Misplaced Comma: A fantastical autobiographical sketch

This could be considered fantasy or autobiography. I will not tell you which parts are true and which are not. After all, fantasy can be true and autobiography often is not.

Misplaced Comma

A fantastical autobiographical sketch

by Judith Espedal

Peaseblossom ¹ watched as Rose wavered, one moment a bonny teen with dark hair and large eyes, fragile seeming, like some lost waif, the next moment a gaunt naked hag with an open mouth full of shark's teeth.

“Why the drama, Rose? Thy writer has once more awakened you. She writes once more.”

Rose - not her true name any more than Peaseblossom was his. The Fair Folk guard their true names well - Rose shook her once more pretty head.

“More than seven years! She let me sleep more than seven years. And all so she could change diapers, wipe little noses, take them for walks in the park.”

“Grandmothers are like that sometimes.”

“She called me - called me in a place of power. Then abandoned me for progeny's offspring. What could I do but sleep? She owes me.”

“You're awake now,” Peaseblossom said.

“Aye. But a wee bit of revenge, a reminder not to do this again. I know. I'll gift her with a grammar error - will drive her crazy I think.”

“What kind?”

“A misplaced comma. Writer's hate that kind of mistake.”

“So. Will you go back through all the books written in her world or just change hers?”

Rose returned to her hag form as she thought a bit. Her hollow eyes glowed.

“But a breath away from her world is an alternate one - so like it she'll never notice. A mere push, a tiny bit of magic; the worlds are so close.   There, 'tis done.”

The two Fair Ones giggled in delight.

The writer logged onto her writing site.

“Ah someone added a critique to my last entry.”

She opened the critique and read it.

“What! A misplaced comma! Should be inside the end quotes, not after? But - I've done it the other way all my life. It seems just natural that way.”

Later, after logging off the site and shutting down the computer, she grabbed a newspaper. She and her husband were old and still indulged in real books and newspapers.

“She is right. The comma goes inside the quotes. Maybe it's changed since I was in school. I need to check some older books.”

She went to the living room book shelf, the one where they kept the classics, and pulled out their copy of “Moby Dick”.

“Oh no. Melville did it the other way too. And it was written in the 1800s.”

Her husband pointed out that their “Moby Dick” copy was printed in 1996.

“Maybe they modernized the punctuation,” he said.

“I don't think they're allowed to do that. But I'll check one of our really old books.”

Her husband had a collection, passed on to him from family, of really old fairy tales and fantasy stuff, some of it printed in the 1800s. She went upstairs where other bookshelves lined the hall to their bedroom and carefully lifted one of these old yellow-leaved books from its shelf.

“The Comma is still inside the quotes. I've been doing it wrong all my life. S**t! It'll take me forever to go back and change it in all my writing. Damn commas, always getting misplaced.”

Rose and Peaseblossom were rolling on the ground they were laughing so hard.

“Never knew a bit of revenge could be so much fun,” Rose gasped out between peals of laughter.

Never piss off a Faerie Muse.

Disclaimer for the Fair Folk: I know you were not really to blame; the mistake was my own. I mean no disrespect. But this story was truly inspired so I had to write it down.

1One of the Fairies from William Shakespeare's “A Mimer Night's Dream

Author's Note

I had the original set for 1 1/2 spacing between lines, which is easier to read - but I used copy and paste to put it up here and it was changed. Can't figure out how to change it back -still learning how to use this site.

Reviews

[Barbara Tennyson]

You've got _three_ different fonts of quotation marks. That's record.

Re: spacing. Try shrinking the font?

[J. Espedal]

I don't know why the quotes showed up in different fonts - they are all one font in the original. And some hyphen marks I'd put in were changed to quotation marks where none were intended. I am using copy and paste to put these stories onto Writers Cafe but I see I need to edit them more before I save - not just for my mistakes but also for word processor caused ones. Changed the font size and it does add more space in between lines.