Once upon a time, in a land far, far away,
the bakers at ‘Eat My Pie’ were sweating up a storm and whistling while they
worked, to get their daily three thousand apple pies out of the oven and out
the door for delivery. Their boss was a taskmistress, delightful, but strict.
After all, she hadn’t built a multi-million dollar business by simply being the
fairest one of all. No, Snow White was a shrewd entrepreneur and survivalist.
She had to be.
Snow White’s happily ever after was
anything but. Her marriage was less than
what she’d been promised. On the fateful morning, five years into her marriage,
Snow White woke up and rolled over to give her Prince Charming a morning snog,
only to have him tell her their marriage, as she knew it, was over.
“Snow,
my sweet, I know you were wishing for the man you love to find you, but
unfortunately, I’m not that man. I’ve realized that I’m a woman trapped in a
man’s body,” Prince
Charming advised. Snow White lay there wishing she had a poison apple to stuff
in his mouth. Five years and no children later, not counting her seven loyal
dwarfs, she was angry. Yet, at the same time, after five years of
bad-to-nonexistent sex, she was secretly relieved to learn the truth. She always knew something was off—they shared a love of baking and a
similar fashion sense but little else.
“You’re
only realizing this now?”
“Well,
no, I think I’ve always known I should’ve been born a girl, but I thought I’d
give marriage a try.”
Snow
White sighed. She was nothing if not adaptable. She lived under the terror
reign of her evil stepmother. She reintegrated seamlessly into society after
her poisoned apple induced coma. She’d become a frugalista—both hers and Prince
Charming’s royal coffers were depleted during the Great Recession after
realizing their treasurers had invested their respective king and queendoms
wealth in a Ponzi scheme—and expert extreme coupon clipper. Their castles
repossessed—they’d been mortgaged to the hilt—and with the diamond mines having
failed to produce any precious stones for years due to climate change, Snow
White and Prince Charming moved into the Dwarfs’ cottage. She could help her
husband transition to womanhood. After all, it was the least she could do since
she’d been having an affair with Grumpy since day 183 of her sexless marriage.
Despite his surly demeanour, Grumpy was a dynamo in the sack.
Another five years later, with her wife in
name only, Princess Charmaine, by her side, though, Snow managed to turn their
lives around. Her life with Grumpy was
no longer hidden in the shadows, and neither was Princess Charmaine’s with
Happy. During her many illicit sexual romps with Grumpy in the woods to keep
their forbidden love ferreted away from everyone—you try living in a cottage with
nine people and have secret sex—Poison Ivy wasn’t all she discovered in the
flora and fauna, but a patch of coca seedling that was thriving in the hot,
damp Enchanted Forest. Ever the
innovator, and having conquered her PTSD-fear of eating apples, she began
baking cocaine-spiked mood-enhancing apple pies that she sold at county fairs
to earn some pocket money. In no time at all, she’d converted an old mine into
a makeshift baker’s kitchen, where the Dwarfs, who’d retrained as pastry chefs,
manned the operations. When word spread about how happy her pies made the
people who ate them, the Columbian drug cartel kingpins ears perked up—no one
got high off apples alone—who, once realizing that the pies were made in a lush
forest, imbued with magical powers, they flew down to investigate. Realizing
that Snow White wasn’t as pure as the driven snow she was peddling by way of
her pies, they struck a deal for Snow White to be the Columbians’ offshore
cocaine producer. A farm team, if you will.
“Where are my pies?” Snow shouted over the
din of the melodious harmony of the mixers, ovens, and singing serfs. Doc, the head
cocaine chemist, was off to the side in his makeshift lab, preoccupied with his
newest creation: a blue cocaine powder inspired by his Breaking Bad binge
watching. Bashful, the head pastry chef, was almost embarrassed by the success
of his apple pie baking skills—he was the mastermind behind the recipe Snow
White used in the business. Sleep was taking a nap in the corner. A
narcoleptic, he was the only Dwarf allowed to sleep on the job. Dopey, did not
live up to his name. Knowing that sex sells, he was the marketing genius who
came up with the double-entendre business name. And, Sneezy, who didn’t want to
be left out of the operation, was balancing the business’ books from behind a
glass wall to keep his nose away from the cocaine and other powder-based baking
materials. If the business had an Achilles heel, Sneezy was it.
“Keep
your panties on, boss. We’re just packing them up,” Grumpy grunted.
“Panty talk is strictly for pillow time. I
need those pies to be ready in five minutes. I’ve got to keep Whole Foods
happy.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Don’t be glib, Grumps,” Princess Charmaine
added. She’d emerged from the stock room with a goofily grinning Happy. “If we
don’t get this shipment out on time, our friends in Bogota won’t be too
pleased.”
“Lady, I said I know. The cocaine will be
ready to ship.”
Eat My Pie was successful, but couldn’t
match the numbers Snow White’s cocaine empire was doing. To keep her reputation virginally pristine,
and the feds off the scent of her burgeoning drug empire, she had to amp up her
baking business front to ensure that her concocted confections’ numbers were so
good no one would question how she was able to move into a penthouse in the Big
Apple’s sky. Able to disguise the cocaine in her pies under the guise of using
non-GMO, organic, hydroponically grown apples—Mother Nature’s spirit
sweeteners.
Snow White—the irony wasn’t lost on her
that she was anything but—stormed out of the mine and headed back to the Dwarfs
cottage, which she’d converted into Eat My Pie’s head office. The role of sugar
mama-in-chief burdened her. Life, while cushy once more, was not without peril.
It wasn’t perfect, nor was it a dream, but for Snow White, Princess Charmaine,
and the Dwarfs, they finally got to live happily ever after.
© 2015. Naomi Elana Zener.
