Grimm's Anew

By Peter Johnson

A Quintet of Fairy Tales Rewritten For Adults of the Modern Age. Featuring a liberal mixture of the sexual and the horrific this is the perfect collection of short stories for readers with a unique, nostalgic bend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Johnson
• Release date: May 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311159328

Peter Johnson

Peter Johnson grew up in Buffalo, New York, at a time when they had a good football team, which seems like fifty years ago. Similar to Benny Alvarez and his friends, Peter always loved words, knowing he was going to be a teacher or a professional baseball player. Also, being from a long line of Irish storytellers, he loved reading and telling tales, and when he realized that his stories changed every time he told them, and that he could get paid for this kind of lying, he decided to become a novelist. His first middle grade novel, The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr. AKA Houdini, was named one of the Best Children's Books by Kirkus Reviews, and he's received many writing fellowships, most notably from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Grimm’s Anew

A Quintet of Fairy Tales Rewritten For Adults of the Modern Age

By

Peter Johnson

© 2015  Grimm’s Anew – Peter Johnson

All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed here are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover adapted from a photo by Gabriel S. Delgado C.

Under a Creative Commons license 2.0

http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/9998

Contents

Brggitta, The Snow White Princess

Rapunzel

Hansel and Gretel

Cinderella

Bluebeard

Also by the Author

Briggitta, The Snow White Princess

1.

Once upon a time there was a queen unrivaled – she was never spoken too highly of and was superior in all ways to all people in all her lands. She had the intelligence of a dozen wise men, the cunning of a score of foxes and beauty such as no man could hope to know. And, when her King took her hand in marriage and retired with her to the royal chambers and threw her upon the bed and endeavored to pleasure her, it was he who was pleased, discovering her abilities in the sensual arts were beyond compare.

My Queen! he gasped, when she’d finished the task of consummating their union, and her ladies-in-waiting tended her, bound her again in her corsets. My Queen!

The Queen’s superiority knew no bounds and she was by turns the kindest and cruelest; humblest and vainest; most confident and most resentful.

But envy? It was the one thing she was best at amongst all others. And so envious was she that when she laid eyes upon her daughter for the first time, named Briggitta after the Queen’s own mother, and found herself looking upon a child with skin white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony wood, her blood boiled with resentment even she’d never known.

Tell me of the child and tell me true, the Queen demanded, calling a valet to confer with, have you ever seen one so fair and beautiful?

The valet looked upon the child and could not say he had.

No, my Queen, he said. She be the fairest—

The Queen raged at such truth, jealous to the point of destruction and determined to prove to the valet that she herself was fairer still. Shedding her robes and corsets, she stood naked before him and bid him to see her. Her flesh pure and flawless. Her breasts full of life.

Look upon me, she demanded. Have you ever seen such perfection?

Aye, the valet said, with hardly a passing interest in the Queen’s smooth, flawless flesh. The Princess Briggitta is—

In a fit, the Queen took the valet to bed. Shed him of his breeches until he wore little beyond his good humor and a raging cock. Took him to the royal bed, where the Princess had been conceived. Took his throbbing member into her body and made her insides were warm with the elixir of his life. Then, sated, she demanded of him again:

Now say you – has there ever been one so fair as your Queen?

Aye, he said, again, without fail. The Princess—

At these words the Queen banished the valet to the dungeons and hard labor. Then she swaddled the child until not but a sliver of her could be seen and called upon one of her huntsman – the darkest-hearted of them all.

My Queen?

Take this child into the forest, she instructed the huntsman. Take her and cleave her in twain and be rid of her! Then return her heart to me as proof of your deed and allegiance to me! Then, before he could argue the matter, she turned over the bundle of the princess – flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood – and bid him leave.

Yes, my Queen, the huntsman agreed and rode off under cover of night into the forest to dispatch of the child. Deep he went, into the darkest corners, until not a soul could be found, but there was a stump. Upon the stump the huntsman placed the child and then took out his sword and raised it and prepared to strike the child dead when—

The Princess squirmed and the swaddling clothes fell from her face and the huntsman caught glimpse of her beauty and—

And could not bring himself to harm the child.

No matter how he determined to do it, reminding himself the Queen had bid it so, and she might surely strike him dead for his