A Writer's Wonderland [PDF] - University of Portsmouth

Kirsty Franks
Second year Creative Writing and English student.
Beauty and the Leash: The Hypocrisy of
Fairytale
Beyond a sheer drop, set into a landscape soiled with soggy mud, in a dank country not too far
from you, there is a house of infinite proportions. Yet while this house brims with the
stereotypical imagery of those twisted tales your granny used to dictate to you through her
beady glasses while bits of her face sagged away, we shall not be visiting the tallest room in the
tallest tower, but rather an inconspicuous little room on an inconspicuous corridor somewhere
on the second or third floor.
This particular tale takes place on a quiet, passive day, perhaps sometime in the middle
of October, if you’re interested. Our protagonist, Beauty (I’m very sorry if I appear to be a
plagiarist of the fairytale, but that really is her name), finds in her blissful eyelids a reaction to
the light permeating through the cracks in the curtain. As she opens her eyes and flutters her
eyelashes a couple of times in that adorable Disney Princess sort of way, she feels the dust lift out
of them and settle on her cheeks like when you sprinkle icing sugar on the top of a Victoria
Sponge. By poking her dainty nose round the edge of the velvet curtain, she ascertains that it is
midday. Actually, it may be dusk; I can’t particularly remember the story anymore. I suppose if I
have to choose, it seems more haunting to set the tale at dusk, yes?
To recap, Beauty awakes in a room at dusk. I should probably also mention that she is
not clothed; perhaps whoever placed her there mistook her for an orange and peeled away the
layers of her clothing as if it were a waxy skin that needed to be removed before she could serve
her purpose, or perhaps she was just a bit of a loose cannon and removed them herself.
Our heroine lifts herself off the bed and picks herself about the room, wiping away the
concealed blood she finds on her inner thighs with the corner of the plum curtains. They’re
such a brash colour that no one will ever notice. I’ll leave out the part about the stinging
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