Trapped

Good morning! It is Monday and I am still recovering from my weekend (kind of). I didn’t do much but I was recovering from a 10 day work week. So I spent a lot of time relaxing. But we are back with a new Grammy’s Grid post. This weeks prompt goes as follows:

As she looked out the window, she wondered if…

Before we get too far into this story, I do want to say that this is my dark retelling of an already known story. I wanted to try my hand at something new, so this is my dark version. You will probably be able to figure of what story I’m referencing pretty early on, though I did change the name for my version. This story is classified as Dark, so please, enjoy!

Trapped

As she looked out the window, she wondered if she would ever leave the room. Rosie was stuck there in a tower, never having been outside of the small space. But the world outside the tower was scary and there were reasons she didn’t leave the space that she knew so well.
Rosie looked out the window at the darkness that surrounded the tower. The dark black sky loomed ominously overhead, making the world seem darker than it actually was. The strange swamp land surrounding the tower seemed to bubble up and down in random places, almost as if the land was breathing underneath the swampland. There were very few plants besides the reeds that were scattered around, but most of the land was bare. The tower stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of this land.
She sat in a chair in the middle of the room and stared at the window. Maybe there was a way to get out of this tower without her mother knowing. Her mother always made it seem like the world was scary, and honestly it kind of was. She had no way to protect herself and no way to survive more than a couple hours. Plus she had to find to get past her mother.
Rosie shook her head and came back to reality. Her eyes scanned the room to see if there was anything that might aid her in trying to escape. As she slowly spun around the room, her eyes landed on a sword. “Has that always been there? Have I just never noticed that there is a literal sword on my wall?”
As she reached for the sword, she wasn’t sure if she was doing the right thing or not. But at this point, it didn’t matter. She needed to find a way out. Her fingers gripped the handle of the sword and she pulled it down off the wall. It was a lot heavier than she had expected it to be. She held it in her hand for a moment trying to decide what she wanted to do next. And then it hit her. She had to cut her hair.
Her long black hair was trailing behind her everywhere she went. It dragged on the floor and was probably long enough touch the swamp if she let it out of her tower window. But if Rosie tried to leave the tower with all of her hair following her, that was a sure way to die. Rosie took the sword and held it under her hair and cut outwards to the rest of the room. There was suddenly a huge relief from all of the weight of her hair falling from her head. She rolled her neck and felt it crack. It felt good. She felt like she was starting to find her way out.
Rosie’s fingers slowly gripped the doorknob and turned the knob as quietly as possible. She pulled the door towards her body, praying that it didn’t make a noise. There was a slight creak that came from the hinges but it wasn’t enough noise for anyone to notice. Rosie slipped through the door, sword in hand, and made her way down the stairs toward where her mother stayed.
She tiptoed down the steps as she tried to listen to where her mother was. There was the faint sound to singing coming from the bottom of the tower, somewhere she had never explored before. Her mother had placed so much fear into Rosie about what was below her room in the tower that she never tried to explore it. Her footsteps softened as she approached the bottom floor, hoping to not make her mother hear her coming.
With one final step, Rosie’s foot touched the bottom of the tower. She slowed down and cautiously tiptoed to the door that she assumed her mother was sitting behind. There was a small gap in the door that she peered through, spying her mother sitting in a chair. Her mother seemed to be reading a book and not paying that much attention to what was around her. Rosie slowly pushed the door open and looked into the living room.
“What are you doing down here?” Rosie froze, she didn’t know her mother had heard her coming down the stairs. Should she answer? “I thought I told you that you had to stay in your tower.”
“I…” A whisper barely passed by Rosie’s lips. “I’m still in the tower. I haven’t left.”
Her mother shifted in her chair but still didn’t look at Rosie. “You aren’t in your tower. You are at the bottom of the tower. They are two different things.”
“But..I’m still in the tower. I haven’t left.” She inched closer, the sword held behind her back. “I know you aren’t happy with me, but I still haven’t left the tower.”
“You have disobeyed!” Her mother turned around in her chair to look at Rosie, and her eyes widened. “What…what happened to your hair? Where did it go?”
Rosie blushed. “I…uh…I cut it. Do you like it?” Her hands started to get a little sweaty as she tried to keep her cool.
“No I don’t like it.” Her mother let out a huff and turned back around in her chair to not face Rosie. “I can’t believe you would cut your hair like that. Without my permission at that.”
Rosie took another couple steps forward and moved the sword to her side. This was her moment to do something. “But I really like it. It’s much easier to manage and take care of. And it’s not weighing me down anymore.” She slowly raised the sword to her side and quickly sliced across the back of the chair.
Her mother’s head went flying across the floor.
Rosie looked at her mother’s head on the floor and walked past it. Her fingers grabbed the doorknob and turned it, opening it up to the dark swamplands around the tower. Rosie wasn’t sure what she was going to find out there. But all she knew was that she was now able to go wherever she pleased.
Her foot landed on the squishy swampland that was outside. She took a deep breath and continued to walk with the sword dragging behind her. Rosie never wanted to see her tower again and that was what she had wanted all along.