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Arabella

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in a country far away, there lived a beautiful princess called Arabella. She didn't know that she was a princess because she had been kidnapped at birth by a wicked witch.

Arabella was allowed out for a short time only on Monday nights, to attend a Creative Writing class. The rest of the time, she was locked in a high tower overlooking an enchanted forest and forced to write stories which the wicked witch had published under her own name. The stories all had unhappy endings because the princess was very sad and lonely.

One day a handsome prince came riding through the enchanted forest. He saw Arabella sitting at the tower window waiting for an inspiration. He was instantly smitten with her beauty and fell deeply in love with her.

He rode up to the door and knocked, but alas, the door was locked fast. The wicked witch had bolted it before going to visit her publisher.

Casting his eyes about, the prince spied a vine growing up to the tower. He grasped it in both hands and carefully climbed up, up, up to the tower window.

Arabella watched in horror. Who was this man climbing up to her window? What did he want with her? The dire endings in all her stories flashed through her mind. By the time the prince had reached the top, Arabella had locked the window and was hiding under the bed.

The prince clung gasping to the window ledge. He rapped on the windowpane and peered in with his nose flattened against the glass. Arabella crouched lower under the bed.

"Let me in." he entreated. "I saw you at the window. You are the most beautiful, exquisite, gorgeous and ravishing woman I have seen and I have fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with you."

"Go away!" shouted Arabella. "I know you are not sincere because you use too many adjectives!"

"Don't turn me away, dearest," he pleaded, his knuckles turning white on the window ledge. "The sight of your heart shaped face in the silvery moonlight has given me such pangs of love, I will leave no stone unturned until you are mine."

"Those are all cliches!" yelled Arabella. "I have been taught to avoid them like the plague."

"But I am itching to hold you, dear one. Simply itching........"

"Of course you are!" Triumphantly, Arabella crawled out from under the bed, covered in dust and fluff. "That vine is Poison Ivy!"

As the prince let go of the ledge to scratch his head, he suddenly slipped and fell all the way down to the ground where he came to a flat ending.

The next Monday night Arabella ran away with her Creative Writing teacher and they lived happily ever after.


MAMALADE

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