Author: Erin Green
The legend starts with a “Once Upon A Time” story of a clichéd damsel-in-distress, locked away in a tower forever, only to be rescued by a prince through the means of a kiss, but not just any kiss, true love’s kiss. What if I told you this glorified elementary version of the story never really happened? What if I told you there was no such thing as true love’s kiss that broke the curse, set the princess free, and let the couple live happily ever after? What if I told you there was no such thing as a happily ever after? Would you believe me? In a way, you’d have to…I’m the storyteller, dictator of what falls on this page, dictator of what you will see written here in front of you, for you are the reader, and know nothing more than what I tell you…therefore you don’t have a choice.
I’ll be honest with you upfront, there is no such thing as true love’s kiss, and I’ll tell you why. You were given the sugar-coated version of what truly happened in that story. Let me take you back to the year 1346…if you know your history, you’ll know what was going on at that time in Europe. Our fairytale stories always take place in Europe. Imagine Europe 1346, a kingdom of sorts, ruled by a king and queen, happily wedded, and respected by their constituency. Around the year 1333, the king and queen conceived a young daughter, who we’ll address in this story as the princess. Because they all end up dying in the end of the story, there’s no need for actual names: it’s irrelevant.
See, what history books got wrong about the Black Death that was eradicating European society was second strain of the infection that reach this kingdom. For obvious reasons, we’ll call this Type 2 Black Plague. Type 2 managed to infiltrate the kingdom, which had a rough population of about 72,000, killing off 45,000 within months. The people of the kingdom, knights, serfs, and priests all alike, came to the king, pleading for him to find a way to stop the Black Death, which was waving its cross bone magic across the innocent lives of the kingdom. The king, being a sympathetic man, was moved, searching for ways to save his land. More obviously, how can one be a king without people to rule?
A little more information about Type 2 Black Plague…this infection was so radically horrific, that it did not have the same effects of Type 1. People’s skins began to decay, mold, grow yellow and fall. Their movements slowed. Their speech pattern disintegrated. Their life force itself, drained of every drop of hope and energy. More importantly, the taste and hunger for human flesh was obsessively addictive. Only roughly 27,000 kingdom inhabitants were not infected with Type 2. Residents were feasting on their neighbors, friends, and families. The kingdom was falling apart like a house of cards blown over by the cool autumn breeze. These infected creatures, bit into the skin of other kingdom goers, devouring their flesh, and also infecting them with Type 2.
There was but only one solution, according to a witch…
See this is where history books got it wrong again. Besides the simple fact that they swept Type 2 Black Plague under the rug like a forgotten child, they completely omitted the unforgivable prophecy that was placed upon the king and his daughter, the princess. “You must sacrifice your daughter to the undead,” was what the witch told the king. “I will put a spell on her, make her sleep eternally for seven years. She will only be awaken by true love’s—not kiss—bite.” The father was skeptical of this witch’s prophecy, but skeptical about the fact of putting his daughter under a sleeping curse and sending her off to some forgotten tower to have her sleep for seven years only to be bitten by an infected monster that would save the kingdom. Ultimately…he was setting up his daughter, the princess, like a pig to be slaughtered for succulent sausages.
Are you still with me? Stay with me, okay? I know you think you know the story about the princess being locked in the tower, guarded by the dragon, and true love’s kiss break the spell, but you in fact don’t know the story. That’s why I’m telling you the story. See, historians obliterated this story for a reason and substituted it with this “kid friendly” version for a reason. This horrific tale of a father, letting his daughter be objectified is too horrendous and appalling for modern day society. But I’m your storyteller. I’m here to break the walls down.
So what do you think happened next? Did the father choose his kingdom or his daughter? In order for one to stay, the other had to go. Of course like any other ruling king would, he chose his kingdom. The witch put a spell on the princess and the king ordered one of his remaining knights to transport her to the farthest castle tower where she was to sleep for seven years straight. The witch promised that if she slept, uninterrupted, for seven years and was bitten, the curse would be lifted, and the plague would cease to exist anymore.
So, I’ll spare you the grotesqueness of the next seven years of body parts falling off their bodies, blood being vomited on the floors of the kingdom, and people lying on their death beds and rotting away. I won’t tell you how the kingdom was full of white slimy maggots, dancing in the rotting corpses in the kingdom. I won’t tell you how the undead continued to walk the kingdom, feasting on the dead, ripping its flesh apart with its teeth, violently ingesting intestinal tracks of God knows what. I’ll skip over the piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles of dead bodies that stank from the stench of deterioration. I’ll skip over how the queen of the kingdom suffered from the infection, and died in her bath tub, and how her husband found her body, swollen with water, and how within moments her body exploded with decaying flesh. I’ll skip over brown water that residents drowned themselves in to escape the decaying world. I’ll skip over all of that because I know you don’t want to hear it. It’ll make you sick to your stomach, sick like the entire kingdom.
By year seven, the princess had rotted into nothing but a decaying lifeless twig. Her skin was yellowish brown, swollen with death. Her eyes were a deep yellow, thirsty for blood. Her hair, once full of volume, and a bright beautiful blonde, now dark thin strands of cob webs. Her lips were cracked porcelain worms glued to her face. The bones in her body, more brittle than winter tree branches.
The princess was awakened from her seven years’ sleep and now she hungered for flesh. The princess walked all the way from the forgotten castle tower to the dying kingdom her father was ruling. Upon seeing her, he was shocked, nearly dying from traumatization. He had not expected to see his daughter in such a condition. The witch, watching the scene said, “In order for the kingdom to be saved…there must be true love’s bite.” See, there’s the catch. The king had been fooled. He assumed all he had to do was let his daughter be bitten to get rid of the plague, but in fact, it was he who was supposed to be bitten by his daughter, who loved him very so, and the plague would be no more. “From this plague your kingdom shall survive. When true love's bite, the plague shall cease,” said the witch, “For true love conquers all.”
So the princess bit him.
Her long thin arms embraced her father and she bit into his neck, causing blood to splatter, ripping the flesh away from him, gnawing into him aggressively, but with love. The king hollered, begged for mercy, shouted from the agony, the physical pain, but the emotional horror that came along with it. His vocal cords were silent as she, his daughter, the princess, had eaten his neck from the front to the back. The king was dead, and suddenly, her body began to convulse. Falling to her knees, she began bleeding from several orifices, foaming at the mouth, until she was also dead, on the floor, beside her father.
Your textbooks say the plague ended roughly in 1353, and I’m here to tell you that’s about the only thing they got correct. They didn’t tell the story of the king who sacrificed his daughter to selfishly save his kingdom, but found out in the end that he was the one to truly be sacrificed. The textbooks didn’t tell the story of “Beauty and the Plague” in which a princess fell in love with the plagued creatures. Your textbooks didn’t tell the story of “The Rotting Mermaid” in which a princess from the sea started the infection on land. Your textbook didn’t tell the story of “Snow White and the Seven Sins” in which a princess was thought to be a witch, and the cause of the plague and horribly executed. And your textbook didn’t tell you the story of “Rotting Beauty.”
Just be warned of these fairytale textbooks rewriting stories and sugar-coating them to spare you the terrible details because not every fairytale ends happily ever after…the true stories end horribly ever after…