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Once upon a time, in the highly idealized middle of nowhere, there was an enchanted mansion in which a happy blonde-haired, blue-eyed couple lived. With them were a maid and a butler who attended their every need.
The butler was a good man, slightly mentally deficient but friendly and complacent. He walked with a stoop and took great time and care in answering the door, even when it was the absent-minded wife who had, once again, locked herself out.
The maid was another type of human being entirely. She was rather like a spider, with long, thin legs and a fat middle. She carried a constant sneer, even at her employers. This was partially because she was angry at their insistence on having children. She thought children were nasty little rodents to be killed, especially pretty ones that would grow up and receive the limitless love of the world, as she never had. Her room was full of black magic items, mostly love charms bought on sale from the local witchcraft store. However, she had her collection of hexes.
She was saving her most important curse for the daughter-to-be of the affluent couple for which she worked. Her goal was to make the girl sleep forever, to grow old and die without ever enjoying her beautiful, rich youth. The maid planned to place this curse the instant the little girl was born.
Her curse of choice could be found within the “Fairy Tales Revived” portion of one of her spellbooks; however, it, the “Sleeping Beauty” curse, required a spindle. The maid was unsure of what a spindle was, nor how she would come upon one, so she settled on a bath towel which she, the maid, had put in the laundry herself.
The baby girl was born and, a few days after the family had come back from the hospital, the maid found her opportunity to curse the baby. She stood over the baby and said to her, “When you’re about sixteen or so, I will give you a towel which you will use, and, upon said use, you will never wake up again until a prince kisses you.” With a smirk, she departed, knowing full well that there were no princes in modern day American suburbia.
Shirley was Xeroxing copies of her ’zine with her boyfriend, Paul. “So, I was thinking that sometimes my life was sort of like a fairy tale, you know. Did you ever see ‘Sleeping Beauty’? I’m an orphan and I live with my three fairy godmothers.”
Paul, who was looking out the window, said, “They’re your three gay uncles.”
“All right, so they’re fairy godfathers, but it’s the same principle.”
“I suppose that you’d better watch out for spindles, then.”
Shirley dumped a pile of copies onto the table behind her and sat on the Xerox machine itself. “What’s a spindle?”
“It has to do with a spinning wheel, I think,” Paul said, beginning to sort the copies into distinct copies.
“Like making your own thread?”
“Something like that. I’ve never really given it that much thought.” Though he had, in fact, given thought to many fairy tales. It was his obsession, to say the least. Paul was a big Brothers Grimm fan. He liked to read all of the classic fairy tales before Disney got its dirty corporate hands on them. For example, he was willing to tell anyone that would listen that in Cinderella, the evil sisters cut off parts of their feet so they (the feet) would fit into the glass slipper, and that their eyes were ultimately picked out by birds. And that the Little Mermaid originally died in the end.
“I’ll steer clear of that sort of thing,” she said.
“Do you have a wicked stepmother?” he asked her.
“My father was only married to my mom. As for step-aunts, did I mention that my uncles are going to the Gay Pride march in Washington, DC, this weekend?”
“Are you home alone?” His eyes were sparkling.
“Not all the time. There’s going to be some maid, but I’m sure she won’t be there during the evenings. You have to sleep over, that is, when you aren’t working.” She winked.
Paul worked for Domino’s. He was a delivery boy. It brought in enough money to make ends meet and then some, which he was putting towards his college education.
“Sounds like a plan,” he told her as he began to pack his bag. “In fact, I should get to work now. I’m going to be late.”
It had really been rough when she had accidentally killed the parents. The maid had been playing with her set of matchbox cars, and it was only after she had smashed the navy blue mini-Porsche that she remembered that that one had been a voodoo car of sorts, representing her employers’ vehicle. “Damn,” she muttered. She made a mental note to keep track of where their daughter, Shirley, went.
“Okay, honey,” Tom, the eldest of the gay triplets, said to her, “now try to be nice to the maid while we’re gone.”
“Yes,” Tim, the middle, gushed, “I’ve met her, and she’s a lovely little lady.”
“No question, she will do an absolutely fabulous job on our little home here,” Jim, the baby, finished, patting her on the head. “Now, are you sure you don’t want to go with us? It was so much fun last time when we all went as a family!”
Shirley shook her head. “Last time the lesbians thought I was parading their cause, not yours, and hit on me. I’d like to avoid reliving that experience. I’ll try not to burn down the house, get pregnant, or offend the maid. I promise.”
They all cringed at the thought of heterosexual intercourse and scurried out, shouting a multitude of ta-ta’s and toodleoo’s to her as they did so.
It was only a few minutes after they had left and she was settling down to watch TV that the doorbell rang. Irritated, she got the door. There stood a little woman who was definitely, by her uncles’ definition, “apple-shaped;” all her weight went to the middle. (Shirley, who was the more fortunate “pear,” had her weight distribution more in the thighs, giving her a “delightful hourglass figure and flat tummy any of us would die for.”)
“How can I help you?” Shirley asked the little woman.
“You dyed your hair pink!” the maid cried out in dismay. How was she going to destroy this girl’s youth, vitality, and beauty if she lacked beauty? “Sleeping Beauty” was the title of the curse. “And your nose is pierced!”
“It is,” Shirley replied uncertainly. She hoped this woman wasn’t some sort of a door-to-door bible saleswoman or something.
Recognizing Shirley’s confusion, the maid smiled widely, extended a hand, and introduced herself. “I am here to clean your house.”
“Oh,” sighed Shirley in relief. “You know, even gay males are males, and this place is a complete and utter pigsty. I’m not sure where or how you plan to get started, but good luck from me,” she said, turning around and going back to watch television again.
The first thing the maid did, strangely enough, was to wash all the towels in the house. Shirley was considering this as she grabbed a dirty towel from under her bed to use after she came out of the shower. It was her theory that a towel should be used three times before being thrown in the wash, and this towel was onto number three.
She stepped out of the shower, wrapped her towel around herself, and went into her room to change. Unfortunately, the towel was still wet from her body and previous uses, and would not dry her hair. She went into the towel closet and grabbed one of the newly-washed towels and wrapped it around her head turban-style.
The maid was waiting expectantly downstairs for the thump. When she heard it, she excitedly leaped up, punched her hand into the air, and yelled, “Score!” She then scurried upstairs to examine the girl. Shirley was lying in the hall, sleeping, next to the open closet. Her pink hair was only halfway in the turban-towel, which was on the floor beside her.
At this point, the maid proceeded to use her much-practiced “evil laugh.”
Carrying Shirley downstairs was a struggle. Although she was not fat, she was a pear, as opposed to a stick, therefore a little difficult to lift.
All that work made the evil maid very hungry, so she proceeded to call Domino’s to get a pizza delivered.
“Hey, Paul, we got a call from your girlfriend’s house,” Paul’s employer said to Paul. “Wanna take this one?”
The doorbell rang and the maid opened it. Paul looked at her with a raised eyebrow, realized she was probably the maid Shirley had mentioned, then smiled and extended a hand. (She thought it was for money, he thought it was for shaking.) She abruptly blushed and informed him that she had to get her wallet, scurrying out.
He put the pizza on the kitchen table and walked into the family room, where Shirley was sleeping on the couch. He cooed, clapped his hands together, and sat down on the edge of the couch beside her. “So cute when she’s sleeping!” he whispered to himself. He bent down to give her a kiss on the nose.
Upon doing so, her eyes flickered open.
Behind them, there was a gasp. They both looked at the maid.
“You’ve never seen people kiss before?” Shirley asked irritably.
“My plans! You have befouled my plans!” the maid shrieked at Paul. He nervously started to shift himself away from her. “She was going to sleep away her youth and become an old spinster like myself! She was going to suffer until a prince woke her up, you good for nothing pizza boy! You have ruined everything!”
He blinked. The corners of his lips turned down in confusion.
“She’s been cursed since she was a child! If she ever were to use my towels, she would fall asleep until a prince kissed her! But you aren’t a prince! You’re a pizza boy!”
Shirley looked at him. “You’re the prince of my heart, sweetie,” she said jokingly, patting him on the head.
“Take this seriously!” the maid hollered. They both jumped.
“Actually, the prince is the son of a king, right?” Paul asked the maid.
“Of course... You don’t mean to tell me that you’re the heir to the throne of some obscure country in the former USSR, do you?” (It was lucky the maid had relied on witchcraft, not guns.)
“Actually, my dad, the drunken worthless bastard he is, was the prom king in his day. With my mom, the prom queen. It was sweet, up until he knocked her up and they got unhappily married and spent the rest of their lives working minimum wage,” Paul explained.
“Damn!” the maid yelled, kicking the wall.
“Um,” Shirley said, “You’re fired.”
Shirley and Paul spent the rest of the weekend burning the towels, buying new ones, and cleaning the house. He knocked her up, and they got married and lived happily ever.