Malefibitch
Once upon a time, there was a young and beautiful princess who lived in a peaceful and happy kingdom. She was so young and beautiful that suitors would come to her castle from all over the realm seeking her hand in marriage and remark:
“By the gods, she is so young and beautiful. But not so young that it would be considered inappropriate in our current cultural context to ask for her hand in marriage.”
Though, admittedly, her kingdom’s standards in this regard were a bit wanting.
One day, her fairy guardians determined that it was time for her to marry, preferably to a naval power because a recent rash of piracy was severely disrupting shipping lanes. Their economy was in the dumps and could greatly benefit from such a blood alliance. Thusly, the royal family hosted a great banquet and invited all the wealthiest bachelor princes from throughout the land. They also invited a few married princes who seemed to be on the outs with their wives.
Noticeably absent from the guest list was the evil witch, Malefibitch.
Malefibitch shouldn’t have been surprised by this — she was an evil witch, after all, and besides that she was a total bummer at parties — but, nonetheless, she was quite angered by this slight. She was so angered, in fact, that she placed a curse upon the princess.
“Vile princess, I curse thee!” she cried, as she appeared at the ball in a puff of smoke. “On the day you come of a marriageable age — which, not gonna lie, is creepily young — you shall die! Sad and alone, you shall die!”
She then shot some evil magic stuff out of her wand at the princess, hitting her in the heart. The collateral damage also killed a few nearby guards, but no one really noticed or cared. Malefibitch cackled maniacally and disappeared in another puff of smoke.
That is how the story begins.
It’s up to you what happens next.
A
On the day the princess comes of marriageable age, Malefibitch’s curse takes hold. The princess falls into a deep sleep, but through the magical efforts of her fairy guardians she is still alive.
Her parents place her high in a tower, praying that one day the curse will be broken by true love’s kiss. (True love’s kiss is prescribed as a cure for many common ailments of the time, so they just kind of assume it will work for this.) It takes a while for the right prince to find her, because the types of people who are capable of true love are typically not the types that would open-mouth kiss an unconscious stranger. But eventually the curse is lifted and she marries a modestly wealthy if otherwise unremarkable prince.
Malefibitch has fallen on hard times by this point. Sorcery doesn’t pay like it once did and she’s looking for work. In an act of benevolence, the princess hires her as a sorcery consultant and they go on to have a fairly amiable working relationship.
B
On the day the princess comes of marriageable age, Malefibitch’s curse takes hold. The princess falls into a deep sleep, but through the magical efforts of her fairy guardians she is still alive.
Her parents place her high in a tower, praying that one day the curse will be broken by true love’s kiss. (They don’t know this yet, but true love’s kiss is definitely not the cure. The cure is leeches.) They go for quantity over quality in this regard, and invite princes from across the realm to come and kiss her whilst she sleeps. So many princes come that the king and queen decide to make a business of it, charging a flat rate per kiss. The model proves successful, and the tower becomes the mainstay of a sleeping princess-themed amusement park.
The kingdom prospers for a time, but after the king and queen die the amusement park falls into disrepair. Princes’ tastes change, and kissing sleeping princesses is no longer considered the innocent fun it once was. The tower is repurposed as a posh apartment complex. The new king and queen place the princess into storage, and as far as we know she’s still there.
C
Let’s backtrack a few seconds.
The princess, anticipating Malefibitch’s wrath, wore a magic slipper to the ball. The slipper is made of an enchanted glass that cannot be penetrated by dark magic. As soon as Malefibitch shoots the magic stuff out of her wand, the princess does a backflip-cum-roundhouse kick and kicks the magic stuff with her slipper. It ping-pongs off the ceiling, off the wall, off a gong that is in the corner of the room for some reason, and directly into Malefibitch’s heart, exploding her into a sparkling mist not unlike glitter confetti tinged with internal organs.
The princess, much to her surprise, finds great pleasure in the taking of another life. She is enraptured by it, addicted to it. She goes on to become a power hungry, bloodthirsty tyrant who presides over a reign of terror for 60 years. She conquers all the surrounding kingdoms, enslaves the princes who once sought her hand in marriage, and turns them into concubines. She hunts down all of Malefibitch’s witch kin and executes them in horrific fashion.
In her old age, as Malefibitch predicted, the princess dies sad and alone. Later historians note that, despite her penchant for violence, her reign was one of great technological progress and economic prosperity.
D
Everything begins as in A, except that the prince doesn’t break the curse until 700 years later. Actually, he’s technically not a prince, but a guy named Nick Prince, which is close enough.
By this point, technology has evolved so rapidly that the princess can hardly comprehend the complex world in which she finds herself. Even the language is unintelligible to her. Those who observe her wandering the streets in her moth-eaten gown assume she is mentally unstable. Nick Prince tries unsuccessfully to help her adjust to the modern world, but in the end it’s a losing battle and he leaves. The princess is left to wander the streets alone.
Maybe she dies of a broken heart. Maybe she’s hit by a car. Either way, the ending is the same: Malefibitch’s prediction comes true, and the princess dies sad and alone.
E
Everything happens the same as in D except Nick Prince never finds the princess. The tower she’s asleep in gets demolished as part of an infrastructure modernization project and she ends up buried in the foundation of an Arby’s.
F
Nick Prince owns the Arby’s. Something about the establishment draws him to it. At first, he assumes it’s the roast beef. But with time he learns it is something else, something deeper even than tender heaps of roast beef on a sesame seed bun.
He finds the still-sleeping princess during a restaurant remodel and covers her in Arby’s roast beef and melted cheddar, which in this version is the cure. Never mind how he knew that. The curse is lifted and they fall in love. They go on to run a successful chain of fast food franchises across the Midwest.
G
Malefibitch realizes she forgot her coat at the party. She reappears in a puff of smoke. The atmosphere is super awkward by this point, but she really likes that coat. She fights her way through the bouncers, grabs her coat, and disappears again.
A few days later, the wife of one of the guards who was killed, vengeful after her husband’s pointless death, comes to Malefibitch’s hovel in the forest and murders the witch in her sleep.
Remember: The extras in our own story are the main characters in theirs.
Everything else continues as in B.
H
“Wait!” cries the princess, just before Malefibitch disappears in a puff of smoke. She pulls Malefibitch to the side to speak to her in private. “Before you disappear in a puff of smoke, I want you to know that I think you’re right.”
Malefibitch is confused, but she decides to hear her out. “Go on,” she says.
“We should have invited you to the ball,” says the princess, “even if you are an evil witch and a total buzzkill. There’s many types of people in this kingdom, and they all deserve to be invited to balls, regardless of whether they’re princes, witches, knights, or whatever. But not peasants, because we need to draw the line somewhere.”
“I’m listening,” Malefibitch says.
“You and I are not the enemies here,” the princess says. “Our real enemies are the king and queen. They’ve been snubbing you from ball invites for years, and they’ve been trying to marry me off to some prince even though I’m way too young and ambitious for marriage at this point in my life. Also, I would like to experiment a little bit first, play the field, as they say.
“So let’s make a deal,” the princess continues. “You lift the curse and help me overthrow the king and queen. In exchange, I’ll make you my closest advisor and invite you to every ball. We’ll rule the kingdom hand-in-hand, and never again will evil witches be treated as outcasts from society.”
This sounds good to Malefibitch, and she and the princess seal the deal with a roundhouse kick. Malefibitch lifts the curse from the princess and turns the king and queen to stone. She and the princess go out for a night on the town to celebrate, and it turns out Malefibitch is actually a pretty fun drinking buddy.
They go on to rule the kingdom successfully, if in a manner that is considerably more evil and witchlike.
I
Everything begins as in H, with the added realism that neither the princess nor the witch has any experience whatsoever in matters of government. Their focus on magic and brewing potions and such over the normal functions of government causes the economy to collapse.
The kingdom is soon overthrown by a peasant uprising. The castle is turned into a kangaroo court, and most of the nobility is tried and executed. Malefibitch and the princess manage to escape to the witch’s hovel deep in the woods. There Malefibitch schools the princess in the ways of evil witchery, and the princess becomes an evil witch herself.
Years pass and Malefibitch dies. People have forgotten about the princess by this point, and no one believes in witches anymore. Local children tell tales of the mean old hag who lives in the woods, but none know her true identity. She lives a lonely, reclusive existence and dies in the hovel alone.
The forest is ultimately felled to make way for a commercial district. On the spot of her former hovel a local entrepreneur named Nick Prince builds an Arby’s.
J
Malefibitch sits in her witch hovel before the fire, brooding, depressed, nibbling on a boiled snake for comfort. She has just teleported home from the ball and is feeling particularly alone.
She remembers the looks of anguish on the king’s and queen’s faces after she cursed their daughter to an early death. She remembers the shock and terror among the partygoers. She remembers the princess’s look of hopelessness for the youth and beauty which would be snatched from her too soon.
“When did I become so evil?” Malefibitch thinks to herself. “I wasn’t always this way. Nay, it was those horrific non-witches that turned me into the beast I have become. They’ve always treated witches as pariahs. I merely did what I had to to survive. Do I want to be evil? No. It is not I who chose this path, but them!”
She nibbles on the snake some more. A feeling of regret washes over her as thoughts of the princess once again enter her mind. She feels a pang in her chest, a spark of goodness in her cold, dark heart.
“Alas, perhaps I bear some responsibility for my personal development. Perhaps it is not too late to change,” she says aloud. “I have done many wrongs in my life. As fun as doing evil stuff is, perhaps it is time for me to turn a new leaf. Perhaps there is still one wrong I can make right.”
Malefibitch decides to uncurse the princess. By doing so, she thinks, maybe she will become just a little less evil. Maybe she will show everyone that there’s more to witches than curses and warts. Maybe, just maybe, she can become good after all.
She disappears in a puff of smoke and reappears back at the castle. The ball is over now, the guests having left in low spirits. The princess’s sad fate has cast a gloom over the entire kingdom. Malefibitch creeps up the stairs to the princess’s room, determined to undo the curse. The princess lies on her bed, her face buried in a pillow, weeping. The witch approaches her silently, unseen. She sits by her side, laying a craggy witch hand on her back.
“Don’t cry, my dear,” Malefibitch says softly. “Everything will be okay.”
Without another word, she places roast beef and cheddar on the princess’s nape and the curse is lifted. The princess isn’t quite aware of what is going on, but her next breath brings with it a new feeling of life, along with a hint of cheese. Where once there was sadness in her heart, now there is joy. Where once there was despair, now hope for a brighter future. Where apathy, now vengeance.
It is about this time that she notices the evil witch Malefibitch sitting next to her on the bed. In a fit of panic she leaps to her feet and roundhouse kicks Malefibitch in the face. The kick sends the witch flying backwards to the balcony and over the ledge, where she falls many stories to her death.
The next day, news spreads that the curse has been lifted and the evil witch is dead. The kingdom celebrates by throwing another ball and not inviting any witches.
Everything else continues as in C.
That is the end of the story. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. If you happen to be a curséd princess, I pray it gives you hope that there are many possible ways your story can unfold.
What was your favorite ending?
What other endings would you have added?
Do you enjoy these longer stories, or would you prefer Ye Olde Tyme News sticks to shorter news-like articles? I have a very bad gauge for what people like to read, and I want to respect your time and your inbox by publishing stories you enjoy.
I'm going with F. I guess I'm just a romantic.
"...even if you are an evil witch and total buzzkill".
A fractured fairy tale with choose your own adventure attached. Wow.