Fairy Tales: Unraveled: A twisted retell shorts collection Page 7

  “Ms. Everson, your father was a first-class inmate. Never had a problem with him, and all the staff respected him. There were some who believed he was innocent . . .”

  “Hold up, why are we talking in the past tense here?” I saw Lucifer out of the corner of my eye smiling his beautiful smile. But I knew what was under the mask he wore.

  “Adam killed himself two days ago. We found him in his cell.”

  My mind went blank. My real father was dead. I caught the odd phrase from the warden as I battled for control. Razor, slit wrists, too much blood. Nothing to be done. The ringing in my ears was too loud now; I couldn’t hear him any longer. My last connection to a woman I have wanted to know all my life is dead.

  “You should not have tried to find redemption here, sweet one.” Lucifer was standing before me now. His smile was wide.

  He did this.

  It had always been him, whispering in my ear. The murder of my stepfather—that was his influence. I’d bet money on it. I looked up into his blue eyes; the answers were there for me to see.

  It was months of mental torment that drove me to hack off my own hand. I had killed many, I was told later. I remember looking at the bloody stump and thinking fuck you, Lucifer. He didn’t come to me then. I almost bled to death that night. Once I was caught and put in prison, they seemed to think it was normal to cut off your own hand. No psych evaluation for me. I got ahold of whatever I could. Razor blades, shanks, anything I could use to mutilate my perfect white skin. If I was to be Lucifer’s bride, I might as well look as gross as he does.

  It was the night before they were moving me to the secure hospital that Lucifer returned to me. He laughed in my face and told me that every bad thing that had ever happened to me was because of him. I had been meant for so much more, including a husband and children, a loving home, and a long life. I was his example. I was his gift to his father, to prove that any human can be corrupted, and the consequences would ripple throughout generations.

  I asked him through my tears if he had ever wanted me. He laughed in my scarred face and told me that I was scum, all humans were. I was a toy, and now I was broken; he had no more need for me.

  “But rest assured, you will be seeing me again. Your place in hell has been reserved since your conception.”

  They tell me I screamed until I ruptured something in my throat. I am mute now and always bound in restraints. Do I want to die? Yes, so I can stop feeling this pain. I mourn the life that could have been. But I am also so scared; when my time does come, I know the Devil himself will be waiting for me, and my torture will be eternal.

  ATTACK OF THE MUNCHIES

  BASED ON SLEEPING BEAUTY

  There was no way to stop the insatiable hunger. You can’t kill people and expect no one to notice. They say you should never run from your problems, that everyone should accept you as you are, including your flaws. This all sounds lovely if it were put into practice hundred percent of the time. However, when you find out your daughter is not quite normal, and the whole acceptance umbrella doesn’t cover her particular quirk—life gets real, really fast!

  That’s exactly what happened to Amber; she was born into royalty, betrothed to a prince, and should have had a charmed life. Unfortunately, at a young age Amber started to change. She was unable to even consider eating cooked food, especially vegetables. Most think this is normal for a child, and they’d be correct. Most children go through a period of hating anything that looks remotely healthy or green. However, Amber took this a little too far. She also refused to eat any meat that had been cooked; this included fish. Her parents were embarrassed to have her at the dinner table as they watched her devour plates of raw chicken or her absolute favourite, bloody, raw steaks.

  Amber saw absolutely nothing wrong with the way she liked to enjoy her foods. After all, one of her cousins was vegan, and there was nothing as far as she was concerned that was weirder than a person who only wanted and actively enjoyed eating greens.

  As she got older, she was invited to less of the family banquets and the huge lavish balls that were held periodically throughout the year. She became depressed; there was no one like her as far as she knew. It was halfway through summer when she noticed that the raw meats were not as satisfying as they once were.

  This posed a huge problem; if she couldn’t eat meat and she knew she couldn’t digest vegetables, how was she meant to survive?

  She took her concern to her mother and father in the hope that they would have a plan; maybe a doctor or a mystic could cure her of this affliction. The king and queen looked at their daughter with sad eyes and explained to her that there was no cure for what she suffered from.

  This sent Amber into a grave depression. She hardly left her room; she didn’t eat for weeks and slowly she began to desiccate. Soon it was too painful to even blink. So, as the first leaves began to turn golden at their edges, signalling the start of autumn, Amber slipped into a coma.

  The kingdom went into a deep mourning for their princess. Offerings were left on the castle steps, and every mystic, holy person, and wise woman from miles around came to the princess in the hope that they might cure her and restore her to the people that love her so.

  Queen Harriet would sit with her daughter day after day and read to her; she knew that Amber would be well one day. Maybe not in her lifetime, but there was just something about the way her daughter’s hair continued to grow thick and strong, and when she touched Amber’s paper thin skin it was still warm, the life force still strong within her.

  In her comatose state akin to death, it appeared that Amber was completely disconnected to the word. However, she heard, smelt, and felt everything. It was as if she were in hibernation, waiting for something miraculous to take place within herself so that she could awaken. This gave her hope as it meant that there was something better waiting on the other side of this imprisonment of her mind; there had to be. Nobody deserved to be entrapped in a withering husk until the day they truly died.

  Still the seasons changed, and the years rolled by. The king died three years after Amber’s slip into nothingness. She felt the pain acutely. She had missed her chance to say goodbye to her beloved Papa, and there was no way to gain that time back. Despite crippling grief, her darling mother visited her chamber every day and read to her. Amber could hear the tremor in the queen’s voice as she read the book containing her favourite poems and short stories. It was as spring changed to summer of the following year that Amber realised it had been weeks since her mother had read to her. Another week passed or maybe it was two? She was now becoming concerned for her mother’s well-being. She had never missed a day visiting, and Amber missed her terribly.

  It was incredibly lonely in her room. She couldn’t blame them really, out of sight out of mind. It had been years since the last physician had visited and told her beloved parents that she would never wake up. It was then she realised that it was likely that news that had caused her father’s untimely death. She knew they had experienced much loss before she was born. So many failed pregnancies, with babies too weak to cling to this earthly plane. No parent wants to outlive their children, and the king and queen had had so many die that once Amber became comatose it broke their hearts.

  Then tragedy struck again. Although for Amber it was a miracle, and it happened on a frosty day in midwinter. There still had been no sign of her lady mother for a very long time. She heard the servants taking about their dear Queen Harriet and how she ailed in her chambers, how the people missed her and wondered if she too was to die? Leaving Amber an orphan.

  It hurt her deeply that her mother was so sick and that they thought of her as some kind of freak—the corpse in the tower rooms. Some kind of sick caricature of death made flesh, everlasting, never changing. Not dead but not fully alive. She knew from her maid’s chatter when they came to tidy her room and change the sheets, that the entire kingdom believed her to be cursed.

  It was one of these visits from the maids that changed her e
xistence forever. It was as the sheets were being replaced and new flowers, roses to be exact, were being placed around her head. They had taken to placing flowers around her body. She was aware of her oder; the flowers didn’t help hide it. The sweet smell of corruption was inescapable.

  The maid, Jodie, she would always remember her name, had been the one arranging the flowers that day when she cut herself. She had carelessly slashed her finger on a thorn while trying to rush the job. Amber understood why she had been trying to hurry, who wanted to hang around a corpse-like princess who breathed foul breath and whose eyelids still moved as the eyes beneath quivered.

  Unfortunately for Jodie, the second Amber caught the scent of her blood something deep within her ignited. With speed she didn’t know she possessed, Amber grabbed the careless maid, her eyes still closed, sealed shut from lack of use, and pulled Jodie across her frail body. She bit down hard on the first area of bare flesh she could reach.

  Jodie’s screams were the worst sound that Amber had ever heard and believed she would ever hear in her entire life. She felt great remorse for what she had done. Attacking her maid and eating her alive was not something she was proud of. Yet, it had saved her life. Within moments of consuming human flesh, she began to regenerate. Of course, Margaret, Jodie’s companion, had fled screaming for help, that the possessed princess had murdered a royal maid. Amber knew that remaining in her room would mean death. Or would it? Could she actually die? She thought about it and didn’t think she could. She had lain in her bed for almost a decade and was still alive. So maybe they would imprison her if they found her there? The thought of existing for another decade as she had been was abhorrent. So, with the strength she had regained from Jodie’s sacrifice, she dressed in the most sensible clothes she could find, which sadly were Jodie’s. All her own clothes were far too small; they were the clothes of her girlhood, and now she was a woman grown.

  She had just finished dressing, when the sound of a commotion could be heard, and it was getting closer to her bedroom door every second. There was nowhere to run; she had to either face them and hope she escaped the cells later or take her chances by jumping out the window. Amber knew that her room was in the tower; the tower was at least twenty feet high and below were jagged rocks and the fast-flowing water of the Oom River. Even in her altered state, she didn’t relish the idea of facing that kind of fall. If she survived it at all. Her mortality was still in question after all.

  Suddenly the choice was taken from her as the door flew open and two palace guards stood before her. She was a bit affronted that they had only sent two and that her mother was not with them. Then again, maybe the news that her only child had just ripped the face off her maid might not have been the best way to announce Amber’s return from near death.

  Thankfully, the guards were so shocked to see the princess on her feet and looking relativity normal that they paused just long enough to allow Amber to push past them and run as fast as her legs could carry her, down the tower stairs, along the corridor, and out into the palace grounds.

  There was nowhere to run in the gardens, one side was the river and on the other was the great wall that separated the castle from the rest of the kingdom. There was no way she could stay within the walls; they would find her and surely try to do her harm. Understandable, just not something she really wanted to experience in the near future. It was then that she felt an agonising hunger. A hunger that was new and yet even though the compulsion was strong, Amber tried to resist it. She wasn’t a killer, not in her heart anyway. The problem was that once she had had her first taste of warm living flesh, human flesh and lapped at the blood, there was going to be a next time. She could feel it as surely as night follows the day.

  It was as she ran to the greenhouse, knowing that she could scale the wall by using one of the trees that grew nearby, that she was grabbed and tossed to the ground. Snarling, she sprang to her feet and turned to face her attacker.

  She stopped and stared.

  She knew this man; he had been a boy when she had last seen him, and he had called her a brat and pulled her pigtails. It was William, her betrothed. Horror froze his handsome face as he took in Amber’s blood-stained appearance and milky eyes. He knew she was the princess and his intended, but she was truly terrifying.

  He drew his short sword and prepared for her attack. It was Amber who backed off; she had no desire to hurt him. That was a lie; she wanted to eat his warm insides and wash them down with his blood. Yet this was William, her William, and there was no way she would steal the heir of her ally’s kingdom just because she had an attack of the munchies and was half crazed with a fever.

  She really wouldn’t have attacked him, only he stuck his sword in her left side as she turned to flee. Something inside her snapped. She became this other creature, feral, predatory, and absolutely lethal. William didn’t stand a chance.

  Within seconds, his sword was lost in the grass, meters away, and his would-be wife was on him; her once beautiful hands were more like claws as they ripped at his shirt and tore into his flesh. Lord forgive him, he punched her in the side of the jaw, hoping it would knock her out and he could then restrain her somehow. The blow only seemed to anger her, and with a sound that no human should be able to make, Amber brought back her right fist and punched a hole clean through his ribs and grabbed his frantically beating heart.

  Amber was enthralled; the feel of his heart still pumping delicious blood was intoxicating. For a second, the mist cleared from her fevered mind and she became Amber again. She looked into William’s pale face and his deep blue eyes and only saw hatred there. It hurt her even though she knew that she was the sole cause of it.

  He used her momentary lack of attention to punch her hard in the face again. This time she felt something shift, and when she heard his scream and felt the wetness run off her chin, she felt the rage return. Amber looked at his hand and saw that a large part of her face clung to his fist like a wet rag. Without thinking, she squeezed his palpitating organ, and all the while she looked into this wide blue eyes. Undeterred, she ripped out his heart. William had enough time to register the missing organ, so vital to live, and watched as Princess Amber took a bite out of his still quivering flesh. Her lipless mouth closing around his heart was the image he took to his grave.

  SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

  BASED ON PUSS IN BOOTS

  Everyone knows the story of Puss in Boots, how the cat was a mastermind and managed to make a poor boy a prince . . . But that’s how the humans tell it. I am going to tell you my story. I warn you it is a sad one of kidnap and servitude.

  So, if you are sitting comfortably, I will begin.

  I was taken from my mother at a young age, maybe eight weeks old. I was the runt, you see, and my siblings pushed me out. Being small was not all bad. It made hiding from the giants—who I later learned to be humans—easier. They would come to the barn and handle us in turn, and one-by-one my brothers and sisters left. My mother had a serious dislike for me, and I never knew my father. The day my last sibling went with yet another human, she left too. You read it correctly: My own mother abandoned me in a cold and smelly barn.

  It was three days later that I managed to find a hole in the barn wall and escape. It was short lived. I was discovered by the humans. They picked me up and poked at my tiny belly and muttered about throwing the “hairball” in the river.

  They meant me!

  Well, I was not having it. I bit the hand that held me and ran as fast as my tiny legs would go. How would I survive? I did not know. All I wanted was to be away from humans and their harsh words and grabbing hands.

  Six months of being my own cat was wonderful. I travelled the land and ate as many mice as I could catch. Life was grand. Then, I got caught again. This time was worse: It was a dog that caught me. That great big slob‐ bering thing got my coat all wet. I was not at all happy. I was carried back to a huge building.

  A portly man was just coming out of the door to one of the o
utbuildings, when he spotted me in the dog’s mouth. He told the foul beast to “drop it.”

  Wonderful, I would be the “it.”

  Thud!

  This incident began my new life as a working mouser in a smelly mill. The miller had three children; mercifully, they ignored me mostly. Apart from the girl—yes, the human tale says it was a boy child I helped but that is not true—who loved to hunt me out.

  “Here, Puss Puss. Where are you?”

  Those words instilled real fear in my heart. It meant Lydia wanted to play Puss in Boots—which meant I needed to hide. Puss in Boots was what the charming devil’s spawn called dressing me up in her dolls’ clothes. It was degrading and very uncomfortable. I never evaded her for long. Lydia was small and very agile, so she always found my best hiding spots. I think having two older brothers didn’t help much. The mill was pretty remote, and Lydia had no friends to speak of. I wanted to help, I really did, just not by wearing her bloody dolls’ get-up for a start. I’m a boy, and also, I have a tail.

  This torture went on for years. As I grew, so did she, and she always found a way to dress me up. Finding her old baby clothes was her first option once I became too big for the dolls’ clothes. There are a lot of mice in a grain mill, and the only way I didn’t get locked in the coal bunker was by doing my “job.” I tried to run away. Lord, how I tried. But Lydia always found me, and the collar with the stupid bell on it did not help any escape plan either.

  SKIP FORWARD A FEW MISERABLE YEARS . . .

  THE MILL WAS NOT PRODUCING as much, and Lydia’s papa was dying. Her brothers were fighting over who gets what when the old man kicks the bucket. All I wanted to do was sleep. With the grain stores that were almost depleted, there wasn’t much work for me to do and not a lot of food either. I just wanted some peace and quiet.