Freida

Freida

The story contains references to sexual assault and substance abuse.

She walks to her desk, sits, crosses her ankles, and considers the racism proclamation once more. It is a quandary. If she bans hate speech, she is also impinging on free speech. Still, there is anger in the kingdom. Traders from neighbouring monarchies are setting up monopolies making it hard for small businesses, fuelling their frustration.

‘If you ask me.’

‘Nobody’s asking you.’

He clears his throat. ‘I repeat, if you ask me my favourite question, I also have the answer on how to solve your free speech dilemma.

She turns 180 degrees to face her reflection; a face fighting with itself. Lines deeper than before, forehead, marionette and those new indentations that make her look angry, even when’s she’s not. The purple dress, her work uniform, looks faded rather than regal. She stands, walks forward and acquiesces.

‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?’

‘Snow White is the fairest, bitch. You’re just a washed-up old hag.’

She questions her sanity again. Why does she keep this filthy, slur-ridden mirror around? He’s just another male opinion she doesn’t need.

Once upon a time, when everybody stared open-mouthed as she entered the room, he called her fair, but since the well dried up and her estrogen dropped, so did his compliments.

What good would being fair do her anyway? Her husband was dead and the thought of being with another man, gave her the ick. Besides, she had a kingdom to run and good help was near impossible to find.

‘So, what’s the answer to the free speech dilemma.’

‘Beats me.’

She contemplates smashing the glass, visualises it shattering, but she won’t give into her anger. She promised her mother that she would live up to her name.

Frieda: Peaceful ruler, lady.

‘Stepmother, Stepmother.’

She closes her eyes as the ultra-high-pitched tone of Snow White reverberates through the castle. What can she want now?

‘Oh, there you are?’

‘Yes, dear. I’m in my office working.’

‘Sure, yeah, working.’ The teen winks and the Queen’s temperature rises. She had seen a video on-line where steam rose off a bald woman’s head. She looked like a kettle.

‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Leftovers.’

Her daughter’s shoulders slump, her mouth drawn into a pout.

‘Cooks on vacation and I’m busy with matters of state.’

Snow White sinks into the seat in front of that mirror. She smiles at her reflection. The mirror whistles back. She flicks her hair, turns her head and gives a sultry look in perfect profile. The mirror snaps a screenshot.

‘Feel free to share that around,’ says Snow White to the mirror, whose reflection now shows a large tongue licking its lips.

‘Enough,’ says the Queen. ‘Be gone.’ The mirror turns black.

Snow White turns to her stepmother. ‘There’s a party in the woods.’

‘No.’

‘You never let me do anything.’

The Queen looks at the mirror given that Snow White’s whine is high enough to shatter glass. ‘There are reports of strange short men living in those woods.’

‘All my friends are going. You’re like the evilest stepmother ever.’

It works every time. The Queen quivers. ‘Take the Huntsman with you.’

‘Yeah,’ says Snow White, as she skips out of the room.

The Queen returns to her desk and her dilemma.

***

He bows before her, then lies on the ground holding out a wooden case the size of a tissue box.

‘Your Majesty. They were upon me all at once and from all directions.’

‘Who, sorry, what?’

‘Your stepdaughter; they unalived her and cut out her heart.’

‘What?’ The Queen’s voice cracked halfway through the word.’

‘I have her heart.’ He opens the box and inside it, is a heart; blood dripping, arteries severed.

The Queen exhales. ‘Well, that’s clearly NOT a human heart. So, it can’t belong to my daughter.’ She taps her foot, hands on hips.

He sits up on his heels, not quite meeting her eyes.

‘Okay, she ran off and I couldn’t find her.’

Pathetic liar. Do I have to do everything myself? She dismisses him.

If she travels as the Queen, she won’t find the truth. She cleanses her face and puts on a dark robe to keep her warm as the temperature has dropped with evening setting in. Before leaving she grabs some glossy apples, knowing that Snow White, despite her protestations, hasn’t touched a piece of fruit or a vegetable in several days.

As she walks the cold demands entry into her bones and she hunches in reply. Her left shoulder twinges and she switches the basket of apples to her other side. She bites into one, the warmth of her mouth awakens the juices which run down her chin. She has been so obsessed with eating protein; sweetness hasn’t reached her lips in an age.

A fox scuttles past her. She holds out her half-eaten apple, his head jerks in her direction. Initially, he steps backwards, keeping her in sight. Her eyes widen as her face opens into a smile. She crouches, bows her head, removing the confrontation of eye-contact and waits. Step by cautious step, he reapproaches, then stretching his neck licks the apple. She stays still and crouched; he takes a bite. As he chews, she lifts her head slightly and their eyes meet.

‘Find the seven,’ he says, and darts away.

The fiery coloured sky alerts her to night’s inevitability. She quickens her steps in the direction of the fox’s escape. Who or what was the seven, and how would she know when she found it?

A bat hangs low from a branch. As it is not yet dark, he slumbers covered by his winged cape. The Queen notices the bat’s nose twitch. She breaks off a piece of apple. A wing opens slowly with mechanical precision. She places the morsel in his open palm. He shoves it into his mouth. Then, with his wing outstretched, his body the shape of a signpost pointing west, he swung like a pendulum back and forth.

‘Beware the prince,’ it whispers before rewrapping himself up against the cold and closing shop.

She walks onwards in the direction the bat gestured, her bunions smarting, until she comes to a door covered in bracken with an enormous seven painted in red. Subtle.

She knocks, the door flies open and a man, average height, with a patchy, mangey, stubble inches its way from his neck to his nose. He stares back.

‘What?’ he says, with arms folded across his chest.

‘Hello,’ she says, her face breaking into a grin. ‘My name is Freida.’

‘I don’t care,’ he says.

She exhales and closes her eyes before continuing. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Letchy,’ he replies.

Apt, she thinks but doesn’t say. ‘Have you seen a young woman, with very dark hair and pale skin? She’s gotten herself lost and her parents are worried.’

‘Nope, it’s just me and my buddies here.’

She taps her foot. He registers the tapping and continues. ‘Smelly, Mansplainy, Vomity, Whiney, Airy and Dopehead.’

‘Don’t you mean Dopey?’

‘No, he lives in the kingdom to the East.’

He goes to close the door, and she slips her foot in as he does so, jamming the door onto one of her more painful bunions.

‘Listen you old hag, get your foot out of my door, or I’ll-.’

As nerve pain shoots up her leg, she contemplates her options, with a silent apology to her mother she throws a punch to his windpipe. He gasps for air and buckles.

‘Yes, I’d love to come in,’ she says, pushing past Letchy, now rolling on the floor. As she walks through the extremely unkempt house—for you could not call it a home—five doors slam in succession around her. One unlucky pale-skinned, red-headed fellow with a goatee doesn’t get his door shut quick enough and she grabs him by the arm.

‘I’m looking for a young woman. Have you seen her?’

He nods double time. ‘She’s a princess and her mother the Queen will pay thousands for her safe return.’

Deep breath in; deep breath out. ‘Continue.’

‘She’s out back, sleeping. We can’t wake her and some Prince is supposed to come with the solution, but he’s late.’

‘Take me to her,’ she says, lengthening her spine, rising to her full height while she shoves him into the hallway. He leads her past a series of dubious closed doors. The pungent aroma of marijuana proliferates. It has been a long time since she had partaken. She had heard the Kingdom to the south had legalised it. No traders had come from that direction since.

A large room, the cleanest so far opened in front of them and there was her daughter laid out on a bed with a somewhat saggy mattress. She held a red rose between her hands, which were clasped to her breast.

The Queen ran her hand over her daughter’s cold face. She put her fingers to her daughter’s neck. There was a faint pulse.

‘The Prince needs to kiss her before midnight or she will never wake up.’

The Queen turned her head towards the man who spoke. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mansplainy.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘What’s the Prince’s name?’

He shrugs his shoulders. ‘He’s from the far far away kingdom.’

Prince Wolfram was supposed to be in jail. He had slipped past several charges of sexual assault, but the Queen had thought the last one, when he was caught red-handed with Ketamine/Kit Kat, had stuck. Her daughter carried all the signs of this drug. She knew that the drug would be out of Snow White’s system in a few hours. She would wait. Wait for her daughter to regain consciousness. Wait for this Prince.

‘Could you find me a comfortable,’ she pauses. ‘A clean chair please.’ Mansplainy disappeared and reappeared with a tall-backed chair with faded, yet clean enough upholstery. She placed the chair next to her daughter. Took her hand in hers. ‘You may go,’ she says without looking away from her daughter’s face. There is a chance Snow White can hear her, so she tells her daughter about her journey and how they will be back home safe and sound in a few hours.

She closes her eyes but does not sleep. Even in her comfortable throne bed, sleep had deserted her.

Approaching footsteps brought her consciousness back into the room. She opens her eyes and turns to see the prince, whose mouth is silent and gaping. Upon seeing Freida, he takes several large backwards steps.

She stands. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’ She does not hold out her hand.

‘Um, like I’m sorry about your daughter. But I can help her. I must kiss her on the lips and she will awaken.’

‘There’s no way you’re kissing my daughter, you little punk,’ she says, her mouth the only part of her face that moves as her eyes drill into his skull. Kissing women while they are unconscious is sexual assault by any definition.

‘Sorry, I must have the wrong—.’

She flies at him, all the hunching and pain a memory. A sequence of kicks she has not used in decades renders him in a far worse state than her unconscious daughter. As the Prince lies bleeding, she returns to her seat and takes Snow White’s hand in hers again.

Several more hours pass. At some stage, one of the seven drags the Prince out of the room. She doesn’t care. She has made her point.

When her daughter starts to move and mumble, the Queen gives her water to sip. ‘It’s okay sweetheart Mummy’s here.’

Once a little more lucid, Snow White munches on an apple. ‘I was like dancing with this guy and then I drank some water which tasted funny. It all went spacey after that.’

‘Do you remember anything else?’

‘He was cute.’

‘Remember Snow, you’re going to be queen one day. You want a partner whose more than cute.’

Snow nods and takes another bite.

‘What about the Huntsman? He seems nice.’

‘NO.’