The Princess and The Monster

Inspired by real life events!

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think all monsters are scary.[1]

Now in this insignificant blue planet, lived a cute little piggy princess. At the point at which this story starts, this piggy princess did not know that she was either a piggy nor a princess. All she knew was that she was fascinated by monsters. Her fascination was a mix of mostly fear and a little curiosity.

She was afraid of monsters because everybody around her talked about how scary they were, about how cruel they were. And even though nobody around her had seen a monster, she knew that monsters existed. She knew because she felt them all around her, trying to confuse, hurt and harm her. She often withdrew into the darkest corner in the tallest tower of her mind because some unseen unnamed monster was sniffing around for her.

Then one day, out of the blue, she saw a monster, or rather a part of a monster. As she was strolling around the woods and the glades, playing around with her little mice babies, she caught sight of a fiery yellowtail, that swished seductively before vanishing. She was piqued. This monster, whose tail she saw did not seem scary at all, even though she knew in her heart that this was a cruel one, perhaps the cruellest of them all.

A few days later, when she was out to keep an appointment with her spider friend, she saw the monster again. This time, she saw it all. This monster was a fantastic beast! He crouched and slithered like a snake and had the tail of a tiger. His coat was the silvery grey of an ancient wolf and carried dark stripes. His tongue, which lashed out often was forked like a serpent.

She stood paralysed with curiosity as the monster drew close to her. She heard vague voices, perhaps hers, perhaps someone else's telling her to run away. She was confused as there were too many voices.

And then the monster spoke.

And then all the other voices went silent.

The monster used his forked tongue and fed words into her, words that were cruel and kind, soft and harsh, cold and warm, burning and soothing. His tongue wove a web of paradoxes around her even as his burning eyes fixated on her body. And as the web grew more and more intricate, more and more tangled, she realized that she was actually a piggy princess, who belonged to a beautiful kingdom of pleasure and pain. As she realized this, she saw that the monster had placed a glittering collar around her with his paw, which made her at once the princess and slave.

And then the monster drew closer and licked her with his forked tongue.

And then the monster opened his cavernous mouth and began to swallow her.

She felt his curved fangs sink into her shoulders and his serpentine mouth suck her in inch by inch. She could feel the soft, warm insides of the monster and before she knew it, she was in the monster's belly.

She was also in the world. This was a strange sensation because the monster's belly was transparent. She had been swallowed whole and yet was in the world.

The world looked a little different now. She could see the other monsters people talked about, but she had no fear for them because she was now inside the biggest monster of them all. She moved about, now clutching her monster's fang, now nuzzling against his furry chin unafraid of everything. When it was dark and the sky turned into a starless inky black, she curled up at her monster's paw and slept there. When it was dawn and the sky burned with a crimson glow that rivalled her monster's eyes, she woke up stroking the monster's fiery tail which kept feeding burning poison into her.

Thus it was that the piggy princess was rescued from the scary world filled with princes, kings, ennui, doubt and sadness by the scariest monster of them all.

And they lived scarily ever after!

[1] - Paraphrased from the opening lines Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

P.S. This is a bedtime story written for my babygirl. She has an audio version of this that she uses to fall asleep. It has been reproduced here in the written version with her consent.