Rapunzel's Escape

Written for the Sleeping White FairyTale Rewrite contest. Enjoy

She felt the brick scrap her pale cheek as the Queen slapped her once more....then darkness coolly surrounded her.

 

Cursing, Rapunzel awoke to find it was dark. Her head felt so heavy and dried blood lipsticked her swollen lip. Titus would have already come and road back into the forest. What a fool she had been for talking about him to the Queen, even if it was her own mother.

 

The tower Rapunzel was capsuled in was definitely not what the media had cunningly betrayed. A witch had not captured her at birth when she was born seconds after her twin brother, Titus. The one thing the press actually did get correct was the assumption that her hair was the only way into the cursed tower. Her mother had birthed Rapunzel and Titus via surrogantancy and when her father heard he was blessed with not only a son, heir to the throne but a daughter, heir to his heart, the Queen was immediately inflamed with jealousy and demanded Rapunzel to be thrown on the rocks at the seaside.

 

Of course, that was impossible in such a modernized world so Rapunzel was 'kidnapped', her mother mourned the loss and painted a story of a ransom half the size of the kingdom, which the Queen was unwilling to pay in return for an infant most likely to die anyways.

 

Rapunzel drew her thoughts back into the present. She was, oh how many flowerpetals were there in that matchbox, sixteen, no, seventeen. Seventeen years old now. Her skin had never been under the Sun's full spell and her hands had never touched those of her beloved brothers. Though here recently they had found one another due to his curiousity about where his mother ventured off to every weekend.

 

Titus promised to bring materials tonight to cut her down from the tower. Their plan was to cut her long hair and make it a carpet so she could fall the dozen or so stories and not hurt herself. Her hair would cushion the fall, hopefully.

 

But Titus was not there and Rapunzel could no longer deal with the threats of death from her jealous mother who tortured her with stories of her father whom she never laid eyes on before. Taking her knife that Titus had sent up to her by a basket on the strands of her hair one evening, Rapunzel began to saw through her hair. This would be the truimphant return of the daughter the King always wanted and dreamed of every night. The daughter he saw dancing at all the royal balls with all the foreign princes. The sister to the twin brother who valiantly chose to save her and claim her as his rightful co-heir.

 

Her hair fell away like failing friendships and dying memories of long cold nights. She quickened her pace as the sun began to trigger its first shots into the eastern skies. Finally, she was done and had pushed the massive piles of fiery red hair over the precicipe into the early morning dew and watched as it weightlessly twisted and tumbled oblivious to its destination. The first wet sunrays stabbed rays of brillance into the amber locks of glowing tresses. Rapunzel flinted through her brick prison like a hart, her head felt so light as if it would float away without the long binding hair winding itself around her waif-like body. She briefly wondered if she would glide into the pile of hair as easy as it landed only moments before but her thoughts of returning to the kingdom jubilant and overturning her tyrant mother's parade sent her out the window faster than she had wanted. The flowerpetals, dried in the years of her keeping, were the only witnesses of Rapunzel's apparant suicide. At least that is what the media proclaimed as a sobbing brother and white fisted mother chanced upon the broken but nonetheless beautiful body of the Princess.

 

 

Reviews

[Ebs]

It left me speechless.

I thought it was brilliant. The story captured me and i couldn't stop reading. What a genius twist on the story. It worked really well. I'm sure your going to win the contest. It's great. I'll be keeping it on my reading list so i can read it over and over again.

Well done

ebs

P.S hahaha not very speechless ayye?

[These Haunted Hallways]

Although, i do not know the entire story of Rapunzel, i think you did such a superb job explaining it in ur version! I like this one better hehe. "Tis a sad ending; i truly felt for her. But, marvelous job in everything here :)

B.A.

[unspokenguilt]

Wow, twisted and cool! masterfully written...I loved it! Great work!

[Juan]

This was better than the original, I do have a somewhat twisted way of looking at life sometimes and this is one of them. The next time I think of Rapunzel I will think of this story.Awesome job.

[Des]

Very, very, very interesting take on this story. I liked it a lot. It was quite descriptive and written so well that I could see it playing out in my mind's eye. It immediately captured my attention. Bravo!

[angelina neves]

a very sad story... and in a way so very true... there are in our world so many children suffering from adults abuse to their rights to freedom and hapiness (although we write about them all over the place!)