Snow White and the Seven Hunks editedbymegan .wps

Snow White and the Seven

Hunks

By

Kimberly Zant

SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 2

© copyright by Kimberly Zant, July 2009

Cover Art by Eliza Black, July 2009

ISBN 978-1-60394-328-4

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 3

“Blackmail is
such
an ugly word! And it’s completely untrue, besides. I’m giving you the option of helping me out and repaying me at the same time.”

The alternative being criminal charges, I thought, feeling stomach churning fear as I stared with horrified fascination at the woman’s smug expression and glittering eyes—Glenda—the wicked witch of the west. With an effort, I dragged my gaze from her and glanced at my sister to see how she’d taken the ‘offer’.

Her chin and lower lip were trembling. I didn’t know whether I most wanted to

smack her for dragging me in to
her
mess or cuddle her—she was my older sister, but I’d fought most of her battles for her over the years until it was pretty much second nature and that helpless look of hers rarely failed to arouse a sense of protectiveness in me. The angelic damsel in distress look she’d cultivated over the years that had such a devastating effect on the male of the species, however, was completely ineffectual on the female—

unless said female happened to be a lesbian. I slid a hopeful glance at the wicked witch again.

No such luck! She wasn’t completely unmoved. Her lips had flattened in an

expression of disgust and the look in her eyes was patently disbelieving.

I released a dejected sigh.

The shit fairy had attended my birth and sprinkled fairy manure over me, cursing me forever afterward to get the shit end of the stick in any given situation. Brandy, my sister, had often accused me of having opticalrectumitis, but how I could have any other outlook was beyond me. It never failed. If I had a half a dozen options, I unerringly chose the absolute worst. If I bought something, it was broken when I got home. If it was under warranty, it broke the day after the warranty expired. If I got into a line—any line—that line stopped moving. There didn’t seem to be any aspect in my life that was unaffected by the ‘shit curse’.

Nearing thirty-three, I’d optimistically entered a half dozen relationships since high school and every one had ended in disaster—the level of the disaster changed, depending upon just how smitten I was with the object of my affections, but they’d all ended badly, regardless. I’d become a man hater after the last bastard had wiped me out and walked off with everything I owned, not that that was anything I could say in public because then I would have to explain that I was
still
heterosexual, I just wanted another option.

The worst part of my current situation was that I couldn’t even claim complete

innocence. I’d helped my sister get the damned job in the first place and I was guilty by association even if I hadn’t been related to her. Glenda didn’t believe me when I’d tried, and as much as it made me want to do something violent, in all honesty I couldn’t really blame her. I knew I looked guilty.

It occurred to me that my life might have been completely different if Brandy had had a convenient accident sometime after birth. Maybe the shit curse would’ve followed her to the grave and left me alone, but that was just wishful thinking, I knew. I was stuck SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 4

with it, just like I was stuck with her as a sister—the bane of my existence from the time I was old enough to realize even parents could be conned into believing their most beautiful duckling was as wonderful as she appeared—not terribly bright but as sweet as the day was long.

Ha!
I
hadn’t instigated the hair-pulling contests that had punctuated our teen years together—actually a good bit of our childhood before that. But did they believe me? No! And Glenda wasn’t buying it either.

Well, at least this once I wasn’t catching the entire blame, even though I shouldn’t have caught any of it!

How was I supposed to know my lame brain of a sister would decide to ‘borrow’

money from the boss? I admit, I’d wondered where she got the damned money for that luxury trip to Vegas, but—what could I say?—I was an idiot when it came to Brandy.

I’d bought her lie hook, line, and sinker—she’d won it on a scratch off!

Did I feel stupid, now, for having spent two solid weeks trying to convince her to invest her ‘winnings’ instead of blowing it in Vegas?

Hell yes!

For a moment as I stared at her, the image danced in my head of curling my

fingers around her slender throat and choking the life out of her. Could I plead temporary insanity, I wondered? How many years would it be before I could get out?

I calculated the minimum and decided, as rotten as life was, I didn’t particularly want free room and board until I was sixty.

“Ok. You convinced us. We’ll do it!” I said quickly, before I could change my mind. “I just want to say, for the record here, that it was her! I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I sure as hell didn’t get any of the money!”

Brandy dropped the ‘innocent as the driven snow’ and ‘delicate angel’ pose so

quickly, Dr. Jekyll would’ve been amazed at the swift transformation. “You
bitch
! I can’t believe you’re blaming all this on me!”

“Ladies! Ladies!” Glenda snapped harshly. “I know you don’t want me to send

for security!”

Boy was I relieved! I was beginning to think I was going to have to defend

myself and Brandy could go from angel to psycho in eight seconds or less!

“Do you agree to the terms, too?” Glenda asked Brandy.

Brandy glared at her belligerently. “And what if I don’t?”

“I’ll call the cops and tell them you embezzled my money,” Glenda said coolly.

I could tell Brandy was wondering if she could get away with leaping over the

desk and choking the life out of Glenda, but she finally subsided. “If I agree to this, I want something legal saying that you won’t file any kind of legal charges related to your accusation or any lawsuit in the future for any kind of damages.”

I gaped at Brandy, dismayed that my brain had been on holiday and I hadn’t

thought about that! “Me, too!”

A look of satisfaction, respect, and irritation flitted across Glenda’s features. “I’ll have my attorney work that up. In the meantime, you two can report to the set. My partner wants to check out the wardrobe and give you both a screen test.”

I gaped at her, trying to sort this in my mind. It didn’t sound at all like the explanation she’d given us before we’d agreed to her demands.

“What do you mean, set?” Brandy demanded immediately. “You said it was

SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 5

going to be a reality thing filmed in a house—hidden cameras and all that! You’re saying
now
that I’m supposed to prance around naked and spread my legs in front of a damned filming crew?”

I really liked the way Brandy switched from ‘we’ to ‘I’, but I wanted to know so I just kept my mouth shut.

Glenda looked at her sourly. “It’s still a set, moron!” she said through gritted teeth.

Bad move! I could tell Glenda wasn’t accustomed to confronting gorillas in lamb suits or she would’ve known better than to provoke Brandy by suggesting she was an idiot just because that was the façade she preferred.

Ok, so she wasn’t the brightest light bulb in the pack. She knew it, but she didn’t really mind it when people thought it was cute. It was the tone and that particular word that aroused her hostility faster than greased lightning. She came to her feet. “Call me moron again, bitch, and you can add assault and battery to the charges, because I’m going to stomp a mud puddle in your ass!”

Glenda eyed her somewhat warily, but she wasn’t too bright either. “Oh, I’m

pretty sure the charges I already have against you will be sufficient.”

Brandy thought that over, apparently decided it was close enough to an apology

and sat back down.

As I said ….

“Now that we have that settled,” Glenda said, smiling thinly, “if you two will

come with me, we’ll take a ride out to the set we’ve leased and the director can do a screen test.”

The dread I felt building inside me as the three of us trooped outside, climbed into Glenda’s broom, a gas guzzling SUV, and drove out to the ‘set’ was more closely akin to a trip to the dentist to get teeth chiseled out of my jawbone than anything else I could think of. Dread was a feeling I was intimately acquainted with. Any hint of

unpleasantness was enough to spark it and it built until the object of my fears was finally surmounted—which often took a long time since I was also a procrastinator and tended to avoid unpleasantness when I could as long as I could.

Brandy either had more spine than I did, or, which I suspected, she just thrived on disharmony and chaos. I might have been prejudiced, but there was no getting around the fact that she created a ruckus whenever life got too dull for her, resurrecting old battles if she couldn’t think of fodder for a new one.

I’d dragged my feet on the way out and ended up in the backseat while Brandy

perched in the front. This added to my distress since the ride was a fairly lengthy one and I had a real problem with motion sickness. Glenda looked me over with disapproval when we got out of the car, but I ignored her, struggling with the nausea as I looked the place over.

There was nothing really ‘threatening’ that I could see about the outside of the house beyond the fact that it was situated a goodly distance from any other house, having been erected in a rural setting. It was actually rather quaint to my mind since it was an old house built in the Victorian style and I’d always been rather fond of the girly frill of that particular style.

“Creepy,” Brandy said with a shudder after she’d looked it over. “It reminds me of that house from the horror movie about a psycho.”

SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 6

Thank you
, Brandy!

“It’s been completely restored,” Glenda said coolly. “It’s quite comfortable. It was chosen for its atmosphere.”

“Cow dung?” Brandy asked sweetly. “How far are we from a shopping center?”

“There won’t be a lot of time for shopping excursions while we’re filming,”

Glenda said pointedly, leading the way through the flower-covered arch over the front gate and up the walkway to the wrap-around front porch.

The pastoral scene of peaceful bygone days vanished as soon as we stepped into

the wide hallway that bisected the lower floor of the house. Ladders, wires, and young men cluttered the hallway, making it a hazard. The flocked, floral wall paper, sconces and gleaming hardwood floor certainly seemed in keeping with the antiquity of the house, but it was hard to get the feel of stepping back in time with all the dangling wires.

“Where’s Gabe?” Glenda asked, drawing my attention to the man perched on the

top of the ladder.

“Upstairs in the playroom,” the man responded slowly, examining me and Brandy

with curiosity—mostly Brandy.

Brandy, I discovered was more than curious. He was attractive enough to bring

her femininity to the fore and she’d adopted the ‘I don’t know you’re there, but notice my beautiful breasts’ pose.

Glenda immediately retraced her steps to the stairs. I followed her uncertainly since she hadn’t commanded us to stay put, wondering uneasily what the ‘playroom’ was all about. I didn’t believe for a moment that it was a child’s room.

“This way, Brandy,” Glenda said briskly when she discovered Brandy was still

preening for the young man on the ladder and not behind her as she’d assumed.

Pretending she’d been fascinated by the work, and not the three young men trying to do it, Brandy sashayed to the stairs and managed a credible model’s walk up the steps to the second floor. The sway of her hips and the bounce of her boobs kept the young men in the foyer mesmerized until she disappeared from their view.

I’d been huffing slightly with imminent panic attack, but it hit me as Brandy

joined us on the upper landing that she was in her element. Brandy was always

convinced she was being watched. Some people might mistake that for paranoia, but I’d long since figured out what it really was—a desire to be watched and the certainty that she held center stage where ever she went.

I had to admit she usually did. I would’ve liked to put it down to bountiful