Page 13 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Three

Snowed Quite and the Seven Sisters

Snowed Quite was a beautiful princess with seven ugly stepsisters:
Beepie, Gulfie, Socalie, Chevrona, Royshelle, Essoë and Mobila. They
lived in a lovely palace made of rare and costly hardwoods. Snowed
Quite liked to be amused, because she was bored with school; her
stepsisters loved to dance around bonfires and watch them burn.
Snowed Quite would inherit the palace as soon as she graduated
from high school. But the Seven Sisters wanted to steal her
inheritance.
They could not kill her, because they would be kicked out of the
palace. So they plotted to keep her from ever finishing her education.
They cleverly poisoned her mind with propaganda, manipulated her
desires with advertising and diverted her attention with bright, shiny
toys and endless silly entertainment until she knew not night from
day, right from wrong, or up from down. Years went by, and Snowed
Quite remained addicted to her massive dose of opiates, unable to
pass a test in basic language or math skills, while the Seven Sisters
took apart the palace piece by piece and burned it in big bonfires in
the courtyard. They liked to see who could build the biggest fire and
be the hottest one of all. From time to time Snowed Quite wondered
about the flames leaping up as high as her tower window, but the
television and the magazines and the computer all told her that she
was very privileged to live in a nice warm climate.