“Oh my fair, sweet Rapunzel,” the Prince sighed.
Only silence greeted him.
“Oh Rapunzel, loveliest maiden in all the lands!” he proclaimed.
Several birds scattered from the treetops.
“RAPUNZEL!” he shouted, “COME TO THE FUCKING WINDOW!”
She appeared. “What?”
“Um, hey,” he spoke bashfully, digging his boot into the soft dirt.
“WHAT?” she inquired.
“HEY,” he shouted.
“Oh,” she answered.
“WHAT’S UP?” he inquired.
“Me, in this god-forsaken tower!” Rapunzel was known among her friends by her middle syllable, as she often capitalized on such gags.
“I don’t think this is working,” the Prince shouted though cupped hands.
“What, your horse?” she asked, gesturing to the animal beside him.
“I will be if I keep shouting!” Rapunzel wasn’t sure if he had bested her at her own delight, or if the bastard just misheard her.
“Can’t you get, like, a megaphone or something? Y’know, maybe like a big cone with a hole in the bottom?”
“Then how will I hear you?” he pondered into the sky.
“Hold it up to your ear, maybe?” Rapunzel went to scratch her head to exercise her brain cells when she was met with resistance - the large cone atop her head, that sorry excuse for a hat! “Bee arr bee!” she shouted down at the Prince.
“You’re not texting me, you can say the full words! They’re the same number of syllables! It’s not hard!” Rapunzel had retreated into her chamber to find a proper cutting tool, but the Prince continued his pontificating regardless. “I swear, it’s ‘cause you text too much! That’s why you’re banished to that tower in the first place! Granted, if you still had your phone I could talk to you much more easily again, but you had to suspect that after two weeks straight of nightly calls between us, your father would be upset!” After shouting all that, the Prince promptly collapsed onto the dusty earth.
Rapunzel returned to the window with a cone fit for announcing the finest of jousts. “WHAT?” Her booming voice did no good in awaking the dehydrated Prince, but it did jostle her stately father from his study in the lower portion of the tower. A steady pounding of footsteps grew louder and nearer as Rapunzel hastily attempted to re-affix her ridiculous head-steeple. She pulled her hands away from it, still crooked, and quickly folded them behind her back just as her father burst in. Her grin smacked of the kind of innocence only a shoplifter could display.
“What in blazes is going on up here?” he demanded. “And why is your face so askew?”
“Oh, fuckbeans,” Rapunzel muttered as she adjusted her hat. “Apologies, father... there must have been a... strong wind through my window!” She turned her head away and muttered into her raised fingertips, “Yes... wind...” as she darted her eyes back and forth.
Her father approached the window for inspection, but Rapunzel bested him to the location and pressed herself up against it, arms wide to the width of the frame. “There’s nothing to see, father! You can’t see wind, as they say.”
“You seem rather alarmed,” her father observed.
“Alarmed? No. Me? Nonsense, no.”
“Then why are you guarding the window?” he questioned.
“No reason. Wind came through it and blew my hat. It’s why they call it a window, father. Eh-heh... eh-heh!” He regarded her curiously. “Don’t you believe me, father?”
“Ehh,” he shrugged, and retreated back to his lower chambers. Once his plodding was distant enough, Rapunzel wiped her brow with relief.
“Phew!” she sighed, collapsing onto her bed. As she lay back, her hat was knocked off by the headboard and fell onto her. She caught it, and remembered the Prince was still on the grounds, seemingly unconscious. “Shit!” she proclaimed, jumping to her feet and racing to the window. She took up the makeshift megaphone and began to call for the Prince, but realized such actions were what roused her surly father to begin with. She then brought the small end of the cone to her eye, angling it to inspect the Prince more closely. “Well, fuck-ass,” she pronounced, “this doesn’t do a damn thing.” She discarded the failed telescope and called after the Prince in what can best be described as a loud whisper. “Prince!” she hissed through cupped hands. “Prinncccccce! Prinsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss...”
He awoke. “What happened?”
“Father heard us and came to inspect my room!” she continued overtly whispering.
“What?” the Prince shouted.
“Shhhh!” she tried to make the gesture as obvious as possible. “He’ll hear you!”
The Prince edged up to the tower close as he could, as if it would make a difference. “What shall we do?”
Rapunzel, with her cap removed, now had the ability to scratch her head, when it all dawned upon her. “Hair!” she shouted, quickly covering her mouth in surprise of her volume.
“You want us to do a naked play?” he asked.
“No, my hair! Climb it up here!”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“I’m serious! They once used my hair to hogtie a dragon!”
“How big was the dragon?” he asked.
“Well, it was only a baby dragon... but a dragon nonetheless! Don’t worry, it’ll hold!”
“Why the hell were you capturing a baby dragon? Doesn’t that seem kind of cruel?” he ventured to inquire.
“That’s beside the point! Actually, one of his claws is beside the point of my cap on my dresser right now...”
“Okay, y’know, you’re right, we’re getting off topic! If you really think it’ll hold...”
“Trust me!” she said. “I also used to let my younger sister use it for a tire swing!”
“Where the fuck did you get a tire? I rode here on a horse!” he proclaimed.
“Just climb!” she said while unfurling her long blonde locks.
“Okay...” he said hesitantly. “Might wanna grab onto something...” And with that, the Prince ascended to Rapunzel’s secluded room atop the towering tower, where they spent the next three hours gathering her hair and pinning it up again. At that point it was nearly dusk and the Prince had to be off. “Next time maybe we can actually do something fun,” he said as he approached the window.
“Wait... now how are you going to get down?” Rapunzel asked. But before she could rise from her bed, the Prince had already parachuted to safety.
For the next several evenings, the Prince would sneak into the tower, often at earlier times to facilitate having an actual reason to bother going. On occasion, Rapunzel’s father would come to inspect the room - but fortunately for the Prince, he was able to hide under Rapunzel’s hair, leaving her to come up with a suitable excuse as to why she was looking so unkempt. Her “wind-ow” explanations grew more incredulous with every telling.
~~~~~~~~*-*-*~~~~~~~~
“The wind blew in several of the bluebirds that perch on the windowsill, and they attempted to make a nest of my hair!”
“Mm-hmmm,” her father said in passing disbelief.
~~~~~~~~*-*-*~~~~~~~~
“A storm front came in, and I had to use my hair to mop up all the rain!”
“A storm,” he said, “indoors.”
“But father, you’ve been saying I need to wash my hair for ages now!”
“Hmmm.”
~~~~~~~~*-*-*~~~~~~~~
“... And then, once the squirrels were sound asleep, I was able to retrieve the enchanted chestnut, and hid it! In my hair! What with there being so much of it, the very lazy squirrels gave up and went home.”
“Mm-hmmmmmmmmm.”
“What, father, don’t you believe me?” She flashed him the widest puppy-eyes her face could manage.
“Hm? Uh, oh. Oh! No, yes. Of course I do!” He had stopped listening half an hour ago. “Rapunzel, my dear sweet daughter, I daresay that this confinement has not worn well on your fragile mind. Perhaps this punishment was a tad harsh for the simple act of communication.” He sighed heavily. “I believe you deserve no more. Here.” He produced a small silver device from inside his coat. “You may have your treasured cellular phone back.”
“Eeeeeeeeheheheeeeee!” she screamed. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou, father!” She ran to hug him, but her hair caught the edge of her dresser and she was pulled onto the floor. However, this did not deter her excitement. “Yay! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”
Afterward, the routine conversations between Rapunzel and the Prince resumed, running for record spans of time. But, curiously enough, the Prince still never saw Rapunzel outside of her tower. Finally, one late evening, he enquired about the matter.
“I don’t get it, you’re finally not grounded anymore, and all you do is sit up there talking to people on the phone! If I were you I’d be sick of that place by now.”
“What... what are you saying? That you don’t like my room?” She started sniveling.
“No, no! Not at all. Just... y’know, a change of scenery--”
“So you think I did a horrible job decorating!” She was now openly crying.
“Stop it! No! I just wonder why you haven’t been out at all.”
She inhaled her loose snot and resumed a calm demeanor. “Oh. Well, I’ve been out of touch for so long, I’ve just been calling people all the time!”
“How many fucking friends do you have?”
“Hey, I can’t help it if I’m popular.”
“And I can’t help it if I’m a jealous bastard; who have you been calling?”
“Just old friends and cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles and first cousins and third uncles twice besmirched and...”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you!” She made an overt smooching sound.
“No, I meant I was sorry I asked. But, uh, anyway. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Oh, I’ve got some stupid doctor’s appointment. Want to come over and I’ll blow it off?”
There was something of a pause. “I’m sorry, there was a bit of static... um... can you say that again? I just want to make sure you didn’t say...”
“I asked if you wanted to come over and I’ll blow the doctor off.”
“What? Who is this doctor? I knew I had a reason to be jealous...”
“BLOW OFF THE APPOINTMENT. Seriously, you need to switch carriers.”
“Oh, oh right, of course. Um, yeah sure, I’ll be there. What time?”
She looked at the sundial on her phone display. “Um, maybe like, 4-ish?”
“Yeah, 4-ish is about the best I can do. I wish they’d get these digital sundials a little more accurate, don’t you?”
“Yuh-huh.” She was obviously distracted, most likely twirling her miles of hair.
“Alright then,” the Prince said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The Prince rode to Rapunzel’s castle, ten minutes to 4-ish, and called up to her window to announce his arrival.
“Heyyyy, girl! I’m here!” An alarming pause of silence later, she finally appeared at the windowsill.
“Shh! I... I can’t come out. I’m sorry,” she said.
“What?” he shouted, “Why not?”
“Father said. He... he got angry about cell phone stuff again. And about not going to the doctor’s.”
“Pshaw!” the Prince announced. “That didn’t hold us back last time, did it?”
Her face began to brighten. “Y’know... you’re right! Hold on, I’ll undo my hair.”
“You’ll do who?” he shouted.
“MY HAIR. GODDAMMIT. Hold on!” She yelled from within her room.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
Ten minutes later, at the stroke of 4-ish, a hirsute rope fell from Rapunzel’s window and kicked up dust and dirt from the ground below. The Prince rubbed his hands together and, grinning, got a running start. He leapt high as he could and grabbed hold of the golden lock, but before he could begin climbing, he felt a sudden sharp pain from behind. Comparing his perspective of the tower to the one he just had, he could conclude that he had, in fact, fallen on his ass. The Prince stood up slowly, fearing Rapunzel’s father had come outside after hearing his shouting and pulled him off his daughter’s hair. But while no angry fathers were seen, what the Prince witnessed was even more alarming.
The long braid was collecting on the ground, falling fast from the great height of the castle.
“Rapunzel!” he called. “Are you alright!”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Where are you already?”
“But... your hair!” he responded. “What happened? Did... did your father cut it off in anger?”
She ran to the window to meet his gaze, saw her nest of lost blonde beauty on the ground, and rose her hand to her head in alarm. “No...” she stated, somewhat shocked.
“Don’t tell me those were extensions!”
“No,” she said. “They weren’t.”
“Then what happened?” he demanded.
“Hm,” she said. “Must’ve been all that chemotherapy.”
*~~~~~~~~~~THE END~~~~~~~~~~*
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