advantage. Snuggling into Baby Bear’s disgusting, sticky bed, she laid in ambush.
Upon entering his home, Papa Bear immediately bellowed for the help to come and remove his coat. After a moment of stone silence, he bellowed again in impotent rage. Mama Bear and her spoiled son began ranging the house, looking for any sign of life. As Papa Bear was just beginning to cut loose into an ironic tirade about villainy and treachery in his own home, Mama Bear soothed him by pointing out that dinner had been set.
The Three Bears marched unceremoniously into the dining room never knowing that their fates were sealed. Many would think that Goldilocks had merely poisoned their food and the story would end here. But revenge, you see, is a dish that is not only best served cold, but blazing hot in such an inferno that it makes your intestines feel as if they were attempting to use a chainsaw made of wolverines to claw their way out of your body.
This was the agony that Papa Bear experienced.
The revenge exacted upon Mama Bear was the colder variety.
The moment the tainted porridge hit her digestive track she began to seize with pain. The North Pole itself in the middle of a frozen Godforsaken wasteland had never experienced such cold. It was so intense it’s debatable as to who burned more, her or Papa Bear.
Most children would have been mortified at their parents in such a plight, but Baby Bear was concerned with a more personal matter: his bowl was empty. This couldn’t be. The last house maid who slighted him in food (or so he perceived) was immediately devoured herself in order to make up for the nutrition lost. Surely they had not overlooked him. Perhaps they had left this dirty, empty porridge bowl in front of him because they were planning to come out in one long parade of servants who would deposit roasted chicken, turkey, duck, chocolate, candies, cakes, and cream pies in his sad, depraved little bowl. Of course, being as stupid as he was, it never occurred to him to actually get up and go find food, but rather to sit there stupidly in all his stupidness and continue staring stupidly at the stupid kitchen door, waiting for food to come.
After a few rounds of uncontrollable vomiting, Papa Bear managed to drag his massive carcass off the floor, cracking the poor oak table under his girth. Mama Bear did the same, though she tried to maintain some sense of ladylike dignity in her presence. This was a lost cause as most women don’t tremble violently after noticeably wetting themselves. A few minutes later, it was decided that the problem was not that something was wrong with the food, but that they needed to sit down and rest. This would somehow account for “the empty” found in Baby Bear’s bowl, but being “fearsome” and “bright” are not always a part of the same package deal.
Wanting nothing more than to assume the fetal position without having to climb the dreaded stairs to their loveless bedchamber, Papa Bear led the way by staggering into the living the room. As he flopped into his favorite rocking chair, a horrifying crack was heard. The chair would not rock or give under his weight. Indeed, it had apparently been rigged in such a way that it would not only support his massive weight, but offer little to no comfort at all as it stood in place, holding its static position. The cracking sound was actually that of the bones located in his spine, hips, and shoulders.
Before he could shout warning cries to his not-so-beloved family, Mama Bear found herself being sucked into a virtual vortex. While the support in Papa Bear’s chair had been reinforced to make it harder than stone, hers had been partially removed. Her rotund behind sank so deeply that it was not only entrapped in the device, but her face and feet were very suddenly brought together in a most uncomfortable fashion. In her panicked thrashing she managed to dislodge one of her eyes with her own claws.
Baby Bear once more found himself unable to concern himself with the matters of his parents as he went to sit down in his own chair—a poor, tortured little stool that had somehow survived his early childhood. As he flung his weight down upon it, the chair splintered into a million tiny pieces that each proceeded to lodge themselves in every available crevice he possessed.
Writhing and moaning in indescribable agony, the Three Bears eventually found their feet. Papa Bear was using his fortress of a chair to support himself as Mama Bear fumbled blindly along the wall, howling unladylike obscenities that would have been inappropriate on a naval vessel in wartime. Baby Bear achieved the closest thing he’s had to legitimate exercise in his entire life as he scooted along the carpet like a dog with worms, completing circuits around the living room at an alarming rate.
Time crawled and Goldilocks held her breath as anticipation finally began to mount. With bated breath she listened as the Three Bears laboriously climbed the stairs, painstakingly seeking the refuge of their beds. Their terrible claws closed around the door handle and with startling suddenness they burst into the room.
First Papa Bear threw himself onto his bed. In the same fashion as the chair below, it had been reinforced. His shoulder dislocated on impact, his ugly snout broke and teeth chipped inside his head. There was no indication of danger to Mama Bear as he immediately went quiet, rendered unconscious on impact. Collapsing onto her cashmere bedspread, she expected warmth and comfort. What she found was flypaper that clung to her fur and held her fast in place. With unbridled fury she blindly swiped and slashed at the air.
Now, Baby Bear was arguably one of the stupidest animals in The Forest at the time. However, it didn’t take a certifiable genius to comprehend that someone was clearly trying to bring down the Bear Empire. After several moments of deductive reasoning, he opted to simply pull the covers from his bed as opposed to dive into it. This would protect him from harm should that suspiciously human-shaped lump turn out to be anything other than his own bed-sanctuary.
It was over in a matter of seconds.
Leaping forth from the place where the sheets were, Goldilocks struck like the professional assassin she had become. Malnourished from missing a meal and slow from being forcibly sodomized by a rebellious chair moments earlier, Baby Bear had no hope of defending himself. His head went rolling across the floor until it came to rest where it overturned an oversized chamber pot.
Mama Bear, in her blind rampage, may have posed a problem—had Goldilocks not been prepared for her condition. Positioning herself near an open window, she began throwing hair products and immaculate shoes until Mama Bear finally rhino-charged through the window and swan-dove headfirst into the gravel of the garden below. Her neck broke on impact.
The dull thud of his wife’s bulk creating a small crater in the garden awoke Papa Bear from his stupor. Sitting up he saw the open window. Looking down he saw his son’s disembodied head soaked in fecal matter on the floor. And there, before him, he saw a child-warrior whose flowing blonde hair looked so beautiful and radiant it brought tears to his eyes.
He roared.
She leapt.
Only one walked out of that cottage alive that evening.
As the burning cottage collapsed on itself, Goldilocks had a moment to stop and feel the heat of the flames at her back and remember the days of baking pastries with her mother in the family business. Now that this dark chapter of her life was over and evil was vanquished in The Forest, she could at last have peace and begin focusing on living—
Were those screams?
Indeed they were. She’d forgotten all about the maids in the storage closet.
Well… hell. Happily Ever After’s overrated anyway.
Goldilocks: Blonde Assassin Page 2
