Cinderella: Another Story

The withered walls had seen better days. Not even the mice would come out to keep her despondent soul company. Roaches now infested the cracked, wooden floors which splintered her hands when scrubbing, and scrapped her knees to an unbearable pain. Her fingers bled from sewing and stitching, but her eyes were dried up wells, never to share the emotion which lies so deep within. She felt alone in her desolate identity, begging for a chance to start anew again.

"Cinderella!" echoed through the halls of the mansion.

Surprised, she awoke from daydreaming.

With a sigh of frustration, Cinderella wiped the sweat from her forehead with her exhausted hand, smearing flour above her brow. Her lack of excitement was apparent by her limp limbs and pitiful frown.

"What took you so long to get here?" cried Marguerite, who obviously needed to lay off the Doritos and cheap beer. A miserable stench Ð'- somewhere between rotten eggs and fish Ð'- was so potent that even her mother disowned her presence. As a matter of fact, Marguerite had almost cleared the mansion in its entirety. Her step-mother relocated across the street with her sister, Jacqueline. However, as faithful as ever, Cinderella was there at beckon and call, waiting on her ever demanding step-sister, and was only "a sturdy bell ring away" from her other family.

It had been years since she has seen her Prince Charming, whose estranged behavior was somehow off-set by the war's end. When he returned home, a monster that never once raged before rose from his bowed breast, creating a whirlwind of affairs with various maidens and attacks on mere peasants. Not even Cinderella's cries and pleas stopped him.

Trying to erase all memory of the unfortunate events at the Prince's castle, Cinderella returned "home" to her step-mother, back to the same routine before she had married.

You could see the lack of emotion on her face. Hardly a smile worn, depressed and uncomforted, Cinderella was losing all hope of someone or something out there that would mend her inopportune circumstance.

Every time she walked down the soured hall which led to her step-sister's uninviting room, she felt the walls mocking her existence. They ridiculed her, dripping with hostility, silently laughing at her misery.

The sweet, gentle nature that was once the face of Cinderella vanished into the thinnest of airs, losing all hope of ever being uncovered again.

However, she was always a strong woman, despite the misfortune thrown at her. Attempting her best to create a better situation for herself, Cinderella secretly catered to her own wishes, making pretty drapes for her lair-esque assigned room and knitting beautiful scarves and threading straw hats to wear while working in the garden.

She loved the garden more than anywhere else on the entire estate. It was, in fact, the only place she felt like herself again, alive and charming. She harvested her own vegetable garden, and grew the most delicate, enchanting floral arrangements. A sea of rainbow color, spread an acre wide, was her safe