Among the beautiful rivers, with its cool flowing waters that lapped beside the lush vegetation and flowers that swayed with the breeze, welcoming the bees and butterflies, who left the flowery abode, glittering in gold. The birds nested on the arms of the old trees, all of who had a story to tell had they had mouths, but unfortunately silence was their sole option. But you could listen to their stories told between the soft rustling of leaves.
But lying just behind this peaceful sight was a dusty old building, bathing in the darkness of mystery. It remained a stark contrast to the scenery beyond, a nightmare amidst the paradise of rivers and creatures. The building wasn’t an abandoned haunted mansion, as it functioned as an asylum housing the country’s most ruthless and dangerous criminals.
The top security facility had seen serial killers, traitors, arsonists and the enemies to the Crown, contained within its four walls. Heavily armed men that rotated every thirty minutes, double walls, and barbed wires through which enormous volts were pumped made sure that the inmates were locked in the damned Establishment. The inmates within were people who had averted their energies to jeopardize the kingdom's peace - and it certainly was just to hide the shenanigans from the real world
But justice was denied to one.
A woman lived amongst the scum of the population, her eyes knowing only sadness, her mouth, which once was full and known only smile and laughter, now remained dry, broken and in a permanent frown. Her features were delicate and fragile, her face spoke of innocence, and her manners of a lady. She, in fact, belonged to a class higher to that of a noblewoman.
She was a princess.
A princess who killed her prince.
Perhaps that was what everyone thought. She was a girl whom fate decided torture, and when she thought that it had finally taken mercy on her, she had found herself in the kingdom's most vicious of jails.
Ella, at a young age, was enslaved by her father’s second wife. His first was claimed by death soon after Ella was born. The girl’s beauty and manners were often praised, and such remarks left her father swelling with pride, leaving the stepmother to think that if Ella continued to reign in her father's heart, she would amass his huge wealth and assets, assets she wished her daughters to fully inherit. Her jealousy drove her to consider her stepdaughter as a maid, making her do errands and clothing her in the shabbiest of wears. Soon the father, who began to see less and less of her, forgot his beloved daughter, not knowing of the plot his wife had committed. Ella swept the house, cooked the food, slept in the kitchen, where a group of rats and sparrows had befriended her, the only beings in the mansion who listened to her sorrows and joys. She was soon likened to the cinders of the place she slept in, her name soon tauntingly changed to Cinder-Ella.
Fate had smiled when she had found the fairy godmother, fallen in love with a prince, who refused to dance with anyone but her during the ball. And that love soon matured, and Cinderella soon became a wife and princess, and she forgave her stepmother and daughters for all the suffering she had inflicted upon the little girl, and invited the mother and her daughters to her palace. Her stepsisters began to love her, waiting her from head to foot as a repentance to the injustices they had done to her
But the stepmother’s hatred couldn’t be cured with mere forgiveness, her heart was too cold for that. She continued plotting against the princess, planting in the heads of the royal family doubts about the new Royal member, and the seeds of suspicions sprung in their minds. In the end, the same people who had supported the marriage of prince to Cinderella, now slowly started seeing her with another eye. Those doubts and suspicions bloomed when the prince was found murdered in his bedroom, and all fingers unquestioningly pointed at Cinderella. Had they examined closer, they would have seen the occasional burst of smiles that erupted on the mourning stepmother’s face, or the cut on her hand that materialized during the struggle as she executed her dastardly plan.
As the guards shackled her physical form as they led her to the jury, her unshackled mind demanded revenge. She wanted to kill the prince’s murderer, for it was least she owed to the man who had given her a proper roof, replaced her rags with riches, made her loved, treated her not as a mere maid but as a princess. She was lucky the jury had been merciful enough to grant her life imprisonment, and not death
The prisoners filed out of their cells and into the canteen. The once quiet room now were filled with boisterous people, whose chomping, guffaws and gossips continuously stabbed the silence. But the princess sat in the corner, unnoticed by the prisoners. Their she toyed with her food, her hands tracing through the grease of the food, or at least that’s what anyone gazing towards her thought.
She was hatching her escape.
A few pair of eyes were fixed on her as she traced her finger the floorplan of the prison. She was being watched, and she knew that she was. Her sincere friends, who had accompanied her from the kitchen to the palace, and from there to the prison, would now help her breakout of this nightmare of an architecture. She would escape her cell tonight, run through the lush forests outside and towards her kingdom.
And the rats would help her.
****************************************************
It must have been dawn when the royal messenger with his drummer ran forth into the town, his loud voice drowning the silence that hung uninterrupted, announcing the dreary news.
‘Hear ye! Hear ye! The Mother-in-Law of the Prince has been murdered.’
The messenger passed by a lamp-post, on which a poster had suddenly appeared. The poster had been stuck almost on all lamp-post, each announcing the escape of a convict named Cinderella. People streamed from their houses and onto the street receiving the two unfortunate news. And they did put two and two together.
‘See I told you Cinderella was the murderer.’ A man was heard talking to his wife.
‘Alas! And I thought she had been wrongfully convicted.’ The gossip streamed from another group of people.
‘I bet for a hundred bucks that she is going for the Queen next.’
At a distant of a few miles away, Cinderella was making her way to her old house. Her dress danced lightly in the wind, her hands swaying by her as she walked, her right one clutching a bloodied knife. To her vengeance could never have been more sweet. With each stab, she had felt her burdens grow less, her spirit rise, and with each stab, she could hear her husband.
She stood before her house. The mansion, that once was brimming with noise, now drowned in silence. Its once white walls, which dutifully reflected every ray of sunlight onto the gardens of roses, petunias, violets, now had vines slithering on it, with moss painting a layer of green over its white walls, while the unkempt gardens were overrun with weeds, grass and vines.
But the mansion was not where Cinderella was headed. She paved her way through the thick foliage of weeds and ferns in the gardens to her intended location. Her eyes rested on a patch of garden, a virgin patch, where pumpkins had started to rot, a patch magically untouched by the lawless weeds and ferns.
This was where all had started.
She looked at the pumpkin patch, where the fairy mother had blessed her, turned her from a maid into a princess whose beauty no mind could fathom. She now knelt on the warm soil, kissed by the morning dew, her eyes now closed, her hands cupped into a prayer, still holding the knife, her mouth chanting
‘Thou who lifted me from pain and suffering,
Thou who had loved me like no other,
I ask now for your soothing presence,
I ask for you, oh fairy godmother.’
Out of nowhere, a brilliant flash of bluish white light erupted before her, though Cinderella still held her eyes shut. From the light a woman slowly emerged, her wings appearing first, followed by her graceful form. Her head was drooped low, hinting that she not was happy with the bloodied knife.
‘What have you done, my child?’ a gentle voice spoke.
Cinderella opened her eyes.
‘I have delivered justice to a mortal.’ Her eyes looked up defiantly.
‘No’ the fairy denied, ‘you have let vengeance control you, you have let fury and his unchaste fire touch you. What have you done, my child?’
‘But I have avenged the death of my husband. The man who clothed me, loved me, raised me from the kitchen.’ her defiance slowly retreated.
‘You have wronged yourself. Do you think the man who clothed you, fed you, raised you would want you to be known as a murderer? You have not avenged his death, but merely allowed the whims of your fury to conquer you. What have you done, my child?’ the fairy’s last sentence was said in despair.
Around the fairy, mist had started to appear.
‘What’s happening to you godmother?’
‘I am no fairy my child. I am nothing divine. All I am is the good in you, the gentle Cinderella who knew how to forget and forgive. Alas! You have let her be killed by your own blind fury, and in turn, you have killed me. And now, like your good, I am no more.’ And in a low tone. ‘What have you done my child?’
'The gentle Cinderella is a fool who could never see the real people behind their masks. A gullible fool who let her beloved be killed.' Her voice began to crack, her eyes moist.
'What have you done, my child?'
The fairy slowly melted into the mist, which was getting foggier by the hour. Warm tears speckled Ella’s face, like little jewels that shone under the sun.
‘Don’t go.’ A strained voice pleaded.
The mist grew, blanketing the fairy and the devil from the world. The sheet of fog swept in, shielding the good from the kneeling devil, whose tears now formed channels running through her face. The good became one with the fog, and it hung like a forgotten memory, leaving the devil alone in the world.
The devil looked at the sheet of white that blinded her from the world, from reality, like her fury. Then she looked down upon the bloody knife and hands.
Her once cupped hands now clutched the blade by its hilt. She raised it a few inches above her abdomen and for the last time, looked around at the thick veil that now clothed her from the vicious world. The world that was filled with wild assumptions. The world which had torn away her happiness, the world that enslaved her, the world who morphed Ella to Cinderella, the world who made the gentlest lady into a murderess.
The wicked unkind world.
She swiftly lowered her knife. A muffled scream ran through the air.
The wall of fog collapsed to reveal a young woman whose form crumbled on the warm soil, a small pool of red forming around her. Sun shone on the frail body, her eyes, now filled with tears, glistened in the light. The breeze swept over her, soothing her agony, and the birds and rats, her friends, now mourned around her in their silence. She smiled
Nature has taken pity on me
Then her eyelids suddenly shut, swearing never to let her blue eyes dart around the world that hurt her. Her mouth pursed itself, never to let her beautiful voice run free through the world that despised her. She lay in that pool of blood, her strength slowly ebbing away from her, her breaths becoming less rapid, her heart slowing its pace, and in her mind reeling memories - as a child, then an orphan, followed by a stepdaughter, then a maid, soon a lover, a wife, a princess, a prisoner, and finally a murderess...
What have you done, my child?
Her crumpled form now took its last breath, bidding adieu to the wicked, unkind world who had only hated her, and to Fate, who only had frowned upon her.
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