you're not a hero

The busy A&E department at Cardiff Hospital had more urgent patients than Jerome, after they did a brief examination of him to determine he wasn't concussed. Now sat in the waiting room on a sultry evening, he looked at the muggles sharing it: most of them were buried into their phones or flicking through magazines, but Jerome was quite bored without his. His Dad, who had forced him to go after seeing the state he was in, was wandering around the shops.

He looked around for reading material available.

As he was sat near the children's corner, all he could manage was a selection of preschool books. The only one that stood out was a battered old book of fairy tales that looked as if it hadn't moved from the waiting room since the 1950s. At least the blood had stopped pouring from his nose so it wouldn't drip all over it.

He opened the book at a random page.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair...

The waiting room was a heat trap. Although an air conditioning unit was rattling away by the window, it hadn't been turned up nearly enough. The atmosphere was soggy, horrendously warm, and making him feel sleepy. As his eyes moved back and forth over the words, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier.


"Amara, Amara, let down your hair."

From the crooked tower above, a tumble of soft curls descended and tickled at his fingers. Jerome reached to it, gripping its rope-like strength, and hoisted himself until his feet were balancing on the tower's outer walls. He climbed higher and higher, until he passed through a tuft of wispy clouds and was vaulting onto the stone of a paneless windowsill at the top.

Princess Amara sat on her chair comprised of empty cigarette packets. Her dress was ripped, stained and frayed, but looked as though it was once long and flowing in rose gold. Numerous empty glass bottles were littered at her feet as she guzzled back the contents of one.

Jerome cleared his throat. "I am here to rescue you from your tower, Princess."

Amara scoffed. "I don't need rescuing. I don't need a bloody Prince. I have everything I need right here, so go away."

An ugly, fanged little creature snickered in the corner as it delivered more bottles to her feet. "Thank you, Ashton," said she, "Keep them coming." The horrid thing cackled and scurried away obediently.

"Well..." said Jerome, rather annoyed, "If you don't need rescuing, why did you let down your hair?"

"I thought it was my Tesco order!" she barked, "I'm completely drunk, remember?!"

Jerome was taken aback by the answer. Did Tesco really deliver to cloud-covered towers as well? Shouldn't any delivery be tied in a gingham cloth and flown in by beautiful swans or something? Amara was all kinds of wrong. She was the oddest Princess he'd ever met!

"But what about your Happily Ever After?" he pressed, aghast, "What about having your Prince?"

"This is my Happily Ever After, you dunderhead! You're just some puffed-up, arrogant twat who thinks he can save a Princess. There's no such thing as Princes, anyway. Now get out of my tower."

"B-But..."

"Ashton!" she cried. Where that stumped creature once was, Ashton Harrington now stood, towering over him. Grinning, he grabbed Jerome by the collar and flung him right out of the paneless window from where he came.

Crying in anguish as the two of them laughed, Jerome plummeted from the Princess's tower, down and down and down...


Jerome bolted awake. His Dad was looking down at him, holding a cup of coffee from one of the machines. He said it was his turn to go in, so Jerome picked himself up groggily and followed him.

Princess Amara, indeed. What a stupid dream!

But as he was patched up by the doctor and informed his nose wasn't broken, he kept thinking back to everything that happened as well as that peculiar dream. It was troubling him. It troubled him in the car ride home, and it troubled him the next day when he woke up. What was it all about, really?