Snow Blight and the Seven Dorks;
A Dysfunctional Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in a land farther away from the real world than Utah or even Hollywood, there lived a witch whom the politically correct among us would refer to as looks-challenged, but who, by any rational person’s definition of the word, was just plain fly-swatter ugly. Her name was Ruebella, and, for all her occult powers and spells, she remained, well, let’s just say she had a face that could stop a sundial.

Ruebella lived in a standard issue crumbling castle perched precariously on the dark side of Magick Mountain, which towered over Gummpe Forest in Roody Valley in the southern part of northern Transylvania, an area so remote that had she not leased-to-own a flying broomstick capable of speeds exceeding 100 mph, it would have been quite inconvenient for shopping, as well as for trips to her regular herbalist Ginkgo Johnswort.

Even worse, she would rarely have been able to attend her favorite form of entertainment, the regularly scheduled public executions; her especial favorites were the rack-stretchings, beheadings, and stake burnings of local winos and satirists.

Ruebella daily consulted her magic mirror, because, unlike any other mirror in the world, this one reflected a (possibly computer-generated) young and beautiful face, in contrast to the one Ruebella actually possessed.

There she would stand, striking a pose which she imagined made her look like Cindy Crawford (though in reality more like Broderick Crawford), and she would ask: “Mirror, mirror, tell me true, who’s the cutest chick in view?”

To which the mirror would answer, “Without a doubt, I tell you true, the cutest chick in view is you.” Remember, it was a magic mirror and was responding while under a spell, having no real choice in the veracity of its answer, and therefore morally uncensurable. Like a computer, it could not assess the actual truth of any input given (“Garbage In, Garbage Out”). So when Ruebella magically programmed the mirror to attest to her cuteness, naturally it had no choice.

Great dollops of years passed while the mirror’s magic-coerced response went completely unchanged, unlike Ruebella who, to put it charitably, ripened with age.

There finally came a time when even the enchanted mirror got disenchanted, and, although it could not change the actual content of its reply, it began to develop a sort of sarcastic tone in its voice, the insincerity of which was not lost on Ruebella, who was sensitive to even the mildest criticism of her appearance, no matter how constructively meant.

Miffed at the mirror’s newly acquired vocal snigger, the wizened witch waved her spotty hands in front of it and chanted, “Tell the truth, you piece of glass, or else I’ll kick your polished a--”

Instantly released from its need to fib (and presumably to rhyme) the mirror interrupted her and replied with intemperately ready eagerness: “Without a doubt, without a clue, if my cat had a face like yours I’d shave its butt and make it walk backward!”

After Ruebella had broken the mirror into thousands of little tiny eency beency pieces and stomped it thoroughly with her size 18 orthopedic shoes, she allowed herself to become calmer, more objective, to consider her options.

In a land where there were no plastic surgeons (I told you it was far away from Hollywood) those options were limited. Checking her occult tomes of magic spells, she looked up the recipe that hit her particular problem right on its homely head; the one which had helped her in the past (helped her as much as could be expected considering what it had to work with): Virgin Stew; the eating of which guaranteed a youthful, comparatively improved appearance for no less than, but not more than one hundred years.

Though Ruebella would never have admitted it to friends (if she’d had any, which she did not, having outlived them by chance or design--she often found herself putting lethal spells on any competition in the looks department, which was pretty much all of them), she’d long since passed her three hundredth birthday and was wearing the mileage quite visibly. (In this faraway land, homely people lived to extreme ages. This was apparently the Universe’s idea of fairness.) (Or possibly a cosmic joke.) (Maybe a karmic witticism.) (Okay, never mind.)

She’d used the magic stew spell twice before, so she immediately went about planning how to obtain the main and understandably irreplaceable ingredient for Virgin Stew--a virgin.

The willingness (or non-) of the particular virgin had never previously been an issue for Ruebella. Virgins were nothing new in Ruebella’s life; in fact, she preferred them on those rare occasions when she could find one. But she had not eaten one (in the most exact and strictest sense) for many years. Her ex-mirror had informed her she was now long overdue.

The wily witch decided that the quickest way to locate a virgin was to secretly infiltrate the nearest twelve step group for folk with sexual problems. She would then join, posing as a person with sexual difficulties. (It would not be an acting stretch for her.) Times being what they were, she was sure she’d discover a genuine virgin among the sexually dysfunctional.

Ruebella took a quick bath in magically reinforced herbal tea water to minimize her distinctive personal aroma (an insistent, not to say eye-wateringly pungent caché which had developed around her person along about her hundred and fiftieth year). She then hopped on her broom and did an easy 90 mph to a small, economically disadvantaged hamlet named after its founder, Sir Ecolai N Hammburgher.

There, that very night, as fate would have it, was a meeting of Horndogs Anonymous, in the basement of First Pentabapticostal Church of Hammburgher Hamlet.

The instant Ruebella stepped into the room and introduced herself curtly, all eyes eagerly swept toward her. Once. After getting a good look at her, they immediately swept away again. Luckily for her self esteem, Ruebella was so engrossed in virgin-spotting, she did not notice that even sexual compulsives were insufficiently so to take any amorous interest in her.

Seven men and two women were seated on folding chairs in a circle, and, luck being with Ruebella, there was one empty seat remaining. The saucy sorceress swiftly seated herself beside one of the women, who sniffed once and promptly moved away from her, switching seats with an eager, elderly (though nowhere near as elderly as Ruebella) gentleman named Sleazy.

At this point, we may as well dispose of what the reader is doubtless awaiting, the names of these seven male group members. They were, in order of age and sexual dysfunctions: Sleazy, Gropey, Achey, Brakey, Pantee, Sniffer and the facilitator, Doctor D Weebe Kavortian, or, as he hated to be called: ‘Doc’.

The two young women present were named Repulzill and Snow Blight. The empty chair belonged to Golda Lox, a young woman who had quit the group and gone off to Gummpe Forest to live insin with a family of three bears. This menage á zoo had all the Hamlet gossips atwitter. (Not to mention gathering stakes and bonfire wood.)

“Welcome to our little group, Ms Rue...” Doc began, but quickly ran out of steam when he realized Ruebella was not paying him the slightest mind. Rather, she was conspicuously eyeballing Repulzill and Snow Blight.

Sleazy and Pantee nodded knowingly to each other and simultaneously whispered, “Lezzie.”

Repulzill swept her long luxuriant raven black locks away from her colorfully and completely tattoo-covered face, and for a moment, the eager enchantress was certain she’d found her virgin. But Ruebella changed her mind when Repulzill lead off the evening’s discussion by recounting her torrid night of bizarre, leather appurtenance associated sexual antics with several local shepherds, a blacksmith, three oompah band players, and some especially selected barnyard animals.

So now Ruebella’s hope-eggs were all gathered up and plopped into Snow Blight’s metaphorical basket.

Snow Blight was the next to “share” and Ruebella’s black little heart skipped a few much needed beats. Judging from the young woman’s personal testimony, not only was she strictly a virgin, but she vowed to remain one at whatever cost to her popularity until her wedding night, when and if that happy and sacred event should transpire. (It is of course a sad commentary on the moral state of Hammburgher Hamlet that a virgin felt it necessary to perceive herself as a sexually dysfunctional person, but there you are. Apparently Hammburgher Hamlet was closer to Hollywood in morals than distance.)

In a tiny, frail, and annoyingly warbly voice, Snow Blight said, “I had a terrifying experience the other night. I was almost date-caressed by Little Tommy Tucker--I think he said his name was ‘Tucker’. ANYway, he tried to touch my ELBOW if you can imagine it! Well I had to show HIM what I thought about him taking THAT sort of liberty! I dislocated his left shoulder, fractured his femur, creased his windpipe and did what I think might be permanent damage to his prostate gland. I mean, what’s a helpless young virgin to DO? And now there’s no one left in the whole Hamlet who’ll even go OUT with me because they all know I’m not That Kind of Girl!”

“There, there,” there’d Ruebella, patting Snow Blight soothingly (doing so to check the firm tenderness and edibility of the girl’s Stew-destined flesh). “I know I’m new to this group but I think we should all applaud this young lady’s well defended--not to say obsessively defended--virtue.”

Snow Blight sniffled into the strangely stained hanky offered to her by Sniffer, until she noticed the blotches on it and returned it with a shudder. “Thank you, Ms Ruebella, I appreciate the validation.”

“And furthermore, dearie, I have a very nice nephew who is a strictly moral, never been married gynecologist who is looking for a nice virgin to date chastely for a period of not less than six months after which they will marry in a large ceremony in which she can proudly and honestly wear a lovely white gown that he will happily pay for, what with his being so rich and all.”

“Really?” sniffed Snow Blight into the lacy hanky handed her now by Pantee. Unfortunately, as she dabbed at her nose, she began to realize it was not a hanky at all. She also realized just where Pantee had gotten his nickname. She daintily dropped the lacy little nothing to the floor, where Pantee sprained three vertebrae stooping rapidly to snatch it up.

“Perhaps I could meet your nephew some time,” said Snow Blight.

Ruebella clapped her hands together and cackled, “Well, ya know, Cookie, there’s no time like the present! Why don’t you nip on up to my castle with me right this minute! My sweet, hunky, handsome, and perfect gentleman of a nephew is at home right now baking some fudge brownies...his hobby, you know.”

(It should probably be superfluous to mention here that the crafty crone did not have a nephew of ANY kind, much less a handsome, rich, or gynecologically employed one.)

“Ahem? Harumph?” fumfered Doc Kavortian, “Of course everyone in this group makes all their own decisions, but Snow Blight, I’m not sure that leaving would be such a good idea at this time. No offense intended, Madam, but we hardly KNOW you and--”

Ruebella momentarily fixed Doc with two steely, witchy eyes. “Drop dead and rot,” she suggested.

Doc noticed with professional objectivity that the unappealing lady who reeked of herbal tea and possibly gravedust did not suffer fools gladly, or for that matter, heroes, or for that matter, interference of any kind with her plans once she had made them. He made notes to this effect in his pad to avoid a potentially nasty confrontation involving possible (and definitely unthinkable) physical contact with her.

“Can WE come too?” leered Sleazy, “to, YOU know... WATCH?”

Ruebella raised her scrawny right leg with surprising agility and used it to cuff Sleazy a resounding thwack in the thorax. Sleazy was propelled rapidly from his chair. He ricocheted off Achey, knocked heads with Sniffer, and landed smack in the lap of Brakey, who fell off his own chair and slid under that of Repulzill, where he managed to steal a brief glimpse of the leather underwear she wore safety-pinned to her skin. Repulzill realized what was happening and, leaping to her feet, imbedded her spiky heels into Brakey’s buttocks, eliciting from him a groan not so much of pain as of bliss.

Gropey pretended to try to help Brakey up (though Brakey wanted no help). Gropey was planning to use Brakey’s fall as an excuse to brush his free hand against Repulzill’s left breast. He missed, however, and instead inserted his hand into the moist mouth of Pantee, who gagged, and promptly threw up into Brakey’s lap.

With his notepad, Doc began vigorously slapping everyone within arm’s reach in a futile effort to regain the group’s attention.

“What a bunch of DORKS!” said Ruebella to Snow Blight. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ignoring the group chaos, Snow Blight lifted her pert chin and voluminous skirt, and regally followed Ruebella out the door and into the night.

In order to keep from revealing her identity as a card carrying member of The Witchsters Union #666, Ruebella stuck out her leg and tripped a carriage to take her and her unsuspecting pre-Stew virgin to the castle. (She knew that the flying broom would have been a dead giveaway, so she’d sent it back home alone.)

All the way to the castle (it was quite a long trip when not taken by broom-back) Snow Blight nattered on about how Ruebella’s nephew must be such a gentleman and how it would be such a relief to date a young man who would not try to partake of her personal parts premaritally.

Ruebella was tempted to off her right there in the carriage.

But she knew that for the stew spell to work, the Virgin had to be executed in a specific and graphic manner worthy of a fairy tale which would both please a child and annoy the hell out of politically correct would-be censors. And such a demise could only be accomplished under controlled conditions, back at the castle.

So Ruebella did what good evil witches have done through the ages... she gritted her few remaining teeth and bided her time.

Repulzill also left the chaotic shambles of a meeting, not wanting to be late for her ‘Ladies In Leather And Lace Potluck’. The seven remaining dorks were sitting morosely about in various stages of sexual dysfunction and frustration.

“I’m worried about Snow Blight,” announced Doc. “I don’t trust that hag she left with.”

“Yeah,” snipped Gropey, “I don’t trust a woman that smells worse than roadkill.”

“YOU smell worse than roadkill,” snorted Sniffer.

“Well, I’m a MAN. A man’s SUPPOSED to smell. It’s MASCuline.”

“If YOU’RE masculine,” sniffed Pantee, “then I’M Conan The Agrarian.”

Doc waved his arms in a begging gesture. “Please, please, fellow Hammburghers, can’t we all just get ALONG? We should be thinking of Snow Blight.”

“I think of Snow Blight ‘til it HURTS,” leered Achey.

“Well,” harrumphed Brakey, who still reeked of unattractive partially digested substances, (having been thrown up on earlier, you’ll recall), “I say, never come between a girl and her gynecologist.”

“I would, if I got half the chance,” snickered Sleazy.

Doc Kavortian sighed. Sometimes his group made him want to reconsider his stance against mercy killing. “Look, all I’m saying is that Snow Blight may be in trouble and I think WE should go to her rescue.”

“RESCUE?” grinned Achey, “YOU make such a big trauma-drama about EVERYthing! Snow Blight’s headed for a date with a gynecologist! That can only mean some super hot SEX!” The mere word stirred the group deeply.

“Well, then,” breathed Pantee excitedly, “if you guys don’t wanna go RESCUE her, ya wanna go WATCH?”

The group paused, with long, questioning looks, on their increasingly flushed faces. With barely stifled excitement, they lurched simultaneously out the door, leaving Doc the indignity of taking up the rear where he bellowed down the cobbled streets for a horse-drawn taxi.

Meanwhile, after the long and arduous carriage ride during which an aggravated Ruebella uncharacteristically refrained a record one hundred and eighteen times from prematurely throttling Snow Blight, they pulled up before the solid rust gate of the cantankerous crone’s castle.

“What a lovely old cast--”

“--yeah, yeah, let’s get crackin’,” snapped the hasty hag who all but yanked the lovely soon-to-be-stewed virgin into her out of the carriage.

“Oh, my,” said the distressed Snow Blight, once inside the witch’s dank and dismal lair, and still attempting to be polite, “you’re home is so--so--atmospheric!”

“Thanks a pile, Cookie. Means a LOT coming from someone in a dress like that. Right this way.” Ruebella hurried Snow Blight down a long corridor lit by rows of torches made of slow burning, tar-coated cats.

“Um, are we going to meet your nephew? I’d like to uh, freshen up first if that’s--”

“Powder room’s on the way,” Ruebella muttered, distracted by her attempted to recall the order in which the incantations needed to be spoken.

Soon they arrived at the smelly but spacious and mildewed chamber in which Ruebella was wont to weave her witchery.

Snow Blight took in the vast room which contained skulls used as candleholders and ash trays, stuffed tarantula doilies, severed limb lamp bases, and a tall ladder up to a platform that leaned against a gigantic cauldron in which bubbled a steaming substance resembling frothy mucous.

What the room was lacking, Snow Blight noticed with dismay, was even one handsome, brownie-baking gynecologist.

She whispered in her already quivery voice made even more so by slow-spreading confusion, “I, uh, don’t understand...”

“Can’t be the first time THAT’S happened,” observed the snide spellcaster, adding perfunctorily, “have a seat in the armchair.”

The younger (by far) woman was startled to note that when Ruebella said ‘armchair’ she meant ARMchair, because it was indeed constructed from the assembled bones of various sized arms.

Even Snow Blight, not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, began to suspect that something was seriously amiss.

Ruebella smacked a large brass gong with an ankle-bone mallet and began impatiently rooting through sheaves of parchments and cobwebbed books. “Now where did I put that darned...”

“Um, uh, Ms Ruebella? I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t come back another time. I see you’re rather um, occupied with--”

Suddenly, a huge bookcase against a far wall slid aside on squeaky rollers and revealed a passageway beyond, through which entered a gnomish-looking hunchback in droopy leotards adorned with varicolored stains. He had a nose which you’d guess had been flattened by a well-aimed skillet (and you’d have guessed correctly), eyes which rolled a bit and then stared steadily and disconcertingly at each other, and ears so wide they made his head look a Volkswagen with its doors left

“You gonged, Mistress?” said the gnome in a voice which was a combination of fingernails on a chalkboard and a burlap sack of strawberry gelatin and scorched aardvarks dragged over loose gravel.

“Where’ve you BEEN, Morbbo, you sawed off, misshapen little Hummel figure?”

“Sorry, Mistress, I was cleaning out the pirhaña pool as you instructed.”

Snow Blight stared, aghast, at the homely homunculus--only one thing on her mind (nothing new in that). “This isn’t--this COULDN’T be your... NEPHEW?!”

“Of course not! This gruesome little goblin is my servant Morbbo. He does little domestic chores around the house. AH!” Ruebella delightedly pounced on the book of spells she’d been looking for, and threw it forcefully at the inattentive hunchback who, distracted by and staring at Snow Blight’s chest, stopped the book’s flight with his forehead. “Morbbo! Prepare the ingredients on page nine hundred and ninety-nine and let me know the instant they’re in the stew.”

Grumbling resentfully (though not loudly enough to be heard by his moldy mistress), Morbbo scuttled over to the cauldron to do her bidding. Still tossing lustful--though cross-eyed--glances at Snow Blight.

Quick as quick, Ruebella switched gears and approached Snow Blight flashing a kindly (though sparsely brown-toothed) smile. “I’m sorry I was ignoring you my dear, I just got a bit overwhelmed with a few pressing chores. A witc-- uh, woman’s work is never done.”

“Oh don’t I KNOW it!” burbled Snow Blight too brightly, overcompensating for the uneasiness she felt as Morbbo now tossed her long distance wet-lipped kisses and wagged his discolored stub of a tongue suggestively. “I oftentimes become so engrossed in cleaning the cinders from my hearth, or that of my anorexic cousin Skinderella, that I neglect to listen to my little friends the birds and...”

Snow Blight droned on in this vein for what seemed to Ruebella like an eternity, though in actuality it was only an hour and three quarters.

“...so finally I said to her I said, ‘Skinderella, IGNORE your wicked step-sisters! GO to the darned--excuse my French--ball!’. And then SHE said--”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve HEARD this one,” snapped Ruebella, her keen though rheumy eyes fixed on Morbbo, who was flashing her a high sign, using only one finger. This either meant that all the ingredients were now in the stew, or he was exercising an inordinate amount of sass. However, knowing that Morbbo had learned she practiced zero sass tolerance, Ruebella deduced that he meant the stew was ready for its last and most potent and important ingredient.

“Here, child, let me show you--”

“--your nephew?” Snow Blight asked hopefully.

“Uh, no. Not exactly... I’d like you to climb up this ladder and take a close peek at what Morbbo’s stirring in my cauldron. I KNOW you’ll find it fascinating.”

For you see, Ruebella had looked up precisely how the virgin was to be done away with. The way ALL virgins should be done away with: by an act of treachery.

Snow Blight was not the slightest bit interested in the cauldron’s crapulous contents, and anticipated finding next to nothing which might remotely fascinate her there, but she saw no way out which would not render her rude and thereby disqualify her from being the heroine of this tale.

The sneaky sorceress got behind Snow Blight and, withered hands to pert buttocks, urged her up the ladder to the platform and next to Morbbo, while reciting to herself theng incantation: “One, Two, into the stew. One, Two, into the stew.”

Unable to find a carriage which could accommodate all seven of them, the would-be rescue party had instead accosted the only other traffic on the road, a fully loaded compost wagon being driven by Squire Melvin Merde, who was heading for Ye Oldde Hammburgher Hamlet Community Poope Heape.

When Melvin proved reluctant to part with control of his malodorous vehicle, and would not listen to reason (though truth to tell no one even ATTEMPTED to use reason with him), Doc forcibly took the reins from him while Brakey boxed his ears and then dumped him into the back of the wagon, where Gropey, Pantee, and Sleazy found him appealing in a limited though immediately available sort of way.

“I don’t know what the big rush is,” complained Achey, “I tell you I just know she’s having the hottest time of her LIFE!”

Snow Blight gazed down into the boiling, bubbling, nasty-looking goop in the cauldron, and refrained from holding her nose only by holding her breath.

“This is sort of a MAGICAL stew, my dear. If you take a REAAALLLY close look,” said the witch with her most winning way, “you’ll see the face of your fiancé!”

As you can imagine, Snow Blight found that promise irresistible, and leaned forward curiously. Ruebella too leaned forward, arms outstretched behind Snow Blight’s back.

Morbbo knew what was coming next since he’d witnessed this ritual twice before (being a mere 90 years younger than Ruebella). But something now stirred inside the horrid heart of the hunchback, and he actually began to regret that this particularly cute virgin was about to become a mere ingredient, a pawn in the putrid plan of his mangy mistress...without his having been able to sample her wares first.

Just as Ruebella’s scraggly-nailed fingers pressed against the frilly blouse of the soon to be soup’ed up virgin, Morbbo hollered, “STOP, you wart-faced wand-waver!”

But Snow Blight had felt the touch of the wicked witch’s digits and whirled around in alarm, mistaking the murder attempt for a potential romantic overture of a nasty nature. “I’m not THAT kind of girl EITHER!” protested the indignant virgin, as indignant virgins have protested from time immemorial.

“She’s trying to put you in the pot!” cried Morbbo, spilling the magical beans, so to speak, “Let me SAVE you!”

Knowing the day was hers, Ruebella’s eyes darted heavenward in bored disbelief, giving Morbbo a second or so to explain. “She needs a virgin to pop in the stew to make her young and pretty like YOU!”

“Oh, stop rhyming you tawdry troll,” commanded the crone, “or I’ll kick your puckered little ass!”

“Oh, THANK you, my nearly heightless hero!” blithered Snow Blight, “SAVE me!”

“All you gotta do,” said Morbbo, with spittle dribbling down his chin and his left hand beginning to slide down his leotards, “is let me make you NOT a virgin anymore--babycakes!”

“WHAT?” shrieked the never so offended in all her life heroine. “What do you MEAN?”

“Dumb as a dirt clod,” muttered Ruebella to no one in particular.

“Get naked, baby! If I screw you, SHE won’t STEW you!”

Suddenly up to speed on the implications of Morbbo’s plan to render her virginity past-tense, Snow Blight snarled, “I’d rather cook, Quasimodo.”

“Now that THAT’S settled,” hissed the mildly exasperated Ruebella, leveling her steely gaze at Morbbo, “first I’ll deal with YOU, you treacherous little toad-person!”

With a sneeze and a snort and a theatrical wave of her skinny arms, Ruebella winked at Morbbo who had barely time to hoist his leotards back up, when he basically...vanished.

“He’s GONE!” trilled Snow Blight, with a mixture of awe, horror and relief. “You made him disappear!”

“Nothing disappears, Cookie. That would violate the laws of matter, physics and theology. I just rendered him...smaller. LOTS smaller. In fact, I turned him into an E Coli bacterium. And now for YOU, my virginal victual...!”

Ruebella tottered across the platform eagerly grasping for Snow Blight’s heaving bosoms, but Snow Blight was not about to become either felt up OR food without a fight. She took hold of Ruebella’s bony wrists and the two women struggled back and forth atop the platform, each grimly concentrating on Snow Blight’s virtue; Snow Blight to keep it and Ruebella to steep it.

Unable to win two falls out of three against the vigorous virgin, Ruebella opted (a trifle unfairly) to use magic. “Look into my EYES, Snow Blight!” she ordered.

Snow Blight paused in her resistance, put her dainty little hand up to her demure and rosy-cheeked face and replied, “Bite me, bitch!”

The sheer shock at hearing such an uncomely expression erupting from the mouth of a canary-voiced heroine caused Ruebella to stagger backward, horny hand over homely heart, cry out loud, “What a world! What a world!” and tumble backward with a major splash and sucking noise into her own stinky stew.

Snow Blight watched as the soupy slop bubbled up (not to say heaved up) its unexpected and thrashing ingredient a number of times. Each time, the howling hag came up protesting and snorting and cussing, increasingly coated with gook, and progressively more braised, then broasted, then finally, thoroughly, boiled.

One can imagine the angry state of the stew, which expected a virgin but got...well, Ruebella.

After a while, the stewed sorceress bobbed and bubbled to the surface no more, and Snow Blight heaved a sigh of relief which deep breath she instantly regretted because the addition of Ruebella did absolutely nothing to enhance the already malodorous aroma of the soup. In fact, the stench acquired new and even more deeply hideous and nasally assaultive qualities.

Snow Blight leaned against the platform railing, hand on heart, to recover her composure, and soon she was calm enough to consider searching the castle for Ruebella’s (mythical) gynecologist nephew.

Suddenly, a shriek pierced the dead-skunk-perfumed air.

The cavalry (such as it was) had arrived!

Into the stinky stew-reeking chamber had cautiously, soundlessly sneaked the seven timid Dorks, and the shriek Snow Blight heard was that of Pantee who, from his floor-level vantage point below the platform, had caught a brief glimpse (causing nearly unbridled ecstasy), right up Snow Blight’s dress.

Unfortunately, Snow Blight’s severe fright at Pantee’s erotically motivated shriek, coupled with disgust at the sight of his face gazing brazenly up at her sanctity, caused her to scream and fling up her dainty hands in horror, which threw her off balance so that she toppled buns over teakettle off the platform and into the stew which had been meant for her all along, indicating a certain perverse sort of symmetry in the ways of the Universe.

The seven seriously abashed Dorks gathered in awe-stricken silence around the cauldron containing the bubbling stew of semi-snot-like substance. Sniffer sniffed the smell which he observed reminded him of rotting eggs, rancid grease, sulfur, poached possum pellets and boiling corned beef and cabbage.

“Way to go, buttwipe,” sneered Sniffer at Pantee.

“Yeah,” added Sleazy superfluously, “What a waste of a perfectly good virgin.”

Achey joined Sleazy in glaring balefully at Pantee who hung his head guiltily to avoid eye contact as well as to avoid the blow from the notepad of Doc who swung and missed Pantee but hit Brakey instead, who had been distracted by Gropey’s hand being where it shouldn’t have been.

For ten minutes no one had the slightest idea what to do, until, as usual, Doc took charge and came up with a plan for the group.

“Well, friends, no use cryin’ over spilt virtue,” observed Doc sagely, “as my sainted trollop of a mother used to say. And I say, ‘Waste not want not’. So... Let’s eat, I’m starved.”

Sleazy leered, “I always WANTED to eat Sno--”

Doc interrupted tactfully if not therapeutically: “Don’t even SAY it, you warped little wanker.”

And so the Seven Dorks consoled themselves by sitting down to a banquet of Virgin Stew. Aside from an abrupt onslaught of diarrhea (caused by the Ruebella ingredient) and the bonus of a loss of about fifteen years from their appearances, (thanks to the virginal element provided by the foul-mouthed Snow Blight) they did not immediately show any ill effects.

Instead, the Seven Dorks of Hammburgher, cheered by their happy meal, all decided to remain in Ruebella’s castle and live together communally, harmoniously and in a certain cases erotically, until some future time when another virgin similar to Snow Blight would come into their lives.

But, as fate would have it (and most of us too, I think), exactly three hours later they were all caught up with by the luckless ex-Morbbo ingredient.

You see, Morbbo, who now existed as an E Coli bacterium, had, unbeknownst to the Dorks, been blown off the platform during the scuffle between the virgin and the witch, and flown right into the stew, which they’d eaten; so by next morning they had all died horribly.

Originally appeared in Fantasy Folklore & Fairytales.

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