marriage Posts

21Oct
2

The New Mouse of the House

Once upon a time, a mouse decided it was finally time for his two sons to marry, and that they would find their brides in the traditional way: they would gnaw at the stem of a sunflower until it fell, and marry the girl the flower pointed to.

Now, the house the mice lived in had no mirrors or other reflective surfaces, and for good reason: the two sons had no idea they were mice. Long ago, their father had decided he would really rather be human, so they lived as humans, the boys would marry humans, and, hopefully, their children would be more human than mouse.

So the brothers went out and gnawed on their sunflowers until they fell. The older brother’s flower fell, luckily, just towards the house of the very girl he had been wooing. He immediately went over and spent a long time convincing her to be his bride.

The younger brother, however, found his flower pointing toward the woods, and he walked for a very long time before he found anyone at all. When he finally did, it was in a quiet little cabin under a lovely willow tree. She had a pleasant voice , and readily agreed to be his bride.

Also, she was a mouse.

He fretted about that a little on the way home, but reasoned that his dad was a mouse, and wouldn’t mind so much.

He was, of course, mistaken, and he was very worried indeed when he made his way back to the cabin. As a test, his father had instructed him to have his mouse weave a sample of the finest cloth ever for him.

He was even more worried when he explained the situation to his mouse, and she simply handed him a piece of cheese. It was a delicious piece of cheese, surely, but not at all what his father had requested.

So he did all he could of to do, and took his bride home, thinking to win his father over with her grace, beauty, and adorable whiskers.

But just as the pair were approaching the house, something surprising happened.

His father flew into such a rage that he physically attacked the little mouse, knocking her backwards into a pond. Without thinking, the son jumped into the water and swam after his bride. As he pulled her back to the shore, he got the greatest shock of his life: he was clearly a mouse, and not a man at all. Years of prejudice against mice  and identity issues finally made sense to him.

He left  his house, married the mouse, and they lived happily ever after.

The End

Source: The Mouse Bride, Finnish fairy tale

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
13Sep
0

Peter in the Squash

Once upon a time, a man named Peter genetically engineered a pumpkin about the size of a house. At least, it was about the size of his house, which was about as large as a shed.

You see, he had lately been having more fights than usual with his wife — over the remote control, or whose turn it was to cook, or who should be responsible for cleaning up after the three toed sloth who lived just outside their house.

The solution, Peter decided, was that he and his wife should live in separate spaces. However, Peter didn’t have the money for another house, and so he genetically engineered a pumpkin.

His wife was less than excited when she came home from work to find that all her things, along with a cot and an icebox, had been moved into a giant pumpkin. But live in it she did, and she didn’t say a word to Peter.

Sometimes, he could faintly hear her on the phone, or walking from one side of the pumpkin to the other. But for the most part, they never really saw each other, and Peter had never been happier.

However, he was not at all happy when he came home and saw a bulldozer demolishing his home. When all the dust cleared, one thing was left: a slightly larger than average squash, with a hole cut into it for a door.

The End.

Source: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Nursery Rhyme.

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Nursery Rhymes and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,
15Jun
0

The Icky Bridegroom

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was promised in marriage by her family to someone she did not care for at all. He was a short thin man with a narrow mustache and shifty eyes. Worst of all, he pronounced schedule “shedule” and even though she made it a point to talk about her busy”ska-edule” whenever he came to visit, he unfortunately still wished to marry her.

Before the wedding could take place however, her parents insisted she visit the man at home, to make sure he had no terrible secrets, like bodies under his deck or cats that bit. He provided her with a poor map he had printed off the internet, but to make sure she could find her way home again, she dropped lentils as she went. She didn’t like her mother’s lentil soup anyway.

She soon reached a little house in the shadow of a giant willow tree. As she slowly approached it, however, she was startled by this:

“Brraaaaack! Don’t go in there!”

“Braaack! you’ll regret it!”

It took some time, but she managed to track the voice to a parrot sitting in the tree above her.

“Shhh!” she said. “He’ll hear!”

There were footsteps then, and the sound of the door creaking. Quickly, she darted behind a chest of drawers behind which there was an extraordinary amount of dust.

Her bridegroom to be had indeed entered the room, but luckily he had not noticed her. She could tell because of the next few things he did.

First, he sat down in the middle of the floor and took off his shoes. After taking a long whiff, he cut his toenails. He then swept them into a little pile and put them in his pocket.

Next, he filled a small kiddie pool with cologne and got into it. He stayed in there for quite some time. After a while, she could feel her eyes burning from all the fumes in the air, but she dared not move or risk giving away her location.

Finally, he stood before the mirror, occasionally murmuring things like “You’re a tiger. Rawr!” or “Rock my world! Rock it hard!” while sometimes slipping his hand into his pocket and chewing on something he had found there.

And then he went into the kitchen, and his bride to be made her escape.

“Brraaack! Going already?” called the parrot.

She tore down the path, following the trail she’d left for herself, and immediately told her father what she’d seen upon arriving home.

* * *

On the day before the wedding, the sun shone and people arrived, mostly not on time. But during the rehearsal dinner, the bride-to-be stood up and shyly (she hoped) asked to make a speech for the man who would be her husband.

“I had a dream,” she began. “I dreamed I went to your house, in the woods, and met a parrot who told me to go no further. I dreamed I heard you coming, and hid behind some furniture. And I dreamed I watched you do disgusting things, like bathe in cologne.”

At this point, several noses pricked up near the bridegroom.

“And smell your own feet.”

“And cut your toenails.”

“And collect and eat them.”

All eyes turned on the bridegroom, who was nervously chewing on something, his hand in his pocket.

The End

Source: The Robber Bridegroom, Brothers Grimm

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
15Jun
0

Princess/Dr. Sheep

Once upon a time, there was a king who was not quite all there, mentally speaking. The King’s family and kingdom and the castle staff were used to his eccentricities, whether they included declaring random days “Pancake Day” or swimming in the shallow fountain with his pet frog, and considered him, on the whole, harmless.

Until the day, however, that he betrothed his only daughter and heir to a sheep. Everyone waited for the king to forget about the promise, or change his mind, but as the day of the wedding drew nearer, and the king seemed sure as ever that he really did want his daughter to marry the sheep, thank you, everyone started to get very nervous. Especially his daughter.

So she came up with a plan that she hoped would work despite how silly it seemed in her head. She informed her father that in order to be married, she had to have the exact the right outfit. And the exact right outfit was a lab coat belonging to the finest doctor in all the land.

He agreed, and she was relieved. After all, she figured, the finest doctor in all the land was not terribly likely to give up her lab coat, on account of how she’d be needing to wear it herself.

But it turned out, that Dr. Jane the Finest Doctor in the Kingdom had a spare, and was happy to help out the king. She had the coat delivered before nightfall.

So, another plan had to be worked out. This time, the princess informed her father that she would need the perfect veil before she could wed. The only veil that would do must be made of sheep’s wool, so that she and the bridegroom would match perfectly as they walked down the aisle. Her husband-to-be would be needing all his wool for the big day, she figured, and there would be none to spare for her veil.

Unfortunately, she had not specified which sheep the wool should come from, and her father simply sent someone to shear one of the other sheep. The veil was ready by nightfall the next day.

Having no other choice, the princess sadly gathered up the veil, the coat, and an old ring of her mother’s, and snuck away from the castle.

She wandered for some time, before finding herself in another castle all together, and, after covering herself with the woolly veil, she was granted a position in the castle kitchen.

The cook already there was a bitter sort, and always made disparaging remarks about the princess’ woolly exterior and funny way of laughing. The princess tried not to be bothered by it, but she wasn’t particularly used to people being mean to her, or hating her for no reason at all.

One night, she was so distracted by a comment the cook had made about her teeth, that she wasn’t paying careful attention to the soup she was preparing. Once she sent it out to the banquet hall for the banquet in honor of the prince being held that very night, she realized that her mother’s ring, which she’d been wearing, was missing. She thought back to when she had last seen it, and knew for certain that it had fallen into the soup.

Obviously, the situation had to be remedied. She needed that ring back, and didn’t love the idea of some unsuspecting banquet frequenter choking to death on it. So, as soon as she got the chance, she snuck out of the kitchen wearing her lab coat, and spent the evening lurking around the perimeter of the banquet hall.

Sure enough, when the soup was served, it was the prince himself who took a big gulp and promptly began to choke. The princess sprang into action, administering the Heimlich to the poor prince, and pocketing the slimy ring, assuring the prince she would find out where it had come from. He thanked her again and again, and begged her to stay and dance. She agreed to one dance with him, but had to run out afterward and return to the kitchen.

The very next day, unbeknownst to the princess in the kitchen, the prince began a search for Dr. Jane the Finest Doctor in the Kingdom, who had, after all, saved his life. The princess had no idea this was happening until the entire staff received an invitation to the wedding.

All the way there, and all the while they waited for the ceremony, the princess felt very sad, and she did not know why. Finally, as she played with the ring in her lap, she had a realization: It should have been her! The prince must have gone looking for the doctor because he read the name on her lab coat and tracked her down. What’s more, she realized that she wanted to marry the prince, even though she’d only met him the one time.

And so she did the only thing she could. She interrupted the wedding in a terribly dramatic way, and showed the ring to the prince as proof it had been in fact she who had saved his life. He exchanged her for the doctor on the spot, and asked that the wedding continue, but with her own name substituted for the doctor’s. And that was that.

Dr. Jane went back to her hospital, somewhat glad she hadn’t gone through with marrying someone with such a short attention span. And back in the other kingdom, the King decided to start a new career as an exotic horticulturist, and the Sheep became King. All agreed he was a wise and just ruler.

The End.

Source: Donkeyskin, Perrault

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,
15Jun
0

Hamsters On His Head

Once upon a time, there was a man who was charming, smart, and not terribly ugly. However, he also went about town with two hamsters perched upon his head, and eventually, he began to realize that the rodents probably had something to do with his inability to find a wife.

“Girls find them scary,” one informed him. “Look, they’re fighting up there right now.”

And indeed they were.

Finally, he met another girl who was able to look past his strange headwear, and married him. After they’d only been married a few weeks, he was informed he needed to go away for some time, since he had one of those mysterious jobs which sometimes requires going away for long periods of time without letting anyone else in on exactly what it is you are doing.

Before he left, he gave her all his keys and numberpad passwords — “Here’s for the security system, the front door, the balcony, the back door, the closet of tiny clothes, the speakers, the poolhouse, the pool, the greenhouse (with a switchblade in case that Man Eating Plant acts up), the oven and the robot butler. Oh, and here is the only one you are not to use. It opens that closet there.”

Of course, as soon as her husband had left, his wife immediately went to the mysterious closet.

Inside, hundreds of cages were stacked one on top of the other, all filled with hamsters. Teddy bear hamsters, Chinese hamsters, Winter white hamsters, Campbells, and tiny little Roborovski hamsters. They were fighting and playing and eating and drinking, and of course, pooping, which they obviously did quite a lot of, since the closet floor was coated in hamster droppings.

The wife was so surprised, she dropped the key onto the floor, and when she picked it up, it was all covered in excrement. What terrible condition for hamsters to live in! She made a few phone calls, and soon all the hamsters were on their way to new homes, save a few, whose cages she cleaned. That mess must be why the hamsters keep ending up on his head, she reasoned. They have no where else to go.

Just as she was finishing up, her phone rang. The caller was her husband, informing her that he was on his way back, since those good-for-nothings didn’t need him after all and didn’t have the decency to tell him before he left.

She panicked then, not sure how to explain to her husband what she had done. Perhaps, if he didn’t notice anything was different, she thought, she’d have more time to figure out how to tell him. She closed the door behind her and frantically tried to clean the key. However, it was full of tiny crevices and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite get all the residue out.

She tried hiding it at first, claiming to have left it another room when her husband asked for it. Eventually, she gave it back, and tried lying, claiming she didn’t know how it had gotten that way.

But he didn’t believe her. “You opened it!” he said. “You opened the one door I told you not to open!” And he rushed over to the closet to find all the hamsters gone, save one or two in newly cleaned cages.

But if she’d expected him to be thankful, ultimately, she was very mistaken. Instead, he only became angrier.

“Well, now you’ll have to die,” he said, and started to advance toward her with the little switchblade.

“What! Why?” Being killed over the hamsters was certainly not what she was expecting.

“You let them go! I’m ruined now! Why do you think I have these hamsters perched on my head?” He slowly lifted the hamsters to reveal…

a bald spot.”Now everyone will know! And it’s all your fault!”

But as he swung the tiny knife, one of the hamsters still perched on his head ran up his arm to his palm and bit him hard between the fingers. Taking the opportunity, his soon to be ex-wife grabbed the few remaining hamsters and ran for the door.

The End.

Source: Bluebeard, Charles Perrault.

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,