Snow White and the Evil Queen

It was a fateful day in a dark and dreadful village. An evil queen who ruled the land was so determined to be the fairest of them all, that when she learned that a young princess named Snow White was fairer than she, she set out to kill her. She ordered a hunter to murder Snow White and bring back her bloody lungs and liver as proof of her demise. The huntsman brought back the organs of a pig and easily conned the Queen into thinking they were the organs of Snow White. The Queen greedily devoured them, with such vigor that there was blood dripping down her chin. When the Queen found out that Snow White was still alive, rage consumed her. She tried to kill Snow White three more times. In her first attempt, she laced Snow White’s corset up so tight that the young princess passed out, unable to breathe. When Snow White awoke yet again, the Queen was furious. She knew she needed to come up with something more cunning and clever to kill the precious princess. As a result, she began to plan her next strategy. In her second attempt at homicide, the Queen brushed Snow White’s hair with a poisoned comb to make her fall into a deep, death-like sleep. Soon enough, she brushed her hair with the comb and became unconscious. However, Snow White’s dwarf friends removed the comb from her hair and she awoke. Outraged at her second failure, the Queen poisoned an apple and tricked Snow White into consuming it, after which, she died once again. Her body was placed in a glass coffin where a prince passed by and decided to bring her to his home. As the prince moved the coffin, the bite of the poisonous apple fell from Snow White’s throat, and she miraculously came back from the dead. The prince and Snow White fell in love and decided to get married. At the wedding, the Queen was forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she died.

The Little Mermaid and the Sea Witch

Deep in a dark underwater kingdom where dry land was a myth and humans were the enemy, a pretty young mermaid listened longingly to her fellow mermaid and merman’s tales of the shore, yearning to see the surface and human beings for herself. When the mermaid finally got a chance to see the unknown world, she saw a ship with a handsome prince and fell in love with him from a distance. Suddenly, lightning struck, thunder roared and the sea became a rocky monsoon. The mermaid rescued the prince from nearly drowning and delivered him to the shore, but he never saw her face. Longing for the prince, she eventually visited the sea witch, who sold her a potion to give her legs in exchange for her tongue and the possession of her soul until she could make the prince love her. The mermaid drank the potion, losing her tongue, voice and the ability to ever be a mermaid again. The disgusting potion made her feel as if a sword sliced through her tail, leaving her tail in two bloody halves that appeared similar to legs. With every step she took, it felt like she was walking on sharp knives. Essentially lifeless as a human, she could only obtain her soul by true love’s kiss and if the prince married her. When she met the prince again, he was mesmerized by her beauty and grace even though she was mute. She loved him so much that, at his request, she danced for him despite the excruciating pain dancing caused her. But the prince fell in love with and married someone else, breaking the young mermaid’s heart. She had given up her whole life and endured suffering for nothing. The sea witch then gave her a choice: either kill him and live or turn into sea foam to spare his life. Out of love, she chose to let him live and threw herself into the ocean. Her broken heart dissolved into sea foam along with the rest of her body.

The Juniper Tree and the Raven

In a desolate village in a far away land lived an evil woman who hated her step-son so much that she created a scheme to get rid of him and secure her husband’s fortune for their young daughter alone. Feigning kindness to the little boy, she asked him to reach into a chest and fetch an apple. As he reached in, she slammed the lid of the chest so hard down on his neck that his head was decapitated. She then propped the boy’s body up in a chair and placed the head back on his corpse so that he appeared to be taking a nap. When his little sister Marlene arrived, the mother convinced her to smack him in the face. His head fell off and Marlene began to cry and scream hysterically, under the impression that she had killed her brother. Her mother told her that they would hide the dead boy in a stew and no one would ever know what Marlene did. As a result, Marlene helped chop up her brother’s body and dropped the pieces into a pot – skin and all. Marlene cried so much during the horrific act that the stew did not need salt. When the father returned home, the mother lied about the boy, saying he went hunting, and she began to serve dinner. Starved after a long day, the father voraciously consumed his own child, and proclaimed that the stew was the best meal he had ever eaten. When the father finished eating, the little girl gathered up her brother’s bones from under the table and placed them beneath the juniper tree where the boy’s dead mother was buried. A few days later, a raven suddenly flew out of the juniper tree, and killed the stepmother by pushing a stone on top of her head, crushing her to death. From the woman’s remains the little boy rose, alive again. The father, brother and sister proceeded to walk hand-in-hand into the house, and sat down at the table together to eat lunch and continue their daily routines.