1.

Once upon a time, the Little Mermaid came into Red Lobster. She came into Red Lobster sad and wobbly. Sad, because she missed her family and friends far away under the sea. Wobbly, because she was now an ex-Mermaid, and had still not quite gotten the hang of legs.

The Little Mermaid came into Red Lobster every Thursday. She never ordered anything, never requested a table. She just loitered in the lobby, by the aquariums, and sang to the lobsters. She had a good singing voice, but, still, customers complained. We told her she could sing to the lobsters all she wanted if she bought something—a Caesar salad, crab cakes, mozzarella cheese sticks, a cup of clam chowder—but she never did. I think she had money troubles. The market price of lobster was then around twenty-seven dollars a pound.

Our manager, Farnsworth, instituted a strict zero tolerance policy toward the Mermaid. He warned new hires about her during induction training, posted “For the Enjoyment of Customers Only” signs on the lobster tanks, stapled a poorly taken photo of the Mermaid to a corkboard in the staff room. But, if he wasn’t around, and no customers complained, we left the Mermaid alone, let her sing to the lobsters for as long as she wanted. I think she wrote the songs herself. They were extremely sad, and many of them seemed like they were meant to be duets, presumably with the lobsters, but when it came time for the lobsters to sing all we heard was silence. This made her sad songs even sadder.

When business was slow, I’d sneak away from my tables and stand near the hostess’s podium, to watch the Mermaid, listen to her sing. Usually I could catch a chorus or two before my tables became restless. The hostesses teased me, said I must have a thing for redheads. Everyone assumed I was the author of the crude graffiti concerning the Mermaid in the employees-only restroom. But, unlike my male coworkers, my interest in the Mermaid went beyond her big doe eyes and exposed navel and tiny seashell bras. It was her voice that truly enchanted me. Red Lobster piped in bland Lionel Richie and Michael Bublé hits all day—the Mermaid’s enigmatic half-silent songs were a welcome respite. I thought about asking her to teach me the lobster parts of her duets sometimes, but my voice wasn’t very good. I wouldn’t have been able to do the lobster parts justice.

Occasionally, as part of my professional responsibilities as a Red Lobster team member, I had to retrieve a lobster from the lobby aquarium during one of the Little Mermaid’s songs. I always begged my coworkers to do it instead, but to no avail. There was a color-coded chart in the staff room that clearly indicated the lobster-handling rotation. I tried to be as respectful, as inconspicuous, as possible. I’d always wait until the Mermaid closed her eyes, immersed herself in a particularly emotional vocal passage, to grab the lobster. I’d always scoop the doomed crustacean out of the tank briskly, efficiently, attempt to ferry it to the kitchen without the Mermaid even noticing that one of her duet partners was gone. But I was never brisk, never efficient, enough. Her eyes always opened, as I grasped the lobster, as it writhed and twitched and thrashed in my hands. She always noticed. She always witnessed my betrayal.

Could the Little Mermaid hear the lobsters? I can only assume she could. Did she have to teach the lobsters their parts of the duets, or did the lobsters already know the melodies, the lyrics, had they sung these songs since birth, since long before they were scooped from the sea floor by New England fishermen and transported a thousand miles to Red Lobster number 437? Did the lobsters sing these songs during their strange journey? Did they understand what awaited them in the restaurant lobby? Did they fathom why their friends, once removed from the aquarium, never came back?

The Little Mermaid never said anything when I retrieved the lobsters. She never screamed, never slapped me, never missed a beat. She just kept singing. But I knew she hated me. “I’m sorry,” I’d say, under my breath, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over, as I carried the lobster, struggling and writhing, to the kitchen. It’s not like I enjoyed this, I wanted to tell the Mermaid. It’s not like I caught the lobster, ordered it, wanted it to die. I was just doing my job. And I didn’t even want to do my job. But that’s what a job is—nine times out of ten—doing something you don’t want to do. And I only kept that job, I wanted to tell the Mermaid, as the lobster in my hands twitched and thrashed and writhed, I only kept it so I could hear her, every Thursday, singing her half of her sad, sweet, seasick songs.

2.

Once upon a time, the old woodcarver Geppetto waited for his son, Pinocchio, to come home from a party. Tick, tock, tick, tock went the woodcarver’s twenty handcrafted cuckoo clocks. Pinocchio’s curfew was midnight—it was now one-thirty. Geppetto, furious, whittled a wooden cuckoo until it was thin splinters of pine.

A real boy. That’s what Geppetto had wished for, and that’s what he had gotten, along with all the toils and tribulations that came with one. Geppetto had tried to be a good father, but Pinocchio, even with the guidance of his insectile conscience, Jiminy Cricket, had always been a handful. Geppetto’s first years of fatherhood were spent largely in emergency rooms, principal’s offices, juvenile courts, the stomach of a giant whale. Now, Pinocchio was seventeen, and Geppetto had two different bail bondsmen on speed dial and three different prescriptions for anxiety and stress. Geppetto had fired Jiminy Cricket the previous fall and experimented with other moral-advising insects—a sawfly, a mealybug, a bagworm, a banana gnat, a louse—but Pinocchio’s behavior didn’t improve. In the winter, Jiminy Cricket begged for his old job back, and Geppetto relented. Geppetto knew how tough the job market was—he himself had recently enrolled in classes to become a certified professional locksmith and a licensed acupuncturist and masseuse. There was just no money in woodcarving anymore.

Geppetto put down his whittling knife and paced around his workshop. He dusted his clocks, swept up splinters, arranged the tools in his toolbox by alphabetical order. It was no mystery what Pinocchio was up to, in the early hours of the morning. He was with one of his good-for-nothing girls: Briana, maybe, or Amber, or Nikki, Ree-Ree, Marisleidis, Honey Bee, Nyeesha. Why couldn’t Pinocchio go out with a nice Italian girl, like Sofia D’Allesandro, who had bought two of Geppetto’s wooden lawn reindeer for her grandparents last Christmas? With no Mrs. Geppetto, Pinocchio sorely needed a positive feminine influence, but instead he cavorted all hours of the night with girls whose idea of formal attire was black instead of leopard print thongs and whose names regularly got carved into the partitions separating truck stop urinals.

Mrs. Geppetto. Geppetto had tried to meet women, had tried to find Pinocchio a loving and nurturing mother, but to no avail. He was so old, so poor, so frail. And women were suspicious of a man who spent so much of his time whittling. No, there would be no Mrs. Geppetto, except for the puppet the old woodcarver kept hidden in a deadbolted closet, for special occasions, but there could still be a Mrs. Pinocchio. A nice girl. She would make all the difference, thought Geppetto, one nice girl, to impress upon Pinocchio the virtues of prudence, wisdom, moderation, and restraint. But how much longer could he wait for Pinocchio to take an interest in such a girl? For such a girl to take an interest in Pinocchio? Even with his three anti-anxiety medications, Geppetto’s blood pressure was through the roof. No, the clocks were tick-ticking, the cuckoo could come at any moment, it was time for Geppetto to take matters into his own hands. And so he cleared off his worktable, retrieved the necessary tools, selected his finest slab of Italian cherrywood, and began carving Pinocchio a nice, Italian, wooden girl.

Geppetto named the girl Arabella. She was short and slim, like the girls Pinocchio canoodled with down by the abandoned glue factory, but whereas their faces were tarty and twisted, hers was hand-carved to be warm, friendly, kind. Geppetto put the finishing touches on Arabella—sanded her blemishes, took a half-inch off her waist, rectified small asymmetries between her breasts—and then knelt dutifully on his bed and waited for a wishing star to twinkle in the sky. Unknowledgeable about astronomy, Geppetto mistook Venus for a star sufficiently twinkly to grant him a wish, and he clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and wished upon Venus that Arabella, his beautiful teenage puppet, would become a real girl. He made it explicitly clear to Venus that the Arabella, once brought to life, was not meant to be his wife, or girlfriend, or anything funny like that. He didn’t want Venus to get the wrong idea. He simply wanted Arabella animated so she could win the heart of his troubled son Pinocchio, guide him along the straight and narrow path, enhance his character and assist him with his studies, keep him from coming home at two-thirty in the morning and vomiting all over Geppetto’s customer invoices and wood lathe.

And lo, in a cerulean flash, the Blue Fairy did appear to grant gentle Geppetto his wish. She was just as beautiful as Geppetto remembered, although she was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and spandex Capri leggings instead of her customary sparkling blue gown. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the Blue Fairy moonlighted as a water aerobics and Pilates instructor. There was just no money in wish-granting anymore.

The Blue Fairy, with a wave of her wand, brought the lovely Arabella to life, and told her that if she proved to be brave, truthful, and unselfish, she would one day become a real girl. Geppetto asked the Blue Fairy if she could recruit an insect or possibly an arachnid who knew right from wrong to serve as Arabella’s conscience, but the Blue Fairy said no, she could not, for liability reasons. She couldn’t afford to be sued for any intervertebrate contractor’s misguided or fraudulent third-party advice. Instead, she gave Arabella a helpful pocket guide, Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality, as well as a Pilates and water aerobics brochure, in case Arabella ever wanted to enroll in a class. And then, in another cerulean flash, she was gone. She taught an indoor pool power plunge class at eight-thirty.

Geppetto introduced Arabella to Pinocchio the next morning, at breakfast. The old woodcarver sat his pulchritudinous puppet directly across from his son and winked at Pinocchio every time he said Arabella’s name.

“Arabella, what a beautiful girl, eh, Pinocchio?”

“Dad, she’s made of wood,” said Pinocchio.

“Cherrywood!” said Geppetto. “The finest cherrywood, imported from Sicily!”

“Umm, does anyone want my hash browns?” said Arabella, meekly. “I don’t have a digestive system.”

Geppetto enrolled Arabella as a junior in Pinocchio’s high school. He told the registrar that Arabella’s previous school transcripts had unfortunately been swallowed by a giant whale. On her first day of school, Arabella’s classmates called her Lumber Girl, threw her into the gym swimming pool to see if she would float, and carved their initials into her shins when she wasn’t looking. Arabella consulted Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality to see what the proper response was to her classmates’ bullying. Her guide said, “The bad puppet, when bullied, seeks revenge, for instance by slashing the bully’s tires, or pouring sugar in his gas tank, or planting thirty grams of cocaine in his backpack and getting him arrested for felony drug trafficking. The good puppet, when bullied, remembers that any satisfaction earned from revenge is ultimately fleeting, whereas the fortitude and unique life perspective gained from dutifully enduring the bully’s relentless verbal and/or physical abuse will last for an entire lifetime.”

Home was not much better for Arabella. There was nothing to do, Geppetto’s cat Figaro kept sharpening his claws on her ankles, and Geppetto was always making her and Pinocchio sit through candlelit spaghetti dinner together as Jiminy Cricket played “Bella Notte” over and over on a tiny accordion.

“It is a beautiful night, eh, Pinocchio?” said Geppetto, winking mischievously at Arabella and his son.

“Old man,” said Pinocchio, venomously. “If I hear ‘Bella Notte’ one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to rip Jiminy’s six legs off one by one with my bare hands, and throw you back into the stomach of that motherfucking whale.”

Despite Geppetto’s and Jiminy Cricket’s best efforts, no sparks flew between Arabella and Pinocchio. Arabella told Geppetto that Pinocchio was a mindless, crude, substance-abusing misogynist. Pinocchio told Geppetto that he could never date a girl whose handjobs would give him splinters. Arabella was attracted to some of the girls at her school, but she never spoke to them, never made eye contact, kept her feelings hidden. Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality said any feelings that felt wrong were wrong. It said, “The good puppet embraces the simplicity and convenience of celibacy.” It said, “For an alphabetical glossary of sins and malfeasances, turn to page 178.”

The weeks passed. Pinocchio got all Fs on his midterm report card. He received a ten-day outdoor suspension for baking pot brownies in Foods and Nutrition. He got two members of the color guard pregnant. Geppetto fired Jiminy Cricket a second time and tried out several non-insect arthropods as Pinocchio’s conscience—a centipede, a millipede, a sea spider, an acorn barnacle—but alas, no matter what class the conscience, what family, what order, what subphylum, Pinocchio’s slide to Gomorrah continued unabated. The last straw came on the final day of Pinocchio’s suspension, when Geppetto came home early from an acupuncture house call and discovered Pinocchio straddling the half-naked Blue Fairy on the workshop floor. The Blue Fairy said it wasn’t what it looked like, as she frantically collected her discarded clothes and lubricated magic wand, but Geppetto paid her protests no heed.

“Out!” Geppetto shouted at his son and the fairy who had brought him to life. “Out! Out! Out! You are no longer welcome in this household! And you too!” he shouted at the barnacle then serving as Pinocchio’s conscience. “Barnacle, you have failed me for the last time.”

After that, it was just Arabella and Geppetto in the old woodcarver’s workshop. There were no more candlelit spaghetti dinners. There was no more accordion-playing Jiminy Cricket. There was no more “Bella Notte.” Geppetto thought about asking Arabella if she’d like to be his daughter, but wasn’t sure if he could stand to be disappointed by another child. Instead, he asked Arabella to get a job and start paying rent. His jobs weren’t going so well. There was just no money in woodcarving, massage therapy, locksmithing, or acupuncture anymore.

The Blue Fairy had said that Arabella would become a real girl if she proved to be brave, truthful, and unselfish. Arabella thought that she had been unselfish, but she certainly hadn’t been truthful or brave. She had never spoken a word to the girls she fantasized about at school. She had never admitted to Geppetto the real reason why she had no interest in asking any boys to the upcoming Sadie Hawkins Dance. In health class, Arabella learned about her female classmates’ blooming bodies, about all their hidden, pliable parts, the parts that, for her, were just flat, rigid strips of sanded-down wood. “The good puppet does not succumb to weaknesses of the flesh, as the good puppet has no flesh,” said Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality. Arabella ran her fingers along the grain of her Sicilian cherrywood. She thought about the girl who sat in front of her in biology class. She poured on a dollop of wood polish. “Star light,” she whispered, as she rubbed the polish into her rigid parts. “Star bright / first star I see tonight / I wish I may, I wish I might . . .”

Arabella got a job at a chocolate shop. She worked after school and on weekends, five to six days a week. During Arabella’s job interview, the shop’s owner said he had been having issues with employees stealing and eating his inventory. Arabella informed him that she had no digestive system and he hired her immediately.

The day of the Sadie Hawkins dance came. All of the girls Arabella secretly admired had long before secured their dates. Arabella worked alone at the chocolate shop that night and envisioned all the girls dolled up for the dance, chiffon, velvet, silk, taffeta, lace. Geppetto had made Arabella a dress, back when he still hoped she would rescue Pinocchio from perpetual delinquency, but he had never shown it to her. Perhaps she could be his daughter, after all, he thought, kneeling on his bed, staring at the stars outside his window. She seemed good. Really, truly, sincerely good. Maybe she wouldn’t disappoint him. She could be his daughter and he could still charge her rent. Yes, it was decided. He was going to have a daughter. He was going to be the proud father of a beautiful girl. In the chocolate shop, Arabella removed one chocolate from every gift box, and threw the commandeered chocolates into the trash. “The bad puppet does not consider the consequences of his or her actions,” said Bad Puppet, Good Puppet: A Beginner’s Guide to Morality. Arabella did not consider the consequences of her actions. There was no need. She couldn’t eat chocolate—she couldn’t eat anything. She would be held completely blameless. Outside, the stars shone brightly. Arabella took the trash out to the dumpster and smiled.

3.

Once upon a time, Snow White spoke with her late stepmother’s magic mirror. The mirror was just one of many items of furniture that Snow White inherited from her stepmother. She also inherited a dining table, a bridal chest, a Gothic buffet cabinet, a four-poster bed, and a handsome mahogany armoire.

Snow White spoke with the magic mirror when her husband, the Prince, was away on hunting trips. The Prince was away on hunting trips often. In the early days of Snow White’s marriage, the Prince would leave the castle before sunrise and return at sunset with a carriage brimming with foxes, mink, pheasant, elk, quail, but, lately, the Prince’s hunting trips had extended to overnight excursions, and yet he always returned with his carriage completely empty. Snow White never asked the magic mirror why the Prince’s carriage was empty. She never asked the mirror what the Prince was actually hunting. Instead, Snow White asked the mirror trivia questions. Marsupials, U.S. state capitals, Peloponnesian War battles, the periodic table. Sometimes, when she couldn’t think of any more trivia questions, Snow White asked the magic mirror how the seven dwarfs were doing. The dwarfs, still laboring in the mines, weren’t doing so well. Happy had contracted black lung. Sleepy had developed miner’s elbow. Bashful had been fatally crushed by a coal car. Dopey had split his own hand open with a pick.

The months passed. More and more dwarfs succumbed to black lung. Grumpy fell down a 200-foot mine shaft. Sneezy developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Prince’s fruitless hunting trips expanded from weekends to entire weeks. Snow White spent her days half-heartedly singing to birds at the mouth of the wishing well where she and the Prince had first met, and her nights struggling to think of more trivia questions for the magic mirror. Some nights, she couldn’t think of a single question. Instead, she and the magic mirror made small talk. “The cucumbers are really coming in,” Snow White would say. Or, “Good tomato weather today.” Or, “Wind’s really blowing up a gale.”

A year went by. The seven dwarfs were now down to three dwarfs. Snow White’s tomatoes and cucumbers perished in a late frost. The Prince’s hunting carriages kept returning empty. Coliform bacteria were found in the wishing well. Snow White ran out of trivia questions, and instead spoke to magic mirror about more personal matters. “Magic mirror, on the wall,” she said. “Is it normal for my husband to spend so much time away from me? Is it normal for him to always say he’s too tired to touch me? Is it normal for him to constantly belittle me in front of the duchesses, the marchionesses, the countesses, viscountesses, baronesses? Is it normal for him to spend so much time with his female horseback riding coach? Is it normal for him to hide racy pictures of teenage scullery maids in our handsome mahogany armoire?”

Snow White had been a teenage scullery maid herself, when she and the Prince first met. He hadn’t known she was a princess then. He had thought she was just a hot no-strings-attached servant girl singing to birds near a wishing well. Then, the magic mirror proclaimed Snow White the fairest one of all, and Snow White’s jealous stepmother ordered a huntsman to murder her, and the huntsman instead advised Snow White to flee into the forest, where she befriended the seven dwarfs by performing a variety of domestic services. A period of contentment and whistle-accompanied manual labor followed, until Snow White’s stepmother engineered a severe case of food poisoning that rendered Snow White comatose in a glass coffin, where the Prince discovered and revived her with true love’s kiss. It seemed romantic at the time, but the more Snow White thought about it, the more red flags it raised. Why was the Prince kissing a sixteen-year-old, presumably dead girl lying in a glass coffin? How many other comatose underage maidens had he kissed? What would he have done to her if she hadn’t woken up? What was he hunting for on those hunting trips? What else was he hiding in her stepmother’s handsome mahogany armoire?

The magic mirror had proclaimed Snow White the fairest one of all, but Snow White certainly didn’t feel like the fairest one of all. She didn’t look anything like the Prince’s racy teenage scullery maids. They were all curvy, long-legged, exotic, bronzed. Snow White bought a push-up bra, platform heels, silicone buttock pads, but she was too self-conscious to wear them. She endured several sessions at a local tanning salon, but her skin merely turned an angry lobster red.

Snow White sometimes dreamt about the huntsman. It was always the same, the dream, the huntsman crawling into bed with Snow White, kissing, caressing, undressing her, running his tongue across her naked body, making love to her savagely, then tenderly, whispering into her ear that she was the fairest one of all, all while holding her still-beating heart in his hand. Snow White recounted the dream to the magic mirror, asked if it was normal for a woman to dream such dreams about a man other than her husband.

“Good sweet corn weather today,” said the magic mirror. “Azaleas are coming into bloom. Wind’s blowing up a gale.”

That August, a mining accident trapped the three still-living dwarfs two thousand feet below the earth’s surface. Doc, Dopey, Sleepy—their small, bearded faces appearing on the front pages of newspapers across the world: “Los Tres Enanos,” “Les Trois Nains,” “De Drie Dwergen.” With the Prince away on an extended hunting trip, Snow White coped during the crisis by reading the newspaper accounts of the rescue operation to the magic mirror and tossing all the wedding jewelry the Prince had given to her into the wishing well. Seventeen days into the rescue, engineers discovered a note attached to a drill bit that said, “Heigh ho, heigh ho, food and water running low.” An audio recorder subsequently lowered down the exploratory borehole captured the faint sound of whistling.

Sometimes, late at night, Snow White recalled her time in the glass coffin. How peaceful she had felt, how tranquil, waiting for her true love to wake her with a single kiss. “He had to love me, right?” she said to the magic mirror, after relating Le Monde and The Christian Science Monitor’s latest features on the dwarfs’ attempted rescue. “If he didn’t love me, he couldn’t have awakened me. So he loves me. Or, at least, he loved me. Right? Right? Right?”

“Leaves are turning,” said the magic mirror. “Good cauliflower weather today. Birds starting to get restless.”

Snow White was eating apples again. She had sworn them off after falling victim to her stepmother’s spell, refused to consume apples in any form: apple juice, applesauce, apple cider, Apple Jacks. But now, when she bit into a fresh, juicy apple, she secretly longed to succumb to another slumber-sorceress’s spell, to rest once more in a glass coffin until the Prince rescued her from stasis with true love’s kiss. “He will come back to me,” she said to the magic mirror, as a hot apple pie cooled on her windowsill. “Someday my prince will come back.”

Meanwhile, the three dwarfs, still trapped in the mine, had become international media sensations. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy t-shirts. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy plush dolls. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy vitamin-enriched cereals. There were Doc, Dopey, and Sleepy marital aids. A club remix of the dwarfs’ subterranean whistling charted in seven different countries. Licensing agreements and endorsement deals were lowered to the dwarfs along with water, flashlights, medical supplies, and food.

After returning with yet another empty hunting carriage, the Prince informed Snow White that he would be away for the entirety of fox season. “How long is fox season?” Snow White asked, but the Prince was already gone. Snow White tried to keep herself busy with domestic tasks—sweeping, mopping, dusting, rinsing, polishing—the mindless routines that had always brought her comfort, distracted her from her troubles, inspired her to gaily whistle; but try as she might, she couldn’t sweep away her pain. She couldn’t swiffer away her sadness. She couldn’t squeegee away her loneliness. She couldn’t whistle anymore.

Two months later, the dwarfs were successfully rescued from the mine. Reporters from all over the world were there to greet them at the surface, as were celebrities and foreign dignitaries, as were film and television agents, as was the Prince, who presented the dwarfs with gold medals and baskets of gourmet summer sausage and cheese. Snow White, meanwhile, remained at the castle. She wanted to see her old friends, to celebrate with them their improbable rescue, but couldn’t stand to be hassled by the cameras, the journalists, the duchesses, countesses, baronesses, the crowds.

Snow White stopped sweeping. She stopped mopping, wiping, dusting. She stopped singing to the birds, stopped whistling while she worked, stopped wishing at the wishing well. Mostly, she just spoke to the magic mirror.

“Magic mirror, on the wall,” said Snow White. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

“Well,” said the magic mirror. “Fairest is such a nebulous term . . .”

“The fairest,” said Snow White. “You know, the most beautiful, most attractive, most enticing, smokin’, bangin’, bootylicious.”

“Right, but beauty is such a subjective quality . . .”

“The loveliest, prettiest, cutest, hottest, finest, flyest.”

“And of course wise men say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . .”

“The bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the hostess with the mostess, the caterpillar’s spats.”

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure . . .”

“The sweetest honey, the phattest shorty, the foxiest lady, the stone coldest fox.”

“And really, who am I to say . . .”

“The fairest!” Snow White exploded. “Come on! Tell me! The fairest! Who is it? Is it Duchess What’s-Her-Name? Is it Viscountess What’s-Her-Face? Is it one of those goddamn teenage scullery maids? Who’s the fairest of them all?”

“After all,” said the magic mirror. “I’m just furniture.”

The three dwarfs never had to work in the mines again. They made the rounds of all the talk shows, guest starred on television sitcoms, signed six-figure endorsement deals, hawked energy drinks, snack foods, domestic beer. The house where they had lived with Snow White and the other four, dearly departed dwarfs was redeveloped into a mine-themed water park. The mine where they had labored was repurposed as a heavily advertised tourist trap. The forest through which Snow White had fled the huntsman was converted into a casino, a golf course, and a forty-six-story luxury hotel.

Snow White, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony. Her mother, the queen, had wished for her unborn child to possess these physical attributes, and though she died during childbirth, she got her wish. “Why couldn’t my mother have wished for something more practical?” Snow White asked the magic mirror. “Why couldn’t she have wished for intelligence? Why couldn’t she have wished for kindness, healthiness, sanity, safety, love? Why couldn’t she have wished me a happy childhood, a painless adolescence, a good marriage, a peaceful and contented dotage? Why couldn’t she have wished to not fucking die the moment I was born? Fuck snow-white skin. Fuck blood-red lips. Fuck ebony hair. Where’s the peroxide? I’m dying that shit blonde tonight.”

Snow White still possessed the glass coffin. It was in an underground floor of the castle, in storage, along with unwanted inheritances from Snow White’s stepmother: a throne, a cauldron, a fondue set, back issues of Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. The coffin was still furnished with comfortable bedding and a pillow. Snow White had joked to the Prince that it would make a perfect extra bed for a guest room, back when Snow White and the Prince were still speaking to each other, back when it was still conceivable that Snow White might ever have guests.

One thing Snow White never told the magic mirror was that she sometimes lay in the coffin. She always did it early in the morning, when everyone else in the castle was sleeping, when she herself couldn’t sleep, when her thoughts were racing with nostalgia and regret. She descended the basement stairs with a candle and a Red Delicious apple. She traversed the piles of her stepmother’s bric-a-brac. She opened the coffin’s glass case, and carefully climbed inside. “Only true love will awake me,” she thought, as she bit into the apple, blew out her candle. “Only a kiss will shake me from this evil spell.” Snow White, skin scarlet as strawberries, lips glossy as glass, hair bleached as bone, waiting in the darkness desperately for her rescuer, her prince, to come.