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FUGLY
by LELA MARIE DE LA GARZA
He seemed to be horror born from horror,
though Dorothea didn’t know the truth about him. Fugly was a
mottled, slimy green and white, noseless and earless, with two
pinpricks of muddy brown for eyes, tiny, toothless, round hole of a
mouth. His front limbs were seal like flippers, and his back legs were
that of a deformed hare.
“Fugly! Time for lunch!” Dorothea poured
canned food into a dish and set out a small saucer of milk. Fugly made
a noise between a snort and a grunt—his only means of
communication--sent out a long, funnel like tongue and began slurping
it up. Dorothea fed him and sheltered him. Without her help he
would probably have died in the open—and been glad to do it.
He’d been creeping around back yards, eating
scraps left out for animals, trying to stay out of sight. He was sure
that anyone who saw him would shoot him, ridding the world of a
creature so repulsive. They one day he’d tangled with a dog. It had
been a small dog, but Fugly had no defenses. His hind foot was being
mangled when Dorothea came along and rescued him. She tended his hurt
foot and gave him a home. Dorothea was the one who had named him Fugly,
and she loved him, though he didn’t know why. But he was very grateful
to her.
Dorothea was just as grateful to Fugly as he
was to her. She had never known any kind of love before. Her entire
life was spent in hiding. Dorothea’s eyes bulged out almost a hand’s
length on each side of her huge, beaklike nose. Her mouth was a razor
slit beneath it.
“I’m afraid there’s not much we can do for
her,” the doctor had told her parents bluntly when the grotesque baby
was born. “It might be possible to alter her nose somewhat, but nothing
would help the rest of her face.” The couple grimly accepted the
doctor’s verdict, took Dorothea home, and tried to accept her.
Dorothea never went to school. The other
children would have made her life miserable. She was taught at home,
and, fortunately, was quite bright. She read and absorbed everything,
educating herself about a world she could never share. When she was
eighteen her parents felt they had done their duty and told her firmly
that she must leave. Growing up Dorothea had become, if possible, even
uglier. They simply couldn’t endure her presence any longer.
She got a job in a library, working behind the
stacks where no one would ever see her. She had no friends. No man had
ever looked at her or ever would. Now she had taken in this strange
creature who seemed to need her. Dorothea tried to be content.
Sometimes she indulged herself in a fantasy,
imagining that she kissed Fugly and he turned into a handsome prince.
That was impossible, of course. And what would a handsome prince want
with me?, she thought, firmly squelching her dream.
Suddenly it was spring. Dry trees leafed into green.
Flowers budded with new life. The sounds, scents, and feelings swept
over Dorothea. I want to love! she thought passionately. I want to be
loved…
Then, without knowing she was going to do it,
Dorothea found herself kissing Fugly on his slimy, misshapen head. The
creature disappeared…but what stood in its place was not a handsome
prince.
His teeth protruded so far it was obvious that
he could never close his mouth. One watery grey eye was placed a full
quarter inch above the other; both were set under a sloping brow. Huge
ears stuck out stiffly on either side of his head.
Dorothea thought he was the handsomest man she
had ever seen.
“Hi,” he said softly. “You’ve been calling me
“Fugly”, but my name is really Patrick.”
“Hi Patrick. What—what just happened?”
He sighed. “It’s like this. I was working
construction on a building near here, carefully keeping my head away
from the sidewalk. Then a young woman walked into my sight, and she was
so beautiful I forgot myself and stared for a few seconds. This made
her very angry. I didn’t know she was a witch. ‘How dare you look at
me!?’ she asked. ‘How dare you show your face?’ Then she turned me into
that creature. ‘You’ll stay that way,’ she said, ‘until another woman,
prettier than I am, kisses you and breaks the spell.’”
Dorothea was bewildered. “But here you are.
How did you become a human being again?”
Patrick smiled and took her in his arms. “You
kissed me. That’s how.”
And for the first time in her life Dorothea
realized she was beautiful.
THE END
© 2014 LELA MARIE DE LA GARZA
E-mail: LELA MARIE DE LA GARZA
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