“Get to sleep quickly, there will be much cleaning for you to do in the morning. No time for you to waste talking to yourself and drawing silly pictures.”

Raquel was pushed into the cellar, her step-sister Sarah beaming a broad smile while watching her stumble barefooted through the stone floor’s soot.

Her second step-sister, Angelique, laughed as she spat a farewell at her in a moving tone.

“Goodnight, Cendrillon!”

Sarah joined her in laughter.

“Cendrillon! Good one, sister! She’s always so filthy with the ashes…”

They laugh as the cellar door slams shut, leaving Raquel with only the light from that evening’s candle.

Ever since she was found at the foot of an ash tree as an infant, the family who had brought her in had treated her this way. They raised her to be their servant girl and not a day went by that she wasn’t reminded of her place.

Raquel only had an hour before her candle burned out, and this hour was the only time she was left to herself. Upstairs, the wicked step-family would be enjoying their evening with the men of the estate. The King. The Herald. The Journeyman. The Graybeard. This is who Raquel knew them to be, though they were otherwise strangers to her, never uttering a word. They left that to their women. Raquel could hear them laughing and enjoying their food and wine, the scraps and leftovers of which would become her food the next day, given in a trough as if she were just another animal on the farm.

France, in all its vastness, was as much a stranger as the men of this family - she had only ever known this house.

“Are you here, Souris?”

Raquel walked across the floor towards a corner of the cellar where her straw bed and threadbare blankets lay. Focusing the light from her candle on a small crack in the wall, she asked again.

“Souris? Can you hear me?”

There comes a squeak.

A tiny mouse comes from the crack and Raquel smiles. She kneels on the straw and opens her hand - the few crumbs she smuggled from the kitchen roll in her palm as the little rodent climbs over her fingers and begins to eat.

“Ah, Souris… my only friend. I wish these crumbs would grow you big enough to break these walls down.”

Raquel’s eyes begin to well with tears as she looks up at her single window, where the dark night sky is visible.

“Big enough to scare away my wicked step-family. To devour the terrible men who control this estate!”

There is a flash of light in the window as Raquel sobs. A single shooting star moving across the night - though much brighter than any Raquel could recall seeing before.

Raquel went about her evening as little Souris dozed with a full belly. With the dying wick of her candle, she dragged colored chalk pieces across the walls of her stone prison. She drew a dream. The bodies of the four men of the house with Raquel standing tall above them. And, of course, a handsome prince by her side. The tall lord from a neighboring land who Raquel had seen visit the estate from time to time. His long blond hair was nearly as lovely as her own

She had shared her body with common men on the grounds, more out of boredom than desire, but a beautiful man of nobility? If only wishes could come true.

Raquel’s hand disappeared under her petticoat as her candle flickered one last time before delving the cellar into total darkness.

Her breath caught a moment later in a hitching gasp.

“I wish I was yours, Lord Vincent Gouchissant…”

Another flash through the window. How odd, Raquel thought, as she began to drift to sleep.

“I can give you your wishes.”

The voice seemed to speak inside her head. Raquel jumped to her feet. The cellar was glowing, bathed in light. The soot on Raquel’s skin was visible everywhere not covered by her tattered house dress, and she moved her hands around her body trying to cover the various spots.

“Allô ? Qui est là?”

Raquel’s eyes were slow to adjust to the brightness, but when they did she finally saw her visitor. A beautiful girl. Not as beautiful as Raquel, duh, but very pretty.




“Who are you?”

Raquel stammered.

“I’m from far away, but also very close. Now but also then, and before as well. We know each other elsewhere and elsewhen.”

“Bitch, what?”

Raquel was never one to mince words.

“Regardez…”

The visitor pointed out the small window.

“My home is known to your people as B-6-12. And I am known to you as your step-daughter. Your belle-fille.”

“I’m nobody’s mother, bonbon.”

The visitor cocked her head to the side.

“I came to grant your wishes. Think of me as… a fairy god-daughter.”

“Ugh. Hate it.”

Raquel turns her back, but the visitor waves her hand, and suddenly Raquel is completely clean of the sooty filth she had been covered in. Her ripped and soiled dress replaced with a gorgeous purple gown.

“Oh… well this is better.”

The visitor waved her hand again, this time toward the mouse still sleeping blissfully unaware on the straw bedding.

“Oh… mon… dieu…”



No longer a tiny mouse, her companion stood a hulking woman, heaving with muscles. Yet, still, when she opened her mouth only a little squeak came out.

“Now that’s impressive, alien lady, but I didn’t wish for an ugly lesbian... If I wanted that I would have just said ‘Jennie Nickles’ into a mirror three times.”

Souris squeaks again, then turns to the brick cellar wall and punches a hole through it! After the dust settles, an opening to the meadow outside the estate is there.

“Oh! Well THAT is something I did wish for!”

Raquel, the visitor, and Souris escape the chamber and scurry off into the night…




“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

[/color][/b]“It’s been ages since I gifted the fans of the XWF with a visit from a perfect ten. You poor darlings have had to settle for Betsy Granger and Manly Amber or whatever the fuck a Clutch Cassidy is. You’re Welcome for War Games, bb.”

“I’ll admit it… I haven’t been in fighting shape for a while. I’ve suffered from a debilitating case of cell phone pinky. I appreciate your thoughts and prayers. But, honestly, I couldn’t resist the chance to cash in my stock options from the Trillies. My dividends turned out to be kicking Jennie Pennies to the curb and taking her spot. Fun! And even more fun is getting to tell Fatty Atty what to do. She has to listen to me! I’m the captain! So when I tell her to leave her tampon in all week to build up a nice funk that the West Memphis Three wannabe vampire Arroyo won’t be able to resist - she did it! She won’t admit it, but, trust me.”

She giggles.

“My cards are on the table.. Piquet, to be exact. My team has Carte Blanche… no kings here. N'est-ce pas approprié? No, we’re going to enjoy demonstrating to everyone in England the true power of pussy. La Foufoune. And we’ll do it by taking down men in every stage of their lives… little brand new Arroyo, before he blossoms into the full-blown Nazi his mommy domme will turn him into. Big D, stuck in that adolescent surge of testosterone that only high school virgins can attain. Kieran, at his peak, finally, twenty years too late to matter, and Larry Tact, one bad prostate exam away from retirement. Trust me, bb, if anyone knows older men it’s moi.”

“With my guidance, my team will finally reach the heights they’ve been striving for all this time. Atty can finally matter by doing something, like, interesting and beating a self-proclaimed legend in King, and his band of merry men will go home with ice packs on their crotches after the way we castrate them in front of millions of onlookers. And after? I’ll go home to my palace by the sea and forget all about them while they spend the next year trying to explain away how they lost to a bunch of girls.

… and Reggie, whatever. What was I supposed to do, pick Ghost Tank?”




“So like are there gonna be dwarves and stuff?”

“I think you are conflating two different stories, Raquel. There are no dwarves here, but I do see three men approaching.”

Raquel and her companions rode down a country road in a carriage led by a large snail. The visitor had fashioned them out of a large pumpkin and… well a smaller snail. Indeed up ahead a trio of young men approached from the opposite direction. A Spaniard, an Ottoman, and a Dane.

Raquel pulled the reins on her snail and the carriage slowed to a stop.

“Hi, if you guys could just like… move off the road? I’m trying to get to the estate of the really hot blonde guy, Lord Vincent?”

“Oh, hey there. We just came from Lord Vincent’s. We could help you find your way, just…”

“MON DIEU! Is that a MOOR? I’ve never seen one in person before!”

The dark-skinned man rolls his eyes.

“Reginald, did this fair lady just call me the M word? Only Moors can call each other Moor, man. Unless it’s in lyrics.”

“She did,”

Replied the Spaniard.

“But don’t worry about that… I think this girl might be exactly who we are looking for. Thomas, do you have the slipper Lord Vincent gave us?”

“You know I do!”

The Dane produced an ornate crystal stiletto heel from a satchel, and held it up in the starlight.

“Lord Vincent said a closet full of these would be one of many gifts he’d bestow to the woman he wed. Lady Raquel, would you like to try it on?”

“Le DUH. I would shoot my mother in the face for a closet full of fuck-me pumps. I just KNEW Lord Vincent was the man of my dreams!”

Raquel opened the door of her carriage and dangled her feet out… and Thomas the Dane swooped in to place the shoe on her delicate foot.

“Whoa! Wait! Is this motherfucker sniffing my toes???”

Indeed he was. He even opened his mouth and looked poised to suck Raquel’s petite cochons! A swift kick to the Dane’s jaw flattened him, though, and his fellow travellers attended to him while Raquel placed the crystal slipper onto her own foot.

“Hey alien girl? I’m in love. I wish to fast forward to the good part…”

Raquel bites her lip and the visitor nods.

“I can do that.”




“Je te plumerai la tête… Je te plumerai la tête…”

“Kieran, your little crown isn’t impressing anyone. Just like any other cock in a henhouse, you’re just fluffing your feathers and trying to impress a female. Color me unimpressed. The points on your crown flutter to the floor just like feathers from a pigeon’s head… or a turkey’s ass.”

“And you brought… what… THIS little motley crew of never was’s and never will be’s? Were you afraid if anyone else on your team had a drop of name recognition that they’d upstage you, Kieran? Are you THAT insecure? Have you so little joie de vivre that you have to surround yourself with underwhelming no-names lest you get outshone in your fancy crown?”

“Nobody wants a King, Kieran, but everybody wants a bombshell. Everybody wants a centerfold. I could make twice as much in a week selling pictures of my ass on OnlyFans than you take home in a month with all your business ventures and ledgers and oh my god I’m falling asleep just thinking about being you for a day.”

“I think it’s time you found a reckoning, ‘King,’... no matter how many accolades you achieve, no matter how many crowns you wear, the people will always prefer to look at me. A poster with my face, my body, will get more attention than one with you. And your teammates? They wish I’d picked them instead. Well, maybe not Arroyo. He strikes me as a little more Milo than Fuentes, you know what I mean? Fuck it, he’d still probably rather be playing dress-up with the girls than pretending to be a knight of the round table. One thing about Nazis… they LOVE fashion!”

“And Tact? What, was he grandfathered in? I’m shocked that being picked AFTER Big D didn’t nudge him into the widowmaker we all know will inevitably rip his barnacled aorta off of his ventricle like a radiator hose popping off of an overheating engine.”

“Big D, you sweet smooth brained child… me good. You bad. Now look out over the lake and tell Roxy about those rabbits on the farm.”

“King, you chose an old man so you could feel young. You chose an up and omer so you can feel accomplished. And you chose Big D so you could feel smart. What a shining example of male fragility you are. I’m going to genuinely enjoy humbling your kingly ego.”

“I’m a ballbuster, bb… it’s what I do best.”




The crowd at the tournament was thunderous.

Raquel, now the lady of La Maison Gouchissant, stood alongside Sir Estrada, the Spanish Knight who’d helped her find her way to Lord Vincent all those months prior… making her wishes  finally come true.

“Put it through his chest, bonbon.”

She blew him a kiss as he lowered his faceplate and straddled his horse, ready for the joust.

“All of this for a shoe, hm? Reminds me of my great grandmother, Rhodopis…”

“Ew, Atty when did you get here? Are you going to put a gypsy curse on me and ruin my relationship?”

“Fuckssakes, Raquel, I’m not a g… you know what, yes, I’m going to curse you if we lose.”

“Putain...”

“Back at you.”

Jolee, the woman knight, approached the bickering pair.

“Raquel, why did you choose Reginald to bring The King down?”

Raquel smiled.

“Because, bonbon, it will make the King fall even farther when it’s someone on the bottom knocking him off of his high horse.”

Jolee and Atty exchanged glances, and Raquel sighed.

“Fine, it’s because he’s a man. If you tell one of them to run into a brick wall and bat your lashes while you say it, they’ll do it.”

As the Herald, the Graybeard, and the Journeyman were assisted off of the housing grounds, felled by La Maison de la Foufoune, the trumpets blared and Sir Estrada lowered his lance and charged. The King was sent into the dirt. The crowd roared. Raquel looked up into the eyes of Lord Vincent.

And they all lived happily ever after.