Rapunzel...?
Once upon a time, there was a tower which stood tall in the middle of the English countryside, higher than any other building in the land.
Well, actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration - it was roughly the same height as a bungalow. But it looked extremely tall from Prince Shortstop's point of view.
And it wasn't technically in the middle of the English countryside. In fact, it was situated in the middle of a small field alongside the M25 motorway. But as far as Prince Shortstop was concerned, it was twice the size of any countryside he had seen – and he hadn’t seen many.
As he sat in the hard shoulder in his Ford Mondeo – which he fondly called Horse – staring out at the brick tower, he wondered what he was going to do.
He had been told that a fair maiden lived in the tower and that she had been there for as long as anyone could remember.
Rumour had it; she’d been locked away in there when she was younger, by an evil witch of some kind. But there was no way of being sure, not if she’d been in there for that long. For all anyone knew, it could have just been a drunken night on the tiles that ended badly, or perhaps she'd fallen out with a friend who knew how to hold a bitter grudge.
But whatever the case, she was still trapped there, no doubt spending her time waiting for the day when a noble prince would rescue her.
Prince Shortstop looked at himself in the rear view mirror. He would be that prince.
Admittedly, he wasn’t exactly the noblest prince in all the land. After all, his mum had had to kill a spider that he’d found in the bath that morning. And on the previous day, he had quite literally screamed when a dog barked at him unexpectedly.
But after being locked in the tower for so long, he doubted the princess would be fussy. Plus, he had come all this way - it was at least a ten minute drive from Epping – he wasn’t going to go back empty handed.
He winked once at his reflection, took a deep breath, and, bracing himself, opened the car door.
Prince Shortstop slid down from the pile of books he had been sat on in a less than graceful manner, his little legs buckling as he landed on the ground, causing him to stumble a little.
He reached up, standing on the very tip of his tippy-toes and stretched his hand up to lock the car door, then turned to face the wave of cars which were racing past him.
It occurred to Prince Shortstop that it would have made more sense for him to have parked on the other side of the motorway as he would have been closer to the field. He also imagined how easy it would be if he had the ability to fly over the cars and land perfectly in the field; or if he could dig himself an underground tunnel underneath the busy road. But this wasn’t exactly a fairy tale scenario.
It was quite clear that he couldn’t go over the cars, and he couldn’t go under the cars. So instead, he would have to go through the cars.
He quickly set about planning a way of getting through the sea of traffic to the field in one piece. This was going to be a challenge, but he knew it had to be done. The fate of the fair princess was lying in his sweaty, jittering hands. He just wished he’d waited until after the morning rush hour before attempting to rescue her.
Unable to put it off any longer, Prince Shortstop breathed deep once more, then took his first step into the hectic, traffic filled road.
It had taken him at least half an hour at a guess, but finally, Prince Shortstop fought his way between the last two bushes and staggered onto the dead, grey grass. He lay there for a while, sprawled out wide-ish, taking some time to regain control of his breath. Never had he been so scared for his life…apart from the barking dog incident yesterday. He decided right then that he’d find a different way home with the princess and go back to collect his car later. He would be purely foolish to attempt to battle the cars again in such a perilous way, as if he hadn’t been silly enough the first time.
The prince sat up and looked towards the tower, which now stood about 200 metres away from him. It would take him ages to get there! Without further hesitation, he got to his feet and started walking, the late morning sun beating down on his back.
He had to stop for a break halfway there, but at last, he was approaching the old brickwork of the tower. It seemed taller closer up...a lot taller.
Prince Shortstop looked up at the single window embedded in the wall of the building, straining his neck as far back as possible to get a better view.
His heart stopped. There she was – the beautiful princess.
She was gazing out across the field, her chin resting on her hand and her elbow leaning on the window frame. The sunlight glinted off her ocean blue eyes and gave her long, plaited hair a slight honey tone of blonde (as far as the prince could tell from where he stood).
She was leaning so far out of the window that Prince Shortstop could see the top of her baby blue, long sleeved shirt, which looked too tight against her arms.
‘Hey, you!’ Prince Shortstop called.
The princess shot her head around, scanning the field for the source of the small voice.
‘Oi!’ Prince Shortstop shouted. ‘I’m down ‘ere, you silly woman!’ He waved his small arms from side to side in a bid to get her attention.
The princess looked down and finally spotted the tiny man that stood below the window. He looked like a very peculiar man to the princess. He was wearing a peak cap, and a Nike hoodie with jogging bottoms to match and he had what could only be described as ‘bum fluff’ on his chin.
‘What do you want?’ the princess asked, dreading the answer he would give.
The princess’ voice sounded extremely loud to Prince Shortstop, with a strangely deep edge to it. He assumed that it must have had something to do with the ear infection he’d had for the past week. Plus, he expected she would be extremely dehydrated by now, which could explain why she sounded so hoarse.
‘You’re that Rapunzel bird, yeah?’ Prince Shortstop shouted back.
‘Yeah, so what?’ Rapunzel answered.
‘Well, I’m here to bust you out.’ The prince felt a surge of pride as he said this and puffed up his chest as much as he could.
‘Oh.’ Rapunzel said.
‘Oh? Oh?! Ah, well don’t sound too happy about, will ya? You might give yourself a migraine!’
‘Nah, nah, you’ll do.’
‘Right, now... Is it right that there’s no door to this place?’ Prince Shortstop glanced around at the walls of the tower, seeing no sign of any other opening from where he was standing.
Rapunzel rolled her eyes and said, in a bored voice, ‘There is, round the back, but Nicky went and bloody locked it and chucked the key somewhere.’
The prince assumed that Nicky was the name of the evil witch. What a nasty bitch she sounded like!
Glad that he probably wouldn’t have to come across her any time soon, Prince Shortstop returned to the matter in hand.
‘Well then, in that case we’ve got a problem.’
‘Oh really?’ Rapunzel asked, sighing and inspecting her nails. ‘What’s that then?’
‘I went and forgot my trampoline...’
Rapunzel quickly returned her gaze to the prince, and sensing an opportunity said ‘Oh well, I’ll just have to stay here for a bit longer then...’
‘Nah, you won’t! I spent a tenner on petrol to get here!’ Prince Shortstop looked around for some way to get the princess out of the tower, but saw nothing of use.
Then he looked back up at the window and an idea struck him. ‘I’ll just have to come up there, won’t I?’ he told the princess.
‘Do you really have to?’ Rapunzel groaned.
‘Do you wanna get outta there or not?’ Prince Shortstop said. He couldn’t believe that these kind of complaints were coming from the mouth of such a lovely young damsel in distress – she should be grateful to him for wanting to help her!
There was nothing in the field that he could use as a ladder to get up to her window. Then he saw Rapunzel’s long, woven hair laying across her shoulder, the ends of it arranged into a neat little coil on the windowsill.
‘Here!’ he said, impressed by his own genius idea. ‘Chuck your hair down here!’
‘What?!’ Rapunzel shouted, appalled.
‘Just chuck it down here!’
Rapunzel sighed and let her long plait fall down towards the ground where Prince Shortstop stood. The prince didn’t realise that he wasn’t standing in the least ideal place until the metal binding of the hair bobble hit him on the head.
After a moment or two, the prince had recovered, though he made a mental note to pop into A&E later to be checked for concussion.
He took hold of the bottom of Rapunzel’s hair and began to climb clumsily, his hands barely keeping grip on the makeshift rope and his legs kicking wildly in thin air.
Rapunzel started to wince as Prince Shortstop slowly climbed higher.
He paused for a moment to get his breath back and, despite his best efforts not to, stole a glance back down at the ground, and was suddenly overcome by dizziness, his eyes struggling to focus properly.
He'd forgotten that he was not very good with heights, and he must have been at least 20 centimetres off the ground now!
He was so light-headed that it took him a moment to register the ripping sound that had started to come from the top of the princess’ head. Prince Shortstop was too heavy.
'Let go of it!' Rapunzel yelled at him. 'LET GO!'
'It's too high! IT'S TOO HIIIIIGH!'
'Don't be a bloody wimp! Just let go!'
But it was too late. With little further warning, Rapunzel’s hair was ripped clean from her head, and Prince Shortstop fell to the floor with a thud, still clutching the thick braid in both his hands.
‘What the…?’ He looked up at the princess, astonished to see that the sunlight was now reflecting off a shiny spot on her completely bald head.
'Oh well done!' Rapunzel shouted, her voice suddenly a lot deeper and more gruff than before. 'Bloody idiot! You've gone and ripped my bloody wig off now!'