Warning: this was written under the desk during a Maths lesson, and is consequently extremely random and weird. Please feel free to bury your head in your hands and moan, "WTF?" Much Love, readers.

Any fairytale worth its salt begins with "once upon a time". This is an uncontested fact, as if it were not so good fairytales wouldn't start with aforementioned phrase. However, a disturbing trend is beginning to fluctuate among young writers of using the opening paragraph to parody the tired and true O.U.T. As it would be ridiculously pretentious to set the bar even lower by parodying the parody, this particular fairytale will follow the bell cow of ages before it, so to speak.

Henceforth, one day somewhere around the twentieth century, there lived a little cheese. He wasn't a very prepossessing cheese, as he had no facial features to speak of, and indeed no face, which is a general cheesy characteristic. However, despite this, he was no ordinary lump of curdled yoghurt. He was a hero. He just hadn't had the chance to show it yet. But his moment would soon come, as we shall see.

One day, when the sky was a delicate shade of fuchsia and sheep were puffing through the air like cumulus clouds, the cheese decided to pay a visit to his best friend, Albert the Latvian gorgonzola. After running over the hills towards Albert's dairy to burn off calories, he arrived and knocked on the door – but no one replied. It wasn't locked, and so he cautiously stepped in and looked around. For a moment, it seemed deserted. Then he saw a note on the shelf. He went over and picked it up.

"HELP!" it read. "I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED AND SOLD AT THE LANCRE CHEDDAR FESTIVAL. SOMEBODY, PLEASE HELP! ALBERT."

The little cheese was horrified. What could he do? He knew he must brave the Lancre Cheddar Festival to rescue Albert from being auctioned off to brutal cheese abusers who would probably want to nibble on him in an inappropriate manner and cut holes in him due to what may have been a case of mistaken identity. (For some reason, the English have a fixation with holes in cheese; they think it cultured and are under the impression that any cheese without holes must have something wrong with it.) But it would be dangerous. The cheese could easily be caught and sold himself. However, he knew he had to try.

He quickly headed towards where the festival was taking place, on the other side of the hills. Human beings were lined up outside, shoving and jostling to get in. Because of the little cheese's concern for his friend, he made use of the healthy stock of ingenuity that he kept in his handbag and managed to get into the marquee without a ticket.

Inside, it was mayhem. Blue cheeses on leashes were snapping at one another in the cheese-fighting cage (their colouration makes them vicious). Fancy French cheeses were tripping around in high heels and talking fast in an extremely pretentious-sounding lingo, although I suppose that anything spoken in French sounds pretentious, even if the speaker is only asking which way the toilets are. But however posh or trained they professed to be, the cheeses were slaves. There was no escaping that fact. Human people walked around, eyeing the cheeses, discussing prices and examining the livestock's teeth, or their skin if they did not possess teeth.

The little cheese looked around him and felt nauseous. It was a hideous case of Cheese-ism, but there was no way of calling it to a halt. He quickly stole a feather hat from a passing Stilton and jammed in on to disguise himself. The disguise in question was more than a little spurious, but there was no way to remedy that, so he laughed in a foreign accent to throw any observers off the scent and carried on searching for Albert.

Then he saw him! Albert was in the corner of a cage, crushed between some very rough-looking dairy products of indeterminate species. If cheese could curl up with their arms round their knees, then that's what Albert would have been doing, but they don't and so he wasn't. The little cheese sneaked up quietly, glancing from left to right with his non-existent eyes, and dived for the lock. With another handful of powdered ingenuity, he succeeded in picking it.

The door opened and cheeses spilled out like a dairy tidal wave, shrieking with exultation, and flooded everywhere, sending the smell of sour milk and heady euphoria percolating throughout the small tent. Humans screamed, jumped onto stools, and generally panicked. They ran in all directions. Well, no one human ran in all directions, but between them every direction was covered. Even up and down. Well, they didn't run up and down, they jumped up and down, which was pretty pointless really. Also, you can't really jump down, because when you try you sort of end up burying yourself. Some of them did do this. Some buried each other. But there was no escape from the onslaught of revengeful cheeses. It was pandemonium!

In the crowd, the little cheese gazed around at what he had caused and felt very proud. He had done this! He had freed the cheeses! Then, suddenly spotting his friend Albert, he made his way over to him through the bulk of heaving dairy products. "Are you all right?" he gasped.

Albert was a bit shell-shocked, but nevertheless replied, "I'm fine," eager to reassure his friend. However, due to his thick Latvian accent, the little cheese could not understand him.

"Come on," he said, concerned. "You look a little peaky." And he grabbed his friend's hand – I lie. Cheeses don't have hands. He grabbed his ear instead – and led him out of the marquee as fast as he could.

"I'm fine," insisted Albert, but the little cheese was not listening. He was normally a rather shy being, but his recent victory had made him cocky, and he was eager to savour it (no pun intended).

"Was that amazing?" he asked his friend.

"Pretty amazing," said Albert.

And the little cheese, although he couldn't quite make out what had been said, decided to reply diplomatically, and responded, "I'm sorry, this is the smallest I've got."

"Right," said Albert, although it sounded like, "Uggle."

"Now, my friend, let us escape from this madhouse," the little cheese cried, and they zoomed off on a motorbike made of jealousy.

The End