FAIRY TALE

   Once upon a hill there stood a tiny white ranch house where a small girl lived with her mother and father. The little girl, whose name was Marie, had never heard a fairy tale. Not one sentence, not one word of those famous tales we’ve cherished since the days of our youth. It wasn’t Marie’s fault. Her mother and father were a little whacked out on soy milk and meatless burger-style sandwich patties, and thought that the old-fashioned lessons of fairy tales would scar their little daughter for the rest of her life. They were also required to spend a large majority of their time at their jobs. As a matter of fact, the only time her parents really saw her was late in the evening, as she was going to bed, when they would read to her from high school geometry books.
   Oddly enough, despite the care of some of the finest nursing-home aids in the land, Marie’s grandmother had become ill. When her father heard of this, he stopped right in the middle of Triangle Theorem Twenty-Seven to ask her if she could possibly carry a gift basket down to the Adult Living Center where her grandmother lived. /Sure, Pop,” Marie told him. /What time should I leave?”
   “Visiting hours start at eleven, so I’d leave at about ten.    Be careful in the woods, though.”
   “How come?”
   “Snakes. And ! 0 Her father hesitated. /Snakes.”
   The next morning, Marie left early with the gift basket. As she was walking through the woods, feeling proud because she hadn’t encountered a single snake, she heard a low growl. Marie had read nearly every book in her attic, and she knew by now that dogs and wolves could smell fear, and that they would chase you if you ran. So Marie slowly turned around, and suddenly found herself face to face with a rather cartoonish-looking gray wolf standing on his hind legs wearing a red flannel shirt and a nametag that read, /Big Bad.” Marie couldn’t help but laugh. The wolf looked confused. /What’s so funny?” he asked incredulously. Marie just kept laughing. She shook her head and tried to apologize several times, but all she could do was snort. /Wait, wait, look! I’m scary! See, look what big eyes I have.” Marie finally spoke through her laughter.
   “Not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said breathlessly, and started to quickly walk away.
   “Wait!” The wolf shouted, and pulled down his bottom lip. /Look how big and scary my teeth are!” But Marie, a top powerwalker, was already far down the sunny path.
   Not five minutes had passed before she came across seven small men carrying pickaxes and crying. They seemed to be taking the same path that she was, so she followed along. After climbing six small hills, she could see in the distance at the top of the seventh a small house and what seemed to be a coffin with a very pale girl inside. /Hey guys,” she said to the little men when they reached the glass coffin. /Who’s this?”
   “Snow White,” one of them replied. /The evil queen killed    her with a poisoned apple.”
   “What evil queen?”
/She lives in a castle about a mile that way,” another said, and indicated vaguley southward with a pudgy little fnger. /And now our beautiful Snow White is gone!”
   “What kind of name is Snow White? Look how pale she is! Didn’t she ever eat?”
   “We-ell ! 0 a short one began.
   “Oh. Just the poisoned kind of food, huh? Hey, look I’m really sorry for your loss. But what’s up with the glass coffin?”
   “We put her in a glass coffin so that all who pass by could stop and marvel at her beauty.” the first one said. Just then, the sound of horse hooves galloping in from the distance caused them to turn. A handsome prince had ridden up the hill, and sure enough, just couldn’t resist stopping to marvel at her beauty. Marie and the seven vertically challenged miners watched in amazement as the prince glanced around, lifted the coffin lid, and leaned over to kiss her.
   “Oh, gross!” Marie screamed. /What do you think you’re doing? Trying to make it with a dead girl? Yuck!”
   The prince looked up in surprise. Marie put a hand on her hip and glared. The prince began to stutter, attempting an excuse.
   “I, w-w-well, I j-just was gonna ! and then I-I saw ! uh ! 0 While all this was going on, Snow White’s chest began to rise and fall steadily, Marie looked over and saw Snow White breathing. She thought suddenly, she must be catatonic! It turns out Marie was right, and the catatonia was most likely due to her poor nutrition, which was evidenced by her skin’s sallow tone. Her heart had been beating and she’d been breathing shallowly all along, but because they had no proper medical training, the little miners had no way of knowing that.
   As the prince tried to finish his explanation, one of the tiny men shouted, /Look!” Everyone stared as Snow White suddenly rolled her china-blue doll eyes open, smiled slowly, and blinked.
   “Hello, my dear,” the prince said. /Would you like to ride away with me on my handsome white horse and be my queen?” Snow White nodded, slowly at first, but then faster with childlike vigor. As they rode off, the tiny men waved a sad goodbye. Marie, more confused than disgusted, walked off again in the direction of her grandmother’s home.
   After a while Marie began to wonder if she’d somehow taken the wrong path. These woods didn’t seem familiar at all, and just a few minutes ago she’d encountered that wolf again, on the ground, out of breath in front of a little brick house that looked like it had been built by someone with the IQ of a pig.
   She decided that she must be lost, and she couldn’t think of anything to do. Suddenly Marie tripped over a rock that she hadn’t seen in the midst of all her thought, and as she fell to the forest floor, she skinned her knee deeply. When she sat up and looked at it, she began to cry. The fear and frustration of being lost had finally gotten to her.
   She began to wipe away her tears, and thought that if she kept on walking, she’d eventually end up out of the woods, and find somebody who could tell her how to get home. As she began to get up, a little man hopped out from behind a bush and said:
   “Are you crying because you can’t spin straw into gold?”
   “No.”
   “So you can spin straw into gold?”
   “No, I can’t. But not being able to doesn’t seem to me like a good reason to cry.”
   “Would you like to try and guess what my name is?”
   “Not really.”
   “Oh.” With that, he began to walk away, looking just a little bit disappointed. Marie was beginning to get particularly irritated with the inhabitants of this forest. /If I see one more–” she mumbled, and just then the little man turned around to face her.
   “You wouldn’t by any chance have a first born you don’t need anymore?”
   Marie had had enough. She screamed at the little man to leave her alone, and ran in the direction of the afternoon sun. Through dense patches of forest, large open paths, she ran. She caught a glimpse of a man cutting through the vines that had wrapped themselves around a castle from which came such a loud snoring that she could hear it yards further down the path. She kept running, and saw a hen, a duck, and a goose all following a fox into his dark cave, along with a strange cluster of houses, one made entirely out of candy, and another from which a strange little cookie ran away screaming, /Run, Run, as fast as you can ! 0 Still she ran, refusing to stop and make conversation with these insane little people. And before she knew it, she found herself standing in a strange little garden between a circle of signposts.
   Each post pointed down a different path. She read them all, wondering which one to follow.
   “Contents,” she read, a little confused, and then /About the Author.” She looked around slowly, none of the paths seeming right, until suddenly she saw the largest one of all, pointing straight west into the late afternoon sun. /The End,” she read gladly, and smiling, started down the path, swinging her grandmother’s gift basket behind her.

- Meghan Maloney