pick out individual targets. I thought that if I swung through the center of the swarm, I was bound to hit some of them. But they easily dodged the fly swatter and I missed them all, even after several swings.
Fester let out another yowl. I didn’t see what they had done to him, but I knew it couldn’t have been good.
I turned my attention back to the pixies on the island. I was just about to attack the ones holding Fester captive when I felt a sharp prick on my neck. I turned to see a flying pixie holding what appeared to be a small blowgun. I reached up to my neck and felt a tiny dart. I pulled it out but the damage had already been done and I toppled over, unconscious before I even hit the floor.
#
It was mid-afternoon by the time I awoke. I stood up and saw Fester’s lifeless body on the kitchen island and remembered my battle with the pixies. The tiny ropes that held him down were nowhere to be seen. In fact, I didn’t see any evidence of the pixies.
I went to my bedroom, hoping to find the pixie foot and bone-infested cat poop still there. Those items were the only real proof I had that the pixies existed, but more importantly, they would confirm that it hadn’t all been some kind of a delusion.
The shoe box was on the bathroom counter where I’d left it. The top was off and the box was empty. Well, nearly so. There was a tiny flower in it; a little purple blossom with five petals and a yellow center. These flowers grew out in my lawn, but I always thought of them as weeds. I’d never really noticed how pretty they were until now.
The pixies must have left it for me; some kind of a message or a token. I didn’t pick it up. It looked too fragile, too delicate. I just stared at it. It wasn’t the evidence I needed to prove that pixies existed, but it was something. At least I knew I wasn’t crazy.
At first, it appeared to be an accessory for a Barbie doll, but as I looked at it, I could see that it was too well made to be a toy. I got out a magnifying glass and studied it more closely.
I could see tiny stitching and embroidery on it, as well as a zipper. I took tweezers and ever so gently, pulled on the zipper and opened the purse. Inside, I found clothes; a pair of doll-sized shorts and a halter top. There was also a pair of tiny panties. They were also too well-crafted to be doll clothes.
I couldn’t imagine how the purse ended up on my bedroom floor. I went back to examine where I’d found it.
There was a rather large gap under the bedroom door and the purse had been just inside, about eight inches from the opening. I closed the door and realized that it matched the depth a cat’s paw could reach.
My cats were always losing things they played with, like the plastic rings from milk jugs. I would find them under the couch about the same distance in. They were probably playing with the purse and pushed it under my door where they couldn’t get at it anymore.
But that still didn’t explain where it came from.
Struck with new inspiration, I grabbed a flashlight and went to the couch. I knelt down and put my face on the floor, my eyes following the beam of light as I looked under it for something that might help explain the purse.I didn’t expect to find anything, but I was wrong. I found what looked like a tiny brown shoe. I lifted the front of the couch and reached under. When I pulled the shoe out, I saw that it wasn’t really brown; it was covered with some kind of syrup. I looked more closely and realized there was still a little foot in it. And it wasn’t syrup. It was dried blood! I dropped the shoe in shock and disgust.
Fester, one of the cats, eyed the shoe where it had fallen. I snatched it back up before he could get it, holding it gingerly between my thumb and index finger, and took it into the master bathroom where the purse and clothes were on the vanity, and where Fester couldn’t get to it.
I fumbled for the magnifying glass, unable to take my eyes off of the shoe. It was a sneaker and like the clothes, it too was well made. It looked like it was real.
I sat back on the edge of the tub, thinking. It seemed that there had been some kind of tiny creature in my house. There was nothing I could think of that fit the description except maybe a pixie. I mean, not unless you believe that dolls are able to come to life or something. Given the choices, I’d rather it was a cryptozoological creature that had yet to be discovered. It seemed less crazy.
And while neither the purse nor the shoe was evidence of the existence of pixies, the foot within the shoe had some real potential. I took the tweezers and the magnifying glass and carefully untied the shoe. I used the tweezers to spread out the strings and then tried to pull the foot free. There wasn’t much to grab onto because it had been chewed off right at the top of the shoe, but it finally came out.
It smelled bad, like rotting meat, and I could see that it looked exactly like a human foot would, except in miniature.
It was a real pixie foot in a real pixie shoe. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened to the owner. There was probably the better part of a pixie corpse digesting in the stomach of one of my cats.
And then I remembered that the purse had been on my floor for several days before I bothered to pick it up. That meant that a pixie wasn’t digesting; it had already been digested. I ran to the litter box.
I picked up the scoop and started sifting. It didn’t take me long to spot a small, white bone sticking out of a dried lump of pooh.
I grabbed a baggie and filled it with the cat poop, ignoring the piss that was stuck to the bottom of the litter box. I should have just cleaned that out too, but I didn’t. I might need to come back later to look for more evidence.
I took the bag back into my bedroom and placed it on the vanity next to the pixie purse, foot and shoe. I thought about examining the shit more closely, but that’s where I drew the line. I didn’t really like cleaning out the litter box, and the idea of playing with cat poop was beginning to gross me out. I would just keep the litter. Maybe some university would want to examine it, once I proved to the world that pixies existed.
I looked up at the clock. It was getting late and I was tired. I put everything in a shoe box and closed it up. I didn’t want a cat sneaking in during the night and leaving me with nothing but a baggie full of cat poop.
Once I was sure that everything was safe, I flipped the light off and landed in bed, falling asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.
#
Something woke me up in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes and glanced at the clock without moving my head. It was almost two-thirty in the morning. I listened, trying to determine what it was that had awakened me.
Everything seemed quiet and I was just starting to drift back to sleep when I heard a loud crash out in the kitchen. Damn cats. They were probably up on the counter, knocking things off. Why I ever let my sister talk me into taking her cats when she moved, I’ll never know.
I got up and opened the bedroom door, expecting to see cats scatter like cockroaches, but what I saw was something quite different.
Fester, the only male cat and by far the most mischievous of the lot, was tied to the top of the kitchen island. There were little strands of thread thrown over him like it was rope, reminiscent of when Gulliver was captured during his travels.
I reached over and flipped on the kitchen light, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. That’s when I saw the little folk. They tried to hide at first, but came out after only a few seconds, showing themselves to me. Most of them were on the kitchen island, helping to hold Fester down, but a few of them hovered in the air above.
I don’t know if they were rightly called pixies, but they were miniature people with dragonfly wings. They stood about five inches tall. They all seemed timid, save for one male who walked over to the edge of the island and glared at me. I wondered if he might be their leader. I slowly approached the island, trying not to frighten them.
The male was dressed in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, complete with boots, belt and a hat. A female came up to him, her eyes red, as if from crying.
Fester let out a long, low meow of anguish, and one of the pixies popped him on the nose with the butt end of a pixie spear.
I looked down at the male and shook my head. I couldn’t just stand by while they tortured my sister’s cat, even though I didn’t really like him much. The pixie leader was clearly trying to communicate with me, making a series of hand gestures that I was only able to understand in the most rudimentary way. If he was making any sounds to go with his gestures, I couldn’t hear.
An idea struck me and I went into my bedroom and got down the shoebox. I gathered up the miniature purse and shoe, leaving the foot and cat poop behind. I thought that seeing dead-pixie body parts might be a little too much for the creatures.
I took the items to the kitchen island and put them down in front of the pixie couple. The female immediately fell on them, shaking visibly. She was definitely crying now. It occurred to me that she was probably the mother of the pixie whom Fester had eaten.
The male looked up at me, tears glistening in his eyes as well. He just nodded his head. I took it as a sign of thanks, but apparently the gratitude only went so far because they weren’t making any move to free Fester.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
I didn’t know if they understood my words or not.
“But I need you to let Fester go,” I continued, pointing at the cat.
They seemed to understand that because the male’s eyes turned hard as he glared at me, shaking his head defiantly.
It appeared to be a standoff. I didn’t want to hurt the little guys, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my cat to them either. I didn’t know exactly what their intentions toward Fester were, but I was pretty sure they were going to kill him, perhaps even torturing him for good measure.
I didn’t see that I had a choice. I walked around the island to the sink, picked up the flyswatter, and turned back toward them.
The male had moved around to the edge closest to me, his eyes now fierce with displeasure. I pointed again at Fester and shook my head no, brandishing the flyswatter for emphasis.
I didn’t want to have to use it, but the pixies weren’t giving me a choice. Maybe if I swatted a couple of them out of the air, they would relent.
The male turned to the other pixies and made some gestures. I still didn’t hear anything, but I felt sure he was telling his companions that they had to let my cat go.
I was wrong. The pixies suddenly sprang into a flurry of activity, flying up like a swarm of angry bees. A sinking feeling came over me. They weren’t freeing the cat. They were attacking me.
I took the swatter and started swinging wildly. The flying bastards were fast, skirting around me like hummingbirds. There were so many of them, I wasn’t able to pick out individual targets. I thought that if I swung through the center of the swarm, I was bound to hit some of them. But they easily dodged the fly swatter and I missed them all, even after several swings.
Fester let out another yowl. I didn’t see what they had done to him, but I knew it couldn’t have been good.
I turned my attention back to the pixies on the island. I was just about to attack the ones holding Fester captive when I felt a sharp prick on my neck. I turned to see a flying pixie holding what appeared to be a small blowgun. I reached up to my neck and felt a tiny dart. I pulled it out but the damage had already been done and I toppled over, unconscious before I even hit the floor.
#
It was mid-afternoon by the time I awoke. I stood up and saw Fester’s lifeless body on the kitchen island and remembered my battle with the pixies. The tiny ropes that held him down were nowhere to be seen. In fact, I didn’t see any evidence of the pixies.
I went to my bedroom, hoping to find the pixie foot and bone-infested cat poop still there. Those items were the only real proof I had that the pixies existed, but more importantly, they would confirm that it hadn’t all been some kind of a delusion.
The shoe box was on the bathroom counter where I’d left it. The top was off and the box was empty. Well, nearly so. There was a tiny flower in it; a little purple blossom with five petals and a yellow center. These flowers grew out in my lawn, but I always thought of them as weeds. I’d never really noticed how pretty they were until now.
The pixies must have left it for me; some kind of a message or a token. I didn’t pick it up. It looked too fragile, too delicate. I just stared at it. It wasn’t the evidence I needed to prove that pixies existed, but it was something. At least I knew I wasn’t crazy.