The air in the cottage bloomed with the floral smell of cleanliness that in recent years had become unfamiliar. My housemates and I had just arrived home after another day of no sunlight, spent toiling away down in the mines.

Grumpy, arguably the skeptic among us, had a look of malice in his eyes. “Somebody broke into our house!”

While the others paced frantically around, surveying the newly polished wooden floors and dust-free countertops, looking for empty spaces where treasured objects used to be, I wondered how guilty a burglar must feel in order to feel the need to clean a house after breaking into it.

“Everyone! Come quick! Look!” My inner monologue was interrupted by Doc’s commanding tone, reduced to a whisper. Doc, with his upright rigid posture and eyes that peered right through you like the sun through a window, thought of himself as our leader. It made sense that he was the first one to find the girl.

There she was, bereft of consciousness, sprawled out across a bed much too small for her, arms and legs hanging haphazardly over the sides. Her skin was porcelain, her hair the hue of the coal we spent our long days searching for. I knew before she spoke a word to me that I had found the woman of my dreams.

Later, she introduced herself to us as Snow White in her tranquil voice that could only be compared to the coo of a dove in its softness. As we all sat around the kitchen table, she stood at the stove and made us a delicious soup for dinner. Between chopping the garden vegetables and stirring the broth, she regaled us with tales of growing up as a princess. In my mind, this was the only past that could befit her radiant beauty.

That night, as we all sat and ate, I decided that this woman was my future. We would move into our own cottage, where she would make her delicious soups for me alone, and every night, I could hold her milk-white body as she drifted off to sleep.

I am fascinated by the way women’s beauty is portrayed in fairy tales. Women are constantly objectified in an unsettling way, and this story was inspired by that.

As soon as the ogre queen decided,

that she had been quite misguided, 

she no longer desiring a child for dinner,

as it would do nothing for her figure.

Because no one ever had a happy ending,

if they looked so very offending.

And the ogre knew that as she was,

she bore the close resemblance of a nightmarish Santa Clause.

But so pretty was her daughter-in-law,

(thin, white, and not a single outside flaw),

and how happy her ending seemed to be,

so the ogre went for advice on how to gain this reality

At first the princess was terribly frightened, 

but it grew worse once she was enlightened. 

“But you’re ugly and fat and mean.

Don’t ruin the story,” she said to me.

“Eat my children, go ahead,

And hopefully next you will drop dead.

You are nothing like the ideal lady,

so why should your ending be anything less than shady?”

Now it was here that the ogre got angry, 

and when that happens the ogre gets hangry.

So she told the princess to set up the pot,

and would pretend it was the children she sought.

She would play the role of the bad guy,

and hopefully the princess would not see her sly.

So while the chefs prepared her feast,

she kept the floor beside the pot greased.

Just as the children were brought forth, 

the king was arriving from the north.

But the princess saw the ogre was standing too distant,

and was worried that he would notice something inconsistent.

As she stepped forth to push her closer,

the princess slipped on the grease and fell over.

Straight into the boiling pot she went,

with ow, ow, ows that spoke of torment.

Years later I met the ogre and asked,

“Just what had happened after his princess had passed?”

She told me she had gotten her happily ever ending, 

when she found out that personality, not looks, were worth defending. 

And the king, she said, had never remarried,

apparently the princess had made him quite wearied.

She supposedly had been a bitch in a cloak, 

and maybe, just maybe, thats why in her story she never spoke. 

(wanted to explore how the ideal woman is portrayed in princess fairytales and the question of why women in princess fairy tales are pitted against each other (Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, etc..)