A Fairy Tale - Part 2

Days, weeks, months passed and still the girl woke up every morning and climbed out of bed and went about her business and despaired.

She sat in class and struggled to see the teacher’s notes through the darkness that clouded her vision; she ate lunch with her friends and worked to hear their words over the hateful whispers pouring constantly into her hears; she listened to great men and women speak in the chapel and tried to find joy to counter the tremendous weight of sorrow that was upon her shoulders.

And meanwhile, whenever she was alone she fell in bed and closed her eyes and had no recourse but to exhaustedly listen to the voices or else take the scissors and fight the only way she knew how – by hurting herself.

Every day that went by where all she saw was terror and darkness and despair was another small victory for the evil genius who hovered on the edge of her existence. Every tear she shed brought a malignant smile to his face, and every mark she drew on her arms was greeted by a tremendous cackle from that beast.

She looked around her and all she saw was darkness. She looked to the heavens but her view of the sun was clouded by the leering faces of the ghosts of her past. Somewhere in the depths of her heart she knew that her past was not all darkness; she had memories of laughter and sunshine and friendship and tears that were shed for joy. She knew that if she could just get a glimpse, just a fleeting, blurry, stop-motion glimpse of a smile or a sunny day or a friend’s face she would have the strength to carry on another day.

And a fleeting, blurry, stop-motion glimpse of a friend’s face came, and she carried on another day. But when she woke up the next morning the darkness was more intense than before and the whispering had turned into full-fledged screaming into her ears.

“I hate you. I hate you!” she screamed into her empty bedroom, and she didn’t know if she meant it more to the shadows torturing her or to herself.

At the edge of her consciousness each second was a picture of blood. Just an inch away from her grasp in every moment was the knife that had somehow become her best friend. And merely a fraction away from that was the thought of death, and as the days wore on that thought became more and more powerful and she became more and more convinced that not only would it be best for her to die, it would be best for anyone who’d ever come into contact with her if she were to simply erase herself from the earth.

And then it happened.

It was a cold, snowy night sometime in the winter. She found herself walking down the road, alone except for her constant companions, Doubt and Sorrow and Regret and Hatred and the shadows and the ghosts of her past. And they were all whispering in her ear about one thing.

“The tallest bridge in America is up ahead,” whispered one.

“Just think how great it would be to jump,” said another.

“A split second of blissful freedom,”

“And then instant death,”

“The best-case scenario for all parties involved!” finished the last one triumphantly.

She had just decided that they were right (and how stupid had she been for taking so long to understand) when she heard a different voice at her side.

This voice caressed her ears where the others grated; it filled her soul with warmth where the others made her wonder how it was possible to be so icy; the mere sound of it shot joy into her heart where the others sent only despair. And the words it chose? Simple and kind.

“Lies,” it said. “They are all lies.”

She stopped walking and turned all about, trying to see the speaker of the voice while the shadows scurried madly about her and tried to block her view.

“Don’t listen to the lies, beloved,” whispered the voice, and through a chink in the armor of her tormentors she saw the speaker.

She’d never seen a more beautiful man. The most beautiful part about him was the kindness in her eyes. She looked into them and something shifted in her heart, and she felt love for the first time.

“Who are you?”

“I am the Prince who has come to rescue his damsel in distress.”

“Take them away,” she begged.

He smiled. “Don’t believe the lies anymore,” he said before the cloud made him disappear again.

She turned and walked back the way she had come, ignoring the frantic hisses urging her to go towards the bridge.

“Not tonight.”

In the next few days, whenever the shadows spoke terror into her heart, she closed her eyes and remembered the stranger’s kind eyes and his words: “I am the Prince who has come to rescue his damsel in distress.”

Outside her room, the evil genius trembled with a mixture of fury and terror. He had been so close, had worked so hard to keep the Prince away, and now, in the moment of triumph, he had arrived to destroy everything!

The girl carried on each day, surrounded by her cloud of blackness, but things were better now: she could catch glimpses of sunlight in the darkest of hours, or hear snippets of joyful music when the hateful voices were at their loudest. She lived each day in the hopes of seeing the beautiful Prince again, of hearing his melodious voice and feeling that strange warmth in her heart again.

“Where is he?” she murmured to herself.

“I’m right next to you,” she heard the mellifluous voice speak next to her.

She sensed the shadows stir as they sought to drown him out, but the Prince said “Enough!” and they parted ways. And there he was, standing straight in front of her, and the path was clear. She could escape this cloud of blackness!

She took a step and felt the darkness move with her. The Prince smiled and reached out his hand. With trembling fingers, she reached out too and he took hold of her fingers.

“Will you take me away from them?” she begged, staring deep into his kind eyes.

He smiled sadly. “The shadows will always find you again unless you defeat them once and for all.”

She felt her heart drop and despair bite at her heart. “You’re not going to rescue me?”

“I will walk by your side and I will fight your ghosts for you. But you have to believe the truths I tell you or the lies will never go away.”

“I have been believing the truth this whole time.”

His eyes were dark when he looked at her. “What you have been believing are lies, beloved. What I say to you is the truth: you are worthy; you are loved; you are precious and beautiful in my sight and you have much to offer the world. If you defeat these liars with me you will be able to see sunlight again and walk freely again and you will reach out your hand and touch people and make their lives better. If you hold my hand and walk with me through the darkness you will emerge on the other side and you will give a precious gift to the world.”

She looked into his eyes and knew that he spoke the truth. “You will stay by my side?”

“I will never leave you and I will never abandon you. You will travel through the darkness, but I will be there to fight the terrors away. You will never be alone.”

“Why did you take so long to come to me?”

“I’ve been here this whole time. You just couldn’t see me because the shadows were too strong. But my light is stronger than the shadows and I will destroy them for you if you will only trust that I am with you, even if you can’t see me.”

She stared deeply into his eyes for a long moment, and then she knew.

“I will trust in you even when I can’t see you. I will know that you are by my side even when I can’t feel you. I will believe the truths you tell me even when I can’t hear them over the lies. You are my Prince, come to rescue this damsel in distress.”

“How’s that for a story?” I opened my eyes and looked over at Ella.

She nodded her head slowly.

“What happened to the evil genius?”

“He suffered a great loss that day. But he didn’t let it get him down.”

“Oh?”

“He’s still out there, searching for poor damsels to ruin.”

“The Prince doesn’t defeat him?”

“Someday, the Prince will destroy him completely. But today is not someday, Ella. Today the poor damsels have a chance to fight back before he ruins their lives completely.”

A Fairy Tale - Part 1

               “Tell me a story.”

                “A story?”

                “Tell me a story.”

                I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling above Ella’s bed.

                “A story?”

She sighed and looked over at me.

“Yeah, like you used to tell me. Back in high school, whenever we would have sleepovers, and you would make up fairy tales to tell me about your days.”

It had been so long since we’d been in high school, so long since we’d had a sleepover, so long since we’d said more than “I miss you” to each other on Facebook. So a story? Where to even begin?

“Come on, Jane. Tell me a story.”

I sighed. I suppose if she really wanted a story I could give her a story…

Let me tell you a fairy tale. It’s about a damsel in distress and the great Prince who came and rescued her.

Once upon a time a young girl lived in a country far far away. Far far away from what, you ask? She lived in a country far far away from home. You see, her home was a filled with shadows and ghosts and things that went ‘boo’ in the dark, and finally she decided to run away from it all. So one sad day she packed up all her bags and kissed her mother and her father good-bye and got in an old Buick and drove and drove and drove. She had to drive so far that she had to stop halfway there and spend the night in a hotel.

And the next morning she got up early and got back in that Buick and started driving. And the closer she got to her destination, the more her stomach clenched and the more her mouth became dry and the more she could see her fingers start to tremble as they clenched the steering wheel. She could tell she was driving somewhere beautiful, because she could faintly sense rolling green hills and picturesque white picket fences and elegant horses romping through the grass, but all she could really see was the road ahead, spotted as it was by terror.

And soon she was there. As she pulled up in front of her new home, she took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and whispered “let this be the best year of my life.”

And for a while it was. For a while all her life consisted of was new friends and fun activities and going to classes (and learning and learning and learning), and exploring the lay of the land and learning which foods in the mess hall were edible and which really weren’t. There never seemed to be a dull or a sad moment in her life, and there definitely was never a moment when the shadows of her past fell upon the blossoming promise of her future.

As she went to bed one night, the young girl smiled to herself. She had friends and she was happy and, for the first time in a long time, she was content. She drifted to sleep thinking how happy she was that her wish had come true, and whispered to the sleeping form on the bed across the room “I’m so glad you’re here to enjoy with me the best year of my life.”

But somewhere there was someone who didn’t want her to be happy. An evil genius lay waiting at the periphery of her existence, waiting for her to be at the peak of her happiness so he could come and push her over the brink. This evil genius was a being skilled in all manner of dark arts, and as he watched her live her happy life he contemplated all maleficent tricks he could pull to destroy her.

It took him a while to figure it out, but one day as he sat at the edge of her existence he heard a voice speak to him.

“Let us back in.”

He turned and he saw them, in a great black cloud, the faces of the ghosts of her past and the shadows that had once haunted her.

“But I thought you had been defeated,” said the evil genius.

“We have been on a long journey,” hissed the ghosts. “She escaped us for a while, but we were never defeated. And we have caught up to her now, and are here to defeat her.”

The evil genius smiled. How perfect, he thought: a fool-proof way to destroy her, and he didn’t even have to get his hands dirty.

He stepped aside and waved his arm toward the young girl, who just happened to be traipsing up the hill to go watch some of her friends run a race. “Have at her,” he murmured, then vanished in a blaze of swirling blackness.

The black cloud of ghosts and shadows and horrors unspoken shot forward and wrapped themselves around the girl, who was immediately imprisoned in a darkness so intense that it could only be felt by her, not seen by any others. As she put one foot in front of the other, her steps faltered, and she felt a heaviness in her soul, a heaviness she had not experienced in many months.

She carried on and went and watched her friends, but she couldn’t find it in herself to rejoice for them: her heart was torn and her mind was being plagued with memories, and the sun that had been shining so much for her was covered by angry shadows.

Later that day she went back to her room and stretched herself out on the floor, and cried. She screamed and she raged and she banged her fists into the ground and she pleaded for the shadows to be taken away, and instead they simply grew thicker and more suffocating. She screamed herself hoarse and cried until she was exhausted, and when she was done, lying drained on the floor, the ghosts started talking to her.

“You’re worthless,” one of them hissed into her ear, sending shivers through her body.

“They don’t actually care about you,” whispered another one.

“You’re the cause of all the troubles in the world,” the first one hissed again, and as the tears began to slowly trail from her eyes it was as though they were feeding on them. The more she cried the more vicious they became.

“Your mother wishes she’d had an abortion.”

“Your roommate wishes you were dead. Then at least she would have free tuition.”

“Your brother is so ashamed of you. He only wishes you had never been born.”

“Ever wondered why we’re the only part of your past that comes back? Because we’re the only ones who ever really cared about you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, just – just stop it,” she whispered.

The first shadow laughed. “We’re all you have. And we’re never going away.”

“No. Please, no.”

“You know how to make us stop.”

Slowly, she stood up and walked to her desk. She sat heavily down in her chair and looked at the green scissors sitting in the mug with all her pens.

“Will you go away if I do it?”

“Oh, yes.”

It only took a second – just a second to press the tip of the scissors into the skin of her forearm and drag them up; just a second for the blood to slowly bubble to the surface and sit there, each drop like an tiny ruby, so beautiful and yet so horrifying. And just a second for the intensity of the black cloud to triple in horror, until it covered her so that she couldn’t scream, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.

The shadows started laughing, and each individual chuckle sent shafts of terror down her spine. The first one leaned down to her ear.

“You will never defeat us. You were put under pressure, and you broke. You will never escape this darkness.”

Outside the window, the evil genius watched the girl put her head down on the table, watched her shoulders start to shake and her fingers tighten on the handle of the scissors. The game had almost been won, he knew, and as he laughed silently to himself he shook his fist and whispered “I will win this one, my friend. I have already won this one.”

The next morning the sun rose just as always, and it shone just as brightly as ever. The girl’s roommate woke up and went about her business as cheerily as any other day, and the girl herself climbed out of bed as though today were yesterday and her past were still a thousand miles away.

But around her lurked the black cloud, and no matter how hard she tried to look into the future, all she saw was blackness.