Grimm's Fairy Tales with no pay-off
Image courtesy of Pexels
Rapunzel
For the sake of the length of this piece, we are going to skip the opening of this tale to the part where Rapunzel is already in the tower, as we can all agree that all of this could have been avoided if her parents had just ordered the rapunzel that they were stealing online after being caught, but that particular ending would negate most of this story, so here we are. So, pretty girl, long hair locked in a tower that somehow has no doors or staircase and thus there is literally no way that she could have been locked in there unless they built the room around her and she was stupid enough to allow that to happen. So, a prince is riding through the forest and hears some unbelievable singing, presumably it would have to be on the level of Taylor Swift doing “The Last Time” for the trouble he is about to go to in the rest of this. He eventually locates the source of the singing and keeps coming back before learning by watching the sorceress how to enter the tower. Unfortunately, this is a fairy-tale from the nineteenth century, so his marriage would be a political decision to appease another European monarch, to whom he is likely related. Thus, before he can go back, he is married off to his cousin in Bohemia for political purposes and is never able to return. Rapunzel, I guess stays there forever, not sure what the sorceress’ game plan was.
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel (Hansel? Hansel?) and Gretel have been dumped in the middle of the woods by their parents so that they don’t starve during a famine, needless to say they are quickly sentenced for child neglect. But back to the forest, Hansel and Gretel are lost after their trail of breadcrumbs has been eaten by birds and they have been found by a witch, who is propositioning them with a smattering of sweet treats. They hop in her windowless, white van and follow her back to her house, which they were told was made of gingerbread. Unfortunately, when they get there it is nothing but rubble as gingerbread has minimal structural integrity, particularly in the quantity that is required to make a whole house. Instead of her original plan, the witch keeps Hansel and Gretel in the van and feeds them with the gingerbread that was on the floor, whilst she calls her real estate agent to see if she was still in her Escrow period and can look for a new property, otherwise in her own words, she is “buggered” because she can in no way afford the loan repayments as the salary for being a witch is not very high. Hansel and Gretel both contract terminal stomach problems for breaking the 5-second rule when eating the remnants of the house. Moral of the story never break the 5-second rule.
Cinderella
Cinderella and her “ugly” stepsisters all hear word of a ball at the royal palace, where the crown prince shall select his princess. Cinderella is placed on cleaning duty that night and her line manager refuses to let her switch shifts, even though Karen said that she did not mind as she needed some time off on Tuesday to go to bingo anyway. Alas, no fairy godmother is forthcoming, as that seems like a bit of an ex Machina, and she does not attend the ball. One of her stepsisters is actually selected to marry the prince, as once again the Grimm Fairy Tales are from the nineteenth century and so it is not really his choice. The prince and Cinderella eventually meet at the wedding and begin a sordid affair and sneaking around behind Cinderella’s stepsister’s back, leading to something of a moral quandary. Despite Cinderella’s protestations the prince confesses, and the stepsister divorces the prince, and he and Cinderella decide to “give it a go”. They learn that their connection was merely physical and they part ways. The Prince then has a second marriage to his cousin in Moravia, also for political reasons, and Cinderella returns to zero-hour contract cleaning jobs, whilst her stepsister lives it up as an Instagram influencer in Bali, paying for it with a combination of alimony and sponsorship deals with companies that sell off-brand teas wholesale.
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood is going to visit her grandmother in what used to be a large forest, but due to deforestation it is now an out-of-town retail park, with a lovely selection of restaurants including Nando’s and an M&S food hall. Red Riding Hood takes the bus to see her grandmother and so arrives much quicker than in the original story. She arrives, having not met a magical talking wolf, and is enjoying a lovely M&S scone with her grandmother when a wild animal breaks into the house. This sizeable wolf, which is naturally far too powerful for a small girl and an elderly woman to even attempt to defend themselves. Red Riding Hood cries out “please can a hunter come and save us.” “What a ridiculous thing to say” says her grandmother “why would a hunter be here? It’s a retail park. What is your mother teaching you?” The two are mauled by the wolf, who itself probably should not have been in a retail park, but that is the consequence of removing animals from their natural habitat in favour of John Lewis having a prime out-of-town location with which to sell me a high-quality angle poise desk lamp at a reasonably competitive price.
Views expressed in InQuire's satire articles are those only of the writer and InQuire does not endorse any of these opinions, this section is dedicated to entertainment purposes only. We use fictitious characters in our stories, except in regards to public figures being satirised directly.
