Robin’s Story
Robin opened the door to his studio apartment, set down his backpack, put some hot water on for tea and sat down with paper and pencil to write a story.
Once there was a high tower made of white stone in Ireland. Ivy grew thickly up the sides of this tower. It was said in the twenty-first century that this tower was haunted. People from all over the world would go and sleep in the old stone tower because they wanted to say that they had a haunted experience. Cathy was a round housewife from the United States, who begged her husband Ron to make reservations to stay one night in the haunted tower. Ron, who wore a brown cowboy hat and a blue plaid shirt stretched over his beer belly, grumbled at first but then gave in.
The tower was originally built so that the only way in or out was through a small window on the west side of the tower. But the O’Donnels , who inherited the tower from some distant relatives, had a hard time finding an insurance company that would cover tourist climbing a ladder several hundred feet in the air; they decided to have a stone staircase put in. Cathy and Ron were out of breathe has they finished climbing the one hundred stairs to the little room. Once inside the room, Cathy looked out the one small window-looking west to watch the sun setting. Ron grumbled and put on his red plaid flannel pajamas and Cathy put on her lavender colored nightgown with yellow roses. She always braided her long blonde hair into a single braid that hung down her back. By the time she finished with the last plait of the braid, Ron was snoring soundly in bed. Cathy was in the habit of reading in bed, she mostly read romance novels. She flipped her braid over her right shoulder and crawled in beside Ron. It might have been the climb or the excitement of the day but Cathy was soon drifting off into a restful sleep, her book lying against her bosom.
Rapunzel, who was always there but never visible, approached the couple as they lay sleeping. She picked the book up off of the sleeping woman’s bosom and looked at the cover. A man and woman were embracing. The man had on a white shirt that was open at the front exposing a muscular and tan chest. The woman lay against the man’s arm in a swoon, her long flowing red hair sweeping away from her back, her rose bud mouth expectant. Rapunzel sat in a chair next to Cathy, holding the book to her chest and cried out, “Oh, Mother what have you done? What have you done? As she cried she put the book down and leaned over the woman. The woman’s long blonde braid was tied with a red ribbon on the end. Rapunzel’s invisible fingers pulled at the ribbon until the ends gave way and she laid the ribbon on top of the book on the table. Great wet tears flowed in remembrance of her love. He was young, beautiful and fair. As Ranpunzel cried, Cathy dreamed that she was in the midst of a great rainstorm. She was holding an umbrella to try to protect herself from the gale. “Funny,” she thought while dreaming, “a rainstorm has never made me feel sad,” and she too started crying. Rapunzel was surprised by the quiet sobs of the woman and the tears that streamed down her face. Finding a tissue on the table, Rapunzel lovingly dabbed at her tears. She soothed the woman with a song of the mountains as she undid her braid and brushed out the woman’s hair.
After Rapunzel finished brushing Cathy’s hair, she sat at the window and watched the stars make their final journal westward over the hills; first there was Orion the hunter, then the teapot and now the dragon. As Rapanzel watched the stars she remembered her lover the fair prince. A long time ago, he would stand underneath her window at the bottom of the tower as she sang. She noticed that his hair was thinning on top and that his scalp often showed through pink or red. She could also see the outward curvature of his belly. But he too liked to sing and had a beautiful alto voice. Her mother, she hated the prince. She was jealous! One day she told Rapunzel, “You either tell that fat balding man to go away or I’ll do something really terrible to him.” Rapunzel had grown tired of her mother after all she was thirty-eight years old. If the tower had had stairs like it did now, she would have simply walked away and left her mother to brew in her own meanness. But she didn’t have a way out, so she waited for the prince to appear. And instead of telling the prince to go away, she told the prince when to come and visit her. The prince came back the next day, when her mother was taking a trip into town for supplies. She let down her thick red braid and he climbed with great energy up her hair and into the tower. Once inside the tower they stood looking at each other. He introduced himself as Prince Herbert. He belted out a couple of lines from a popular folk song and she joined in. She poured him a glass of water and prepared a plate of flat bread, cheese and apple slices. They spent the afternoon this way, enjoying each other’s company. They embraced before he left, she told him to come back in two days. He came back often. Once he came back with a robe ladder that he wore over his shoulder like a sash. Once in the tower he secured the homemade rope ladder to a wall and they both climbed down. The prince had a horse that was secured to in a tree in nearby thicket. Herbert and Rapunzel rode the horse named Star back to his kingdom. Now Herbert’s parents the King and Queen immediately fell in love with Rapunzel. They were relieved that their forty -something year old son had finally found someone that he loved. Herbert and Rapunzel were married in the castle the following month. Rapunzel’s mother Agnes had taken residence in the tower. She sat drinking ale and the flame of her anger finally became a mountain of red-hot volcanic rage. “How dare her daughter, how ungrateful of her daughter!” She wasn’t even invited to their wedding, not that she would have gone anyway, but still! One night during one of her rages, she got up out of her chair, found an axe that she put it into a bag, climbed down the rope the two had used to escape a month and a half before and walked towards the kingdom. The first person to greet her was old Sam who guarded the gate. He had often seen Agnes come into the kingdom for supplies. Agnes put on her sweetest voice and said, “I’ve come to visit my daughter and her wonderful new husband.” Sam smiled broadly and let her in. After entering the kingdom, Agnes stayed in the shadows of the alleyways and buildings, moving stealthily like a cat looking for prey. The castle was in the middle of the kingdom, it was a modest affair, only being four stories high, it looked more like a mansion. Agnes crept around the north side of the castle where she knew the cooks had their door. It was open as the cooks were all on break, smoking long stemmed pipes and eating leftovers. Agnes pretended that she had a delivery. There was no reason to suspect that Agnes wasn’t there for the purpose that she claimed so the cooks smiled and nodded at Agnes as she walked into the kitchen. Once inside the deserted kitchen Agnes exited out a door that took her up a passageway of stairs. The stairs led to a hallway. It’s too terrible to describe what Agnes did to prince Herbert and Rapunzel with her axe while they lie sleeping in their beds.
The next day after the terrible news spread throughout the kingdom, Sam the gatekeeper went to the sheriff and informed him that Agnes was the only person to come into the kingdom in the late afternoon. The sheriff, whose name was Tom, was a short man with a thick beard and mustache. He rode out to the tower that morning, climbed up the ladder, saw the bloody axe against the wall and brought Agnes, whose arms he bound to her sides back into the kingdom. Judgment was pronounced against Agnes and she was beheaded a week after the murder.
Each night, Rapunzel would replay this story, savoring the memory of her happy times with prince Herbert as brief as they were. The western sky was starting to turn pink when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The wooden door sudden burst open letting in a gust of cold air and in stomped her mother Agnes. At this point Ron awoke. The door to the room was wide open and the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end and he wasn’t certain if it the cold air that he was feeling or some fear. He got up to close the door and felt a cold hand on his neck, he stopped still in his tracks, shuttered and closed the door. Rapunzel on seeing her mother, cried out, “OH Mother what have you done!” “What have you done?!?” Agnes eyed her daughter didn’t say anything and sat down at the window. “Mother answer me what have you done?” Agnes acidly replied, “I have saved you from a life of unhappiness, you were too stupid to see what an idiot that prince was, I saved you.” Rapunzel howled pulling at her shoulder length hair (for one of the things that her mother had done with the axe was to cut off Rapunzel’s hair to her shoulders) at her mother’s curt response. “But mother I have no life” Agnes didn’t reply, she just sat staring out of the window. Ron had an uneasy feeling that he couldn’t talk himself out of as he lay with the covers pulled up to his chin. As the sun climbed over the hills and then into the room, Agnes got up and stomped out of the room. This time being fully awake to his horror Ron watched the door open and then shut by itself. Ron was still lying flat on his back and the covers pulled up to his chin nervously looking at the door when his wife Cathy woke up. “Why Ron what is the matter?” Cathy asked. Ron who wanted to preserve whatever was left of his masculinity answered back, “Oh nothing dear, I’m just cold.” “Well, you’ll warm up when you get dressed,” Cathy asserted. Cathy was so surprised to see Ron looking like a frightened child that she didn’t notice that her book had been moved or that her hair had changed. Rapunzel sat and looked out the window as Ron and Cathy got dressed and left the room. After they left, she got up from her window seat and crawled into the vacated bed falling into a deep sleep.
