Once upon a time in a land of all work and no pay, a young woman applied for an unpaid internship at a castle.

The advertisement read:

Artisan in Residence (Entry-Level, No Exit)

We’re looking for a self-starter to alchemize raw materials into scalable assets.
Must thrive in high-pressure dungeons, and be able to collaborate cross-functionally with floor-dwelling consultants.

The young woman thought she’d be fetching coffee and collecting trauma for her portfolio,
but on her first day, the king looked her dead in the eye and said:
“Spin this pile of straw into gold… for exposure. Or die. Ideally both.”

She said yes , because even fairy tale characters don’t get a ‘happily ever after’ without a LinkedIn profile and at least two side hustles.

She panicked and added,
“Yeah, totally. I do that all the time.”

Because in this economy, you fake it or you die.
And even entry-level straw-spinning requires five years of experience,
and a glowing reference from a unicorn.

Yes, unicorn references glow. They all do. It’s the magic mushrooms. Anyway, HR says not to touch them bare-handed.

And also to stand very still if the photocopier starts printing time.

(They’re still hearing colors from last Tuesday.)

As soon as she said yes, the young woman was escorted to a tower for what the monarch called “a high-stakes growth opportunity.”

They left her with straw, pressure, and a locked door — classic onboarding.

She watched six YouTube tutorials and ended up on a homesteading channel watching a woman chop wood in Vermont.

By video three, she still didn’t know how to spin straw, but she was definitely rethinking her sexuality… and capitalism.

That’s when a tiny man crawled out of the floor and offered to help.

And the young woman was like: “absolutely not.”

I am busy, overwhelmed and on deadline and this man thinks now is the moment to offer unsolicited assistance? Classic.

But then he said:

“I’ll spin all the straw into gold for you… in exchange for your firstborn.”

And without even looking up, she just went: “Deal.”

She thought to herself:

In this economy? Babe I’m never having kids.

Parenthood is like a high-risk startup that launches overnight.

And I’ve seen the pitch deck. All stretch marks and Baby Shark.

Plus, I’ll be way too busy raising goats with a lesbian lumberjack to even consider getting a human subscription with no pause button.

The tiny man spun all the straw into gold.

The king was thrilled, let the young woman out of the tower, and proposed she marry him on the spot.

She said: “Hell no. Hostage situations are not my love language.”

The young woman left the palace and joined a queer agricultural collective with good boundaries and great tomatoes.

Meanwhile, the little man waited. And waited.

There was no baby.

He grew angry and showed up demanding his prize — but no matter how the queers insisted the seventy three cats were their children, the deal didn’t work that way.

Now he hosts a podcast called Grimm Realities,
where he rants about how “you can’t even claim a woman’s firstborn anymore without everyone getting offended,”
and how people just don’t value traditional masculine skillsets anymore.

The queers are unbothered. The cats have blocked him on all platforms.

The End.