OWC's Tall Tales Thread

[Winter Bones]

Figures that the very day after I bump this thread life grabs me by the horns and doesn't let go until today. I'm free to write now though, especially in the middle of the night-it's the perfect time for writing!

Prompt: fairies move in next door

Did I ever tell you about the time some fairies moved in next door? They didn't exactly move in legally or officially. Fairies are a lot like crows, if a building stays abandoned for too long a whole flock of them will start nesting in it eventually. It just so happened that, about a month ago, after years of vacancy, the apartment next door from mine received some new tenants. Tenants that were entirely unseen and unheard of by most, except for when it came to a long time believer like myself. The fairies immediately began to keep me awake at night; I'm a light sleeper, you see, and nothing gives fairies more enjoyment than making the lives of others that much harder. So, every night at about four in the morning, a chorus of twenty high-pitched, inebriated voices would erupt from behind the walls and interrupt my otherwise peaceful slumber. I asked my neighbors about it, but being normal, well-adjusted adults, they didn't hear a thing. I asked my land lord about it too, and there were no noise complaints that he had heard of. So, for an entire week I was woken up early by the fairies' clinking glasses, carrying on, and ear-splitting Celtic music. To make matters worse, the fairy dust that came in through the vents did nothing to help my seasonal allergies. So how does one get rid of fairies? Well, there's the obviously inhumane method, but I could never bring myself to do such a thing being a true believer. The real question is, how does one get rid of fairies humanely? The idea finally dawned on me when small trinkets of mine started disappearing: first the ring I got on my sixteenth birthday, then my spare set of keys, then the watch right off my wrist. Just like crows, fairies can't resist shiny things! Grabbing my swear jar (which was nearly full at that point) and my second-best watch, I set out to create the longest trail of change I could, a trail that lead to a place no fairy could resist settling down in: the abandoned brewery downtown, its grounds scattered with shiny bottle caps and glinting glass shards. Several hours later and several hundred dollars worth of change poorer I returned home and waited. Through the paper-thin walls, at 4 AM exactly, excited elvish bickering met my ears instead of the usual drunken revelry, then, faintly, the frantic flapping of wings and clattering of coins as they fought over the trail of change. After that, for the first time in weeks, silence. I'm pleased to say that's the last I've heard of them since. I can't guarantee this method is foolproof, but I would definitely recommend it if you're the type who believes in fairies; it's much more considerate than simply clapping your hands together and saying you don't believe.

Inspired by true events. I had some horrid neighbors who behaved pretty much like this, they moved out just a couple weeks ago. They weren't fairies though, and I didn't lure them away with spare change.