Here is the Prologue to The Golden Lock of Mischief, an original short story by junior FHS student Grace Brosnan!

Prologue

There’s said to be a girl of wonder hidden in the heart of a forest in our small town. Irises as green as emerald diamonds, skin as pale as pure white snow, freckles dancing along her cheekbones, and golden locks as long as the tower she was awfully imprisoned in. She was rumored to be full of unconditional kindness, extreme gentleness, and fiercely spirited. She was the mysterious question that everyone wanted to answer but no one knew where to ask. She was free, she knew what true freedom was, yet no one knew who she was. She was a wonderful distraction for our small town but she was also part of the poison that infected it.

No one knew her name because she wasn’t real. Hell, she sounded like a sappy version of the story of Rapunzel that sits in our dusty library on Main Street. Her story was just entertainment to distract the people of Grimson from their bland everyday lives. A beautiful girl whose wandering around the woods fills people’s lives with adventure. She was wondrous, marvelous, and exquisite in a mystical way. No one could describe her (because no one has seen her) but everyone claimed to have spotted her at one point or another.
Maybe some people’s claims were truthful, I mean they had a reason to be. Every town has one, from the smallest to the largest: a beautiful mansion that bordered the town lines and screamed danger. In Grimson’s case, our haunted mansion wasn’t exactly a manor as it was a tower. A tall tower that reached higher than the evergreens within the woods and a patch of faded violet flowers circling its base. The tower was built of old gothic stone that was too old for our time. The top of the circled tower was beautifully designed with a pattern that resembled the top of a castle guard. Three windows that were imbedded into the tower were placed on each side of the old building, with one that was popped from the side that faced Grimson with a ledge that had no paine glass such as the others.

But as beautiful as the tower was, it was abandoned. The tower had been sitting in the heart of the woods since before the Grimson residents had settled into their boring routine. No one had thought of tearing it down because it was so anciently pleasing, and there was no reason to be taken down. No resident of Grimson ever resided in the woods that would cause the tower to be an issue. Kids always tried to break in, adults were always snooping around, but no one could ever get in.

You see, the tower was guarded.

The only entrance that provided a way in was blocked by a stone wall. Built up to the brink with old cobblestone matching the rest of the towers design, kept any trespassers from entering the tower. Kids have tried climbing it, of course, but no one was able to reach the top without the fear of falling to their death. The tower was too tall. So, like most of the things in our simple town, people enhance the story of the tower and the beautiful girl to mold it into something that creates a sense of adventure in their life.

That was a pattern in the lives of Grimson residents. Everyone had a specific schedule that they stuck too and everyone knew each other’s routine. It was almost sickening how much a town knew everyone’s secrets. We were so small that everyone felt like family but too close that you felt trapped.

Grimson was a forgotten town in the heart of Upstate New York. Surrounded by woods and a few ponds, no one ever really acknowledged Grimson. We never had any tourists, besides the holidays when families from out of town would come to stay, and no one ever wanted to start their life in Grimson. The only residents that lived in Grimson were the ones who grew up in Grimson. It was like a cycle. Grow up in Grimson, find yourself in Grimson, maybe go to college for a year or two but then find yourself back into that small town that held your childhood. Marry a girl you didn’t particularly like in high school and then start a life.

As for me though, I didn’t want any part of it.

Not the continuous routine that everyone knew about or the girl I sort of dated in high school to become my wife. I didn’t want to be stuck like everyone else in this inkling town. I couldn’t be stuck. I wouldn’t allow myself too. But as the days of my senior year of high school flew by, I felt myself starting to become fixed into Grimson. I was becoming grounded into a place I didn’t want to call home.

I was definitely not your typical Grimson local. I hated following the agenda everyone knew about. I hated how my friends knew every single thing that was going on in my life. I hated that I was an open book that anyone could read. But I guess part of that was because of my Dad.

Being the mayor’s son in a small town didn’t really give you much privacy to begin with. Everyone was forced to be nice to me and everyone wanted to be my friend. I was a seventeen year old boy with a full head of dark chestnut curls and deep sea blue eyes that was treated like a prince. And as much as I hated it, I was used to it.
I was a wanderer in a colorless town. I was a traveler just looking for an actual adventure rather than a rumored one. I wanted to experience something that was real and wondrous. Something other than what I already knew. I wanted something different, exotic, new.

Little did I know that was exactly what I was going to get. Alone, wandering through the night when I wasn’t supposed to be, I stumbled upon an adventure of my own.

A girl.

A tower.

And a small town.

And I never even saw it coming

* photo via Google Images under the Creative Commons license