Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a beautiful princess, named Aurora, with a severe case of narcolepsy. Well, actually, she was technically cursed by a wicked queen, named Maleficent, who was obsessed with her own magnificent (if a bit severe) visage and got ticked off that she didn’t get invited to baby Princess Aurora’s christening. And so the story goes that the queen put a hex on the princess - after crashing her christening - that when little Aurora would turn eighteen, she’d prick her finger, and fall into a slumber, from which she would never wake. So would her parents, maids and all her subjects. Except for a couple wise fairy godmothers who were able to insert a special clause into bitter old Maleficent’s curse that Aurora and friends would only sleep for a hundred years (they liked round numbers) and she’d awaken if she received “true love’s kiss.”

Even though it was kind of wrong for someone to forcibly kiss a sleeping beauty uninvited, so it was that the spell was cast with its special magical twist.

Aurora would become the most beautiful, fairest girl in all the land and the pride and joy of her parents and her subjects. Her parents guarded her safely in the castle and cast Maleficent into a keep in the darkest forest, where she plotted and brooded, as any evil, wicked queen should do. No one ever really knew who she was queen of, other than the jaded and miserable. She talked, a lot, to a supposedly magic mirror, and everyone around her thought she was going batshit crazy, but the mirror kept telling her that Aurora was the most beautiful girl in the land and Maleficent started feeling really depressed. That mirror was really kind of a dick, right?

Aurora‘s parents never told her about the curse and just hoped the whole damn thing would blow over. But Maleficent was not having it. She snuck into the castle on Aurora‘s eighteenth birthday and pretended to be a weaver. She enticed the girl to see how wonderful it was to work the loom (sounds like a party, doesn’t it) and, of course, innocently, Aurora pricked her finger on that fated, terrible spindle. Totally clueless. She quickly fell into the deepest sleep you could ever hope for, but this was actually a little bit too much of a good thing. Because everyone else fell asleep, too. There was no one to do the cooking or feed the chickens or clean the laundry, empty the chamber pots, get the morning paper, iron. You get the point. The whole blooming castle went to trash.

So here’s the real problem. Those adorable, wise little fairy godmothers we talked about before? Dead. Run over, crossing the road by a horse and buggy. Tragic. So they really had no way of keeping up their end of the deal, magically speaking. Maleficent’s curse looked like it was going to be a long haul. But maybe, somehow, there was still some hope for Aurora and the castle’s comatose community. I mean, this is a fairytale. So anything is possible, right?

Maleficent wound up catching a stage coach to the sea, seated with a conceited bard named Shakespur, or something, and inspired him to write a bunch of plays that garnered some notoriety. But she never looked back, since revenge was all she wanted and her dish go served cold. Byeee!

Until, one day - a hundred years later - a noble, uncomfortably handsome prince came upon the doomed castle, covered in briars twenty feet thick. He and his men slashed through the thicket and came upon the strangest of scenes: men, women, children, dogs, and cats, all frozen in suspended animation. In the middle of eating, in the middle of buying and selling, in the middle of arguing and crying and laughing and choking and teasing and groping and farting and, well you get the point - there they stood! Flesh and blood statues. The prince couldn’t believe his eyes. He decided to search the castle, suspecting a foul mystical enchantment had been placed on the lot. He was smarter than he looked.

The Prince came upon the cobwebbed chamber of the sleeping princess. He coughed and sneezed as he made his way through her dusty abode. He shrieked at the many dangling spiders and their webs full of cocooned insects. Gross. This was not a pleasant sort of first meeting, but still, he was intrigued. After all, she was so beautiful and seems so innocent, and so vulnerable. And that kind of turned him on. So, in a very charming, if a alarming way, he leaned over her and decided he would steal a kiss while she laid there, surrounded by a dilapidated castle, full of spiders, covered in a layer of dust. Maybe the prince was into some kinky stuff. But did he love her?

Suddenly, her eyes opened. Aurora was awake again. Maybe the fairy godmothers were able to help after all. Maybe the curse was finally broken. Maybe all the kingdom could live happily ever after, after all. Maybe not. True love’s kiss could break the curse. But what about a horny, handsy, kinky prince taking advantage of an almost-dead teenager while she slept without her consent? Not sure how magic works all the time, but it seems that might have messed up whatever good intentions were attached that could have successfully mitigated the worst effects of the curse.

Once Aurora awoke, she was hungry! Consumed with a voracious appetite, befitting only a zombie. The prince had barely pulled away when she pulled his face back to hers and promptly bit off his ruby lips. He bled like a stuck pig! She snarled, wanting more. He screamed and ran from her chamber, back into the courtyard. There he found a frightful scene. All of the princesses subjects had also been awakened. And all of them were zombies! And they started biting all of the prince’s men. Aurora stumbled down the stairs, in search of her meal. The Prince was busy fending off a bloodthirsty milkmaid and a rabid looking tin smith when the princess arrived.

“Argh, “ she commanded! The townspeople parted for their sovereign lady.

The prince, injured and afraid, scooted away, attempting to escape - there was no help to be found.

“Please, my lady! No!” His begging fell upon the deafness of enchantment.

Aurora, the Zombie Princess, lunged at the humbled prince and tore him, limb from limb. She plunged her once-beautiful face into his brawny chest; with her jagged, rotten teeth and clamping jaws, she pried the prince’s still-pumping heart from his broken thorax and devoured it at once.

She had found her true love: the heart of man.

Aurora and her subjects pillaged the kingdom and spread their morbid affliction to all whom they encountered. The princess’s unsavory affection for human flesh took her to the door of a poor old witch who lived in a cottage by the sea. When the shriveled, ancient woman answered the door she shuttered.

“Aurora? Can it be? You were once the most beautiful and fairest in all the land. And now… this?” The old witch sneered in disgust. “Surely, even in my shriveled, wrinkled condition, I am at last more fair and beautiful than thee!”

With that, a single tier dropped from Aurora’s eye. And then she bit off Malifecent’s pruny face. And they all live miserably, ever after.

The End.