Sleepy Beauty

Based on the Disney rendition of Sleeping Beauty

A long time ago, there lived a king and a queen. They weren’t king and queen of any particular region, they were just… a king and a queen.

They had a baby. This baby was a boy. So he was a prince. Right after the birth, the midwife asked the queen what he was to be named, and she said this: “Many the months have I carried this – oww, it hurts – child, many the weeks have I – aaah, painful – been fat for him, many the hours have I been in – aaaargh – unbearable pain to birth him, thus he shall be christened Christiano – AAAH! SHIT PAINFUL EH – Ronaldo.”

And so, the prince was proudly named Christiano Ah-Shit-Painful-Eh Ronaldo. This was, of course, a mouthful, and the queen was forever embarrassed for having given the child such an unseemly name, so he became known as ‘Casper’ for short.

One day, when Casper was about three years old, his parents brought him to a party. It was in a castle, and it was being thrown by another king and queen in celebration of the birth of their baby daughter.

His father brought him to see the baby in the cot, and Casper thought she was the weirdest looking lump of pink he had ever seen. He was much more interested in what happened afterwards.

The fairy godmothers had arrived and were waving their glittery sticks around, giving the princess boring gifts like ‘beauty’ and ‘kindness’ and stuff, when this really cool lady in black suddenly appeared. There was a lot of purple smoke, and a huge bang, and that impressed Casper immensely.

The lady in black did a lot of talking very loudly then. Casper didn’t really remember it all, but he knew that she was pissed about not having been invited to the party. Casper wanted to tell her it wasn’t that fun anyway, but he kept his mouth shut because the lady was starting to talk even louder. At the end of her really long speech, she waved her stick, but no glittery stuff came out. And then she told everyone that the princess would die of poking one day.

Casper thought all this was very interesting, and couldn’t understand why the mum and dad of the princess started crying. Then the last fairy godmother waved her glittery stick and told everyone the princess wouldn’t die but would go to sleep until some dude woke her up. Casper thought it wasn’t very nice of her to spoil the gift that the purply-smoke lady had given the princess, but he forgot about the whole thing when he fell asleep.

The years passed and Casper grew up. He kept growing up, up, and up until he was quite a bit taller than everyone else. He wished he could grow a little outwards, however, because he looked a bit like an upside down golf club.

One day, he had a fight with his father. The king wanted him to marry a girl called Karina, but all he wanted to do was to play hackey sack with a Milo ball all day, so he rode his bright shining white horse away into the forest.

He stopped by the river to rest after a while, and that was when he heard it.

“…I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream

I know you, that gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam…”

It was a girl’s voice singing. And he was drawn to the music. He left his horse and made his way through the trees, seeking out the source of that voice. He finally saw her, a girl with long dark hair, fair skin, and small eyes. She was dancing as she sang, and Casper couldn’t figure out how she managed to skip and pirouette like that while still putting out the laundry.

He knew the wisest course of action was to just turn around and mind his own business. But for some reason, he really wanted to burst into song with her. He didn’t know the song she was singing, so he sang the only song that came to mind.

“I WONDER HOW, I WONDER WHY,

YESTERDAY YOU TOLD ME ABOUT THE BLUE, BLUE SKY,

BUT ALL THAT I CAN SEE

IS JUST A YELLOW LEMON TREE!!!”

The princess was startled, and danced away into the forest. But Casper danced his way after her, and eventually, the princess slowed down and turned to look at him. Then, miraculously, she sang…

“I’M TURNING MY HEAD, ROUND AND ROUND,

I’M TURNING, TURNING, TURNING, TURNING, TURNING AROUND,

AND ALL THAT I CAN SEE

IS JUST ANOTHER LEMON TREE!!!”

And they formed an instant bond. But the girl had to go back to the three aunts she lived with, and so Casper rode home, still humming the song under his breath.

The next day, he went back to the forest, and he came upon a house. In this house, there were three short ladies. One was blue, one was pink, and the other green. They were named Barah, Parah, and Garah respectively.

All of them were crying. Casper immediately tried to back out of the house. He didn’t like crying people. Or laughing people. Or just people in general. But the three short ladies grabbed him and hauled him into the house.

“YOU HAVE TO HELP US!!!” they screamed. “YOU HAVE TO SAVE HER.”

Casper was very afraid. Apparently short women could be very scary at times. So he listened to what they had to say. They told him a really sappy story about a girl who was the most gorgeous, talented, lovely person anyone could ever meet and how she had been kidnapped and imprisoned by an evil witch with a long name that might have been MacDonald’s. Casper had no interest whatsoever in whomever this wonderful person might be, but Parah [or it might have been Barah] would not let go of his left arm until he had promised to save her.

Casper left the house and decided to find a comfortable rock to take a nap on, but he turned around and realized that one of the three short ladies was following him closely. So closely in fact that she was practically sharing Casper’s long, flowing cape. She was green, so he guessed that she must be Garah. He dodged to the left, she followed. He faked to the right then went left again; she swung too far right and nearly tripped before throwing herself leftwards to keep up with him.

“Err, like, why are you stalking me?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m not stalking you. Who says I’m stalking you? Are you calling me a stalker? Like you’re worth stalking anyway. Who would wanna stalk you? Hmph.”

“Dude, like, it was just a question,” Casper proceeded on his way. Only he realized that if he didn’t actually save this wonderful girl from the evil witch, then Garah would never leave him alone. So reluctantly, he gave up his quest for the comfortable rock and set off for the evil witch’s evil castle.

“How do I automatically know where the bad guy’s castle is?” Casper asked Garah.

“I don’t know. The good guy always knows where the bad guy lives.”

“That’s stupid. What’s the point in having an evil lair if everyone knows where it is? I mean, it’s redundant.”

“Shut up and keep moving.”

“Can’t you find an easier way there?”

“What do you mean? There’s only one way to the castle, you bum. You think I would be cutting my way through briars and thorns if there was an easier way? You think I would put myself through the misery of all this rain and having to stare at your backside while we climb this cliff? You are so-“

“Shaddup. You’re a fairy. Just wave your stick and magic us there or something.”

“Oh. Right. Err… my bad?”

“Yeah, your bad.”

It took about five minutes for them to reach the castle after that. Four and a half for Garah to find her wand, and half a minute’s traveling time.

On getting there, they found that the witch had transformed herself into a raging dragon. Casper sighed. It would have been so much easier and a lot less messy to impale a witch on his sword rather than a raging dragon.

“HOW DARE YOU!?!? HOW DAAAAAAAAARE YOU?!?!” the witch screeched.

Casper, who gave about as much crap as the next stick, was unfazed. “How dare I what?”

“How dare you… HOW DARE YOU ASK ME WHAT YOU DARE? SUCH IMPUDENCE IS UNHEARD OF! HOW DARE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!”

“Whoa, major PMS,” Casper muttered under his breath. He considered his options.

There was launching into a fearless attack and fighting valiantly for the freedom and honor of the lady in question. Or there was simply dropping his sword and walking away. He didn’t know the girl anyway.

Neither of these options appealed to him. One involved him actually having to risk his life in close combat with an extremely unhinged dragon, and the other involved a green fairy haunting him for the rest of his life. He regarded the dragon critically.

“Can we talk about this?” he asked her.

Silence.

“You… you want to… to talk to me?”

“Err, yes.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, it all started when I was studying at the Royal School of Evil Villains. They all made fun of me because I wanted to be an evil sorceress and my name was Jigglypuff. I mean, it’s not like I can choose my name, right? And there is nothing wrong with painting my nails pink once in a while. I’m an evil witch, but a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. And there was the time when…”

Casper was beginning to think his chances of survival might have been higher if he’d just thrust his sword at the beast. At this rate, he was going to die of some SSSS (Stupid Sob Story Syndrome) and a lot of zzzz.

“… and then the bat bit Dracula and he was never the same again. But did they make fun of him? No, it was always little Jigglypuff with the pink nails that was too slow, too stupid, too ugly, too nice. What did I have to do to…”

It would be three years later when the evil witch [halfway through a detailed outline of how she paid Dracula back for tormenting her all those years. She used a satay stick; you use your imagination] realized Casper wasn’t listening anymore. In fact, he wasn’t even there, and neither was the princess locked up in the tower.

She screamed with fury before flapping off into the forest where she met a talking donkey who eventually wooed her into domestic life despite his ass-ish qualities.

But back to the story of Casper. He had gone into the tower to find a girl sleeping in there. He recognized her as the girl he had met singing in the forest just the day before. He shook her, trying to wake her up. But she remained stubbornly asleep. In fact, she was so stubbornly asleep that she only giggled a little when he tickled her.

“Princess Karina will only wake up with true love’s first kiss,” Garah whispered helpfully behind him.

“True love’s first what?”

“First KISS you idiot! Oh, he’s stupid AND deaf.”

“Umm, okay. Are you her true love?” he asked hopefully.

“Do I look like a true love? YOU are the true love.”

“Haha. Good joke. Very funny. I’ll be sure to tell the king that one.”

“IS ANYBODY GONNA KISS ME SO I CAN WAKE UP? Only, the bed’s lumpy and my bum itches.”

Casper picked up a frog off the ground and jammed its face onto Karina’s face. Karina sprung to life. The frog said “Oh bugger” before turning into a young man.

Karina seemed to be very taken by the frog-turned-young-man, who turned out to be Prince Hung of Yi. The princess was the henpecking type, and the prince was the henpecked type. So they got married and lived happily ever after.

And Casper continued to like a golf club for many, many years to come.