Once upon a time, there was a princess named Mary. Mary was a classic princess: she had always dreamed of being kidnapped by a dragon or an evil knight and then thrown into a great stone tower where a good, upright prince would come and rescue her.
These wishes, these things that she so fervently wished for, eventually turned into obsessions. She would sit in class, listening to the professor drone on and on about math and different kinds of princess hats and why one should never drink coffee, thinking about a beautiful blond prince who would come and make sweet love to her while showering her with countless gifts of jewelry and clothes.
Preferably simultaneously.
This obsession eventually became so strong that she actually went out and looked for a dragon's lair, where she planned on enticing the dragon into kidnapping her. She stole some of the finest meats from the kitchen and set off for a cave that was moderately close by, excited and a little apprehensive. She was about to be kidnapped, after all.
Unfortunately, it turned out that that particular dragon was her father's most trusted advisor, whom she had not had the pleasure to meet before that awkward moment because she had spent all of her time daydreaming about handsome, sexy princes.
Who were also very rich. That is a very important detail.
Needless to say, the King's Advisor carried her back to her father's court, who then had her locked up in the highest and most rural tower in the land because dagnabit he couldn't just have the ugliest princess in the entire land go frolicking about in the countryside at a whim! That was completely unacceptable, and he told her as much. Well, his royal messenger did, but that was basically the same thing.
At first, Mary was quite upset that her father had dashed her hopes of ever being rescued. She kicked and screamed and hollered and generally raised hell for the poor guards, who were ordered to lock her up in the tower. After three days of screaming and fighting, she realized that her father had done the equivalent of kidnapping her, although it had been quite benign.
She immediately stopped having fit and began to make a plan. She had paper, and ink...
She sat down and thought about it a little more. If she could only get the attention of at least twenty handsome princes, she had a very good chance of being rescued by at least one.
She sat down at the desk, and, with the paper that was provided, sent letters to every kingdom under the sun. After her last messenger pigeon left on its super important mission, she sat back on her bed and smirked. She was too smart for her father. Much too smart.
She then took out her knitting needles and began to wait for a prince to rescue her from her evil father.
It was a beautiful sunny day when Mary saw a man riding up to the tower on a big, beautiful stallion. He must be very rich, she thought as she rushed to the window. She then rushed back to her bed because she realized that she had forgotten her handkerchief. Handkerchiefs, as you may or may not know, are quite important for getting the attention of princes.
They seem to be oblivious to women without them.
The knight rode up to the base of the tower and peered up at the window. She waved her handkerchief and called out to him, begging him to rescue her from her terrible plight.
He contemplated riding away, but then he saw the handkerchief and immediately began climbing up the side. It took him quite a while.
When he finally reached the top the princess could barely contain herself. She was already lying in bed, naked, the handkerchief draped over a chair and forgotten.
The unfortunate prince climbed through the window and struck a manly pose. After he finished flexing his muscles he looked down at the bed and then fell backward out of the window.
There was then a sickening crunch as his beautiful face and muscles and bones connected with the ground, and then a slightly awkward silence as he slowly, painfully died. 945Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDupfJ0Yz6g
Silence reigned over the clearing where the tower stood. 945Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMkOxjPndN
She poked her head out of the window and waved her handkerchief, but to no avail. His broken form could not be aroused. She pulled her head back in and poured herself a glass of wine. She took a deep draft, still naked, and thought about the unfortunate premise of the poor knights demise. Mary had no idea why or how this had happened and was therefore at a loss. She took another sip of wine and frowned.
She was the most beautiful princess in the land. Her mother said so.
She poured her wine out of the window and went to sleep. She would wait for the next prince to save her. Surely he would love her?
The same thing happened to the other forty princes who came across her tower. And the next eighty. And the next hundred, until there was a veritable ramp of dead princes leading up to her window. There were so many that the Royal Quest Advisor posted a sign warning all princes to turn back because it was nigh on suicide. The smell of rotting nobleman was also so bad that it drew dragons near and far, and nearby towns had to literally pack up and leave.
Through all this, the princess waited. Surely a prince would come and rescue her? Surely a prince would love her and shower her with gold? But, alas. No prince came.
The problem became so bad that the king had to send highly trained garbage men to clean up the bodies, and, after that was done, workers to bar off the clearing from the outside world with a giant iron wall.
The princess watched all of the work with sadness. Surely a prince would come? Surely a prince would come and love her?
But, alas. No prince came. The world went back to normal, a new generation of princes was conceived, and Princess Mary the Ugly was all but forgotten.
Twenty years passed.
Mary had long given up on a prince. She had long given up on her cooking (which was terrible), and she was close to giving up on life in general. She poured herself a glass of wine. Might as well die drunk.
She drank the entire pitcher of red wine, and, as she was about to stab herself to death with a comb that she had sharpened, she heard something land on the roof. She paused.
What the hell?
She heard it walking around, stomping here, tapping there, and generally making much too much noise. She was about to poke her head out of the window and yell some profanities at the perpetrator when the roof was torn off and thrown away.
She looked up and saw that a great golden dragon had committed the heinous crime, the crime that should have been punishable by death. She began to berate the dragon, punish it for being such a massive turd. She was in mid- swear when she suddenly realized that a middle-aged man sat on the dragon, his golden crown shining in the sun and his purple cloak flapping in the wind and his beautiful face outlined perfectly against the blue of the cloudless sky.
She gasped. The king (for what else could he have been) smiled and motioned for her to get on. She gasped again. He couldn't be real. She stepped forward, desiring to get on the dragon, to be swept away in the arms of a king, when she remembered that she was ugly and so, therefore, would not be wanted by a king, of all people. She shuffled over to her bed and sat down on it, suddenly quite sad. Maybe he could fix the roof before he left.
But the king, much to her surprise, jumped off of the dragon and begged her to go with him. "Please, princess! Come with me to my castle! I love you, and I will treat you only with respect. Please," he said, getting on one knee.
She looked at him sadly.
"Why? I am an ugly beast of a woman. My face has killed one hundred good, handsome princes alone, and my cooking does not do me any favors either. So tell me, O king: why do you love me?" she asked, beginning to cry.
"Because..." he began. He opened his mouth and then shut it, as if he knew what he was going to say but thought better of it.
"Because what?" she asked, sobbing.
"Because... because I have a fetish for ugly people," he blurted out, his face reddening with embarrassment.
There was a moment of very awkward silence.
Mary dried her tears and stood up, exposing the king to the full fury of her ugliness. "Is that what I am to you, king? Is that what you think of me? As an object?!" she shrieked, spittle flying from her mouth. The king shrank back, surprised by her sudden outburst. He tried to tell her that it was and accident, that he hadn't meant to offend her, but to no avail. Twenty years of rage, twenty years of sadness and pain and hurt all bubbled up in a tidal wave of pure fury. She locked the shutters, just so that he couldn't escape. She picked up the sharpened comb and stabbed the king once, twice, thrice. She roared and got on the dragon, leaving the king to die in that cursed tower.
She woke up in a padded room. Blood was smeared upon the walls, and a nurse lay on the floor, eyes wide open in terror as blood poured from a gaping hole in her chest. A sharpened comb lay nearby.
Mary screamed. She looked through the window of her padded door and saw doctors and nurses and security guards rushing about in the hallway, some screaming and some talking into their radios and some just standing there in shock.
She looked down at the nurse again and screamed for the second time. The nurse had propped herself against a wall and put her hands on the wound, trying to keep the blood from flowing out of her body and onto the floor, but to no avail. Her blood spurted out from between her hands with every heartbeat.
EMT's and armed guards showed up at the door. They tried to open it, but there was a chair propped under the doorknob.
Mary ignored them. She fell on her knees and began sobbing, looking at the woman who was dying in front of her. Who am I? she thought, staring at the blood that was pooling on the floor. The guards began forcing the door. She continued to ignore them. The nurse looked at her, fear and pain and sadness in her eyes, and then she slumped over, dead. The guards burst in seconds later, yelling and screaming and making so much noise that Mary put her hands on her ears and doubled over, silently sobbing.
A doctor peered into Patient 1009's room.
There was no blood.
There were no guards.
There was no sharpened comb, and there was certainly no dead nurse. He wrote something down on his clipboard and walked on to the next room, making sure that all of his patients were alive and well before he went home for the night. 945Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoaICKWmRjK
After finishing his rounds, he took his notes and instructions to the Head Nurse, Elizabeth. He told her that Patients 1000 and 1009 needed more than the usual attention, and that he would see her tomorrow after his shift was over.
He gave her a peck on the cheek and walked out of the hospital. He got home an hour later and fell into bed, falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Working in a schizophrenic ward is hard work, after all.
ns 18.68.41.148da2
