What ingredients are required to create a modern-day fairy tale? Sometimes all that’s needed is a little magic dust—and a bit of lube. Bryn Haniver’s ever-so-dirty “Mastering Their Dungeons” draws on a familiar game, but not everyone could turn a dorm room into a setting for a modern-day myth. Benjamin Eliot has conjured his own version of Sisyphus, with a protagonist forced to fix the same facility for what appears to be an eternity in “An Uphill Battle.” Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Let Down Your Libido” features a completely different type of prison for a Rapunzel of the new millennium. And Thomas S. Roche’s “Cupid Has Signed Off” takes us from sex play in the online universe to a sizzling scenario IRL (in real life). My own “Rings on My Fingers” features dusky Los Angeles, a shy bookstore clerk and the universal desire for a happy ending, even with a tattooed prince.
Three wishes are all one girl requires when offered to choose in Saskia Walker’s “Kiss It.” What exactly does the protagonist kiss? Well, he’s definitely not a frog. Janine Ashbless’s “Gold, On Snow” tackles “Snow White” from the queen’s point of view. Allison Wonderland’s “Sleeping with Beauty” delves into the bubblegum-pink universe of two princesses who forgo princes (and frogs) in favor of each other. And what if one of those handsome fairy-tale studs liked men?
Are the endings always happy? That’s for the reader to decide. “The Clean-Shaven Type” by N. T. Morley, is a version of “Beauty and the Beast” with quite unexpected results for the Beast. “After the Happily-Ever-After,” by Heidi Champa, describes what happens to poor Cinderella once the sparkle fades from her fairy-tale wedding. The collection rides off into the sunset with a fairy tale told in a hundred words. If you don’t think that’s possible, check out Elspeth Potter’s “The Princess.”
With a combination of retold tales and brand-new fables, Alison’s Wonderland is the perfect naughty bedtime storybook to share with a partner (or enjoy solo style) for your own X-rated Happily-Ever-After.
XXX,
Alison Tyler
Epigraph
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
—Margaret Bonnano
…don’t forget about what happened to the man who got everything he ever wanted.
He lived happily ever after.
—Roald Dahl
The Red Shoes (Redux)
Nikki Magennis
Lily had walked past the shoe shop a hundred times. On her way to work at the flower shop early every morning, wearing shabby jeans and baseball boots that were worn the same color as the pavement, she’d walk fast and barely glance at the shiny, chichi window display. She didn’t need to see heartbreaker heels and designer bags that would cost her a month’s wages.
For the past six weeks, though, she’d found herself swiveling on her heel and turning to look at a particular display.
The window stretched high above her head, the plate glass polished so bright it reflected her image like a mirror. But Lily wasn’t looking at herself. Her gaze was totally transfixed on the shoes. Glossy, cherry-red, skyscraper-high, patent-leather fuck-me shoes that made her heart beat faster just looking at them. They had deep curves and a dangerous heel and they stood center stage on a podium by themselves, proud, shockingly beautiful and insanely unaffordable. They made Lily’s mouth water. She could almost taste the red of them.
Once, she’d approached the door, got close enough to feel the cool hum of air-conditioned air on her face. And then she’d checked herself. Girls with ratty hair and dirt under their chipped-varnish nails didn’t enter shops like that. Not without a motorcycle helmet and a package under their arm. Not in a million years.
While she was at work, emptying buckets of stinking slime-water and slicing the stems of stargazer lilies, Lily let her imagination wander. In those shoes, she’d be able to walk anywhere—up red carpets and through gilded palaces, across Hollywood Boulevard and down the Champs-Élysées. She’d be a shameless scarlet bombshell, and take no shit from anyone. Her hips would swing and her lips would pout and men would fall at her feet.
And then her boss, Margie, yelled at her for daydreaming, and Lily snapped out of it and got on with the cold, dirty, green-stained work of the day.
It was the first Saturday in May. The city was full of mist that crawled lazily up the streets and muffled the edges of the morning. Dragging herself reluctantly to work, Lily walked past the siren-red shine of the shoes, and drifted to the window to gaze at her unreachable dreams through half an inch of bulletproof glass.
“You like them.”
Lily nearly fell on her ass. A man had appeared, silently, in the shop doorway. He wore a black shirt and trousers the color of champagne. His face was taut and unlined, and his smile barely tweaked the corners of his mouth.
“I was just looking,” Lily said, backing away.
“I see you,” the man continued, fixing her with fathomless gray eyes, “every morning. You look at my shoes like you’re starving.”
“Your shoes?”
“I design them,” he said.
“No shit,” said Lily.
“For women,” he said, “like you.”
“Oh,” Lily said, and looked down at her faded, raggedy Ramones T-shirt.
A smile snaked across the man’s face.
“It’s what’s underneath that matters,” he said, his eyes hooking on Lily’s chest.
If Lily had seen herself in the plate glass, she’d have seen her cheeks flare as red as the shoes. She looked down at the paving slabs and tried to think of a witty comeback.
“Come in,” the man said, pushing the door open.
Lily’s eyes flicked from the shoes to the man and back again. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the flower shop’s shutters rolling open and Margie cursing the empty street. And then, although she knew it was crazy and although she couldn’t afford to get fired from another job and although everything about the man made her feel she had sleepwalked into some surreal stage play, she followed him into the cool, palatial interior.
The whole place must have been polished by an army of women on their hands and knees, Lily thought. Every damn surface shone like a mirror. Even the light shafts that fell across the room looked glossy. The air smelt faintly of a sweet, spicy perfume, and the shop was silent. There was no sound other than the click of the man’s shoes as he walked across the marble floor to the window display.
He lifted the shoes by the straps and brought them to Lily, dangling them from his hand like a bunch of grapes he didn’t want to bruise.
“See,” he said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
But as Lily reached out, he swung the shoes away and shook his head. He gave her a smile that made her feel dizzy.
“Not yet. You can wear them tonight. When I take you out.”
When Lily finally