Tooth Fairy Not Real, Easter Bunny Real but Long Dead

The Easter Bunny fills in for Santa Claus on Christmas after Santa’s third pulmonary embolism. - photo by Michael Swaim

Alexander Speigel

It was discovered Thursday that the Tooth Fairy, long believed to flutter about on pixie wings exchanging children’s shed teeth for money, is in fact entirely fictitious. On the heels of this revelation came the grim discovery that the Easter Bunny, while in fact real, has been dead for many, many years.

“I first got suspicious of the Tooth Fairy,” explained Rachel Walsh, the child who uncovered the Fairy’s imaginary nature, “when the teeth I put under my pillow after Tommy Carmine pushed me down the stairs in our back yard didn’t turn into money.”

Walsh said she didn’t tell her parents about the mishap, worried that she would get in trouble. “So when no money came,” she continued, “I figured they must have something to do with it.”

Added Walsh, “And that money was already spent. How am I supposed to pay off loan sharks with teeth? I hope there’s such a thing as the Leg Fairy, because mine are as good as broke.”

When Walsh confronted her parents, they confirmed that the Tooth Fairy is little more than “a pleasant fiction.” Mr. Walsh went on to elaborate that the Easter Bunny died in 1987 due to massive internal hemorrhaging following his ninety-seventh clutch of brightly-colored eggs.

“In retrospect,” said the abashed father, “I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I was trying to cheer her up. I mean, at least the Easter Bunny is real.”

Mr. Walsh later added, “Was. Was real.”

The young Walsh reports that her innocence has been “thoroughly defiled,” and she now sees the world through a dark, cynical lens. “The Tooth Fairy is just a kids’ story,” said Walsh, burning her stuffed-animal collection, “like Santa, or God.”