There once was a beautiful girl who dreamed of becoming a princess. If this were a fairy tale, she would have no doubt waited patiently for a prince to arrive at her doorstep but, because this isn’t a fairy tale, she knew she’d have to leave the small town in Canada where she lived and venture out into the world in search of her prince.
She also knew that the world was a very superficial place and if she had any hope of landing her dream man, she would have to remain thin. To this end, she examined a number of exercise regimens and diets but decided that her safest bet was to ingest a tapeworm.
So committed to her goal was she that, to be on the safe side, she swallowed two.
This is their story.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a fairy tale. I probably don’t need to reiterate this. The word tapeworm probably made this pretty clear. Just the idea of putting tapeworms on the cover of a children’s book would have them screaming and running out of bookstore. Hysterical and probably thinking up some rather difficult questions about the nature of parasites for mommy and daddy to wrestle with.
Once they had both attached themselves to her small intestine, life rolled on. The months passed and they both grew to a length of over three feet. They enjoyed each other’s company and their host remained thin and all seemed idyllic.
Then one day, they noticed something new in their home- wedding cake. At this point, I considered the tapeworms having a conversation about this new development, but this would mean I would have to name them and I’m not naming fucking tapeworms.
I have standards, after all. Perhaps the profanity was a bit unnecessary but I don’t like to go back and remove things once they’re written. If you’re wondering why, I refer you back to the first sentence in this paragraph.
So the two tapeworms looked at each other with worried looks on their faces but did not talk about the significance of wedding cake in their diet.
In retrospect, perhaps they should have. Unbeknownst to them, the cake was from the wedding of their host. She’d found her prince and it wouldn’t be very long before she no longer required the services of her Hymenolepis nana cohorts.
I guess you could argue that if I would have named the tapeworms, perhaps they could have had a conversation to discuss a contingency plan for just such an eventuality, but I think you’re guilty of blurring the lines of reality. While it’s true that in physics, matter might behave differently when observed, I highly doubt the same can be said of fiction. I have no regrets. Well, outside of writing something where the main characters are tapeworms. That goes without saying.
You might be feeling something similar about your choice of reading material.
Eventually, the day came when the girl and her husband decided to remove her unwanted guests. On a positive note, the fact that her husband had agreed to the scheme just goes to show that his love for her was sincere. I’m not sure how many men would have signed up for what was to follow. Definitely a love litmus test if I ever saw one.
The girl knew that her tapeworms loved strawberry milk. It was their one weakness. So she placed a drop on her nose and opened her mouth wide, with the intention of grabbing the tapeworm when it inevitably wiggled up to have at the droplet.
Meanwhile, her husband was perched by her anus for the same reason. A drop of strawberry milk clung to the top of her butt cheeks.
Now do you see what I was talking about? How many men would do this for their wife? While I described the scenario to you, I have still have yet to picture it in my head. Obviously, there will be no further details on that particular scene forthcoming.
The two of them watched and waited for the tapeworms to make their entrance… which they eventually did. One out of each end of her.
And here is the romantic part. They both grabbed a tapeworm and began to tug away. An aerial view of the proceedings might have you believing she was being flossed. Slowly, the tapeworms started to be pulled from their home. All looked lost for them until, realizing how much they meant to each other, they tied their lower bodies together into a knot. The girl and her husband pulled and pulled, but it was in vain. Eventually, they realized what had happened inside her intestines and let go of the tapeworms.
They just couldn’t bring themselves to separate the two tapeworm lovers once they realized how much they wanted to be together. To do otherwise wouldn’t necessarily make them heartless or hopeless, just somehow less.
Both the tapeworms and the girl and her husband lived happily ever after.
So maybe this was a fairy tale after all.
About tapeworms though…?
Hmmmm. No way.