Part One Rose Red

Once upon a time, fairytales started with ‘’once upon a time’’. Once upon a time, the world was called Lovelyville. Every citizen of lovelyville was as lovely as could be, and sunshine, roses and butterflies spewed across the landscape. Once upon a time, unrequited love was unknown, death was a scary story made up to frighten naughty Lovelies, and everything was beautiful forever. Of course, as with all fairytales, there was a ruling power to this frilly, impossible simplicity. King Stephen, the ruler of Lovelyville, was fair and kindly, his wife Eileen famously lovely, and his rosy-cheeked, innocent Rose Red, the loveliest of all the lands.

Now I want you to imagine the lowliest scum you possibly can. Its no time to be proper now, I want you to imagine dinghy, filthy dungeons, horrible toenail stew and rotting, putrid teeth. I want you to imagine warts, bunions, smelly socks, a thousand of them if you please. Try dumping all these stinking ingredients into a festering cauldron. Reading the directions, stir with disgust. Add a pinch of denial, a dash of lost hopes, and a vat of horrible. Crank the heat up now, don’t breathe it in, and drink it up. Thats right, alllll up, until you can feel the putrid concoction seeping into your very being, until you turn into the nastiest, cruelest creature ever. Now, dear reader, you have experienced just a moment of Horebelle’s existence, her futile, meaningless life.

Now, Horebelle stood for everything that was wrong in this world. King Stephen, who had made a pact with the almight God himself, had pleaded for this lovely perfection, for a kingdom that had never a day rained, to purge forth rainbows, dewdrops and vibrance. Of course, God had not relented, instead giving the foolish king an ultimatum. ‘’There will always ALWAYS be evil in your kingdom, young Stephen. It is an violent, but necessary evil. But just for your sake, I will give you two options. If you do not want a world of good and evil people balanced, then I can grant your perfect vision, but only with one difference. In this land of lovely people, there must be one crueler than the rest. She will embody the burden that you wish to evade, that you seek so desperately to crush. But she will be evil, Stephen, evil beyond human recognition. If fact, she will be totally inhuman, and as her life slips past her, she can choose any person, ANY person in Lovelyville to infect with this sick, terminal disease. But you will have your beauty, Stephen. The reest of them will be untarnished, beautiful, except for the blackest of souls, the victim you have chosen.

And so Horebelle, the least perfect of all the world during the king’s scrutiny, was unloadeed with the burden of King Stephen’s world-altering decision, and all the ugly, sick people of the world became beautiful. And lovely, of course. And so the kingdom was named Lovelyville, and the sky spewed forth rainbows, heart-shaped marshmellow clouds, and an untiring future of hope.