Walt Disney and Jeremy Epstein present:
THE OVERWEIGHT MERMAID
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was a great castle. This castle was at the bottom of the sea, where it is cold and dark and no people live. There were all kinds of fish, sharks, whales and octopus in this sea, and many other weird and wonderful servants of the sea. These animals guarded the great castle faithfully, and let no one through unless they promised that they would not kill anyone or try to destroy the castle.
In the castle lived the people that ruled the sea, the merms and mermaids (the merms were men and the mermaids were women), and there was a merm king, BigBrute (he was a brute and wore brute' 33 after-shave) and a mermaid queen, Roxanna. Queen Roxanna and King BigBrute happily ruled the ocean, and none disobeyed them lest they be put in a cage with the sharks and eaten alive (while listening to the king sing in his especially torturing low squeaky voice).
The Queen and King also had a beautiful daughter, the young princess Katrina. Katrina had beautiful blood-red hair, soft pink skin and a slender flipper at her base. Katrina was waited on all hours of the day by servants, butlers and maids, attended the best mermaid academy in the kingdom, and had lots of handsome boyfriends. Katrina had never been allowed out of the kingdom, for her parents feared her safety, but she still had a good time within the walls of her home, and she was promised that when she was old enough she would go on a journey all over the ocean, and she would visit the many other colonies that lay sprawled over the ocean floor.
So the princess kept growing up, learning more, and becoming more and more beautiful. When she was 18, she graduated from Royal Academy with a diploma of shells, which certified that she could collect, paint, decorate and use shells to catch small fish. This was a very high honour, and her parents were very proud of her. They told her that now she was old, responsible and learned, and was ready to travel beyond her home kingdom.
So, for her 19th birthday, Katrina was given a beautiful royal chariot, driven by two fine white unicorns and with a cheerful merm driver that had been a faithful servant of the princess for many years. On the day after her birthday celebrations, food and clothing were packed, farewells were said and Katrina was off on her great voyage.
On her voyage, the princess saw many great beasts, rich townships, and all the many other wonders of the ocean floor. She had been travelling for many months when she came upon a particularly small, warm town which had only a few small caves, some shops and a school. The princess was welcomed into this community with open arms, and given the best food and the nicest cave to sleep in.
In this town the princess had noticed a boy about her own age that was very handsome, and at first sight they instantly fell in love. The princess realised that this boy was very poor, and that he was not fit to marry her, but she did not tell him this in fear that it would hurt his feelings. When the time came, a few days later, for the princess to leave and be on her way, the poor handsome boy swore to her that if she ever needed him, she would be there.
So the princess continued her voyage, visiting all towns, large and small, in her father's great kingdom. She never found someone as charming or as handsome as the poor boy, but still looked vainly for a future husband.
One day, when Princess Katrina was visiting one of the outer towns on the border of the kingdom, a great octopus came and captured her. He was a huge purple beast with an enormous muscly bulk, and three of his tough arms were holding the princess's chariot, blocking the doors and windows.
"Yes!" Exclaimed the octopus. "Finally you are mine, Princess Katrina. Now I can keep you as my prisoner for as long as you live. I am going to take you to my home, where you can have a taste of living in the real world.
"No!" Screamed Katrina. "Please let me go! I'll do anything, if you'll only let me go back to my home where I will never see you again. Please!"
"You will give me anything?" Asked the Octopus. "Even three beautiful dishes of royal food you have in the back of your chariot? Even the beautiful gold necklaces, bracelets and rings you are wearing?"
"Well, but, you see, no," replied Princess Katrina. "I can't give away all my food, because then I will go hungry, and besides it is really yummy, too good for you. And I can't give away my jewellery, because then my parents will be angry with me."
"Well, then, selfish little goody-goody princess who is too stupid to give me something when I ask for it," sniggered the octopus. "You'll just have to come to my kingdom with me!" The octopus swam away with the chariot in his arms, and the princess fell fast asleep inside.
*
When she awoke, the princess found herself in a cold, dark cell with bars in the windows. They were made of a hard grey material she had never seen before. They were nearly as hard as pure gold, but not quite. She was lying in a hard bed and there was some food next to her, but she had never seen food so weird before. There were some slippery yellow sticks in a cup-like holder, some fish and seaweed between two white fluffy things, and a cup of disgusting-looking brown drink. She didn't want to touch any of it.
A door to her right opened and a merm walked in, dressed in shiny black clothes. "Don't worry, Princess Katrina," he said. "We'll take good care of you here. As long as you stay, you'll be well looked after."
The princess was appalled. "Well looked after, did you say? Being brought here, wherever this is, by a huge aggressive octopus, and getting no food but this… this…this filth! I deserve better. I am a princess!"
"Well, around here you'll have to take what you get, miss princess, because this isn't your Father's kingdom, this is the kingdom of the dark, and we have our own princes and princesses to serve. So eat your Maccas or starve, because you're not getting any gourmet caviar round here." And with that he stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
Once the merm had departed, the princess inspected the new foul-smelling rotten-looking filth more closely. When looked at carefully, she could see that it wasn't so bad after all, it had just had a lot of slippery rotten liquid poured all over it. The princess pulled out one of the yellow stalks and bit off one end of it. YUM! It tasted great! Katrina ate all the yellow stalks and felt much better and less hungry, but still needed some more to eat and some sort of beverage. She suspiciously eyed the black liquid, which had made a horrible fizzing noise when she first woke up, but was now silent. It had strange unnatural odour she was entirely unfamiliar with, but nevertheless she picked up the cup and sipped some. Just as she was surprised at the deliciousness of the yellow stalks, so was she at this yummy sweet tickly drink! She tried to read what it said on the cup, it looked something like: Enjoy Coca-Cola; but she couldn't be sure, and she had no idea why it would say something so weird.
Once she had drank all the delicious Coca-cola she tried the seaweed and fish between the white fluffy foods, and found it just as delicious and appetising as the rest of her meal. So she ate all her food and felt pleasantly full afterwards.
The next day, after a very refreshing sleep, the princess awoke to find the same merm that had visited her the day before waiting patiently by her bedside, reading a huge floppy grey paper with pictures that looked astonishingly realistic, as though they had been put there by something way more powerful than a hand. When he saw that she had woken, he glanced over the messy bundle of grey papers and peered at her. "Had a good night?" He asked. "I see you ate all the food and drank all the Coke. You like it?"
"Yes, thankyou," replied Katrina. "It was quite sufficient. Oh, what is your name?"
"My name's Thomas, but you will call me Tom, and I will call you Katie. I will be teaching you a lot of things during your stay here."
*
Three months later…
"OK Tommy boy," said Katie. "You've taught me tonnes about this place in three months. You've taught me how to talk properly, like, real cool, and you've showed me how to dress in fashion. You've shown me what's cool to listen to, and you've shown me how to hang out real cool. You've really been a great help in getting me settled here, and you've even made me very overweight like everyone else here so I fit in better. I owe you a lot, and I don't know how I could ever repay you."
"Oh, I don't need to be repaid," replied Tom. "The best thing you could do for me if you really wanted to would be to go back home after this mega experience and try and explain to your parents and the rest of the kingdom what you've learnt, and explain that we aren't really as bad as the rumours say, we are just another ordinary kingdom. Tell them about the many other kingdoms in other seas that I've told you about, and try and change their negativity towards us. We brought you here because we saw that you were the key to a new revolution, if we could get to you and show you everything you've been shown, then you could go back home, like you're going to, and finally make peace between your primitive kingdom and all the others like this one."
"OK Tommy, I'll go back and I'll tell them. That's fine by me," replied Katie.
"Thankyou so much, perhaps now the revolution may finally come about, thanks to you. Would you like to go now?"
"Yes, I think so. Can you get the chariot ready? I think it's off home for me!"
The princess did go back to her kingdom, and told her parents what she had learnt, but they wouldn't listen to her, they thought she was mad and massively overweight, and sent her away out of the kingdom and told her that she was no longer a princess. She was very upset that her parents hadn't believed what she had said and wouldn't listen to her recounts of the kingdom of the dark that she had spent three happy months at. When she was banished she thought she was totally alone, then she remembered her friend that she had fallen in love with before she set out. She travelled to him and asked him to marry her, but he wouldn't hear of it, she now wore strange clothing and looked disgustingly fat.
The rest of Katie's life was a miserable, lonely and horribly short one. A few months after her friend dumped her, she stabbed herself to death with a stalagmite from the sea bed.
And they all lived sadly ever after