The Last Job, an original short story by J. M. Richards (me;)
Wrote this for a short story contest on Meg Cabot’s fansite a couple years ago…and won! ;) (I got a copy of the last Princess Diaries for it. :) Since fairy tales and things like Oz and Jack the Giant Slayer are getting new life on the screen, just thought I’d throw my own twist out there.
Shortest thing I’ve ever written, incidentally.
I have never come across this version, and I’ve read dozens of Fairy Tale collections.
FYI I did read the source article, and it’s interesting—a good piece for those who think fairy tales are for kids, and that they are nice little stories about magic and girls waiting to be rescued by a prince. Hells to the no.
Some gritty, shady stuff goes down in most fairy tales, and for all that, I’ve been fascinated by them since I was a kid. They have some interesting things to say as myths, whether they’ve been “sanitized” or not.
As a side note, I wonder why we feel like we have to “clean” stories up to tell them to kids? I faced this same dilemma when relating some of the Greek myths to my camp kiddos this summer. I was tempted to leave out some of the brutal, unpleasant stuff…but…THAT’S THE STORY. Idk. I handled it when I was a kid, and look how I turned out.
On second thought, that’s a bad example.
