Chatterbox: Inkwell

Short Story that I wrote for Humanities today and thought turned out decent so I'm posting it now for more critiques mwah ha ha ha.

Partly inspired by listening to Into the Woods a little too often. The princes' backstories especially are almost directly ripped from the ItW princes. And the ELE was stolen shamelessly from Dr. Horrible. And the stupid broom was modelled on Granny's from the Discworld series.

*

At the end of a long, busy day, the witch liked nothing better than to curl up in her armchair in front of a crackling fire. And today had been busy, excessively so. It wasn't over yet, either; there was still the Tower Project to be seeing to. The withc had come home to find the file on her desk, weighted down by a jar of frog eggs.

She hated that file. For fourteen long years the Tower Project had made her life a complete misery. By the end of it she had developed a pathological hatred of both towers and woods and had sworn off them completely. She'd dumped the project on a less experienced member of the Evil League of Evil and moved her focus to the murder investigation in Oz. Sad, yes, but less of a headache: manslaughter, perpatrator known as "Dorothy"; cause of death, falling house. Simple and straightforward.

The witch sighed and opened the file. Now this... this was anything but straightforward. The ELE had hired a private investigator who returned with about sixty photographs and twenty-three pages of exhaustively researched, cross-referenced infortmation about a certain Prince Charming.

He was a handsome prince, tall and broad-shouldered with curly blond hair. In every picture he wore the same perfect smile. The witch knew him well; before Project Tower she'd run into him several times; the Poison Apple case, right after he'd saved the princess from apparent death, and before that he'd spent a brief spell as a frog because she'd caught him in her garden, rooting through the beans. Recently he'd been seen with a Princess Belle, who the witch was not familiar with. She knew his brother Charmont, too, an even more easily distracted ladies' man than Charming. He'd married Cinderella, and then had a brief affair with some peasant. Cinderella, bless her, had handled the situation with relative grace and sent him on his way. Scarcely a week later he'd shown up arm-in-arm with the princess (whose name the witch could not recall) from Project Spinning Wheel. Ridiculous.

The witch scanned the investigator's report and closed the file, frowning. It held nothing she didn't already know, except that he had been last seen halfway up the tower, dangling by lovely hair the colour of corn. Apparently Charming had lost interest in his latest acquisition already.

Shooting a longing glance at her armchair, the witch pulled on the heavy black travelling cloak expected of one on these occassions and stepped out into the cool September evening. She snatched the broom from its place by the door and gave it a shake; it trembled in her hand and then died.

Swearing under her breath, the witch looked around to make sure no one was watching and then sprinted away from the house with the broom clutched in both hands. Helped by the momentum, the broom's magic spluttered to life and she swung on as it rocketed into the sky.

She touched down about an hour later on the roof of the hated tower and scrambled down through the wide window and into the room below.

Rapunzel looked up guiltly as the witch dropped onto the stone floor. A ladder of blonde hair, half-finished, was piled in her lap. The witch glared at her, and wondered what it was about princesses that made them such easy prey for the Princes Charming and Charmont.

"Remember me?" the witch grabbed Rapunzel's wrist and hauled her upright. "Running away? With Charming? Breach of contract, first offense, my dear, which merits an eighteen month period of isolation with no chance of appeal."

"That seems very harsh," Rapunzel said, indignant. The witch shrugged.

"That's the ELE for you." She snapped her fingers and the princess disappeared. The hair settled lightly onto the floor.

The witch sighed.

"Rapunzel! Rapunzel!"

She jumped.

"Let down your hair to me!"

The witch grimaced. Charming. She picked up the unfinished hair ladder and swung tied one end to the iron hook on the wall, then swung the rest of it out the window. The prince climbed quickly, reaching the top in under thirty seconds. Shock crossed his handsome face when he saw the witch.

"Look, clear off, alright?" the witch said. "You're not welcome here." She pushed him, hard.

It wasn't a long drop, no more than fifteen feet at best, and the thorny briar he landed in cushioned his fall somewhat. It was just unfortunate for him that he landed on his face. The witch peered out of the window to see him stagger to his feet and away from the tower, moaning, with his hands over his eyes. The witch nodded to herself and started her broom again. She flew away, looking forward to the fire and armchair at home.

*

Comments? Critique? I do so love critique.