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.