Jack risked one look back. He really shouldn’t have. An army of zombie woodland creatures, along with most of the castle employees and one burly woodcutter, were coming out of the trees. A girl in a red riding hood lurched to the front.
“Jill?” he asked.
She turned toward him, her eyes glowing. “Braaaaaiiiiins,” she growled.
Jack fell down the hill.
Jill came tumbling after.
Once upon a time, there was a stepmother who had devoted her life to putting out fires.
Whether they were metaphorical fires, like a stepdaughter destined to grow into a terrible creature of the night or a stepdaughter who fell victim to her horrible hungry pet, or literal fires, like the kind she had been dumping water on all day thanks to Cinderella and Prince Charring’s honeymoon tour through the kingdom, the stepmother was there to put them out.
She had just finished dousing a literal fire, and was not ready to douse any metaphorical fires. So when she heard Jack screaming her name, she sat heavily onto the ground and put her head in her hands. A little dog trotted by. Its bark sounded like it was laughing to see such a sight.
“Stepmother!” Jack shouted. “Stepmooooooooother!”
“I’m over here,” she groaned.
Jack skidded to a halt in front of her. At his side was a girl with beautiful golden locks. She had nice hair, too. “We need your help!”
“Of course you do.”
“Stepmother!” a girl’s voice screamed. “Step-moooooooooother!”
The stepmother stood, puzzled. From the opposite direction, a horse came barreling out of the trees. Cinderella and Prince Charring clung to its back. They didn’t even have anything burning with them. Something must really be wrong.
“We need your help!” the prince shouted.
“No, we need her help!” Jack said. He pointed in the direction he had come from. “Zombies!”
Cinderella scowled, pointing back to the trees where she had come from. “Vampires!”
The stepmother massaged her temples. She had a headache. She had had a headache for approximately the last eighteen years. “Zombies?”
“Yes,” the girl with the golden locks said. “I’ve been tracking the source of the outbreak for days. Fortunately, they bypassed the sheep village. Their leader seems to be especially hungry for Jack’s brains. She’s a little girl in a red riding hood.”
“Jill?” The stepmother looked at Jack. Jack shrugged sheepishly, the one skill he had learned while being a sheep-sitter.
“There are too many for me to fight on my own.” Goldilocks twirled one of her weapons, watching the night for signs of shambling.
“Well, we have vampires!” Cinderella said. “A creepy girl and seven little dwarves!”
“Hirsute boys,” the stepmother corrected.
“Hirsute vampires,” Prince Charring updated.
It was the middle of the night. There was no sun. And even if there was sun, the stepmother didn’t know how to deal with zombies. She thought she had taken care of Snow White—twice!—but something always came up. It was all Jack and Cinderella’s fault. If they hadn’t been climbing plants up into the clouds or setting fires, she would have been able to make sure that Snow White had been properly and permanently put to sleep. And where had the zombies come from?
(Should I tell her? No, she’s better off not knowing. I wish I didn’t know.)
“I don’t think I care,” the stepmother said.
“What?” Jack asked.
“I’m tired. I’ve been cleaning up messes for eighteen years now, ever since I took my first job as a stepmother. What’s wrong with these kingdoms, anyway? Why are there no mothers? Why do all the fathers up and die as soon as they marry me? It’s not fair! It’s not fair, and I’m not going to do it anymore. All this time I thought I was helping you all. Now I think maybe I was hurting.”
“But we need you!” Cind