Monsters And Murderers

Part 4

Anastasia

A flash of gold hair. A whispered 'goodnight'. A distorted scream, likely from Drizella's mouth.

I whirl around, just in time to see a silver sword arching through the air towards me-

And stopping a hair's width from my head.

I let out a breath I had no idea I'd been holding. In my peripheral vision, I see Drizella sag in relief.

My eyes travel up the arm holding the sword, still an inch away from slicing through my skull. My bewildered gaze meets Cinderella's cold glare, and we hang there for a second, suspended in time, yellow eyes on blue.

Then her lips twist, and the mirage is broken.

"Don't worry, my dear Anastasia. I will kill you- but first I have something to show you."

I keep my face blank as I turn to my sister, watch as her beady eyes widen.
Behind me, Cinderella laughs. It sounds like chiming bells, and the noise is so out of character that I startle.

"Oh yes. I  do apologize- little Drizella here is in on my little secret. Very disappointing, I am aware, but we were waiting for you to arrive oh so long, and as you might know, my lips can be quite loose when I have a juicy secret to keep..."

She grins. I scowl as childhood memories come flooding back, but I focus on one in particular- my first crush… on the son of a wealthy businessman.

I had been giddy and falling fast. Cinderella had been sweeping the halls outside our room in the dead of night when she heard Drizella and I whispering about him.

The next day, a newspaper was delivered to our house with the wrong address- 56 cherry blossom grove. His house.

Mother had, of course, tasked little Cinderella with returning it to the real owners- but when not the mother or the father- but the son- creaked open the door, she just couldn't keep her damned mouth shut.

She'd felt terrible afterwards- blessed soul she used to be- and came crying to me, confessing everything.
That didn't change a thing. He'd been disgusted, and for days he and his friends recoiled if I came anywhere near. That's when they started calling us 'the ugly stepsisters'.

To be honest, I never really forgave her.

Cinderella

I whistled.

Whistled as I plucked the blade from Anastasia's hand, grinning as she scowled.

Whistled as I bound them both to a marble pillar.

Whistled as I swung round and flounced into the second compartment in my three-room compartment.

Whistled as I saw it. The surprise.

Whistled as I dragged my prince's mangled corpse back to see my sisters.

Drizella

I'd known it was coming, but that didn't make it any less horrifying.

All the breath left my body, my knees buckles, I was left like a deflated balloon. My gut twisted into a knot and a strangled scream bubbled up my throat; lost in all the bile that had hurled itself into my mouth.

I noticed Anastasia wasn't faring much better. She looked positively pale, clammy and white as a sheet. Partially, it could have been blood loss from her Cinderella-inflicted wounds, but it seemed largely pure horror.

Oh, how I wanted to comfort my sister- to stroke her hair and tell her it was merely made up, like I used to when she woke from a bad dream.

But I would not lie to her.

It was a nightmare, yes. But it was not a dream.

~*~

The once-handsome prince lay crumpled on the ground at our feet, throat slit open in a bright red smile.

His hair was matted, tangled through with dried blood.

Almost a fifth of his body was gnawed away by still-hovering bugs and flies. His jaw was shredded open, showing a full set of browned, ruby-smeared teeth.

It was terrible, horrible. And I couldn't look away.

Cinderella sighed heavily, and I jolted. Anastasia barely flinched, eyes snared on the prince's dismembered carcass.

"Told everyone he'd gone on a hunting trip," she shrugged. "If a rogue boar or angered bear happened to do away with him while he's gone- well, wouldn't that be a damned shame?"

I stared into her cruel eyes as her cloyingly sweet tone increased. She flipped her hand to inspect her perfectly filed nails. "You see, sister darlings, I'm a princess now. I simply no longer needed him."

I stared at her, but her gaze was fixed on my sister, her lips slowly twisting into a smirk.

I gasped, heart beating faster. I knew what was coming.

"I apologize for the unpleasant display," She drawled, sounding not very sorry at all. "I've learned that some bodies just don't keep well." She turned her smirk on me. "Not unlike your mother's."

My throat tightened. It took all my might to will my tears away. Those words crushed me. I deflated.

But then I straightened again as sadness drained, making way for a bright, burning anger that filled every bit of me.

It was her. She did this- to me, to Anastasia, to my mother.

And I would end her for it.