The Princess and the Pea

So I’ve been a little absent lately. A lot absent. Sorry. Well, a little sorry. But it’s NaNoWriMo, and I don’t have time to write anything else. So enjoy this little version of “The Princess and the Pea” that I wrote like a year ago.

            Once upon a time, there was a princess with really sensitive skin. Like, really, ridiculously sensitive. But that’s not where this story starts. This story starts with a prince who had really, ridiculously high standards. He was looking for a bride, but it was kind of slow going. No one was good enough.

            And, okay, let’s be real here—we all know the prince was short and pimply and pudgy, with gross pasty skin and terrible eyesight. He probably only got good grades in school because he was a prince, and then went around bragging to everyone about how smart he was. He probably dropped out of college because he was “smarter than all the professors.” He probably got friendzoned all the time. Maybe he wears a fedora. Yeah, let’s give the guy a fedora.

            But I digress. The prince wanted a really hot girlfriend. His mom completely backed him up on this. His dad was not in the picture.

            So one night they were just hanging out in the palace, you know, commiserating about the difficulty of finding pretty girls and all that.

            And suddenly, there was a knock.

            As there were apparently no butlers in this kingdom, the queen went to get the door. Standing outside in the rain was a damp, bedraggled, poorly dressed young woman. Instead of letting her in, the queen asked the girl, “Are you a princess?”

            “Why yes,” said the girl, “I am.”

            “Harald!” called the queen. “Come and have a look at this one.”

            The prince came to the door and thoroughly examined the princess, deciding that with some makeup and a new dress and hairstyle, she might have some potential. They permitted her to come in out of the rain, and left her dripping on the floor as they made plans to test her suitability.

            Finally, the queen went to prepare a guest room for her, while the prince showed her to the bathroom and very considerately tossed her a couple towels to dry herself off.

            When the princess, clean, dry, and just a little confused and apprehensive about this whole set up, went up to her bedroom, she found herself face to face with a mountain of mattresses. We’re talking, like, five or six hundred of the things. (I wonder what poor person had to set them all up. We’ve already established that there are no butlers here.)

            So the princess used the expandable ladder, conveniently propped up against the wall, to climb up into bed. She didn’t even question it.

            And this is where that little skin condition of hers gets to be an issue. You see—and don’t tell the princess about this—the queen had stashed one little uncooked pea beneath all of those hundreds of mattresses. The idea was that a proper, suitable princess should be really fragile, or delicate, or sensitive, or something. Who knows? We’re dealing with crazy people here. Anyway, this princess was definitely sensitive.

            Not only was she completely unable to sleep all night because of that tiny little lump six hundred layers down, but when she got up the next morning, she was actually black and blue.

            Yep.

            Well, the prince was so thrilled by this result that he proposed on the spot. And the princess, sore and sleep deprived as she was, agreed to marry the complete stranger with the weirdest sleeping habits ever, and I guess they lived happily, or something.