"The Caring Stepmother" by Jon Schweer

I live in a fine mansion with my two daughters, my stepdaughter, who used to live here with us and who was a cleaning freak, has long since moved out and in with her husband Prince Charming.

It’s a bit of a long story, but to make a long story short I’ll tell you. During the time that she lived here, I tried to tell Cinderella to stop working so hard and relax a bit. But to my dismay, she insisted on keeping an immaculate house. She would stay up late at night hunched over the books of Martha Stewart and reading tabloids for home-styling tips. Almost every day it was the same thing, "This house is too small; there is too much dirt in this house; there are too many decorating ideas and not enough budget to tackle them all," and so on, and so on. It was like she was addicted to cleaning; she just couldn’t get enough. She kept the house practically sterile. The exterminator came in every six months to do a complete sweep of rodents and other "unwanted and disgusting little pests". Cinderella was some sort of cleaning commando.

She kept this up for as long as I can remember. Then, one day, we got the news that the prince was throwing a party at his palace and I decided it might be a good opportunity for Cinderella to finally get out of the house. My daughters went into town and were able to get her a dress, made at one of the local boutiques. We told her to stop working on the Autumn arrangements and were able to coax her into pending some time with us at the ball.

All the way to the ball she was panicking about trivial little "what ifs" of housekeeping. She kept saying things that she left the iron on and the house might burn down or that the kitchen stove might be on and create a health hazard. When we finally got to the ball and managed to introduce ourselves to Prince Charming, my daughters and I took off, leaving Cinderella with the prince. it wasn’t long before we saw that they had hit it off and were the life of the party. I overheard them talking and soon realized that the prince was just as much of a cleaning fanatic as Cinderella. They danced to everything; they were like Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers of the disco scene.

It was roughly midnight when Cinderella shouted that she had forgotten to set the video timer to record the Martha Stewart Living Special on A&E. She was so frantic, that on her way out, she dropped one of her dancing slippers on the steps outside the palace. You can only imagine the state she was in when she didn’t even stop to pick the slipper up.

When we returned home, we found her crying that she had missed the special and that her designer slippers were no longer a pair.

Days later, Prince Charming paid us a house call to see if anyone’s food would fit the glass slipper that had mysteriously appeared on the front steps of the palace. My two daughters, excited and enthusiastic, began pushing and shoving to see if they were able to fit into the slipper. Neither of them could fit her size 12 feet into the size 7 slipper. But when the prince was almost out of the door, Cinderella came running out of the dining room, where she had just finished a Christmas arrangement, to try on the slipper, and, what do you know, she had perfect fit.

Now she’s at the palace trying, to put flower arrangements in all the bedrooms and decorating rooms all round the castle in various motifs. She has even fired all of the cleaning staff there, saying that they couldn’t do as good of a job as she could.