by Tim Manley
And the two poured themselves some whiskey and stayed up late talking, pretending it wasn’t a big deal that they were opening up to each other.
They were all each other had. They were brother and sister.
After the Pied Piper led the rats and children away from the village with his magic flute, he initiated his secret plan to steal the adults as well: He gave them each a GPS, but it always led them the wrong way.
The morning after her high school reunion, the Ugly Duckling saw that a friend had posted a bunch of photos from the reunion, and she thought, Uh-oh, time for some good old-fashioned untagging.
But hey! She didn’t look terrible in them, and one of them she loved. A simple shot of her taken while she was talking to a friend. She couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about, but she knew it had felt great. It was like she could actually be less guarded with this friend than with herself.
Something about the Ugly Duckling looked different in the picture. Around the eyes? She looked . . . she wouldn’t use the word beautiful; she just looked right.
Beauty and the Beast had gradually grown distant. They didn’t even ballroom-dance around the dining room anymore. And who could remember the last time the teapot had written a song about their love?
So when Beauty got a Facebook message from that guy who used to balance ten beer glasses on his biceps, she thought, It could be nice at least to have a drink with him.
Then the Beast ran into the room like an excited little kid, grabbed the remote, and said, “It’s Shark Week!”
This man, Beauty thought, smiling, this is the man for me. And she closed her laptop.
When Arthur finally pulled Excalibur back out from under his bed, it was even more difficult than pulling it from the stone had been. The truth was that he faced his future with a mix of courage and desperation; he did it because it was his only choice.
(Merlin said he was going to stop paying Arthur’s rent.)
Aladdin and Jasmine chose not to get back together. It was a mutual decision, but as the genie said, “In a breakup there’s always only one person who really walks away.”
Aladdin sat in his window looking at the palace lit up above the city, and of course he thought of the old lamp. Everything he’d dreamed of had been possible for a brief moment. If he had known then what he knew now, what would he have wished for?
A generous heart and the love of someone with the same. Nothing else mattered.
As a joke, Puss in Boots started an Etsy for “elegant evening wear for cats,” and by morning he’d already gotten thousands of orders.
Jack was eventually stripped of his giant-killing medals when he was proven guilty of doping.
Alice woke up, hungover, at the foot of the Caterpillar’s mushroom.
“You’ve changed,” said the Caterpillar. “You are less sure of yourself than the last time you were here.”
Alice knew he was right. Life got more confusing with each year, and there was no prescribed path for what to do next. How was she supposed to move forward?
When she looked up, the Caterpillar was gone. He’d become something new and was flying away.
The Tortoise and the Hare decided to meet for coffee.
They took turns casually mentioning their recent successes. The Hare was named one of the up-and-coming tech whizzes to watch. The Tortoise was coming out with a book of drawings he’d made in the margins of other people’s poems.
“How original,” the Hare commented.
They parted ways with a smile, the Hare hailing a cab and the Tortoise stretching his legs for a walk across the bridge.
It wasn’t until they were each about to fall asleep that night that it hit them at the same time: There is no destination. There isn’t a winner. There never was a race.
Peter Pan’s first few days off the Internet were weird: Was there anyone out there approving of what he was doing at this very moment? And how was he supposed to know if something he said was clever if no one retweeted him?
But after that it was like all of his five senses became heightened as the noise in his head disappeared. He was waking back up to his life.
And he didn’t even want to blog about it. He just wanted to breathe it in and be there for it.
As her gallery opening ended, Cinderella caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and did a double take: She looked like the woman she’d wished she would become.
Her doubts and uncertainties lingered, they did, but she knew now they would never fully go away. They weren’t a sign she was doing something wrong. Neither were her mistakes. Everything she’d been through, it was all just part of the story.