Fractured Fairy Tale
 

Its for a contest I'm entering, theres a 100 dollar prize, and this is (a part of) my entry.
Comments? (:
The princess fell to the ground, limbs twitching and eyes rolling in their sockets. Immediately, medical personnel descended from their posts, wasted no time in surrounding the thrashing figure with soft things; pillows, seat cushions, whatever they could find in the immediate vincity. They did this quickly, in complete synchronization. It was a routine they were used to. The head practitioner stepped from his place in the shadows, a mortar and pestle already in one hand, and a bundle of herbs in the other. He swiftly and methodologically crushed the papery leaves between the two stone surfaces. The herbs released a pungent smell when crushed, a smell that only grew stronger as they were dropped into a cup of boiling water, held by a shaking page with wide eyes and white hair. The water quickly coloured, turning from clear to a muddy brown. Its consistency changed as well, solidifying into a vicious goopy mess that was the same consistency of strawberry jam, though no where near as tasty. The practitioner stirred the mixture, using the end of the pestle, for lack of anything else to stir with. The mixture grew smoother, and the colour intensified. When he was satisfied with what was in the cup, he gave a quick shout, the signal for one of the guards to come forward, and secure the convulsing princess’s head. The practitioner, shaking just a bit, tipped the liquid into the open mouth, starting out small, and gradually increasing in volume. He only let up when the thrashings began to diminish, and when she had to be turned over so she could throw up.
At the back of the room of excessive grandeur, the queen began sobbing, throwing herself into the King’s arms. The King wrapped his arms around her torso, holding her close and murmuring reassuring words, while he himself felt the same aura of dread and impending doom. He gazed bleakly at the scene, the medics scurrying around, prodding this and that to check for pulse and heart beat, the maids trying in vain to clean up the vomit, and the head practitioner, standing in a corner making notes on his scroll with a hopeless expression on his face.

It was a full hour and a half before the princess stood before her father again, sporting a new gown and an odd expression. What was that look? The King mused silently. It looked like a mixture of anger, esperation and exhaustion, all wrapped up in a neat condescending smile. The look was tired and world weary, it didn’t match her slight twelve year old profile. She spoke, calm and slow, but with a crackling underlying tension. “I apologize father, that idiotic wretch of a nurse you assigned me insisted I get changed into something fresh. She believed it not prudent to address the King while covered in vomit,” she gave a little mocking bow, “but as if I need to get dolled up for my own father, oops, I mean the Majesty.” She stood up straight and gave her father a sarcastic half smile, the one that drove her etiquette teacher barking mad. The King, obviously uncomfortable, gave a short mumbled reply. “That’s quite all right darling, you may do…” The last bit was too incoherent to make out, and sounded like ‘watermumblefish’.
The young princess eyed the empty throne, and the partially dried wet spot on the front of her father’s tunic. “Father, where has mother gone?” The King had been planning his answer for a while now, and gave his reply promptly and easily. “She went to the kitchen. She was peckish, and went to beg bread and cheese from the cook.” The princess crossed her arms across her chest and shifted her weight to her left foot, a posture that would later become the epitome of teenage disobedience. “Don’t be daft father. We just finished dinner, and no one can be puckish after shoving two suckling pigs down their throat, even mom.” She gave a little laugh, it sounded like barking dogs. “You need not lie, I already know dearest mother can’t stand the sight of me.” She flicked a stray piece of vomit off her chin, a bit her nursemaid hadn’t been able to scrub off.

The king gasped, but quickly regained his composure. It was true, the queen was not pilfering food, instead she was probably in her quarters, sobbing into her bed sheets. “That’s not tru-“
“Can it father. Your lies are as annoying as they are transparent. She is not the matter I came here to discuss.” The King was dumbfounded, and surprised. Not pleasantly so. Though he did not enjoy lying, he fancied himself good at it. Having his fabrication picked apart, by a young girl, his own daughter no less, it was unnerving to say in the least. He asked the baited question, even though he knew, and dreaded, the answer. “So then, what did you come here to discuss?” He said, tiredly. She scoffed. “Father, you are no better than the village fool if you do not know the answer to that one.”
The King bit back anger. If it was anyone else who said that, even the queen, he would order the guards to throw the offender in a dank dungeon for a few days, a king does not look good with his subjects openly insulting him. She was the one exception to this rule. As much as he wanted to, he was frightened it would cause another episode, and no one wanted that.

Hey there! Let’s get the comments started!
And, since you appear to be open for edits, may we know what the prompt was for the contest? Just to see if the people here think it fits well.
Just a suggestion. =]

As a general thing, when you post large paragraphs on a forum, it’s best to double space between every block of text or so. Just to make it easier to read.

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I think ‘wasted’ should be changed to ‘wasting’. Or you could drop the comma and add in ‘and wasted…’

‘vincity’ should be ‘vicinity’. =]

This part of the sentence struck me as a bit comical. I’m not sure if that’s what you were intending. The rest of the piece, doesn’t have that feel to it. So I suggest either changing the rest of the piece to have some sort of comical tone, or strike out ‘strawberry’ and ‘though no where near as tasty.’

I’m not sure ‘just’ is needed in this sentence. Unless, of course, you’re going to play up how hard he’s trying not to be nervous. If he’s not that important, as a character, in this part I’d strike the word out.

While it’s not wrong at all, I suggest changing the last bit (‘so she could throw up’) to ‘before she threw up’, or something along those lines. Since, whether they turn her over or not, she’s going to throw up. It’s just that if she isn’t turned over, she’ll choke. By putting the word ‘before’ you add a sense of time and urgency, showing how necessary it is that she’s turned.

‘King’ doesn’t need to be capitalized. ‘King’ only needs to be capitalized if there is a name attached: King Arthur, King Henry, and so on and so forth.

‘esperation’ should be ‘exasperation’.

I just wanted to point this out because I like it so much.

I feel this is an understatement so severe it may need re-phrasing. I understand she’s disobedient, but to be quite this rude to the king goes beyond ‘teenage disobedience’. There has to be some other underlying cause.

When I end a comment with a dash, because someone has been cut-off, what I usually do is put a period after the dash and then add in the ending quotation mark. Then, I go back and delete the period. That way, the quotation mark is still facing the right way. It’s probably not a necessary thing and it might depend on your word processor, but it’s something to do if you want. =]

The phrase ‘can it’ seems out of place for the time-period and/or speech patterns you’ve already set up. It sounds very modern in a dialogue that seems much earlier.

You could probably drop the comma.
I’m also a little confused by his emotions and reactions. He treats her as though he knows what the expect from her, with the scenes and her possibly being able to forcibly have a seizure, but he is still surprised by her? I would think that if he knows how to respond to her (not being angry for her blatant disrespect not only as her father but as the king) that he would not longer be surprised by her tone.

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I quite like the way you describe things. And much of your sentence structure makes reading your work easy and enjoyable. The thing that confused me most about the piece is not the girl’s reactions, but the king’s. Granted, I figure that must be explained elsewhere.

Good luck in the contest!