Retelling :: the Aftertruths to Happily Ever After
The Frog Prince
Despite his magical metamorphosis, the Frog Prince is still amphibious. The skin of his palms cracks and bleeds in the dry winter air and every time he licks his chapped lips, he tastes blood. In order to alleviate the pain, he soaks in baths of water drawn from the pond for five hours each day. He keeps his head underwater as long as he can bare and imagines he's back in the dark comfort of his well. When he crawls into bed every night, his skin is still damp and the Princess cannot bare for him to touch her with his waterlogged fingers. Twelve days after happily ever after, he drowns himself in the pond, leaving a dull red smear across its surface.
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Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel managed to live two months past happily ever after, reunited with their father and his new wife. But times were hard, and hunger crept upon them once again. It hollowed out Gretel's cheeks and loosened the belt of Hansel's pants. This time, instead of leaving the task to chance or her idiot husband, the Stepmother brought the children into the woods herself and smothered them beneath an oak tree.
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Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood discovers in her fifteenth year that there are worse things a wolf can do to you than eat you alive. One day in late autumn five years after happily ever after, she stumbles through the front door with leaves in her hair. She sits in the bath in the hours that follow, absently rubbing her skin raw. There are tiny rocks lodged in the cuts across her back and claw marks on the insides of her thighs that stain the tepid bathwater pink. When her mother comes to comfort her, she doesn't notice when a hand is placed against her brow. Little Red is speaking--but only to herself--repeating over and over again: "He told me that he loved me. And wolves mate for life."
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Snow White
Snow White hides her glass coffin in the basement, against her husband's wishes. It's a good four months past happily ever after before she begins visiting it in the early morning hours, after the Prince has ridden off to hunt. She whispers to it like an old lover whenever she passes her fingertips over it's smudged sides. New scratches collect on the inside of the lid with every visit and she counts them before she lifts her skirt to climb in. It takes a few hours before the air starts to turn thin inside, but those are the moments she loves the most--with her head light, her nails clawing, and her body convinced that it's finally dying.
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Rapunzel
Rapunzel takes two weeks to realize she misses old Mother Goethal. Tiny details about the Prince begin to wear away at her nerves. When she stares across the dining table at him, she begins to list his inadequacies in her head. His hands are too smooth and his voice is not rough; his eyes are too blue, while his skin is too pink. She wakes up early one morning longing for sharp fingernails in her hair and breath that smells of sour milk. That evening, Rapunzel begins slipping strands of her hair into the Prince's meals. She disappears before he dies on the forty-seventh day of happily ever after. When they cut him open to perform the autopsy, they find a blonde stone logged in his belly twined into the shape of a heart.