Sleeping Beauty: A Rewrite

 

Me: Rewrite the story of Sleeping Beauty into a horror story with a scary ending

In a kingdom shrouded by mist and superstition, a beautiful princess named Aurora was cursed by a vengeful, dark sorceress at her birth. The sorceress foretold that on her sixteenth birthday, Aurora would prick her finger on a spindle and fall into an eternal slumber, a sleep so deep that she would never wake. Fearing the curse, the king ordered every spindle in the kingdom to be destroyed, and Aurora was hidden away in a remote castle, watched over by a group of strange, silent servants who never seemed to age.

Despite the king’s efforts, as Aurora’s sixteenth birthday approached, strange things began to happen. The castle halls grew darker, shadows stretched longer, and whispers echoed from behind locked doors. On the eve of her birthday, Aurora felt drawn to an abandoned wing of the castle that had been sealed for years. There, she discovered a single spindle, covered in dust but untouched by time. Her fingers, as if possessed, reached for it before she could stop herself, and the moment her skin touched the sharp point, a cold darkness crept through her veins. She collapsed to the floor, her breath shallow, her eyes closing as the curse took hold.

The king, devastated, ordered the entire castle sealed. He and his kingdom fled, leaving the once-grand fortress to rot as vines and thorns twisted around it, keeping it hidden from the outside world. But Aurora did not sleep peacefully. Instead, she was trapped in a waking nightmare, her mind plagued by visions of twisted faces and shadowy figures circling her bed, whispering her name with voices that were not human.

A hundred years passed, and a daring prince, having heard the tale of the sleeping princess, ventured into the cursed woods. As he hacked through the thick, thorny brambles, he finally reached the overgrown castle, where eerie silence greeted him. Inside, the air was thick with decay, and the walls dripped with something darker than water. He followed the scent of rot to the princess’s chamber, where he found Aurora lying on her bed, untouched by time, her beauty as ethereal as the legends claimed.

He knelt beside her and, as the stories said, kissed her. But the moment his lips touched hers, Aurora’s eyes snapped open, not with relief or joy, but with terror. Her once-soft features contorted into a grotesque snarl, her skin paling to a sickly shade, and her eyes glowing with a malevolent light.

"You should never have come," she whispered, her voice not her own, as her body rose unnaturally from the bed. The prince stumbled back, but it was too late. The curse had transformed Aurora over the century, turning her into a vessel for the dark forces that had haunted her dreams. The castle groaned, its walls cracking as shadowy, twisted figures began to emerge from the darkness, their faces gaunt, their eyes hollow.

The prince tried to flee, but the doors slammed shut. The creatures closed in, their cold fingers wrapping around him, pulling him into the abyss. Aurora, now nothing more than a dark queen bound to the curse, watched as the castle consumed him, just as it had consumed her soul.

The kingdom never knew what became of the prince. The castle now stands forgotten, shrouded in mist and haunted by the restless, cursed princess who lies awake, waiting for the next fool to stumble upon her, so she may drag them into her endless nightmare, never to escape.