Not So Happily Ever After

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

Not So Happily Ever After

By Plot Roach

“Welcome to the club” said a man with a mane of flowing golden hair as he gestured to a seat across from him in the circle. “There’s no need to feel embarrassed if it’s your first time, we’ve all been where you are.”

“All of you?” the new man asked.

“Each and every one of us.” said a man getting a cup of coffee before returning to his seat. “Shall we begin?”

The idle conversation which had peppered the room came to an abrupt halt. The man with the coffee cleared his throat before beginning: “I’m glad to see everyone here today, some old faces as well as new. And while it grieves me that any of you are here, let me make it clear that you are loved and accepted for who you are, not WHAT you are.”

“Thanks, Daniel.” said the golden haired man. He surveyed the men sitting in a circle in the hard metal chairs. The smell of the coffee house basement did little to lift their emotions, as each man had his own demons to face. “For those of you who do not know me, my name is 'Jeff'. Though I was once known as ‘Charming’.”

The newest man gasped. Surely it could not be THE Charming, he thought.

Jeff nodded in the man’s direction as if he could read the man’s thoughts. “To my left here” he said, motioning to the man who had brought the meeting to order, “Is Valiant.” He let the name sink in before continuing. “If you are here, it means that you were once part of a happily-ever-after tale, that ended not so happily after all. Please go around the room and introduce yourselves.”

“I’m now ‘Benjamin’, I kissed Snow White and freed her from the poisoned apple curse. Now I can’t kiss a woman without tasting apples and making her comatose.”

“I’m ‘Peter’, I freed Rapunzel from the tower. Once she cut her hair, everything seemed fine. But then it started to grow on me, literally. I’ve tried hot wax treatments, laser surgery, and drugs. I spend a fortune on razors and it makes no difference. I still end up looking like Sasquatch by five o’clock in the evening.”

“’Jim’ here, I helped my woman defend China from the Huns, all the while helping her to masquerade as a man. No I’m the one with the breasts and pouty lips. A week after our little victory, she said I was too effeminate and left me for a farmhand who had wide shoulders and less…curves.”

“’Bill‘” a man in sandals said, massaging one of his toes. “I had a thing with Cinderella. But I should have know it wouldn’t have worked when I liked the shoes better than the woman. And try as I might, nothing feels better than a pair of enchanted glass pumps.”

Man after man bared his soul and his story to the room. When it came to Charming (now Jeff), he told the long and painful tale of finding Sleeping Beauty, kissing her awake and saving her from living death. “Not long after the honeymoon we discovered the curse within the curse. For you see, I took a little of her sleeping death into me when I kissed her. Now I suffer from narcolepsy, especially during the -tender moments- I share with a woman. It seemed that my wife didn’t find my prone form as attractive as I had hers, and so left me to find her fortune on the high seas with a pirate captain.”

There was silence, except fro the sniffles of a few of the men, grieving over what they had lost. The new man shifted in his chair, knowing that he should share, but unwilling to be turned away from yet another fairy tale support group. “Please don’t be offended…” he began. “But I am not a man…”

“But you are here, betrayed by fairy fate like the rest of us.” said Jeff. “If your story had a happily ever after ending, why would you come to a place like this?”

“While it is true that the magic has caused us to live forever with the curses of those we chose to love and save. I did not begin my story as a human, but as a magical beast.” he sighed. “My name is ’Ed’, though in the forest I watched over, I had no name. Being a creature of myth and beauty, I was only known as Unicorn. She came to me one day, and sat at the base of a tree. She was dressed in a pure white silk gown, and carried a basket of apples.”

“You've got to watch out for those apples” Benjamin said.

“Her scent on the wind mesmerized me and I could not help myself. So I went to her, laid my head in her lap. And I fell into the deepest sleep.”

“And then the hunters came for you?” Jeff asked.

“No, nothing so crude. For you see, when I awoke, I found her straddling my er…horn. She chose me as her tool of deflowerment. And since I had taken her purity, I was forever saddled with it. I could not retain my equine form and was thus transformed into a man, making my curse even harder to bare.”

“How so?” asked Jim, repositioning one of his breasts.

“Human males have a ‘horn’ of their own, with which to tame virgins. But I found out after my first few attempts at this game with ladies that I was to remain forever ‘chaste’ despite the chase. And no woman wants to be with a beast whose horn cannot remain hard enough to be sheathed, if you get my meaning.”

“So what do you do now, Ed?”

“I work in poison control. It seems my talent for rendering even the most deadly elements of this earth into nothing more than water was retained, even if my form was not. It comes in quite handy while working in hazardous situations like toxic spills and tainted food.”

“I bet it beats my job at the shoe store” Bill said.

“Or mine as a lingerie model” said Jim.