I'M HERE FOR HER MONEY

An extremely silly story rescued from another site where it has been lingering since 2009.

The Princess Atara looked in the mirror.

She was a sweet young thing. Everyone said that. She had a face like the reflection of an angel and everyone agreed about that, too.

She wore the finest clothes, skirts made of damask from far off lands and silky tops that swirled around her bosom like diaphanous clouds.

Everything was fine and dandy about her, but inside where only she dared go she knew that she had a doubtful heart.

You see, she was deeply and remarkably and passionately and overwhelmingly in love with a prince from a far off land. But everyone said that the prince was a bad man. He glowered at all the people in his sight whenever he went out, and ordered that heads be chopped off at regular intervals, just so that he could drink a cup of nice warm blood if he fancied it.

And, they said, those who should have known him, he was after the princess's wealth. He had room after room after room filled with precious things. Whole castles had been built and were crammed with his gold; halls as big as tabernacles were constructed to hold his silver and his precious stones �" diamonds chief amongst them �" were kept in a cathedral the size of ten football pitches placed end to end.

Yet he wanted still more wealth.

He wanted so much that his heart throbbed painfully in his chest whenever he thought of not having more wealth, and he had to swallow pills prescribed by his physician.

And it was this man that the Princess Atara loved as she gazed into her mirror.

She was so distracted by her love for him that she failed to notice that she was growing a beard. And it wasn't any ordinary little one strand here and another strand there kind of beard: it was a huge great explosion of rich black hair on her chin and cheeks and even her upper lip.

You'd have thought she'd have noticed it because she was seemingly gazing into her mirror, but she saw nothing of the sort.

She was blind to reality because her love for the prince was overwhelming, and her head might have fallen off and she wouldn't have noticed until the blood loss killed her.

She was so unaware of her marvellous beard, that was growing at a great rate even as she unseeingly gazed into her mirror, that her Chief taster might have rushed into the room and proclaimed all her food was poisoned, and she would merely have smiled distractedly at him and sighed "wonderful" before eating a seventeen course banquet.

So there was the princess Atara distracted from reality by the intensity of her love, and here was her lover marching towards her palace.

"Off with that man's head!" he barked, and a poor wretch from the crowd was dragged forwards and his head lopped cleanly off before a golden chalice was filled to overflowing with his blood and the Prince took a deep draught of it. Then he smacked his lips so hard together that crimson droplets scattered from his lips and teeth all over the crowds, and carried on his way.

He arrived at the Princess Atara's palace and had the doorman's head lopped off.

"Serve him right," he grunted, swallowing a huge draught of rich warm blood. "No man worthy of the word should be a toady like that doorman was!"

The Princess's cook backed into the room, an iron brace around her neck to ward off lopping.

"You!" roared the Prince. "You go and tell the Atara b***h that I'm here and gagging for it!"

She nodded and squeaked and whimpered and backed back out of the room, and fled up the stairs to the princess's private room.

"He's here, your highness," she whimpered.

"That's nice," dreamed the bearded princess. "I'd love to do it."

"Do what, ma'am?" asked the cook, tackling the princess's sideburns with a pair of garden shears.

"That tickles," moaned the princess, still gazing with unseeing eyes into her looking glass and sighing her lovelornness to the entire universe.

"That prince bloke, the one as chops heads off, the one as drinks blood," shouted the cook, combing the front of the princess's beard with a garden rake.

"Oh, that's nice," dreamed the Princess Atara, and she drifted to the toilet in an adjacent room whilst the cook tried to do something to her pubic hairs with a lawnmower.

"He wants your money," advised the cook, and somehow the dreamy Princess Atara heard that.

"Then he can have it," she announced. "I'll make a royal princessly declaration and give him all my money if only he'll take my heart."

"He'll take that soon enough!" whimpered the cook, piling a mound of cut hair into a neat pile in the corner. "He'll have thy heart soon enough, Majesty. He's the sort to have hearts. On toast, preferably. And nicely grilled."

"What are you rabbiting on about cookie?" asked the Princess Atara. "I do hate it when you rabbit on like that! Now speak plainly and I'll understand what you mean!"

The cook was about to reply, had even opened her mouth wide so that her pretty white teeth could all be plainly seen, when there was a kafuffle and furore at the door, which burst open there and then and the Prince burst in.

"Off with her head!" he declared, pointing at the princess Atara thinking she was a walking bush and consequently of no great lineage.

Two of his henchmen lopped the princess's head clean off her shoulders, and at that precise moment and as if by magic (which it was) her beard shrivelled and fell off, revealing the most beautiful head ever seen in that or any other land anywhen and anywhere.

"What beauty have we here?" roared the prince. "I have never seen one so lovely! I am in love! I will swoon! I will fall over myself and pass out and a frog will have to kiss me to resuscitate me!"

"It were the Princess Atara, and I were shaving her," put in the cook, "but you lopped off her head and she's dead."

"You were shaving her, you say?" murmured the prince, admiringly.

"I had to your princeship, or she would have gorn and fallen over her whiskers," blushed the cook.

"Then you must shave me!" declared the prince, "for I declare you are the mistress of the blade and can shave like no other! To think! I came here for a Princess's wealth and have ended up with a shaver! What a fortunate Prince I am!"

"The Heavens preserve me!" began the cook. "Truth to tell, I have no great skill…" she moaned.

"Shave me, wench, and I will give you your late mistress's fortune!" shouted the Prince.

"Her fortune?" asked the cook.

He nodded. "Yes: her fortune," he said.

"All of it?" purred the cook.

"Yes. All of it," agreed the Prince.

"Then I will use all my skill and shave you, your high and mighty princeship!" she declared.

And she took up her blade and approached the Prince and with almost exquisite skill she started shaving him, and when she'd reached two thirds of the way across his head she very determinedly and with almost unbelievable gentility lopped off his head.

The head bounced on the floor and lay still. Its eyes closed and its teeth fell out.

The cook went to a cupboard set in the wall and took out a small bag bulging with diamonds.

"This is mine, I believe," she said to the henchmen. "Tidy that mess up, will you?"

And she walked out into the summer's sun and bought herself a caravan, and a grey mare to pull it, and off she went on a very, very long holiday, as far from lopped off heads and mysteriously royal beards as she could get.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

You have gone off the charts with wild imagination here, my friend! I can't understand how ANYONE could think up such an outlandish tale, complete with strange made-up words, here & there. Strangely, it's not even distasteful, all the vivid descriptions of slurping chalices of blood, becuz the entire story is so bizarre, the gentle reader must suspend all belief, in order to plunge fully into this craziness! I think I better go look into the mirror to see if I've sprouted a beard while reading! Amazingly well constructed, albeit in some other unknown reality! *smile*

[Peter Rogerson]

I'm afraid that I seem to let all violence and nastiness out in fictitious words leaving me all calm and peacefulness ... I hope !

[barleygirl]

Sounds like self-mutilation or cutting . . . a lot of blood gives you sublime release! *ha! ha! ha!*