Title: Don’t Talk to Strangers
Genre(s): Fairy tale; satire
Rating: U (suitable for all)
Word count: 850
Summary: Gullible princess, wicked witch, modern twist.
Author’s notes: We studied fairy tales in English at Sixth Form and had to write our own modern version, so I wrote this. I had to update it before uploading it here as many of the items and concepts featured were already outdated.
Don’t Talk to Strangers
Once there was a young princess who lived in a grand palace in the middle of a bustling city. Ever since she was born she had been diligently watched over by the King and Queen and all their advisors and servants. She had everything she could ever want. Her room was filled with dolls and bears and faberge merry-go-rounds, over three hundred beanie babies, a home cinema system, every gaming console ever invented from Nintendo 64 (a Christening present) through to Nintendo Wii with Motion Plus, and giant lego replicas of Justin Bieber and Zac Effron. Her wardrobe was almost entirely Donna Karan and Prada. And she’d always been very popular. She had over six hundred thousand friends on Facebook and twenty six thousand followers on Twitter. She grew up believing that the world in which she lived was good and happy and safe, and she was happy in it.
Upon the occasion of her fourteenth birthday, the princess asked her parents if she could go into the city to see the peasant boy, who was her friend. The King and Queen decided that she was now old enough to go by herself. The princess had always been taken everywhere in the limo with a dozen bodyguards, so of course she was delighted and proud to be thought responsible enough to watch out for herself and given her parents’ trust. But before she left, her parents warned her not to talk to strangers or leave the main road. The princess, being a good girl, happily agreed and set off to see her friend.
Along the way the princess stumbled upon an old beggar woman. She was kneeling on the pavement and clutching her heart. Nobody else even seemed to have noticed her. Being a good and kind girl, the princess ran to her.
“Oh my gosh! Are you all right?”
“I feel my age creeping up on me, dear, that is all.”
“I can call for a doctor on my iphone 4,” suggested the princess, taking it from her pocket. “The highest screen resolution ever on a phone.”
“No, no, I just need to get home and rest, that’s all.”
Being a good and kind and selfless girl, the princess offered to help her home. The beggar woman pointed towards a side-street and the two of them left the main road. The princess hadn’t forgotten her parents’ warnings but she thought the beggar woman’s health more important than some silly rule. Besides, she didn’t seem dangerous, she wasn’t wearing a hoodie.
They reached the block of council flats where the beggar woman lived and the princess helped her climb the stairs to the front door. Once the door was open, the beggar woman turned to the princess and said, “Thank you so very much, my dear. Please come in and have something to drink. It is the least I can do.”
After helping the beggar woman up four flights of stairs the princess felt quite thirsty so, being a good, kind, selfless and gullible girl, she agreed. But no sooner had she stepped into the room did the door slam shut behind her and she heard the key turning in the lock.
The beggar woman vanished in a puff of purple smoke and where she had been now stood a witch in long black robes and pointed hat. She cackled evilly.
“Fool! Didn’t your royal mummy and daddy ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”
The princess was trembling from head to foot, but managed to squeak out, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m an anti-royalist, of course,” said the witch. “And now I think you shall be useful with my potions, little princess!”
And with that she took a wand from her pocket and started towards the princess, but she had not taken two steps before the door burst open again and in stepped the peasant boy, holding a Super Soaker Flash Flood.
“Princess, get out of the way!”
The witch was too stunned to move in time. Before she knew what was happening she had been hit in the face by the double blast. With a piercing shriek the witch began to melt away.
“You wretched boy! Look what you’ve done! Do you realise the money I spent in plastic surgery?! My make-up took hours to apply! Curse you! Curse you! Oh nooooooo….”
And all that was left of her was her robes and hat in a pile on the floor.
“Huh, that was easy,” said the peasant boy.
“But how did you know we were here?” asked the princess, who was extremely grateful but not about to swoon and fawn like some damsel in distress.
“I’ve got a few friends around here and they told me they’d seen you with the witch. Everybody knows what she is, they just haven’t been able to prove it.”
As they turned to leave the princess said, “How did you get in, anyway?”
“Spare key under the doormat, never a good idea.”
And they all lived happily ever after (except the witch).
