in high school i used to write a weekly newsletter for my unfortunate friends, and each week i would appropriate a story from a fairy tale, a classic novel or the bible and make fun of them by turning them into caricatures. those stories won't make me a better writer but they were fun, and i miss indulging in them. this one is for the first of my high school friends, who is about to be married in less than 10 days.
A princess with the expected endowments of beauty, brains, and likeable neurotic innocence finds herself unhappy with the world. first of all, her best friend was a male rodent she had specifically procured from a high end market. the male rodent promptly gave birth and made our princess very confused about reproduction. she also wanted to find her one true love so that she could give away her collection of Men's Perfume (which she sometimes secretly used on herself).
However in your typical princess fashion she was trapped in her home where a tall, bespectacled soldier guarded her. every time she tried to leave he would think of ways to stop her, by scaring her with beetroot-stained sandwiches, by farting around all the exit points, by catapulting tissue boxes at her, and finally, by singing at a pitch which made bats vomit.
But she was determined, and one day the princess finally escaped her abode, finding herself lost on a carriage. within the carriage were some kind peasants who befriended the princess. Even though she had trouble understanding them as they talked faster than a real estate agent at an auction, she made quick friends of them and soon adopted their complex practices, including: Standing Without Holding Onto Anything, Waiting for Total Silence Before Screaming, and everybody's favourite, Who Can Rip The Princess' Stockings Off Without Her Noticing. despite her new acquisition of peasants she was still uncertain about her world, with the scary soldier and a sex-changing rat. she was also running out of men's perfume.
it was during one of these journeys when a Charming Prince from far away Dilmah spotted her. he had never seen someone with such uncoordinated grace, such an inviting, hyenaesque laugh. he was drawn to her like a pensioner to a pokie machine, like a bogan to a stubby of beer, like influenza to swine. he hadn't felt this happy since the last time Australia lost a cricket test match (and even then, who knew if it was rigged or not).
The handsome prince took the courage to go to her, but he did not fix her problems. instead, he offered some of his own problems. their respective problems cancelled each others' out, because in maths two negatives make a positive, and if you thought her mouse was strange you should see his sari-dressing dog. Their world became magical.
The prince built her a palace where they could be safe, it even had a spare room for one of her peasants. He promised they would grow old together, and they did.
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