Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #13 April 2015 | Page 72

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but they turned
out to be decent if bizarre mugs. So they took me in.
At first I took care of the house, but that had half the
guys in a political dust up because of all this negative
stereotyping and bending to outdated gender roles and
crap, and the others were insisting that it wasn’t them
subjecting the young female to household slavery, it
was prudence to keep me out of sight.
Upshot of it was I ended up working the mines along
with them and really loathing the fact I had to find
the only seven dwarves living in a little commune
of politically correct socialist hell. But I can crush a
fucking melon between my thighs.
So the day it’s my turn to do the household chores and
cook the meals, this old bird shows up. She looks like
the little sister God had that He created the paper bag
as head wear for. Selling apples.
I don’t need any damn apples, I’m baking peach pie,
and the dame goes on about how men folks love them
some apples which was going over like a steel balloon. Hey, old woman, we don’t abide by your insensitive and unenlightened antique man-woman social
class opinions.
I was desperate to get the old bag out of the yard so
I could get back to work when she starts on insisting
her damn apples are magic. Take a bite, make a wish,
ta-da, Bob’s your bloody uncle.
So I took a bite of the apple and wished she’d get her
wrinkled liver spotted ass out of there.
#
And that was my last memory. I finally tore through
the cobweb fog and found myself staring at some
dude. You know the sort. Tall, handsome, blond wavy
hair begging for you to run your fingers through it,
shoulders just right to lock your arms around, blue
eyes you could set sail in. ‘Prince’ written all over
him. A nice beefy place to rest my eyes a while.
Then I realize I’m uncomfortable as hell made of
cat claws and poison ivy. Why? I see a wad of half-

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chewed apple on the ground, a fucking glass box
tipped over, a big white coffin, and me half out of it.
The guy tells me I was so beautiful in my undecaying
death that he wanted to kiss me, realized my airway
was blocked and performed the Heimlich manoeuvre
instead. I had been found in a death-like state by my
roommates and they built this monument to me and
encased me in glass. This was a fucking year ago!
So many questions. Like, why the hell didn’t it dawn
on my idiot pals to see if there was anything in my
mouth? They’re all about equal rights, I guess corpses
also get the right to just lay the re and be dead. Why
was I undecaying? My guys are good with building
things, but even an air tight glass coffin isn’t going to
keep my rotting carcass springtime fresh. And what
the hell is going through Prince Handsome’s mind,
necrophilia? God damn it, I wish the royals around
here would stop finding their cousins so bloody attractive.
The hunk’s name turned out to be Sam, and he wasn’t
all about dead chicks in glass coffins. He had some
book learning behind that pretty face. Said the apple
I ate was enchanted. Usually can only be countered
once eaten by true love’s first kiss.
Then he admits his parents sent his toned and muscular ass off into the world to find a pretty princess and
the easy way is to look into all the cases where it looks
like the gal’s chugged some magic poison. I liked him
a lot more when he was honest.
So why did the old broad poison me? That was no
skeezy old woman, my fine companions tell me. That
was the fucking queen. Sacculina. Disguising herself
as a harmless hag to get at me after discovering that
her tasty snack of roasted princess heart was nothing
more than a wild boar’s ticker.
And that’s when I cracked, smash, like that fine porcelain cup that your great grandma slung into the wall
while screaming at the maid for spitting into the tea.
It was all a heady acid boil in my brain.
Sacculina took it all. My Dad, my kingdom, my fuck-