A Modern Fairytale For The Cynical People We Have Become

Once Upon a Time, the exact time being 8:30 on a Thursday, the beautiful maiden Annabelle left her house to go to work. Now when I say beautiful maiden she wasn’t exactly fucking Marilyn Monroe, but considering she lived in a pretty normal suburban English town she was a bit of alright. I’d say most people would rate her as about an 8 out of 10. If you’re having trouble picturing that, it’s the sort of girl most people fancied in high school but she wasn’t one of the bitches. Otherwise I wouldn’t have described her as a maiden; I probably would’ve said ‘beautiful bitch’ or something. I’ll now take some time to apologise for the unrelenting chauvinism that has constituted this fairy-tale up until this point. However, I can’t promise it won’t happen again.
As Annabelle caught the magical (it isn’t really) 182 bus towards Harrow bus station, she noticed the streets looked quite empty today.
‘Strange,’ she thought.
Upon arriving at Harrow bus station, she is immediately taken aside by an old crone.
“Be warned young’un, there be many a villain up ahead! That’s why all the villagers are hidin’ today. There be a curse on this town….” she warns.
“What, in St. Anne’s shopping centre? And why are you talking like that, are you from Cornwall?” Annabelle asked. The old crone isn’t particularly happy about this, but being quite old she is probably suffering from senile dementia anyway so Annabelle was quite right to initially doubt her warnings without being presented with solid evidence.
“Young’un, if you’s don’t heed my advice, you could be imprisoned by the wicked queen!”
“Look I know a lot of people oppose the monarchy these days, what with them being a somewhat unnecessary drain on tax-payer’s money, but I hardly think you could go as far to say that Queen Elizabeth II is ‘wicked’. That’s just being harsh.”
Of course by now the old crone is so flummoxed by all of Annabelle’s shrewd post-modern observations that she gives away all the plot points which were to be gradually unveiled in a whimsical yet educational fashion.
“What the fuck are you talking about?! Listen, what’s meant to happen is you go ahead, get captured and held in a tower by the wicked queen, who is actually me by the way, and then you get rescued by a prince and live happily ever after! Why the fuck do you keep talking fucking shit? You fucking slut, for fuck’s sake.”
“Alright first of all don’t you dare call me that, and if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to call the police.”
“What??! No! Go ahead and I’ll take off my old crone disguise and capture you!”
So, as forewarned, Annabelle calls the police. The ‘wicked queen’ is arrested for antisocial behaviour, and on further investigation is found to be a paranoid-schizophrenic.
So yes, unfortunately in this day and age it is quite impossible for fairy tales to come true. Partially because we’re just too unwilling for something fantastical to occur I suppose.
Sad really, isn’t it?
Although in another sense it isn’t sad at all, because some fairy tales are pretty heavy and involve a lot of child abduction and shit. Mad.