Scarylocks! (A Children's Story - in progress)

SCARYLOCKS! - THE SCARY PRINCESS.

In the little Kingdoms of Locksrovia, there was once a princess, who was born to a beautiful Queen and a handsome King, but who was herself…fiendishly hideously ugly!

Not just averagely ugly, not just spot-on-the-nose ugly, or mismatched ears ugly, but supernaturally, mirror-shatteringly, mask-of-evil-ly ugly. Her face was green (and not a nice apple green but a rancid, sickly, gangrenous green), and her hair was scary coiled snakes like Medusas. Her eyes which squinted were also red and glowed. Her nose was as sharp as an axe, and as runny as a rotten water-melon.

The worst of it was there wasn’t even a malicious fairy Godmother to blame. These things happen sometimes; even to good people.
They happen even to good people who happen to be royalty; although slightly less often possibly because you don’t get many truly good royals, simply because being royal means that at some point in the past your ancestors probably had a bigger battle-axe than someone else at a vital moment. As well as having a bigger battle-axe, the King’s great great great great grandfather had been half a troll, and as well as having a bigger dowery, the Queen’s great great great great grandmother had been one of Medusa’s sisters (and indeed still was, as Medusa’s sister gorgon’s were imortal. This is true ask your unatural history teacher.). The genes for hideousness, and snaky hairiness which are vitally useful and perfectly natural for trolls and gorgons had been passed down through the royal line until, bang! Well there it was.

The King (who’s name was Ferdinand the Good) and the Queen (who was called Matilda the Kind) and who genuinely were both good and kind, fretted. Being ugly and royal wasn’t so bad as being ugly and common of course, no one would be taking poor Scarylocks (the name they’d intended to give their baby was Wilhemina the Beautiful, but you can see why Scarylocks had stuck) and selling her to a travelling circus as the Snake-Headed Horror Baby, but even so it didn’t bode well for the dynasty.

‘My dear,’ the King said, ‘what are we to do?’
‘What is there to do,’ the Queen sobbed, ‘she’s hideous.’
‘I think that’s rather harsh,’ Ferdinand said, ‘really I do. Many babies aren’t as attractive as their parents think. My brother the Arch Duke of Heptovia, has a son who looks like a dissipated hippo, and he thinks he looks good on a postage stamp. Well three postage stamps.’
‘But we are her parents!’ Matilda sniffed, ‘if we don’t think she’s beautiful what will the world think.’
Ferdinand brooded, ‘well my third cousin’s recently written to me in the most glowing terms recommending the services of Custardicus
The Uncanny, as apparently he’s made such a good job of Court Magician for him, that there’s simply no need for magic there any-more. I feel we might give the chap a trial run…’

To Be Continued…