Repunzel's [sic] Revenge

I stumbled upon a wealth of relics from my childhood and adolescence this week while vacationing at my parents' house! The first I'd like to showcase is this spin on a classic fairy tale I wrote in February 2000. You can learn a lot about my ten-year-old self from reading this story and seeing how I warped the familiar plot and characters, and the word choice I use that just indicated what I thought was funny back then. True to my nature, I hid a couple of Easter eggs from my interests at the time of writing it (Digimon, in this case).

I've preserved the incorrect spelling of "Rapunzel," but otherwise I've fixed the grammar to read better.

Repunzel's Revenge

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a king and a queen who always longed for a child. One day, the queen got pregnant and got a strange sickness that gave her furious cravings. She discovered a patch of "repunzel" plants in the yard of their next-door neighbor witch. As soon as she saw them, she craved them so badly she feared if she did not get some, she would die.

The king decided that during the night, he would try to steal some repunzel for his wife. He did, and the queen was so delighted, she made a salad out of it (with some tomatoes and onions) and gobbled it up. It was so delicious, she begged the king to fetch some more. He did, but she still wasn't satisfied.

The king kept repeating this night after night until he got caught. The witch was going to turn the king into a petrified toadstool, but he begged for mercy and she said "Alright. You can have all the repunzel you want. If..." she paused. "If you promise to, when the child is born, give the child to me." The king agreed, and the very next day, a child was born. The king refused to give the witch their child, so she turned him and the queen into petrified toadstools and ran off with the child.

Her first task was to give the child a name. First she tried calling her something like "Fiddlewhack" or "Zudikkaku" or even "Togelilly," but the child didn't answer to any of those. So she tried something simpler like "Id" or "Ok" or even "Zy," but she still didn't come. Finally, she tried "Repunzel" after the plant her mother loved, and the child came running.

When Repunzel was sixteen, the witch locked her in a tower with no door and no stairs. Each day, the witch came and visited Repunzel in the tower. To get up, she only needed to say "Repunzel! Repunzel! Let down your... HEY! Stop singing and listen! I said 'Let down your hair'!" So Repunzel would let down her strands of long, long hair and the witch would climb up.

One day, after the witch had gone, Repunzel noticed a book and a rope that were stuck onto a sharp nail outside the tower window. The witch must've gotten her cloak caught onto it. Repunzel picked the book up and started reading. Her beautiful face begat to twist and fold into an angry sneer of rage until she looked almost like the witch herself. The book was a diary and had told Repunzel about the witch and repunzel plants and her real parents. Repunzel took out her secret needle and gold thread and began to sew onto the rope.

When the witch came back to visit her again, she called "Repunzel! Repunzel! Let down your... HEY! Stop singing and listen! I said 'Let down your hair'!" So she let down the rope that looked like her hair, and the witch began to climb. When she was about halfway up the rope, Repunzel let go and the witch fell to her death.

After the witch was dead, Repunzel cut her strands of hair off with her secret scissors and took her dress off so she was just in her underskirt. She tied the hair onto the dress into the formation of a parachute and jumped out the window. The parachute, unfortunately, didn't work so well, so instead of gliding gently down, she sort of, well, just fell hard into a green shrub.

After she regained consciousness, Repunzel stood up and put her messy, crumpled, muddy dress back on and started limping towards the witch's house. Right next to it, though, was her old house that she didn't remember at all, but she went in anyway.

The house was now covered in moss, lichen, and ivy and looked more like a jungle than a house. She found two petrified toadstools in the throne room. They both had tiny crowns on their caps, which were also covered with ivy. "Mom?" Repunzel whispered. "Dad?" she started sobbing. "Mom, please wake up," she pleaded. "Daddy, please!" She started crying, then screaming. A rain of tears streamed onto the petrified toadstools, turning them a different color with each tear.

After about a half hour of sobbing, crying, and screaming, and after the toadstools had turned a pale shade of aquamarine, Repunzel remembered about the plant repunzel. She ran out back and took a leaf of Repunzel from the green plant in the garden and, for some reason, dropped it right in front of their cow. The cow ate it and Repunzel started to milk it. The milk filled only a tablespoon's worth of milk in a tiny bottle. As Repunzel sniffed the milk, one last tear landed in it. The milk smelled a smidgen like Caesar salad and a hint like cabbage.

Repunzel ran back inside her jungle, I mean house, and poured the "repunzel milk" all over the toadstools' roots. The toadstools' caps grew into human heads and their mycelial threads into arms, until they were queen and king again.

After a lot of thankful hugs and kisses, they heard their door-bell and Repunzel answered it. There stood a handsome prince that Repunzel immediately fell in love with, who said "Is this the house of Togelilly?"

The princess was about to lie and say "Yes!" but for some reason, her tongue refused to lie. "NO!" said Repunzel. "I mean, no, sir."

"Oh, sorry," said the prince. And he left.

And everybody except Repunzel lived happily ever after. Until a black-cloaked woman moved in next door...

The End