The Turtley Squirrel -or- The Squirrely Turtle

So, I've got this idea for a story. It's not really a fully fleshed-out story, as I'm still working on it, but it goes a little something like this. Hit it:

There was this squirrel, and she was sad because she thought she had no friends. She went walking in the forest and nobody walked with her. Until this turtle found her, and she fell in love with the turtle and he fell in love with her. But she still wanted to have friends, and the turtle told her that she was likable, but she didn't believe him.

"If I was likable," she said, "then people would walk with me in the forest."
"They do walk with you," said the turtle, "you just can't see them."

The squirrel didn't like this answer, and climbed a tree to get away from the frustrating turtle. The turtle waited at the base of the tree for the squirrel to return. He tried to think of another way to tell the squirrel that which might help her, but tell her in a way so that she wouldn't run away from him. And as he sat under the tree, he fell asleep. The squirrel saw him sleeping and this made her more frustrated.

"If he really loved me, he would stay awake," she grumbled.

But eventually, the squirrel came down from the tree. She struggled to wake up the turtle because he was a heavy sleeper and probably had some kind of sleep apnea that hadn't been diagnosed yet.

I don't know about this last part. A lot of people have sleep apnea, and it's kinda getting this reputation as a fat-person's ailment. But my mother has sleep apnea, and she's not a fat person. In fact, she's quite healthy. So maybe the turtle shouldn't have sleep apnea, as I don't want the reader to conjure the image of a fat turtle. And I also don't want the reader to think that the squirrel was grumpy. She was normally quite full of life, but this story deals with a time when she was fighting some pretty intense inner demons. Well, we'll get to that later... maybe... I'm not sure yet...

So the squirrel and the turtle kept hanging out with each other and they had lots of fun together. Until the squirrel started thinking about how she had no friends again, and then she got sad again. The turtle tried to explain a little more to her.

"You do have friends walking with you in the forest, but you don't see them because they're not close by," explained the turtle. He kinda spoke slowly, because he was a turtle. And the squirrel did a great job of letting him finish without cutting him off or hurrying him along, which was really hard for her, because she was a squirrel.

"If they liked me," said the squirrel, "they would be close by. What good are friends that don't stand close to me?"
"You have stickers in your tail," said the turtle, "and when you walk and run and dance, you swing your tail around and your friends get cut with the stickers." The turtle felt good about getting that all out, but then felt bad when he saw the pained look on the squirrel's face. She ran up the tree to get away from the turtle.

Up in the tree, she sat there, thinking about how horrible she was for having stickers in her tail. "If I was a good squirrel," she thought, "I would take better care of my tail. I would clean it on a regular basis. It wouldn't drive away my friends. My tail is a direct reflection of me. I am a dirty, filthy squirrel, and people are right to not want to be around me. I will hurt them if they were too close to me, and I suck." She tried to look up at her tail, but the way she was built made it impossible for her to actually see her tail. When she looked up, her tail moved back, just out of eyesight. She wondered why that was, as she knew she had a long tail. She should be able to see her tail. "I'm built stupidly," she thought again. "If I was built right, I would be able to see my tail. I can see other squirrel tails. I must be deficient because I can't see my own tail. I suck." Then, a new feeling of resentment came over her. "Wait a minute," she thought, "that stupid turtle is trying to make me feel bad. He told me I have stickers in my tail, and I probably don't! He can't even show me the stickers in my tail, which would prove that they were actually there! That fucking asshole!"

Not quite sure how I feel about her language there, as she's really a genteel creature, not prone to outbursts. But she's all alone in the tree, you see, and there's nobody around to offend, so she used the appropriate language to express her emotional state at that time. I think. I could be wrong. Anywhooo...

So the squirrel went back down the tree to wake up the asshole turtle.

"Wake up!" she yelled at the asshole.
"I am awake!" the turtle shouted back, startled by the sudden outburst from the fast squirrel that he didn't even realize was there.
"You were not awake," shouted the squirrel, "you were snoring!"
"I know!" shouted the turtle, trying to hold his own against this onslaught.
"And this isn't an onslaught," yelled the squirrel, as if she had known what the author had written. The turtle was reeling with confusion at this point, but he held on to the conversation well enough to manage, "I snore even when I'm awake because of some kind of sleep apnea that hasn't been diagnosed yet, and I don't mention it a lot because it makes me feel fat when I think about it even though my mother has it and she's quite healthy!"

I think this part gets a little too self-referential, and starts to blur the lines of reality, as it's making reference to something not in the story, really, but rather, something I had written earlier. So now the audience is left wondering if I'm the turtle or is my mother going to enter the story... or what. I'll have to edit this out later.

The squirrel stopped, as this had made sense to her. She smiled, because the turtle was really cute, and he was even cuter when he made himself vulnerable to her. She would do him later.

Now, I'm really planning on keeping this section, because it makes the audience think there might be a sex scene, and sex sells. So this is staying. So where were we... we had the squirrel getting mad at the turtle because he was trying to hurt her... she curses... yadda yadda yadda... oh yeah, she's about to tell him off for lying to her about there being stickers in her tail.

"There are no stickers in my tail! If there were stickers, I would see them! And when you say things like that, you really hurt my feelings!"
"I'm really sorry," said the turtle, "but you do have stickers in your tail. You and I are perfect for each other, because of my shell. I was made for you. But the other creatures who are your friends aren't built like I am. They get hurt by your stickers. And you're not built like they are, which is why you can't see your stickers."

The squirrel was getting frustrated. She wanted to run up the tree again, because this stupid turtle was just blabbering on about whatever and such. But there was a part of her that believed that she was made for him and he was made for her. And it was not easy to hear that little part of her, because her head was filled with loud, angry voices all the time. "You suck! You have no friends! You're not deserving of friends! They don't like you because you're fat! You're hideous! You're ugly! You're not smart enough! You're not deserving of anything good or decent! You suck so bad! If you believe anything this stupid fucking turtle says, you're an even bigger idiot than you already think you are!" Most of the time, she wasn't even aware of the voices. Most of the time, these voices provided the foundation for her life. Most of the time she didn't think about it.

Today, she thought about it.

What if the turtle was right?

She fought really hard to not run up the tree.
"I'm a horrible person for having stickers in my tail," she said. And even as she was saying it, she didn't quite believe it. She heard the words she said, and she knew that she believed them... but when she said them out loud, they sounded... silly? Small? They certainly weren't as powerful as they were when they were in her head and could control her from inside that darkness where they fester and run unchecked. The turtle snuggled up to her, as she softly let some tears run down her cheek.

"If you want me to," said the turtle, "I could help you take them out."
The squirrel got mad again. The voices were telling her that she was dirty, unkempt, and did not want anyone to touch her dirty, filthy tail, and if the turtle knew just how dirty she was, he would surely leave her. And right now, he was the only creature who would walk with her in the forest. But she fought through these inner demons, just like she knew she was going to do from the beginning...

See... she's fighting some pretty intense inner demons.

...and she decided to listen to that tiny little part of her that kept saying...

"What if the turtle is right?"

So she let him touch her tail. And the turtle used the thick pads on his hands to pull the stickers out of the squirrel's tail. The turtle was really glad that he had finally found a purpose for those thick pads on his feet, which he had always thought were ugly and not very soft. But the thick foot pads were allowing him to pull the stickers out of the squirrel's tail without hurting himself and without hurting the squirrel.

The turtle held the stickers in his hand and the squirrel looked at them. She didn't quite know how to feel about them. There actually were stickers in her tail, and she didn't want to admit that there had been stickers in her tail. But if she didn't admit to the stickers in her tail, then she couldn't give herself credit for overcoming some really intense inner demons and fighting through it. But if she did give herself credit, then that would mean that she really was dirty. She didn't know how to feel, and so she silently looked at her turtle, who gently said,

"I love all that you are. Dirty and clean. Uncertain and certain. Afraid and brave. With stickers and without. With voices and without. With inner demons and without. I didn't leave you when you were whacking me with your stickery tail. I didn't complain because there was nothing for me to complain about. All of those things that you're thinking are in your head, and you can get rid of them if you want. And I'll be here when that happens. And if you want to keep the voices, I'll be here for that, too. So no worries. I love you complete with everything that makes you you."

And with that, the turtle kissed the squirrel's face.

Suddenly, and without warning, a fundamentalist church group rushed the forest and started beating the turtle with sticks and yelling at him.

"This is what happens when you let gays get married! First you let them get married, then they'll want to sleep with animals, and then the animals won't know who to kiss! Turtles and squirrels need to stay with their own kind!!"

I don't know about this last part, too. It feels a little extraneous and weird. Plus I wanna let people know that the turtle doesn't get hurt because he's got his shell and the sticks really just bounce off him. But I don't want people to worry about an errant stick hitting the squirrel, either, because they weren't aiming for the squirrel. It's, you know, just kinda, well, whatever. It's still a work in progress. So there's that.