CotW #63: Take a much-loved Disney story, twist it into an adult, kick-in-the-gut tale. Poetry or Prose. The most eloquent, elegant, entertaining entry, ascertained by Prose, earns $100 and stays atop the Spotlight shelf for six straight days. Feel free to invite friends, distant family, even strange acquaintances to play this challenge with you anonymously. Please use #twistedtales for sharing online. Now lights, camera, fiction.

A Lowly Street Urchin

I could see us laughing, having the greatest of times. Our lives would be perfect, if they only were to be. It'd just be you and me... and my monkey. Such a pretty sight. Maybe we'd go on adventures, and our love would get tested, but we'd conquer it all, I tell you. We'd be perfect.

Jazmine. I'll call you Jazmine. Even if I knew your name I'd call you that, because I don't need to know how others have called you, what names you've been given. I see you, and I know who you are. I recognize you.

No good will ever come from dwelling on how great our lives would be. We are apart, and will remain like that, I think, at least for a long time. Though I can see great things for us written in the stars, I just can't picture me: out of this dump, off of this pipe. I'm just a bum Jazmine, that's all I am, for now. We could be great together, true, but we're apart, and I'm bound to this place, to this pipe, to these dreams I get, to this life I have. I'm bound to dream about the life I'll never have. I'm bound to have it, though only in mind. I'm bound to you, but you are free... to live, to love, to laugh, to leave.

I dream, and my dreams are alive. Like bugs, like insects, they crawl to the back of my head, to the whole of my mind. They get to live while I get to die.