Genre: Fairy Tale
Location: Funeral Home
Object: Spaghetti with Meatballs
Sparkling Gold
Rapunzel
died on Monday. Angela hadn't had
someone this noteworthy in a long time. It
had been over a year since she prepared Sleeping Beauty. But, because of their track record and
tendency to only seem to die, various
tests needed to be administered to any royalty, celebrity, magical creature or historically
significant person before they were deemed “officially deceased.” That was Angela’s job. She was the resident Death Tester and
mortician for the kings and queens and godmothers and just once, a beloved
squirrel.
Rapunzel’s
hair had not been touched by time. It
had stayed as golden as the straw she spun until the day she died at 104. Only her face and hunched back showed her
age. She had deep lines around her mouth
and crows feet branching out from her eyes.
But her hair still held the luster of youth, the golden trusses hanging
low over the cold metal table.
Now
Friday, Rapunzel had passed most of the tests.
Her body had been cleared for poison and sleeping elixirs. Frogs and toads were pressed to her stiff
lips. Magic harps played on a loop. Enchanted birds were brought in to whistle
her favorite tune. Spinning-wheel
needles were confiscated from witches’ homes and screened for spells. Prince Rupert had just left, the fourth and
youngest prince of the current royal family.
It was his job to kiss each dead lady to rule out any bewitchment that
might require a prince to awaken them.
He kissed Rapunzel quickly. Needless
to say, this “duty,” wasn't his favorite.
After all
the tests were complete, and the dead remained dead, Angela would prepare them for
their glass coffin. They were
celebrities even in death. Their stories
remaining real as long as their bodies could be seen.
Now that
Rapunzel had been officially declared dead, the world could begin grieving and
await their chance to stand before the glass coffin, and say their farewells to
the woman who inspired a century of blonde hair color and floor-sweeping
lengths.
But a
year before, almost to the day, Rapunzel had come to Angela and asked her to do
the unthinkable.
“I want
you to cut it all off. And then I want
you to burn it.” The wrinkled woman had to look up at Angela
during their meeting at the funeral home, her head weighted down, her neck no
longer strong enough to support the weight of the hair. “Please, you must
promise.”
Angela
didn't want to do it. She had been told
her story as a little girl and she loved picturing the prince climbing up her
strong braid to rescue her. Angela
fought within herself, holding onto the magic of Rapunzel and her hair, but
also felt pity for the old woman and what had become of her. She could hear the desperation in her voice
and the fear that her hair would keep growing, turning her into even more of a
spectacle than she had been when she was alive.
"I
swear."
After receiving
Rapunzel’s body, she spent five days combing it, running her fingers through
the never-tangling locks. It was cold,
the telling chill of dead hair. She thought
while administering the potions and spells to safeguard against burying one of
the famous too soon, that the temperature of the hair was the only test they ever
really needed. Living hair retains heat,
stretching down to the very tips. But once a person dies, the hair will forever
be cold, lifeless and still.
She
thought of their meeting a year before, and remembered her promise to do as the
old woman had asked. She waited until
the end of the night, the harps and singing birds quiet under their covering
sheets and cages. She pulled out a pair
of scissors, the same ones she often used to trim and style hair and beards and
the curling mustaches of the villains.
She held up a handful of gold, allowing it to slip through her fingers
like cool water. Then she put the blade around
the thin ropes that raised a man to his love, strong enough to support his
quest and magical enough to inspire a story to be told again and again,
imprinting a picture of true love on every girl’s heart.
“What
are you doing?” Griffin asked while clutching a stained Tupperware of reheated
spaghetti he brought in for his lunch every day, a half-chewed meatball in his
mouth.
“Nothing!”
she said, startled and dropping the scissors.
“Don't
do anything stupid.” he said, eyeing her suspiciously. Griffin was her assistant and a distant
cousin to Sleepy, one of Snow White’s infamous seven. “Whatever you're doing, you won’t get away
with it. You can’t sell it, you'd lose
your job.”
“I was
just trimming it.”
"Ya,
whatever." He turned and left to finish his meal in the front parlor.
She knew
she would never get away with what she was about to do, and she wasn't exactly
sure what would happen to her. But
despite her hesitation to destroy something so famous, so integral to a story
known by thousands, she felt compelled to lift the burden from the old woman
trapped beneath the unbearable weight of her golden hair.
So she
began to cut slowly, worried Griffin would come back. But with each lock that fell to the floor,
she felt more confident about what she was doing. Soon, there was nothing more than a rough
inch of hair sticking straight up on the crown of Rapunzel’s head. And for a moment, she thought she saw
Rapunzel smile. But before she could
worry she had been declared dead too soon, the old woman started to disappear
and fade into nothing. Only the pile of
hair remained. Angela stood quiet, and
then slowly started gathering it up. She
walked to the furnace, careful to not miss a strand, and dumped it all in. It burst and crackled like straw and sparked like
gold.
No comments:
Post a Comment