Watch Out For Those Fairy Tale Endings

Last night, I was going to bed early (for me) and was about to sit on my bed and watch the TV show I watch every night from my Iphone.  But I felt like reading, and as I went for my copy of Get Lost by Dannah Gresh I stopped short and spontaneously grabbed a beautifully blue linen bound copy of Short Works, by Hans Christen Anderson, you know, the fairy tale guy?  Opening to the table of contents I picked one that looked to my liking-The Rose Elf.  I like roses, I like elves, it sounded beautiful and perfect for a nice rainy whimsical evening.
The story opens with an elf, so tiny you could never see him, who lives inside a rose.  Love it. One day his rose is plucked by a maiden to give to her parting lover.  Sounds good.  On the way home through the forest, the maiden's evil big brother ambushes the poor lover, stabbing him to death, cutting off his head and burying both under a tree.  Ok, this is a bit morbid, I'm never reading this to my kids....but, I'll keep reading.  The rose elf who manages to get on a leaf which then attaches itself to the evil brother, which then falls off onto the sleeping maiden's bed, whispers into the girl's ear the story of what happened to her beloved.  She goes into the woods, digs up his grave, and takes his head back home with her, which she then puts into a flower put and plants a flower.  This is super weird, who would do something like that, fertilize a plant with her lover's brains?  Months go by, the poor sorrowful girl waters the plant with her tears, the rose elf whispers sweet things into her ear one night which make her die peacefully.  She dies too?!  What is the point of this story?!  The evil brother takes the plant and puts it by his bedside, the rose elf comes by and speaks to the souls of the flowers, telling them the horrible deed.  Those little souls then stab the sleeping brother in his sleep with a poisoned thorn on his tongue.  He dies and justice is served.
The End  
Ok, so that was a horrible story, not satisfying in any way shape or form.  But I decided not to judge too quickly and pick another short one to read before bed.  The Leaf from Heaven.  How bad could that be?

An angel is in the sky holding a leaf from heaven's garden, he kisses the leaf and it drops to earth and takes root in a forest.  This sounds great!  I love this already!  The plant grows into a beautiful plant no one appreciates, budding fiery red blossoms.  A little girl comes by, who has a pure heart, she loves the plant, thanks God for it, and presses one if it's never fading leaves into the pages of her old Bible.  This is beautiful, I hope he doesn't kill off the little girl.   For some unknown reason, the girl dies months later.  Dang.  Enter the King of the kingdom who is depressed, nothing can make him happier, but he hears about this heavenly plant and sends for it so it can cheer him up. This may turn good after all.  Turns out, the royal fire wood collector had come by earlier and gathered it up with other plants and it was destroyed.  So a gold fence is put around the place where the plant used to be.  No one ever found out about the one leaf still pressed into the dead girls Bible, and the king stayed depressed forever.  The End.   

I put the book back and watched Anime.  And the only thing good that came out of this whole thing was that I could write a bog post about it.  The End.