Fairytales Aren't Perfect

Chapter One

Chapter One

         Melody Fitz sat on her purple bed covers writing. Her thin necked Hello Kitty pen was securely placed in between her slender fingers. Small curls of blond brushed at the nape of her neck as opposed to where they should have been in the bun on the back of her skull.  The pen flittered about the tattered journal on apparently its own accord, the words lurching so fast head first through her brain on circuits that Melody did understand. She knew if she dared to go any slower she’d lose her train of thought and the story would be gone.

Hannah’s head bobbed tensely between the frigid lines of her shoulders. The hallway was otherwise empty besides the irritating, hurtful sounds of shrill giggles. She had known the moment she had turned the corner of the hallway he was there. She wasn’t an idiot, she knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly what class she had, and he knew exactly how to hurt her the most. Her heart clenched, it hurt too much to bear sometimes.         

Hannah hadn’t known how she had tripped, but she supposed she’d been too far gone in her own thoughts to notice much of anything and next thing she knew her nose was to the floor. She could hear them and despite the fear that welled in her chest, Hannah looked up. Immediately at the sight of his lips crashing onto hers, her heart crushed itself in her chest.   

But something was different, there was a woman. Blonde and beautiful like Hannah never would be. In awe she watched as she strode toward Ian, her tangles of blond waves echoing down her back like the wind in a canyon –

Something stilled Melody’s pen. Her eyebrows met together in the middle of her forehead, a blonde woman? Since when had there ever been a blonde woman?

The pain that came next was worse than anything she had ever felt. It started out as a thrumming then morphed into the pounding of drums. Melody doubled over in pain and clutched at her temple. Her pen falling loose from her hand, completely forgotten as it rolled off the comforter and underneath the bed. Melody was the next to go, following suit of the runaway pen; she slid like dead weight off of her bed. Uncaring for the moment of the loud noise she made as her back hit the floor, the air leaving her like a plane on takeoff. What the hell is wrong with me? She wondered as she twisted on the floor.

They say when you go through pain so immense and you think you just might die on the spot as it feels a kinder outcome, that you have one moment of clarity. One moment of clear, unharnessed suspension. That was how it felt when the pain left her. She lay on the floor, motionless. Her small chest heaving in large desperations as her lungs trying to get the air it had been deprived of suddenly. She could see the cheese curd ceiling she had stared up at since childhood, the slim dots of water damage near the light fixture and on the outskirt where the wall met the ceiling.

Slowly, feeling peaceful for the first time in a long time, Melody closed her eyes. Her eyelashes brushing against the tops of her cheeks with the touch of feathers. She could hear it though, the thumping of her mother dragging herself up the stairs. She knew that in moments her peace would end and she would be where she had been since she was seven.

The door swung open and Melody flinched as the handle hit the wall with such impact she feared it had broken the drywall.

 “What the hell do you think you are doing, you little bitch?” Her mother demanded harshly; her voice made hoarse from the whiskey she had had early that night. Melody’s heart curled in at the noise. Her peace had evaporated, fear replacing it. 

                Tears welled in Melody’s still closed eyes as her hair was yanked up at the roots, pain lacing through the nerves in her brain.