Compound Fracture

By Matthew Patterson

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Tell me a story, please.”

“What kind of story would you like to hear?”

“Tell me a story about... fairy princesses and teddy bears and princes and magic and all kinds of good stuff!”

“I’ve got just the thing. Once upon a time, there was a beautiful kingdom of the Moon. All the planets were at peace and the Moon had a giant party to celebrate.”

“What did they eat at the party?”

“Um... moon punch... moon finger sandwiches... moon pie... strange and wonderful stuff. Anyway, on the night of this party, the jealous witch Aproh came and kidnapped the Princess of the Moon because the witch had heard that the Princess was the most beautiful woman in all the land.”

“Was she really the most beautiful, Daddy?”

“Indeed she was. Her beauty was of such splendor that all photographs of her were considered worth their weight in gold. (Consequently, the Palace photographer was rather well-guarded.) Anyway, the witch took her back to a forest on Earth and held her prisoner in a house made of graham crackers, held together by vanilla icing, and decorated with licorice.”

“Ew. She was a really mean witch. Licorice is icky.”

“She was very mean. So mean, in fact, that she was going to cook the princess in her oven and eat her up!”

“Did she really?”

“That was her plan. But fortunately, a kind woodcutter had seen the witch take the princess into the woods. He told his friends the Eight Gnomes about it, for it was known throughout the land that the leader of the Gnomes, Wrinkleclogskin, could solve any problem put to him.”

“What were the other Gnomes’ names, Daddy?”

“Well, let’s see. There were Sleepy... Dipsy... Cheeky... Yoshi... Bunny... Bernie... Shirley... and their leader Wrinkleclogskin. So old Wrinkleclogskin thought long and hard, and decided that the best way to rescue the princess would be to distract Aproh with some tasty children.”

“She liked to eat children?”

“The witch liked to eat anything. Once, when there was no other food in her house, she ate frozen hot dog buns covered in honey until her stomach blew up like a balloon. But that’s another story. So Wrinkleclogskin called up two kids that lived next door, Hansel and Jill. Hansel was greedy and fat, and Jill was dumb enough to follow him everywhere. Wrinkleclogskin told them about the witch’s graham cracker house, standing there, unguarded, in the woods. Of course, Hansel had to have it, so he dragged Jill along with him. Wrinkleclogskin’s plan was for the greedy children to eat up the house and make Aproh mad enough to eat them and draw her attention away from the princess so she could get away.”

“But what if the witch had already eaten the princess?”

“Nobody ever said that gnomes were very smart. So Hansel and Jill made their way to the house and ate their way inside. However, they found three rooms to choose from. Jill opened the first door and was incinerated by a burst of flames from the dragon inside.”

“Ouch.”

“Hansel, in shock, bumped open the second door and was blasted with a frigid wind from the cold-hearted terror from the frozen North, Janet Reno. He turned into an ice cube.”

“Brr. Janet Reno. Daddy, I thought you were going to tell me a happy story!”

“It gets happier. The witch came back and saw the hole eaten in the side of her house, and when she went inside, she saw the remains of the kids. Hansel she stir-fried for lunch, and Jill she saved in the refrigerator for later. But that’s beside the point. Anyway, she got very mad that someone had broken in and used her black magic to turn her nice little graham cracker cottage into a fifty-story castle surrounded by thorny rose bushes.”

“Ooh, pretty!”

“No, these were evil black poison roses. The princess found this out when she leaned out her window to pick one. She pricked her finger on one of the thorns and fell into an enchanted sleep that could only be undone by a kiss from her true love.”

“And of course, he just happened to be wandering by at the moment.”

“Hey, you’re catching on quick. The prince that loved her had been wandering the Earth trying to find her, having many adventures of his own, including one particularly unpleasant one with a fly-eating old woman who lived in a shoe.”

“I remember! You told me that story! Same guy?”

“The very same. The prince came near the castle and demanded that the witch let him in. She shouted, ‘Not by the hair on my shinny-shin-shin!’ ”

“Eew!”

“Nobody ever said that witches were polite. The prince, repulsed by the witch’s offensive mention of unnecessary body hair, set off to find a convenient cherry picker to get his princess down safely. However, the only thing he found was an old man selling acorns. Desperate, the prince traded all his gold for the acorns.”

“That wasn’t very smart. Why didn’t the prince just buy some weed killer?”

“Well, the prince led a sheltered life. So he planted the acorns just outside the castle, and overnight, they grew into a huge papyrus-reed ladder that reached to the very tippy-top of the castle.”

“I thought papyrus only grew in Egypt.”

“It was, uh, magic papyrus. Yeah, that’s the ticket. So the prince climbed up the ladder and carried the princess back down. When they reached the ground, he kissed her and she woke up... and promptly slapped him with a sexual harassment lawsuit. And they lived litigiously ever after.”

“What? I thought he was her true love?”

“True love or not, it’s still wrong for a boy to do anything to a girl without her consent. And that’s the moral of this story.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, the prince appealed the suit... his lawyer introduced a motion to dismiss, calling it ‘frivolous’ and ‘detrimental to the public image of the kingdom of the Moon.’ Then it got tied up in appeals for a few years. I think the princess finally got awarded the prince's vacation home in Atlantis or some such."

"What about the witch?"

"Nobody noticed her sneak off in the crowd of lawyers, as more often than not a lawyer and a user of black magic will radiate the same aura. She wound up doing the late-night talk show circuit, trying to drum up some sympathy. I think later she started selling *YAWN* a cosmetic line... fifteen easy payments of $19.95... call this number today... zzzzzzzzzzzz..."

“Well, that certainly took long enough. I thought he’d never stop spewing that garbage. I wish he’d learn some real stories instead of trying to make up his own. Wonder what’s on TV?”

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