Snow White was getting restless. She was supposed to be fast asleep, waiting for her kiss from Prince Charming, but where was he?
“Why is this taking so long?” she complained.
“Don’t you remember, Snow?” said Doc. “We’ve paused all the fairy tales, out of respect for what the humans are going through with Coronavirus right now… even though there’s no such thing here. If they have to live under terrible restrictions to their travel and get-togethers, it seems only fair that we do the same.”
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” she replied, “but this pillow of glass is giving me a ferocious headache! And even if my Prince does arrive, how is he supposed to kiss me, through this mask? I’m going to make myself a cup of tea in the cottage,” she said, hopping down off her crystal-glass bed. “Whenever he shows up, you can tell him to go whistle after Cinderella instead.”
Elsewhere in Fairy Tale Land, the Big Bad Wolf was equally unhappy. “How many times must I pretend to blow down the house of straw?” he wanted to know. “It’s so flimsy, all I have to do is breathe on it and it falls down all by itself!”
“All the more reason to keep your mask on then,” yelled the little pig from an attic window. But it wasn’t his own attic window. He and his brother (the one with the house of sticks) had already moved in to shelter with their eldest brother in his house of brick across the street.
“Darned pandemic,” muttered the wolf, under the mask he had reluctantly pulled back on. “What’s a hungry carnivore to do? We can’t all live on plants!”
He started slouching down the road. Then something seemed to occur to him. “I know!” he exclaimed, and began trotting off into the distance.
Meanwhile, Rapunzel was having a terrible day. “I mean, it’s not like I can leave this tower, even on a good day,” she said into her phone, “but somehow it feels even worse right now. And to top it all off, I can’t find my hair brush!”
“It can’t have gone far,” replied her friend, Rose Red. “You haven’t left the place in what 15 years?”
“Yes, I know — but saying that doesn’t help me one bit,” Rapunzel snapped. “The fact is, even when you can’t leave the house, somehow things can get lost completely. Only now, nobody else can come in and help you look for them! Oh, never mind, I found it.”
“Where was it?” her friend wanted to know.
“None of your business,” said Rapunzel. “Just remember to look in your chair from now on before you sit down. Text you later!”
The wolf chuckled to himself as he snuck past Little Red Riding Hood and was first in the door at her grandmother’s house. “Thank goodness that girl takes her ‘short cut’ every time,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do if she ever figures out that it’s actually the long way round.”
“Okay, Grandma, you know the drill,” he added, turning to Red Riding Hood’s granny. “Time to jump down my throat and help me swallow you whole.”
“Can’t we stop doing this with the pandemic and all?” Grandma said, crossly. “I was hoping I could use this time to finally finish knitting a new cloak for my granddaughter — that red one is looking kind of ratty.”
“Sorry, I’d like to take a rest. too,” said the Wolf, licking his chops, “but our instructions say to freeze the story after I’ve swallowed you. So down the hatch!”
Grandma put down her knitting and did as the Wolf demanded. “But it’s so stuffy in here!” she complained, her voice muffled from inside the Wolf. “Haven’t you ever heard of Tums?”
“Quit complaining,” said the Wolf. “You’re no spring chicken! And what’s this all over your bed … cookie crumbs?”
Grandma was about to answer when the door burst open and Red Riding Hood stomped in.
“I hate this costume!” she exclaimed, shedding the cloak. “It snags on every thorn bush in the forest, so of course the wolf always beats me here. And I know it’s you, Mister Wolf; no one would believe you’re my granny.”
“Not even when I’m wearing this mask, my dear?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Now, where’s that delivery?”
Just then, someone knocked on the cottage door. “Pizza’s here!” said a cheery voice.
“Half meatball, half veggie, I hope?” yelled the Wolf. “With a small side of Grandma?—er, Grandma’s pizza, I mean?”
“Yes, Wolf, just like it’s been every night for the past 111 days,” said the pizza boy.
This pandemic sure is a bore!
