Disclaimer 1: The opinions expressed in this fanfiction are in no way reflective of those of the Truelove and Truelove agency as a whole, but are merely those of one of its more deranged members. The agency will accept no responsibility for its secretary's work.
Disclaimer 2: I don't own anything in this that belongs to someone else. Obviously.
There are no clichés here, reader! This is no fairy tale! There will be no happy endings here, please. There will be no gruesome chopping of limbs! Instead, there will be sterilized corridors, mafia underworlds, cocaine in plentiful supply. The world has changed, reader. We no longer have time for 'Once upon a time…'
Once upon a time…
Okay, let's try that again.
Once upon a time…
Okay…
Once upon a time…
What the –
Once upon a time…
FU-
Once upon a time…
Okay, I don't know why this is happening. I keep on trying to write 'This morning, June the seventeenth, at ten twenty-three precisely, and certainly not in some vague, unspecified fairy-tale time which is only used so that the author can protect themselves against being sued for glaring anachronisms'. But what comes out is
Once upon a time…
Although wait, I DID just write my beginning, so maybe this time-
Once upon a time…
Okay, this is weird and repetitive, never a good combination. Maybe I should just stop…or…. I guess I can cope with
Once upon a time…there was a castle. No, there wasn't! There was a hotel. Yeah. What am I talking about? Anyway, in the…hotel, in the room at the very top of the tallest, ivy-covered towe- wait! I mean…in the penthouse suite…in the penthouse suite, there slept a…p…a…pr…princess! Prostitute! I meant…
Oh, whatever. I give up. As we all know, the world has not changed, people have not changed, and so stories cannot change. So prepare yourself for every cliché in the magic book. Princesses? You got 'em (though princess and prostitute are not, as we shall see, mutually exclusive terms). Glass slipper? I'll give you pairs! And lots of gruesome bits too. That's right, reader. It's time for…
Fairy tales
The compilation album
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a king and queen. The king and queen loved each other very much, and would have been happy, were it not for one thing. They were childless. They both desperately longed for a child, so much so that they could not think about anything else. They'd wanted a child since the moment they got married. Because of this, they had never been able to think about anything else, certainly not sex. But despite all their prayers, despite all their silent pleas as they lay in their huge bed (around three meters away from each other) they just could not get pregnant. They'd stolen all the herbs from the garden of the witch who lived next door, and even some of her tulips, but it did no good! Neither did pricking their fingers, cleaning their lamps, putting out milk for the brownies, being kind to little animals or gutting fish to search their innards for golden rings. In short, they were at a loss.
One day, in desperation, the queen when to visit her mother's grave. This was somewhat strange, as her mother was still alive – she lived in Woking. What had happened was this. The queen had been in love with the king when she was a teenager, but he'd had a thing for Cinderella (coughfootfetishfootfetish). So, to make herself seem like a tragic heroine, the queen had pretended that her mother was dead, and had even constructed a tomb for her. Now, crazed by her inability to get a sprog, the queen hurried here to pray for guidance. On her way, she met a wizened old man who told her that he would grant her one wish. But she really had no time for him – all she could think about was getting to her mother's grave, so she could wish and pray - and anyway, he had a funny, foreign-sounding name. Then she met a woman with a broomstick, a black cat, a pointy hat, a cauldron, a toad and a copy of "Harry Potter', who promised her her heart's desire. But the queen had no idea how someone dressed like this could possibly help her, so she hurried on her way. She also went past a sperm bank. 'God,' she thought (and she was being sincere, not blasphemous like we are today) 'I need a child so much!' Then she went past an adoption agency. 'Seriously, any child would do!' But after that, the queen had to stop appealing sincerely to God, because she had reached her mother's grave, and her mother had never liked her speaking to strange men, particularly those who enjoyed making the Holy Spirit move in young virgins.
After the queen had sat on the tombstone ('R.I.P. mother,' it read 'wherever you are. I know I'll see you again') for a while, and a few animals had come to talk to her, it started to rain so she went into the little church in the graveyard. Under the altar (no, she was not being nosy and looking at God's secret places, she had dropped her…queen ring) she found a stack of the parson's magazines. And, as she was idly flipping through these…stimulating publications, the queen suddenly realised that the tool with which she would realise her desires lay within her grasp…and she intended to grasp it!