ELAINE CHIEW
Fairytale Princesses Running Amok
Cinderella is finally getting married – the wedding kept getting postponed because of travel restrictions – and us bridesmaids (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Pea Princess, Rapunzel and me) are struggling into lavender gowns, having gained some weight during the circuit breakers. The location is a Tudor-styled grand hotel up in the tea plantation highlands. Everyone is arriving by car, looking a little green from the switchback roads. Her prince, however, is scheduled to arrive by helicopter, after the Hang Seng Index closes for the day.
Mosquito repellent torches have been lit all over the garden. The festive white ribbons adorning the chairs and the front pergola look magical with their towering bouquets of white chempaka. In the bridal suite, we hover around Cinderella, grumpy because an eyelet for her corset has separated from the fabric. Her wedding planner is flapping about finding a tailor. Rapunzel offers to help, having done weaving from her days in the Kamunting high tower. Snow White insouciantly chews an apple. I capture our bridal hijinks on TikTok – I know their whispers about me since I shacked up with the Beast – but to me, weddings are all pomp and circumstance without any fun.
I’m adding audio clips to the reels when Pea Princess sidles up: psst, she says, have a secret to share with you. One night, wandering around sleepless on the hotel grounds, guess who she saw? Cinderella with a man, marauding each other underneath a drooping banyan. “Okay, my eyesight isn’t 20/20, but I do believe I know that guy – he’s one of her liveried footmen from the kabocha carriage incident.”
“You mean to say he comes from mice stock?”
Pea Princess nods knowingly. We stare at each other, because this casts the whole kabocha carriage incident in a new light. “I’ve got more,” she whispers, devilish glee in her tone, “apparently, he was cursed to turn into a footman because his tempeh conglomerate owed a ton of debt.”
“No!”
Pea Princess nods again. She whispers, “Fairy Godmother isn’t who you think she is. She runs a gambling parlour and an extortion racket. I hear Cinderella pawned the glass slipper to pay off her lover’s debts.”
We both look at Cinderella, twisting this way and that in front of the full-length mirror. A mirror tells no tales.
***
We fairy tale princesses have known each other for millenia, we’ve visited each other’s houses, been there for each other through thick and thin, we were all there at Ariel’s funeral, and kept mum that ‘happily-ever-afters’ is a myth, so Pea Princess’s revelations continue to trouble me as I hear the wedding music preludes begin above the beat of rotor blades. The bridesmaids huddle round to form a ‘amok’ plan – a leaf out of the book of lazy natives. Cinderella and I swap gowns.
The Prince is only now running through the flattened grass, his epaulette tassels flying about in the helicopter’s wake. The caterers are carrying the white-tiered cake to the banquet table. Everyone’s attention rivets on him as he straightens his cuffs and steps up to the pergola, handsome but still a schmuck. Earlier Pea Princess told me he has Cinderella take over scullery chores at his mansion even though he has a full staff – what good is marriage if all you do is swap one kitchen for another, Pea Princess scoffed, and I couldn’t but agree. Sleeping Beauty gives the sign – a two-finger rolling sign. Without ado, Pea Princess and Snow White bundle Cinderella into the caterer’s van. Rapunzel slips behind the wheel, the van gives a lurch as she releases the hand-brake. The van backs slowly down the driveway.
Standing in the wings of the flower arbor with Cinderella’s bouquet in my hand, I throw the veil over my face as the wedding march strikes up. I shuffle slow-slow down the aisle, Sleeping Beauty holding my train behind me. The van makes a three-point turn. The Prince’s eyebrows beetle: What’s this? The van idles its engine in the hotel compound.
At midpoint, Sleeping Beauty trips, pulling the train, jerking my head backwards. This is not part of the plan. We cascade down onto the white carpet; the Prince’s eyebrows shoot into his hair. A collective gasp of horror. The wedding march finishes, restarts. I grab onto my veil; the bouquet flies up and splashes into a large cistern, ejecting a snapping turtle arcing in a parabola to land in the coiffeur of a lady-guest. She squawks.
All is mayhem. Sleeping Beauty grabs my hand. We lift our hems and leg it after the van. We barely make it through the van’s open back door as Rapunzel careen-tilts the vehicle out of the compound, burning rubber. The Prince hollers, giving chase. I whip off my veil and toss it to him, watching his expression give way from surprise to realisation to grudging admiration. Through the van’s rearview mirror, the six of us tip our fingers to our foreheads in mock salute.
Elaine Chiew is the author of The Heartsick Diaspora and Editor/Compiler of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World. Her stories have been anthologised in the U.S., UK, Singapore and Malaysia.She is a two-time winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition, and guest editor of Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press) for 2022. Her flash stories have appeared in Wigleaf, Smokelong, Jellyfish Review, among others. More info can be found at www.epchiew.com