Happily Never After

• Chrysandra Ingels, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

" The moral of Snow White is never eat apples."
~ Lemony Snicket
".....and they lived happily ever after. The end." Nancy read finally finishing the fairy tale Snow White. "Well, David, what did you think?" she asked her charge, a young boy with dark hair and a skeptical personality.
"So, basically, the moral of Snow White is never eat apples." he replied dryly, disinterested in the conversation.
"Well yes but that isn't the only moral."
"Oh, what's the other one?" David asked his newest nanny in a heavily sarcastic tone. Nancy blushed, her freckled face turning a light pink from embarrassment.
"I...ugh...I don't actually know what the moral is. But I'm sure there is one!" Nancy said sheepishly, trying to look at anything other than the boy's face.
"Whatever," David said standing up, "I'm going to bed." And with that he left, headed towards his bedroom. Nancy sighed and began to pick up her scattered belongings.
A couple of hours later, Martha and Ranger Finley, David's parents, came home and Nancy left. A grin on her face and a check in her hand.
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The next morning, Martha went down to the kitchen to start breakfast, humming merrily as she walked. But when she reached the kitchen she stopped in shock. Passed out on the floor was her son, with a bitten apple laying next to his hand.
The police said that he had choked to death. A piece of apple had become lodged in his throat. David's funeral was held on a dark dreary day, his parents inconsolable. It was a fairly unremarkable funeral really. But on his gravestone, if you looked really closely, you could see faint words scratched in to the stone underneath the usual 'David Finley 2006-2016'.
"The moral of David Finley is never eat apples."