Luneland: Now hiring full-time and part-time cast members. Residence and accommodations onsite. Contact Grace Delacroix in the back office.
The poster depicted a beautiful crystalline tower with a dragon clinging to the side, in the center of a medieval village where families in modern clothing walking around. On the horizon were rollercoasters and flat rides – drop tower, pirate ship, star flier – but none were as high as the tower. It looked like a summer job opportunity sent from heaven, but God, I was nervous.
I kept looking at the poster in my hands as I waited in front of a door marked “Employees Only”, on the back side of one of the buildings. This poster was my way to get in. I presented it to the employee who opened the door, and he smiled. He waved me in.
In the backstage, cast members were rushing about, all dressed as knights with the same uniform. They even appeared to move the same way, orderly, stiffly, almost puppet-like. Even then, I found it strange and intimidating, though I attributed it to how much I’d stick out among them.
Just as I had thought of her, Grace opened the door to her office and greeted me with a smile. She was the current staff manager of the park, as well as the designer of its attractions. Grace was a beautiful older woman who, now that I saw her in person, looked even more like an angel from a painting. Her pale blonde hair was let down and fell to her lower back, and to look more thematically appropriate, she wore a flowing white dress.
She reached out a hand to shake mine. “How art thou, fair maiden?” She had a soft contralto voice, with a sweet murmur of some European accent that was too well-concealed to place. It was entrancing.
“Welcome,” she began once she was behind her desk. “I hope you are well?” I nodded.
“I’m happy to hear that,” she replied. “I’ve received your latest correspondence. I’m certain that there will be a place for you to call home.” I smiled.
“Now, do you have any dependents, including children? More broadly, are you living alone?”
“Yes, it’s just me in my apartment.”
“Would you have any significant reason to leave the onsite accommodations or be visited, such as for a partner or close friends?”
“I don’t have anyone visiting at the moment.”
“Or… family members?” Her tone was a little sharp.
“I’m just planning on staying here for the summer.”
“Hmm.” Grace looked into my eyes, seemingly deep in thought. “This may be an incorrect hypothesis, but you seem as if you wanted to be a princess when you were young.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Grew up with Disney.”
“Why don’t I offer you a different job opportunity that might interest you more, then? We can deal with being a few knights short for a while longer, but we are in need of a princess to appear from the window of Rapunzel Tower.”
She walked to my side of the desk, then took my face in her hand, turning me towards the light. “Yes, you’ll do. You’re the spitting image of a princess in my mind. Now, if you’ll sign here…”
The contract was comprehensive, but far too many pages to read in one sitting, so I tried to skim. No breaking immersion, no phone out on the job – it all sounded fair enough.
Eventually, I signed my name, and she shook my hand again. “You’re hired.”
“When will I start?”
“Immediately. Come, let’s get you ready to perform.”
She led me through several backrooms and into a dressing room, almost gliding, skirt flowing. Carvings of suns, each with a watchful eye, lined the top of the wall.
I eventually settled on a simple, pale blue dress. Grace nodded approvingly. I handed my old clothing and my bags to a knight, and he took it out of the room.
“Pick up the basket, then, and we’ll move it up to your room.” I didn’t question it, and took a handle in each hand.
We entered an old service elevator, with metal fencing for walls and a smell of rust and oil. She took a key out of a pocket in her dress and inserted it into a keyhole. The old elevator thundered to life, bringing us up seven floors to the very top of the tower.
The room at the top was decorated perfectly in theme, with fake stonework and a four poster bed. It felt as if no one had lived here before me. The only thing off was the strong smell of something burning coming through the window. I rushed to it to get a look.
The dragon I’d seen from the outside wasn’t just a sculpture, its head and wings were fully articulated and its maw could spit fire. I reckoned this animatronic was made to do so every so often, and the crowds would gather around the tower to watch. That would be my chance to greet them.
“I see you’ve already found Blyte,” said Grace’s voice. “Don’t fall out the window trying to look out of it, please.” She chuckled at her own warning.
The sides of the tower were completely sheer, and the dragon’s back was directly below, covered in long, sharp-looking spikes. If I somehow fell out, I could be roasted alive, if I didn’t simply impale myself. There was no safety rail.
My thoughts were interrupted when the lock on the door clicked into place.
I was trapped.
I banged on the door, only to be met with silence. I scrambled around the room, looking for any other entrance, any secret back door that’d tell me that that door was just for show. Nothing. Nothing but out the window to my doom.
At the end of the next few days, she would take me to the rides in the park, after they’d closed to guests. She said I had to experience them firsthand to better engage with the guests.
First she took me to a boat ride called the Royal Observatory, intended for children. No marvel of engineering, but she seemed to be most proud of this one, and I couldn’t find out why.
Behind a round platform on the other side of the loading room, there was a projection on the wall. It alternated between a map of the stars and a stained glass window, depicting a woman who looked like Grace, a man with a kind face, and a young girl – blonde like me – between them, flying in the night sky. They looked blissful, even angelic. Something felt intimate about it, but just as I began to wonder, it was gone.
In every room from then on, a different sun hung from the ceiling. And she would get closer, more familiar, even referring to me as “my child” once. I wanted to pull away, this didn’t feel right, but I felt unnaturally cold, as if I was too frozen to move. Her voice entranced me… As we approached the window again, she seemed distracted, but not for long.
“Ah ah, keep your hands in the boat,” she scolded gently. “I have eyes everywhere.”
And on every ride afterwards, she did the same, to the point where I became used to it. I began to anticipate what she wanted, and tolerate the experience, to avoid experiencing that helplessness again. Sometimes she surprised me by wanting more.
I remember there was a full moon the first night that Grace took complete control.
I was gazing in awe at that moon from my window when I heard a knock on my door. Grace unlocked and opened it before I could even get to the door to open it from my side.
On a lower floor, I changed into a mascot suit, preparing for tonight’s special nighttime show. I thought of the excitement that awaited. Fireworks brightly lighting the sky. Dancers on a stage with beautiful carnival masks. But most of all, there’d be guests there. And for the first time, I’d be in the crowd, not watching them from above. I could try to talk to them. I could try to get help, and get out of this place.
Then it felt like I blinked and suddenly had a screaming child in my arms.
“Welcome back,” said Grace, smiling.
I looked around in bewilderment. “Welcome back? I haven’t… How long was I out?”
“The show is over now.” I looked outside, and the crowd was almost gone. Trails of smoke from the last fireworks still hung in the sky.
“What-… what did I just do?” I asked her in bewilderment.
“You saved a child.”
“From what?”
“From its parents.”
“Look at those bruises,” she continued. “Look at that filthy hair. Parents are some of the cruelest people in this world. Countless innocent souls, suffering in silence, trapped in their own personal hells. The cruelty, the neglect, the abuse – it’s a disease that festers in the very core of humanity. So I have become their savior, their guardian angel working from the shadows. I am their light. One day, the old construct of so-called family will fall, and I know I must live to see it.”
I kept silent. Something felt tragic about all that she had just said. Something had to have made her lose hope. But we weren’t qualified for this job. We were in danger of harming this child in the process of trying to save him from harm.
She smiled, with sadness in her eyes. “I always wanted to be a mother myself, but I never got the chance to raise a child fully. Time was not on my side.”
I’ve become numb to these nocturnal kidnappings. It’s now quite crowded in the nursery… the “dungeon”. It’s yet another room that I think was originally supposed to be open to guests. The walls are painted with cartoon skeletons and simple renderings of torture devices. In between my public appearances, I’m frequently asked to check on these children, though the knights do most of the work. They call me their eldest sister. My obligation to take care of them is keeping me bound to her, and she knows it.
Most of the children seem normal, nothing like what I’d expect. They are used as our servants, answering Grace’s and my needs from morning to night, but pacified with innumerable candies and sweets administered by the knights, unbranded and possibly laced.
The first child, the one who’d been bruised, could not be pacified. He was angry, and he would scream and yell at the smallest things. We tried giving him toys from the park’s own gift shop, and he hit the other children with them, or bashed them against the wall until they broke. The final straw came when he escaped from the dungeon, trying to get to one of the employees-only areas.
So he was punished.
First she tried a bag of dry ice that was stocked for the fog machines. Four knights held him down to a table by the arms and legs, and one more used a pair of tongs to press it against his skin. He kicked and screamed through the freezing pain, but in the end it could not scare him into obedience.
We then brought the children through a maintenance passageway to a balcony on the side of the tower, a few feet underneath the dragon. Grace softly coaxed the troublesome boy into a specific spot to stand on, while the others were held back. Grace opened a control panel tucked away in an indent in the wall, flipped a switch or two, and the dragon rumbled to life.
She pulled a lever, and its neck telescoped downwards towards the boy. I could only watch as it snapped him up in its jaws and retracted back to its place. The flamethrower lit up, and to my surprise, the dragon’s steel jaw started moving.
Burning flesh, crushing bones, rending limb from limb, the dragon feasted on its prey. High-pitched wailing accompanied the whirring of the machine and the sickening sound of what it was doing to its victim. Drops of blood and giblets fell from the sky, only to hit the ground or my face.
I wanted to run at the controls, to find the off switch, anything I could do to save the boy.
But I was rooted in place, by fear and by Grace. All I could do was avert my gaze, watch the shadows dance in the firelight, shut my eyes as one final scream was heard, before all was silent except the crackle of the last flames.
“What a mess,” I heard her say. I led the children back into the tower alone, the silence punctuated by the snap of a latex glove.
We ate dinner in silence afterwards, in an empty great hall, after feeding the children in the dungeon below. It was nominally a fine dinner, with a patê, copious red wine, and a chocolate cake. She sat across from me, in a different white dress, and refilled my glass again and again.
As my mind grew hazy with drink, I finally spoke. “So what is your end goal with these children?” I asked. “At least, those who don’t misbehave?”
“They will be raised in the ways of righteousness.” Her lack of elaboration sent chills down my spine.
Deciding not to press further, I poked at my food again. “Do you expect more trouble to happen with the children?”
“Oh yes,” she replied. “There will be more.”
“What do we do then?” I asked. “We’ve already literally killed one off to try to teach the others a lesson. What would we do if-”
“Continue the same way.”
I blinked for a few seconds, trying to process this and come up with at least a short reply. “But… but the body count…”
She smiled. “The bodies do not go to waste. By a special means of preparation, the flesh of a child can give us both a longer period of youth. You’ll learn the magic eventually.” She winked as if nothing was wrong.
Immediately, I choked.
I pushed away the plate, but she locked me in her gaze and she made me eat. She made me eat every last bite.
My stomach was heaving and my head was spinning by the time she finally let go. Acid started to rise in my throat. I desperately tried to push my chair away from the table, but I only got as far as turning my head before the contents of that dinner erupted out of my innards and onto the floor beside me. It looked awful, dark colored like coagulated blood or whatever untold other ingredients were in the food. The smell alone made me dry heave again.
Grace was unfazed. I could even swear that her skin was smoother after eating the flesh, her hair more vibrant without a hint of gray.
“There, there. Poor thing. Perhaps you aren’t ready yet,” she said, and cut a piece out of the cake. She lifted a forkful to my lips. “Eat something, princess, so that you won’t have an empty stomach.” I had no choice but to weakly accept it. I didn’t even want to think about what it might be made of – it smelled odd, almost metallic – but I ate the cake, and by some miracle I kept it down.
“Why don’t you go get some rest,” Grace suggested, and I nodded. She unlocked the elevator – thankfully – and led me up to my room.
When she approaches, I look away. When she speaks, I plug my ears. I fear her sudden appearance on the other side of my room’s door or behind me in the mirror, coming to me with a new horror to enact. Every night, the fog machine turns on and the performers assemble in their malicious carnival masks, ready to conceal and distract while I am sent to take child after child. It is routine now. I used to hope that one of these times I’d somehow regain consciousness in the middle of the act, but it’s starting to look like I never will. And from this tower, I’ve seen no sign of them ever getting closer to being saved.
It feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.
My limbs can betray me to serve her. My lips can speak words not of my own making. My mind is powerless, a mere spectator. I am losing the essence of who I am.
That’s why I’m standing on the windowsill now. I’m ready to take the jump, and impale this mere puppet I call a body on the dragon’s spines below. I can’t keep going with this. I can’t let her continue to control me. There’s only one way out of Rapunzel Tower, and I have no choice anymore but to take it.
…But I can’t do that. I have to appear in a marketing video for the park tomorrow. No child wants to see their princess dead.