The girl, Elle to her friends, looked down from the single window in her high tower and grimaced. Another one? This one was a little long in the tooth with grey hair at the temples, and she sighed. Was this her fate? To be ‘rescued’ by a man old enough to be her father? She thought not.
He called out to her again, and she extended her hand and her middle finger. Would his eyesight even be good enough to see it? She smiled at his muffled curse. Obviously, yes. Her smile grew even wider at the sound of his horses’ hoofbeats. Thank God for small miracles.
Elle took three steps and plopped down on her narrow, albeit comfortable bed. Someone, somewhere had started the rumor she was here against her will. Probably Helena, the fool, convinced only a man could save a woman from the woes of life.
“Give me a break,” Elle muttered, tapping her foot on the floor.
She kept the braid of hair the men so fondly desired in a box under the bed. Chopping it off was the first thing she’d done after locking herself in the room. Contrary to popular belief, she could leave at any time; she wore the key on a long chain around her neck.
Elle didn’t know who started the trapped by a witch rumor, but she could guess how it happened. The tower housekeeper and cook, a little old woman with a stooped back and a wild tangle of hair, resembled one, at least in the way they were portrayed in stories. Elle knew a witch or two, and they looked nothing like her housekeeper.
She’d fire the woman and hire someone else, but she made kick-ass lentil soup and didn’t ask questions. That was the important part. She did her job, collected her pay, and went home. If any of the men had bothered to wait until after dark, they could have easily met up with the housekeeper, asked her a few questions, and saved themselves a lot of time and energy, but a girl locked in a tower gave them all delusions of princely grandeur.
It didn’t matter though. A few more weeks and she’d rejoin the land of the living. Elle could see her return clearly. Helena would freak out over her hair, her mother would pop another Valium and ask if she’d had a nice time, her father would ask if she needed any money, and her brother would nod his head in her general direction and go back to his video game. Elle could say the hell with all of them and stay in the tower, but she had a serious craving for a soy latte from Starbucks.
Pushing the latte out of her mind, she opened up her laptop. Despite the daily interruptions from her ‘rescuers’, her novel, the reason for her sabbatical, was nearly complete. Three months to write the first draft (she could have done it in two, but instead took her time), one month off (with no peeking at the manuscript), two months to edit, another month off, more edits, and then a few more. One final read-thru and she could call it done. She’d never be 100% happy with it, but 99% was good enough. Then of course, she had to find a literary agent willing to look at the thing, but–
“Let down your hair.”
The deep voice drifted up through the open window, cutting off her thoughts. Elle sighed. Really? Twice in one day? Maybe she should have had a ‘Dragon on Premises’ sign posted at the gate instead of ‘Keep Out’.
Damien Walters Grintalis is a writer of dark tales and a poet. Her short fiction has appeared in Crash and Liquid Imagination; future works will appear in Bards & Sages Quarterly, Murky Depths, Everyday Weirdness, Every Day Fiction, Weirdyear, Emerald Tales, Copper Wire, and The Stray Branch. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Rose & Thorn Journal, Every Day Poets, The Cynic Online, and Baltimore’s City Paper.
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22 Responses to “LET DOWN YOUR HAIR • by Damien Walters Grintalis”
Comments
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February 1st, 2010 at 1:54 am
A nicely written alternative fairytale, with touches of humour, but not much of note happened.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:42 am
Agree with Paul. Well written, fun take, but no payoff, really.
February 1st, 2010 at 3:51 am
Ditto to comments 1 and 2. Climax was barely a blip and the ending ho-hum.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:05 am
The juxtaposition of modern technology with the whole castle-damsel-witch thing was a little jarring, and not wholly reconciled in the story. Nonetheless, it’s a cute idea, well executed. I’m not bothered by the absence of a twist or high-impact ending – the situation itself is novel enough to hold it together. Four stars.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:38 am
It isn’t the absence of a twist or high-impact ending that signifies, it’s what you take away from the story. The most I took away from this is a proto-feminist rant that’s ultimately cold and uninteresting.
February 1st, 2010 at 5:21 am
I have to ditto pretty much everything said. At the end of the read I found no reason to care for the MC. She had no redeeming qualities thus leaving me no reason to care.
I did like the juxtaposition of the Rapunzel story against the backdrop of todays technology. It was a great idea that could’ve been executed better.
This was absolutely a mid-three.
February 1st, 2010 at 6:15 am
Kind of a Paris Hilton type gal isn’t she?
February 1st, 2010 at 6:20 am
I like this story – a modern person trying to escape dull childhood mythologies and stale misconceptions.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:09 am
I really liked this one. Providing a nice backstory to an old fairy tale was well done. The ending didn’t have much “twist” to it, but it wrapped things up quite neatly.
I will note that it took no more than the title and the first sentence to tell me we were doing “Rapunzel,” but that’s OK. Knowing what we were doing a sendup of just made the anachronisms funnier. Five braids from me!
February 1st, 2010 at 7:13 am
I like your take on the Rapunzel tale, that she has chosen to lock herself up rather than to be locked up. I think you could have made her more sympathetic – emphasizing her passion for her art, career before marriage, etc. and taking it beyond crankiness. You do emphasize her passion in the end, but you could hint at it a little more earlier, so we know that she’s not just up in the tower because she’s a misanthropic bitch, but because she has a priority in her life that supersedes getting rescued.
All in all, I liked this story a lot. Great idea and well told.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:20 am
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention – I was a little surprised this story got to print, because I have found that stories about WRITERS are a very hard sell, not just at EDF but everywhere. Editors seem to feel that non-writer readers don’t want to read about writers (or something like that).
February 1st, 2010 at 8:35 am
It held my interest at the beginning (up to the point where she gave the inernational salute to the first ‘Prince’) It even gave me a giggle. However, it just seemed to drone on after that and I found myself nodding off a time or two. At last, my favorite part showed up . . . “The End.” 2 stars.
February 1st, 2010 at 10:15 am
3 ***
Confusing…where do yo want the reader to be ???
1600s or present day ???
Weak ending!! Started with good imagination.
It lapsed at the end.
February 1st, 2010 at 10:26 am
A nice quirky take on an old fairy tale. (I must have missed the part where it devolved into a feminist rant.) I did find the juxtaposition between some of the old world settings and the modern day conveniences a little jarring, part of me wants to say pick one and run with it – old man in a old car, for example – though I wouldn’t want to lose the line about the dragon.
A quick and entertaining read.
February 1st, 2010 at 10:30 am
Don’t struggling writers wish they could lock themselves away in a tower (I’d take a cave some days). Like Jim noted already, clearly a “writer-centric” story. The subject matter probably limits the appeal somewhat.
–John
February 1st, 2010 at 11:47 am
It just seemed like a “day-in-the-life” of a woman on sabbatical writing her “publish or perish” piece. That she chose a quiet old-fashioned hotel is neither jarring nor politically feministic and it’s also not anachronistic. As for the men, it wasn’t mentioned whether any got past the frame of her window, but when one understands her situation, its understandable that she doesn’t want to be disturbed.
February 1st, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Not something I enjoyed.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Most has been said, but I can’t help making my own comment.
As the self-appointed pronoun police, I feel a need to point out pronoun confusion with, “She’d fire the woman and hire someone else, but she made kick-ass lentil soup and didn’t ask questions.”
This sentence also had me in a spin, “The tower housekeeper and cook, a little old woman with a stooped back and a wild tangle of hair, resembled one, at least in the way they were portrayed in stories.”
Another ** from me.
February 1st, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Loved it! What a fresh spin on an old tale. I like this modern-snotty Rapunzel.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:14 pm
I love it.
The whole story is the twist.
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:48 am
The metaphor of ivory tower instead of (noisy?)den seems perfectly apt for an academic writer having to contend with all those old stories riffling through her mind while Department Heads glare at their calendars.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:13 am
I loved this! My tower would have a closed and double-glazed window, though. Also, air conditioning.