Tuesday Writing Essential: I Cursed Sleeping Beauty... And She Deserved It.

I Cursed Sleeping Beauty... And She Deserved It.

So you want to hear my side of the story? 

All the dirt behind the scoundrel of the Sleeping Beauty Tale?

Well here’s the scoop...

The fact is I’ve gotten a bad rap.  I’ve been branded the bad guy because I put some prissy, pink-cheeked spoiled princess under a curse and she fell asleep for a century.  Big deal, so she took a nap.  She woke up eventually and now she’s got her happily-ever-after and a dreamy prince.  Plus, she’s over a hundred and she still looks like a teenager.  I bet she’ll be wishing she was still snoozing when things start to sag.

Yes, dear little Sleeping Beauty’s got it good and what did I get?  Bad PR, that’s what.  Of course nobody ever looks at it from my side.  It’s all well, “she’s the bad fairy”.  Was it my fault that fate chose me to be the keeper of the darker things in life?  No it wasn’t, I was born into it; I’ve been up against it since I came into this world.

A numbers game, that’s what my life started as, a freaking unlucky chance of being born the thirteenth heir of the ruling fairy families.  All my life I knew my destiny would be to follow the path of Dark Magic. 

As a child, I was sent to magic school with my cousins.  I learned curses and poisons while the rest my family made love potions and fancy fairy dust.  On the playground they shunned me, taunted and teased me.  I toughened up quickly in that school.

I spent my teen years crawling around swamps for toads and lizards while the other girls dreamed about boys and lacy dresses.  But, no one teased me anymore; you turn one girl blue for a week and that sort of thing stops cold.

After graduation (head of my class, but I never get credit for that) I found myself at loose ends and an outcast in my own family. I went to live on my own, shut myself away in a lonely tower, while my twelve cousins went on to fame and fortune.  They flitted about bestowing beauty, happiness and charm on the world; I dished out warts and bad luck spells. Is it any wonder I’m a little bitter?

It’s not like I looked for any trouble, I just did my job.  I went out of my way to temper all that evil I was in charge of and make the best of it. All I asked for was some respect.  Not too much to request, but still I got shafted.

You see, there’s a part of my story that tends to get glossed over, you know the part about me being snubbed, publicly.  They knew the tradition, that a royal child is christened in attendance of all the fairy houses, even the Dark Fae.  I wanted to go, to have a new elegant dress, and maybe dance a waltz at the after party.  I picked out the right gift -nothing to ostentatious, just a touch of temper- a flaw to give her a rounded personality.  I figured with all those other gifts like wit, charm and beauty she needed a little something to make her more human.

But the King and Queen couldn’t bear to have their precious daughter marred (their word not mine) so they made the wrong decision to change the centuries old custom.  Did those royals ever consider my feelings?  No, they went and left me out of the christening party.  An oversight they said later, they simply forgot to dispatch my invite.  Yeah, right.  And I was supposed to stand back and suffer that slight, take the insult?  Well, not this gal, I can tell you.  I had a reputation to maintain.

So I crashed their soiree and cursed the little princess.  Sure, I went a little aboard with my original, “prick her finger and die”, proclamation, but I’ve always had a tendency to overdo when I’m mad.    It’s not like she died or anything.  And maybe I did cheat a little on her sixteenth birthday to ensure my curse, but hey, a bit of chicanery is my trademark.  I needed some insurance, to show those royals that I was still in control. 

I stand by my actions.  I was justified and they all had it coming.  What did they expect for offending the Queen of the Dark Fairies?  It’s the spin that bugs me, this whole “wicked fairy godmother” crap.  Where do they get off judging me?  A bunch of snooty royals screw up and for that I get labelled a villain! 

Life just isn’t fair.

I did a bit of recycling for this challenge as this story was originally written for a group on Goodreads, but it seemed to fit well, so I decided to post it: 

The Challenge: This piece needs to be fictional; needs to feature a 'true' villain; needs to enlist the reader into that other 'unlikely' point of view.