Rapunzel

RAPUNZEL by Zosia Feher
A smartly dressed man walks down a street lined with tall blocks of buildings. A poster is blown near his feet by the wind, he stops to look around and picks up the poster, it shows an image of Princess Rapunzel with long blonde flowing hair wearing an impractical frilly dress. The words above the image explain that there is a reward for anyone who rescues the princess and that no one has managed it before. In his imagination he pictures the scenario of a vulnerable princess brushing out her long hair and the riches that await him, appealing to his greed and sense of self importance.
The man stuffs the poster inside his jacket pocket and looks visibly smug and continues walking down the street at a quickened pace.
He reaches a tall tower, it looms above him giving a very imposing presence despite its crumbling state, he begins to look around for a way into the tower and doesn’t find one. When he gazes up again he notices a window near the top, he shouts up to the window and long hair is lowered out of the window towards him. Slightly confused he grabs the hair and starts to climb up the tower. When he reaches the top he climbs through the open window and looks around. The room in the tower is mostly in darkness, the only light is the shaft of sunlight from the window. Rapunzel creeps out of the shadows behind him, she approaches swiftly and silently and loops her long hair around his neck and be- gins to efficiently strangle him with a strong hold before he becomes aware of her. He panics and tries to claw his neck free but Rapunzel continues to tighten her hair and with the panic on his face and bulging eyeballs he becomes lifeless.
Rapunzel drags the dead body away by the ankles in a practiced manoeuvre. She walks over to a tidy desk which sits underneath a large board. The board has many maps and lists pinned to it. Sitting at her desk she pulls a file out of a drawer. The file has a photo of the man she has just killed on the cover. She flicks through the file containing police re- ports, photos of bruising and injuries on a dead woman, crime scene reports and news- paper cuttings reporting about the man being declared not guilty of killing his wife. She closes the file and crosses out his photo with a red pen before adding it to a large pile of other files. Closing her eyes, she sits back in her chair for a second before getting back to work. Reaching forwards she opens another drawer and gets a new file out of a new tar- get and another poster.