The Asylum for Fairy-Tale Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    The mother explained, “All our guards have their eyes and ears and mouths sewn tightly closed. To see no mania, to hear no lunacy and to speak no madness. Now come, let me show you your new home. No fear, please—we are here, after all, to cure you.”
    The nurse nodded to the guard; in turn the guard grunted, ushering the three along. They passed a wall that looked down to the vast asylum. From the vantage point they could see a labyrinth of walls and buildings, some crumbling with roofs of broken black tiles. While others were stone prisons with monolith walls and barred windows. There were towers and chimneys with smoke lazily rising from them. Above the sky was a clear blue in contrast to the dark black hues of the buildings. Ravens flew in circles. The asylum was a magic porridge pot of lunacy, continually spilling and growing, a hell splitting into the land itself. The girl wondered how long it would be until there was no fairy tale kingdom at all. She spotted the long road they must have travelled, stretching off into the forever ever. As it reached the asylum, however, it was met by the tangled forest of thorns. If one could even escape from here, there would be the thorns waiting for them. Only death grew in that forest and by normal means there was no way through. Red Hood watched far below as the thorns slithered apart allowing a carriage to leave.
    The bear had climbed on Thumbeana’s shoulder.
    “I’ve never seen so much world.,” it gasped.
    “Oh, yes, we have many patients here of all types and species,” Mother May I chirped. “Now come along, let’s see inside.”
    Into the asylum the three went: the girl in the red hood, the false child and the possessed bear…
    Hickory dickory dock, there was madness around the clock. See the old lady who lived in a shoe, she had so many children; she knew what to do, she sharpened her axe and put them in sacks, then dropped them in a river. She sits rocking here in her cell, calling their names over and over and over again. Atishoo, Atishoo they all fall down and down and down. Three blind mice, Three blind mice, driven mad with lice, they cut off the toes of the farmer’s wife, chased the farmer with a carving knife, here they come to take your life, three blind mice. They squeaked in their cage, gnawing for a way out and farmers’ wives to torment. Jack and Jill buried people on the hill, they said—Jill’s idea, let us put the heads in pails of water. Old Mother Hubbard kept eyeballs in a cupboard in a jar. A jar? Yes, of course a jar. Jack is nimble, Jack is ever quick and Jack chased people with a sharpened stick. Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, and ate spiders all day. The Pied Piper, who preferred human prey to rats, with his pipe taken away he sings and claps. Snow White stood in the corner, mumbling to the seven dwarves in her head, her head, her head and her head. Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle the cow cried at the moon, the little dog laughed to see such fun that the dish smashed itself with a spoon. Georgie Porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play he happily made them die for the day.
    Tell me a story or I’ll cut off your ears, they said. Burn down the house on Drury Lane, four and twenty blackbirds to peck out your eyes. I’ll huff and puff and I blow your house down, the last thing you hear is my bark. So many, so many small things singing and dancing, waiting in the dark.
    “Ah, you are awake,” said the voice from nowhere.
    The girl opened her eyes. She found herself shackled by her arms and legs, lying on what felt like a metal table. She shook and fought, but her panic and shakes were for naught. The girl could move neither hair nor head.
    “Red Riding Hood, that is what you called yourself—do you remember why?” the voice asked.
    The only light was a buzzing, flickering bare bulb. It swung on a bare wire that disappeared into the dark. The voice belonged