Don't it always seem to go

 

When, after a hundred years, Sleeping Beauty was ready to be woken up, there was no prince in the country – handsome or not.  The monarchy was abolished over thirty years ago and the last prince had long since fled to Canada.  The castle Sleeping Beauty was ensconced in had been forgotten.  Briar roses had formed an impenetrable hedge around it, in a dense patch of ancient woodland. However, the land was sold to a developer who got planning permission to build a shopping centre and parking lot on the site.

The developer bulldozered the ancient woodland and eventually got to a halt at the castle guarded by the Briar rose hedge. They started on the hedge but found that whatever they chopped off, grew back on in minutes.  The developer used a drone to see what was going on.  If all else failed, he would throw a bomb on it but instead they found the castle.  The drone was small enough and they steered it into the castle and found Sleeping Beauty.

As she lay there peacefully asleep, she was utterly instagrammable – with her long black hair, her rosy cheeks and her full, red lips.  All over the world images of her sleeping on her four-poster bed were shared on social media.  There was no shortage of men offering to wake her up and the developer had to enforce an exclusion area around the castle.

Now the developer had three sons.  Two of them were big burly men who worked with their father in the business.  The third one, Louis, was a very kind soul. Kind to children, kind to animals, respectful of women and the environment.  He identified himself as a man but was very mindful of those with gender fluidity and was careful to address them with they and their whenever he was in mixed company.  Louis himself was more attracted to big burley men.

Nevertheless, he offered to be helicoptered in the castle, kiss Sleeping Beauty and get her out so his father could develop the land.  And so it happened.  Louis was winched in the courtyard, walked up the dusty stairs and found himself in the presence of Sleeping Beauty.  He could appreciate the beauty of women.  He just itched to get his hands on her hair.

His father, who was in the helicopter hovering above the castle and in contact over the radio said: ‘have you given her a kiss yet, son.  Come on, get on with it. Give her a big smacker!’  Louis balked.  In his mind that would be very disrespectful and tantamount to sexual assault.  But he gave her a respectful, chaste peck on the forehead.  And so Sleeping Beauty woke up.

‘Are you my prince?’, she asked.  Then she looked at Louis and sighed. ‘No, I didn’t think so.  Ah well, let’s get out of here.’  They didn’t need to be winched out – the Briar rose became pliant and twisted so that Sleeping Beauty and Louis could get out easily.  The media were waiting and there was frenzied activity with cameras and reporters shouting questions.  Sleeping Beauty seemed to like the cameras and posed happily.  As soon as they were out, the Briar rose seemed to give a deep sigh and crumbled, along with the castle.  The bulldozers only had to clear away the rubble.

Sleeping Beauty adjusted well to life out of the castle.  She quickly took to social media and became an important influencer, giving advice on beauty sleep, beauty products and diet.  Louis became a hairdresser and entertained some important clients, thanks to Sleeping Beauty.  He found a nice boyfriend and he married him in a lavish ceremony, where the groom seemed to be asleep on a couch, to be woken up by a kiss of the groom.  Sleeping Beauty was the maid of honour.

The birds and the animals who had lived in the forest and the Briar Hedge had mostly died. Where the castle once stood was a large parking lot. Sleeping Beauty parked her car there once and felt suddenly very sad.

‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ she thought. ‘They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.’