Kids. Kids. Your uncle’s had a tough day. I can’t take one more minute of screaming. It’s bad enough I have to hear it at work.
A game? That’s a great idea. Lemme see what’s on. Grab me a beer from the—
Ow! Whaddya doing? Not the tail! Not the tail! Let go of my—
Dammit.
I have no idea how that got in there.
No, it’s not a tail extension. Why would I need a—
—gimme that!
—keep your voice down, you little—
—okay, okay. I’ll play a game.
I got a great game. The best. It’s called “Dragon”. I’m the dragon, see. And this—this box of toys, over here, is my treasure.
So the dragon lies down on this sofa here, like this, see? And it’s sleeping. And you gotta sneak past the dragon without waking it and steal all its treasure, one piece at a time.
I’m going to sleep now. So just sneak past, on your toes. Real quiet. Yeah, that’s—
OW!
Oh, kid. You are pushing your luck.
Did I ever tell you about your little brother? The one you don’t have no more?
No. No, I don’t think I should tell you a story. Or anything else. You’re dangerous enough already.
It’s not a tail extension.
I’m gonna tell you a story now, aren’t I?
Clever little bastards. Heh.
Okay, whaddya wanna hear? The bearskin? How the bear lost his tail?
What? I like stories with bears.
I don’t know that one. No, I dunno that one either.
Now you’re making stuff up. The stinky cheese man is not a story.
Beauty and the beast? Oh, boy, do I know that one.
Once upon a time, there was this stallion who fell in love with a beautiful mare. If you could’ve just seen her walk into a room. The way she swayed her hips should’ve been a crime.
I don’t mean some winking low-class burley-que come-hither. I mean she’d glide. Every piece of her added something to it. Her hooves rolled around her ankles, her ankles rolled around her gams, her gams rolled around her hips, and her hips just rolled around and around, while her tail did slinky figure 8's behind her. Waves on top of waves, none of 'em ever stopping or slowing down. Just sliding, curving back, and coming around again. Made everypony else look like puppets jerking on strings.
Sure that’s the story. Don’t tell me I don’t know the story. Every stallion knows this story, sooner or later.
But you shoulda seen her smile, kids. Like she had stars inside her.
Do not ever tell anypony I said that.
No. No, you’re not getting another story after this. You can’t prove a thing.
You ever walk outside on a cold night under a full moon? Everypony scuttles by in a trance, hunched over cold, staring at their own breath, hoofclops bouncing off the brownstone. Maybe some horns honking. Maybe a drunk’s eyeing you from a doorway and you’re wondering if you should roll him before he rolls you. Maybe you step into something nasty leaking from a dumpster, again. Maybe some dam’s leaning out the window, shouting for the world to hear at some mumble-faced guy down on the street. And then you look up, and hanging in the gap between two apartment buildings is the moon, shining like a hole cut through the night all the way to heaven. A world away but maybe you could reach out and touch it.
Now imagine it was right there on the street with you. But you still couldn't touch it. You could only look. Maybe lean in a little, catch a whiff of its perfume.
It’d drive you crazy, right?
Better the moon should stay in the sky, kids. And better that stallion had gone home and had a cold shower. But he was a fool. When she turned his way and smiled, he smiled right back and stepped up to her, like he thought he could get inside her to where all those stars were. And then he looked into her eyes, and he felt the shape of her through the heat and pressure of the air, and he was lost, kids. Lost.
No. No, he is not a big stupid-face.
Did you at least get what I said about the moon?
Look. Say it’s the night before Nightmare Night, and there’s not a candy in the house. Not even one of those lousy waxy candy corns. You know there’s bags and bags of it all around you, stashed away secret, but you can’t have any.
Oh, so the moon and the stars and all is dumb, but candy you understand.
Pearls before swine, I tell ya.
Now I don’t want you thinking the way a stallion feels about a mare is the same as a colt or a filly feels about a bag of candy. It’s more like...
Eh, close enough.
But he really wants that candy. It’s the only candy in the world for him all of a sudden. If he can just get that candy, nothing else will matter. Only it ain’t candy, it’s a metaphor.
What it means is, she ain’t really candy, okay?
No, I don’t got no candy.
So he took her out to parties and such. Fancy ones where old stallions with monocles told stories and old mares in dresses with too many frills laughed at them like they were funny. Wild hayburners where zebras played crazy music in basements while everypony danced. If she said she liked the sound of the water, he’d take her on a riverboat cruise. If she said the moon was beautiful, he’d get a magic lasso and haul it down outta the sky for her.
Turns out there’s a law against that. Who knew?
Now the amazing thing, kids, is that it turned out this mare, she loved candy too. I mean, of course she did. Everypony likes candy. But it seemed like a miracle. And she wanted his candy.
No. I told you, it’s a metaphor.
What it means is, she liked him. Oh, it’d be easy to sneer and say she liked the parties and the pearls. But I think she really liked him. They lit up the night together. And one day he finally did get inside and see all those stars.
Also a metaphor. Ask your mother.
So the two of them, they got hitched, and she moved into his place. They laughed a lot, smiled at each other a lot, and did other things a lot. It was great. Pretty soon some foals came along, fuzzy and cute. Happy ending, right?
But the more they were together, the more the things she liked about him before, she didn’t like no more. Before, she liked that he laughed too loud. That he could pick her up and swing her around in the air when they danced. That other ponies moved aside when he walked down the street. That he said what he thought, and didn’t take guff from no one or care what nopony thought.
But now it was, “Keep your voice down! Don't be such a hood! Don’t burp! Wipe off your hooves! Pick your clothes off the floor!”
I ask you, kids: Can a pony be the kind of stallion who cuts his own path through life if he can’t fart in his own home? If he’s worried about whether his dirty socks are in the dark pile or the light pile?
No. No he can’t.
Yeah, I said fart. That’s not the important point here, kids.
That’s pretty good, but to really make it rip you gotta use your pits, like this.
Yeah, see, your uncle knows what he’s talking about. Now work on that all day tomorrow for me, and I’ll come by later and see what you got, okay?
Anyway. That mare, she couldn’t be happy. She’d stand there watching him, like she wanted to say something, and he’d say “So what is it?”, and she’d say, “Nothing.” So he’d go back to whatever he was doing, and then she’d suddenly burst out with, “We never go out anymore.”
Like he was gonna keep buying her things and taking her places forever. What did she think he married her for, am I right? She knew how the game went.
And like they had time for parties or riverboats anymore. She was busy with those foals, and he was working late every night, trying to put hay on the table. He’d come home after a hard day, just wanting to sit down, have a square meal, and rest his four feet. And she’d kinda hover over him, and if he wasn’t quick with a word about how tender the carrots were or how crunchy the hay was, she’d say, “You don’t appreciate how hard I work for you!” Which was ironic, what with him being just home from busting his balls all day for her.
Ask your mother.
Then she’d want to talk. Like he hasn’t heard enough talk all day. She’d say, “I've been alone with the foals all day, and you come in and don’t speak a word and sit down with your nose glued to the front of that tube like some dumb animal.” Like she’s been waiting all day, but now she can’t wait just till the end of the quarter. Then she’d stand almost between him and the set and glare at him while he watched. Maybe lean in front of him right when there was a fumble or a breakaway pass. Like how a cat knows to sit on the paper just when you’re reading something good.
So sometimes he’d stay a little later at the bar to watch the game, catch up with his pals, like guys do. Nothing wrong with that. A fellow needs a break sometime. Then he’d head home with a smile on his face. Not four sheets to the wind or anything. Just a little warm glow from the bar. And she’d be waiting for him, and I don’t mean waiting the way that makes a stallion happy.
“We need to talk,” she’d say. “About our relationship.” “We don’t got a relationship,” he’d say, “we’re married.” And then she’d start crying, and blowing her nose into her fancy monogrammed silk hoofkerchiefs he bought for her. Damned expensive things for a little shred of cloth that you fill with snot and stuff into your pocket, if you ask me.
“You never tell me I’m beautiful anymore!” she’d sob. While she's standing there in some frumpy sweater, glaring out from under a mane that looked like a rat’s nest. I mean she’d started to let herself go, kids. And he'd try to do his duty anyway, get a little sugar from her, but the store was closed.
Or she'd say, “You never buy me pearls anymore!” “What’s the matter with the pearls I got you before?” he’d say. “Did they go bad? Did they invent better pearls?” And she wouldn't answer.
Then she’d pull out the big guns: “You just don’t understand!”
And, kids, he didn’t. He didn’t have a clue why everything had gone wrong. She’d said she wanted to settle down, and he'd settled down for her. Now he had a good job, a couple of decent kids, a comfortable armchair, and somepony to snuggle at night without having to go out and tear up the town first, but it wasn’t enough for her. He just didn’t get it.
He didn’t get it until the day he came home after one or two or three rounds at the bar, and the house was empty and there was nothing on the table except an empty wine bottle and a vase with a couple of flowers. He didn’t think much of it, just took off his shirt and sat down in front of the TV chewing on the flowers, spitting the stems out onto the floor, until he heard angry stomping and she came down the stairs wearing a red dress and a snarl, and he remembered the kids were at her mother’s because it was their anniversary.
She musta done herself up earlier, but her makeup was running down her face and smeared all around her eyes and in her mane, like she’d been crying and rubbing her eyes. The dress didn’t fit her no more, and she spilled out of it at both ends like a tube of toothpaste you’d squeezed in the middle.
She clomped over to him, leaned over right into his face and brayed. She called him stupid and crude and other things I can't tell you until you're older, and some of them were true. She said she was gonna leave and take the kids with her. Her lips twitched and twisted all out-of-shape, like rubber bands, spraying him each time she spoke, and her breath stank. She was plastered good, kids.
Meanwhile he's standing there, looking around at the house. It already seems empty, like it was before she came. She's screaming at the top of her lungs but he can't hear her no more. It's like when you've planned a job for weeks, choreographed it like a broadway dance number, and you bust in the door, and the wall of the joint you cased was white but the wall in front of you's green. Everything slows down while you stare at that green paint, trying to figure out where you are and how you got there.
Then she leans into him, grabs his mane, blows her nose into his chest, mumbles something and passes out.
And that moment, kids, was when he realized what had happened:
The beautiful mare he’d married had turned into a horrible beast.
And that’s the story of beauty and the beast.
How does the story end? Hah.
It never ends, kids. It never ends.