"It creeps me out when they ask me to keep the crown on," Lillian said, thinking back to the endless sea of single men she'd hooked up with at countless kids birthday parties, "They wanna call me stuff like their little princess and there's just something slightly unnerving about the whole thing. Not unnerving enough to keep me from orgasming, of course, but still."
She sighed, crossed her legs and looked towards the painting on the wall. A field of sunflowers. Beautiful. Calming. Meant to evoke happiness. "And I used to find all of this so fun. I used to find joy in childrens joy, but after a few years of dressing up in the same outfit regularly like some cartoon character, now I find their joy grating, which sucks. A childs joy should never be grating. There are some perks. Sometimes a kid will give you a piece of candy, or a hug, and that always does melt my heart, because I'm not a monster, but overall..." She glanced at the man sitting across from her jotting something down in his notepad as she sighed deeply and shook her head. "Every little girl wants to be a princess, but...man...some dreams just shouldn't come true," she said quietly. *** Lillian picked up the salt and pepper shakers and began daintily dashing them over her plate of scrambled eggs before mixing it all together and taking a bite. She leaned on the diner table and scoffed. "It's like...imagine being the ruler of a beloved kingdom, but the kingdom is full of subjects you'd rather not rule and don't really care about, and they all look up to you so you can't disappoint them even though you've already thoroughly disappointed yourself time and time again. That's what it's like, honestly. Every single day is the same thing. Every single day, I put on the crown, I step out onto the balcony and I deliver a message of hope and togetherness when really it's a complete and utter lie." She looked at her friend, Vera, sitting across from her. Vera, a light skinned young black woman - her short salmon colored nails tapping nervously against the coffee mug between her hands - furrowed her brow and grimaced. "There's a balcony? Boy, these kids parents go all out," she said. "It's a metaphorical balcony, genius," Lillian said, chuckling as she took another bite of eggs. "I don't get it, how is what you're doing lying? You're just an entertainer playing pretend." "That's lying! That's, like, the definition of lying!" Lillian replied, laughing now. As the girls continued to laugh and eat their breakfast for dinner, a young man dressed as a cowboy walked slowly up to the table, scooted into the booth and took his hat off, plopping it on Vera's head, making her smile. He sighed and ran his hands through his scruffy short brown hair. "Hard day down at the rodeo, tex?" Lillian asked. "A kid died today," Tyler said softly, surprising both girls. "One of the kids at this party I was at today grabbed a bunch of candy when the pinata broke, and I guess he just, he didn't know there was peanuts in one, and he just ate it, and he fuckin', like..." Tyler said, clearly trying not to break into tears; he waited a moment and held back his tears as Vera rubbed his back, before he continued, "he just died, man. He's dead." "Are you kidding?" Lillian asked quietly. "Yeah, this is my idea of a good time joke, dead children," Tyler said sternly, making Lillian hold back a smirk as he continued, "it was mayhem, just absolute chaos. Parents are screaming, kids are running around thinking the candy is poisoned, and this little dude's just lying on the grass as his throat closes and his little eyes are buggin' out-" "I'm tryin' to eat here!" Lillian said. "And I'm standing there, and I'm watching this, and I'm thinking to myself...I'm supposed to be a hero. I'm the sheriff. I'm supposed to keep people safe and maintain order in the face of abject evil, and be this grandiose fucking champion of the wild wild west and protector of the innocent, and I can't do anything to stop this. I just...fucking stood there...and...watched him die." Vera put her forehead against his shoulder, still rubbing his back, trying to keep him calm as Lillian scooted her plate of eggs away from herself. "I don't really have an appetite anymore," she muttered. *** "His name was Thomas Middleditch, he was 7 years old," Lillian said softly, sitting across from her therapist, "I saw it on the news that night. A brief 45 second stint of recognition followed by the weather. That's it. Seven years of life summed up in a segment shorter than a commercial, and immediately followed with 'there's wind, Jill!'. Just bummed me the hell out, man." "Are you still bummed out?" her therapist asked, and she shrugged. "I don't know. My moods don't last more than a few minutes it feels like, so who knows," Lillian said as she slouched on the sofa and blew her bangs out of her face, adding, "it just feels really unfair. That sort of thing has never happened to any of us, and for it to happen to Tyler of all people, man...it really bothered me. He's a really fragile person. He didn't deserve that." "Think about the kid whose birthday it was," her therapist said offhandedly, making Lillian raise an eyebrow and perk up a bit. "What?" "Sorry," her therapist said, chuckling a little, "I have a hard time keeping my thoughts to myself now and then. I was just thinking about the child whose birthday party it was. Someone their age, maybe even a friend, died at their party. That's gotta be traumatizing." "I...I hadn't even really considered that," Lillian said. "So tell me, how's your week been otherwise?" But Lillian was now off on another tangent in her head, and there was no stopping what was coming from it. *** Tyler was seated at a small, plastic, multicolored lunch table in the backyard, scooping a piece of cake up with a fork, when he looked up and saw Lillian sit down across from him. He furrowed his brow at her as he slid the cake bite into his mouth. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I need to ask you a question," she said. "How...how did you even know I was working here?" he asked, looking around. "Vera told me. Anyway, I have to ask you a question...who's party was it where that kid died?" Lillian asked, and Tyler stared at her, deadeyed now, his fork dropping onto the paper plate. "...why?" he asked solemnly. "Because I wanna know how they're doing. Think about it, dude, some kid died at their party. That has to be traumatizing. I wanna see that they're okay," Lillian said, "So just tell me the name of the family and what street it was on and I'll leave, okay?" Tyler sighed, setting his plate down as he scratched at his forehead. He cupped his hands together on the table and shook his head slightly. "...if you're absolutely determined to do this, then we go together," he said, "I'll be done in an hour." Lillian spent the remainder of the time at the party sitting in the living room, thumbing through an old book about birds and various diseases they contract (she presumed this kids parents were veterinarians), anxiously awaiting Tyler's job to finish. She thought about what would happen when they saw this kid. What could they even do if they were traumatized by it? It's not like they were child psychologists, or worse, the kids parents. After what felt like an eternity, Tyler walked into the living room, hat under his arm. "You ready to mosey on over?" Lillian asked, smirking. "You really need to stop with all the cowboy lingo," Tyler replied. "No can do, pardner," she said, making him chuckle. The two headed outside and into Tyler's car. He said he'd drive Lillian back to get her car afterwards. As she buckled her seatbelt, she looked over at him. Poor Tyler. He came from a broken home, and he was doing all this to help his mother pay bills, and he never even got to attend college. He was handsome, but in an approachable way, not a 'so handsome you can't take him seriously' leading man kind of way, and he was extremely nice. Always helpful, always considerate. If they each didn't have the baggage they had, Lillian had often considered asking him out. The party in question had taken place over on Briscane, only a few blocks away, oddly enough, from todays job. Tyler didn't say a thing the entire way over, instead leaving Lillian to make awkward small talk for the both of them as she fiddled with his air conditioner. "What would you be doing if you weren't doing this?" she asked. "Going home." "No, I mean, this job, in general. What did you wanna do instead?" she asked. "Oh," he said, "Uh...I don't know. Something useful. I like the idea of being a firefighter, but fire scares me, so. Plus I'm not very strong. You need to have a lot of upper body strength for that sort of work." "Well, yeah, how else are they gonna move those shirtless charity calendars?" Lillian replied, making him chuckle. "I like this job cause it lets me work with kids when they're at their happiest, and I think that's what screwed me up about this incident because the happiest day of the year for this kid and now another child has died near them. Just felt sick. I always wanted to work with kids, but after..." he stopped suddenly, clearly choosing his words carefully, "uh, anyway, I didn't wanna do sad kid work, so this let me work with happy children, but of course, sadness exists everywhere. There's no escaping it." "Have you ever considered seeing a therapist?" "Like I could afford to." "I was just asking." Tyler pulled up to the curb and stopped the car, pointing across the street at a small, yellow house with white wooden window trim shades and beautiful rose bushes out front, where a little girl was sitting on the lawn, reading a picture book. Lillian felt her heart sink as she slid down in her chair. For some reason she'd expected this boy to have died at another boys party, she hadn't expected to see a small girl. That threw her for quite a loop. "She seems rather indifferent," Tyler said quietly, "but perhaps I would be too." "This is bumming me out." "You asked to come here." "...I wanna talk to her, I wanna...I wanna see that she's okay," Lillian said, exhaling deeply. As she put her hand on the door handle to exit, Tyler stopped her, as the front door to the house opened and a man stepped outside, walking towards the little girl, patting her on the head and making conversation with her. "...that's her dad," Tyler said, "he wasn't at the party, he was running late." "She seems to listless," Lillian said, "So totally morose." "Nice observation Professor Synonym," Tyler said, making her smile as he added, "...she didn't really respond to what happened. She just sort of hid away when everything was going down. Maybe she feels responsible, I don't know, but it struck me as odd either way." "...I feel terrible," Lillian whispered, "I feel like we should be able to hide kids from stuff like that, especially on their birthday of all days, but it still happened. Look at her. She's got no bounce. She's got no glee. She's just...cold. No child should be cold. You shouldn't be cold until you reach at least 15 years old." "And even then it's a mild cold, not the bitter cold you attain once you're in your twenties," Tyler said. "Let's get outta here," Lillian said softly. Tyler nodded, starting the car back up and pulling away. Lillian could see the little girl on the lawn in the rearview mirror, but she quickly adjusted it, turning it away so she didn't see her anymore. It was simply too painful to watch. *** "When I was a kid," Lillian said, chewing on her nails as her therapist listened, "I went to Disneyland. The happiest place on earth, right? I had so much fun, running around, riding the rides, meeting walk around characters and getting pictures and signatures and all sorts of good stuff. And then, on the last day there, we were waiting for Big Thunder Mountain, you know that train ride? It was about to start again, and out of the corner of my eye I saw this woman who was a walkaround for Cinderella, and she was standing nearby. I watched her closely, and as one of the other trains started to speed by, not yet done with its run, she just hopped the fence and let it hit her. There she is, Cinderella, smeared across a railroad track right in front of me." "Holy shit," her therapist said softly as he started writing something down, "and this had an adverse effect on you?" "Ya know, I don't think it had any effect on me, except to learn that there's no such thing as the happiest place on earth, because apparently even someones paradise can be someone else trap," Lillian said, running her hands through her long brown hair, "...did you ever have people come to your birthday? Not like a clown or something, but like what I do." "No, but my child has," her therapist, Greg, said, continuing "they asked for a princess to come to their 6th birthday party. My wife and I are open minded people, so we were totally fine with them wanting a princess party. We got them a dress and everything." "...why would you need to be open minded for that?" "They were our son at the time," Greg said, "that party answered a lot of questions, heh. Now they wear dresses all the time and go by a girl name and we're just happy they're happy. By allowing them to explore that part of themselves via a birthday party, they were more at ease with who they were, and are happier now. They weren't happy before. We could always tell something felt off. So see, what you do is important. You help people." Lillian smiled. She wanted to appreciate this. She wanted to feel like what she did did in fact matter. And yet she couldn't shake this horrid feeling that not only was she wasting her own life, but she wasn't really able to help anyone with what she was doing. "I'll see you next Thursday, same time okay?" Greg asked, checking his watch. "Am I...sick?" Lillian asked suddenly, jarring him from the unusual question. "Uh...what do you mean?" "I don't...I don't feel like I respond to things the way a person should. I feel like I either care too deeply or too little. Am I just a sociopath?" "Yes, you're a sociopathic princess," Greg said, laughing, "No, Lily, I don't think you're sick. I think, like a lot of people your age, you're stuck because the world is burning down and nothing works, and you don't know how to get better. You don't know how to get unstuck. And I can't help you with that, sad to say. I can maybe make you feel slightly better about it, but I'm not going to be able to fix all your problems. No matter what I do, the world's still gonna suck and you're still gonna be stuck, and I think this job might be the only thing keeping you going." "...well now I'm depressed, thanks," she said with a smirk. "Hey, don't mention it," Greg remarked, laughing with her. As she stood up and headed for the door, he stopped at the door behind her. She turned and looked at him for a moment, with a quizzical look on her face. "Did you ever have a character at your party?" Greg asked. "Yeah, once, when I was 9," Lillian said, "I asked my parents if I could have a clown. They got me a clown. But jesus was he a mess. After that I stopped having birthday parties altogether. Nobody really showed up anyway, so it was just me and Stinko all day long. That was perhaps the weirdest day I've ever had in my life." "Stinko? Really? Stinko The Clown?" Greg asked, chuckling. "Hey," Lillian said, shrugging, "It's a living. See you next Thursday, doc." And with that she left, putting her tiara on her head as she walked out to her car. She had a job to get to.
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A young woman named Lilian Phillips, who plays a princess at birthday parties, befriends a little girl who had a child die at her own birthday party. Archives
April 2024
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