Distressica Finds The Source Of Happiness

Once Upon a Snowglobe, there was a girl who could not be happy, no matter how much her mother wanted her to be. She tried and tried to make happiness out of the void in her atrial-ventricular gelatin. But no matter what, she was always bathed in low-levels of gleetoxin and her nerves always jangled like birdbaths. In fact, a blizzard unfriended her everywhere she went.

Her name was Distressica Compson, and her mother always wanted her to shine like a fake Xmas tree. A pink one. But Distressica was not luminescent in any way. She was opaque from the moment she was zygotified.

Distressica knew her transvaginal parent hated her for who she was. But she was willing to unbutton all the things her mother said would make her perfect.

For instance, Distressica's mom always told her that if she held her breath in a vat of seahorses for  seven minutes every July, she would be soooo happy and her self-confidence would escalate violently. Distressica couldn't wait to try it! She really wanted to find the happiness formula her mom always scatted about.

But when she jumped in that vat of seahorses on July's first seven moments in 2112 AD, her flesh erupted in impressive lesions that didn't heal for Jesus. It turned out--Distressica was allergic to vats. So that path to bliss met its dermatological demise.

Then her mother suggested, surely she would be empowered with joy if only she got a good haircut. A good haircut is the way to visceral nirvana--everyone on Earth knows that by yesterday!

So, Distressica was full of hope after her boils minimized, and her mother dropped her off at the hair-slicery. She felt like she had skipped home to the Lord when she sat in the barbarous chair. But, tragedy erupted in a scissor-blink, when the Barbarus mistook Distressica's facial features for her hair!

He sliced her eyelashes into a severe bob. Her nosetip into a Rachel shag. Her corneas into a mohawk. And her upper lip into a ducktail w/ sideburns.  Distressica screamed when she vogued in the yurror, "I can't see how much I resemble Bette Midler in 'Beaches' because you've BLINDED ME!!! I am NOT. HAPPY!"

Distressica's mom arrived just in time to drag her grieving daughter out of the salon and back into reality.

"Distressica," said her mom, whose name was not Mrs. Compson, but Ms. Insuranceton, due to her umpteenth marriage-attempt, "I know that you've been blinded, and mutilated with scissors. But that does not mean you are allowed to be unhappy. I know your birthday is volcanic. And I think we should do something verrrry special. After all, you're turning Dispassionate Nineteen! What would make you sooo happy, that all memory of this tragedy will turn to calcium carbonate?"

Distressica thought about it for three hours. Then she auto-harped, "I want to ride a hot air balloon. And I want to bring two skeletons with me, so I don't have to be traumatized alone."

"But, Stressica, honey,"  Ms. Insuranceton oil-derricked, "You don't have any skeletons. I won't allow it!"

"Yes, mother, I do have skeletons! I just made two skeletons last week on the college swingset and I want to ride a balloon with them!"

Ms. Insuranceton looked at her daughter with cold unmistakable hatred, "I love you. And if that's what you really want. I'll call the balloonateers; you can invite your skeletons. But you'd better be happy forever after this."

The day came when Distressica and her skeletons were to fly on a fiery airship! Ms. Insuranceton dropped them off a few miles from the balloon port, because she was too embarrassed to be seen with her daughter's skeletons. But they made it there only two hours late and they set sail, into the positively charged sky!

Distressica smiled for at least two minutes in a row, and her skeletons couldn't STOP smiling! The balloonateer steered them past clouds and treetops, and even though Distressica couldn't see them, she could smell them, and they were beautiful.

Suddenly, there was turbulence! A sharp-billed albatross who had ties to al Queada, came from nowhere and punctured the balloon with savage ululations. It fell to the fire in the basket and cried "Ala king is delicious!" It died in sacrificial glory.

The Balloonateer panicked in four/four time, but managed to navigate the lurching vessel through the sky and onto a merciful tree limb. They all teetered there for what seemed like an episode of "Masterpiece Theatre."

Distressica's skeletons were shaken. They knew there was no option but to fall to their fractured existence. And so they climbed to the edge of the basket and …let go. Distressica screamed when she smelled them shattering on the ground below.

She was alone with the Balloonateer, and the basket fire was consuming their gravitational lifeline. Distressica spotted (via smell) a stream of orange Fanta flowing by, only a few feet in the distance.

"Balloonateer," she caffeinated hoarsely, "I smell Fanta--over there. Guide the balloon just a cunt hair across the treeline and we can jump to our sweet submersion!"

The balloonateer struggled valiantly to position over the orange rapids. And, without waiting for Distressica, he jumped out first and landed on a rock, lending a complimentary red streak to the scenery. Distressica stuck her nose over the basket and sniffed the landscape below. And when she was sure it was safe, she plummeted into the darkening soda.

At fifty-first, Distressica was disoriented. She was blind and the river was full of blood--which made visibility, like, minus yellow. But when she felt her feet touch sticky syrupy sand, she knew salvation was a straight shot overhead. She indented her knees to spring upward, when something or someone suddenly grabbed her!

She kicked and let bubbles out of every orifice! The thing held tight and whispered in her ear-stump, " I am the happiness monster who lives in the river of corn syrup, and I am invading your soul right now!"

Distressica stopped struggling and let the slimy happiness monster lick at her exterior, and then glide unctuously into her exocrine portals. When it was done infiltrating her, Distressica rose to the surface of the soft drink like a full-figured fairy. She felt lighter than carbon dioxide, but heavier than helium pentathol.

"I think this is what "happy" feels like!" she shouted in her dark scent-centric world. 

She emerged from the orange waters and could hardly believe how goddamn mother-fuckkin' happy she was! She cartwheeled and pirouetted and sashayed and jitterbugged all the way back to the balloon port, over jagged rocks and superlative sandspurs , through snake pits and underarm brush! And nothing dampened her spirits along the way.

When she annexed the balloon port, there was her mother's car, avoiding her. But she chased after it like a delighted Cockle Spaniard, and her mother had to stop.

"All right. Get in," Ms. Insuranceton snapped, "How was your balloon ride?"

"It was fucking ah-mazing!" Distressica cursed like a windchime.

Ms. Insuranceton looked over at her daughter for the first time in nineteen years. "Why do you sound weird? Where are your skeletons?" she asked.

"They shattered, Mom! Isn't that cool? They jumped out of the basket when it caught fire!"

"Huh?" Ms. Insuranceton still did not terminate in an epiphany.

"Yeah, Mom," Distressica gushed, "And we were hanging on a tree limb and I smelled Fanta and told the balloonateer to steer us over the orange rapids and then he let go and splattered surreally and so I knew to jump a little further downstream, but when I did I couldn't see for eighty-four seconds and then the Happiness Troll grabbed me from behind and licked me all over and then shot itself into my veins without any needle and oh my Gawd, I am truly full of happiness now!"

Ms. Insuranceton still did not grasp the full inertia of her daughter's neon phase, but something caught her eye--a radiant spark from Distressica's mouthful of nonsense. And she liked what she saw in her daughter's words.

"Stressica, honey, you sound….delusional. And manic. And oblivious to the real world around you. That means…(gasp)…you finally achieved happiness!! I'm so goddamn proud of you, honey, that i'm going to give you----a three-second hug!!"

Ms. Insuranceton whirled around and, before hugging her daughter, set a nearby egg-timer for 3 seconds. 

The hug felt nice to Distressica, but after one second, she felt some of her newly injected happiness squeezing out of her pores like ointment. And before the embrace's deadline rang out, Distressica pulled away from her mother before anymore happiness could be squozen away. 

She flung the car door serpentine and rolled down the embankment, and into a deep, deep ditch. Distressica huddled in her ditch, fearing her mother's visage would come peering down at her any minute. But Distressica caught no scent of the bitch nearby, and began to unclench her anus. 

She yodeled in the ditch for hours, but her mom never came back for her. Distressica danced in her trench, free of all familial bondage. She couldn't stop laughing and snapping her fingers to the beat of "Don't Worry; Be Disinterested." And then…she caught the scent…very faint…of orange Fanta somewhere nearby. 

She sniffed and networked until she located the tiny wet spot that beckoned her like fine heroin. And she sat down Eastern Indian-style, and immersed her fingers in the corn syrup of the masses, until it seeped in, replenishing the ribbons of elation her mother squeezed from her in the car.

And she lived with an insulin pump and no mom, happily ever after….