Roses and Black Glass: A Dark Cinderella Tale
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Chapter I
1
Christian smirked with interest as the place came closer into view through the carriage window. Though seventeen and considered an upstanding young man, he couldn’t help but feel much curiosity pouring to him at the sight of the large house, seeping through the cracks in the carriage like ghostly fingers. For quite a while, he’d been anxious to have a look inside the Madison house, but he hadn’t been fortunate enough to have anyone so close to him die. Today was that day.
There was another wagon trailing along behind them that also belonged to Christian’s father. In the back of that wagon rested the body of his aunt, covered neatly in white sheets. She had died in the night– a woman only in her forties that had been growing sicker over the past months. The deal with death done, her body was now being taken to be prepared for a funeral. Christian couldn’t help but wonder what they’d do to her corpse. What would they stuff her body full of for preservation? What would they do with all the fluids they drained? Would they gouge out the woman’s eyes, or leave them within to settle as pools of mush?
“Are you alright, Christian?” asked Anthony Charming, the young man’s father. The words were caring, but the tone was quite flat and emotionless.
Christian tilted his head from the window, looking across at his father, but not completely withdrawing from the light of the gray day that shown in on him. It looked like rain, but it was pleasant to Christian.
“Perfectly fine, father,” he assured the man.
“Good to hear. We will be there soon. I want to thank you for accompanying me today. With the death of your aunt… I’m just not feeling like myself.”
“I realize it’s hard for you,” Christian said, trying to be sympathetic as best he could. “You and Aunt Kate were very close.”
Christian wasn’t exactly sure what to say to his father. The two of them had never been very warm in conversation and neither was Christian used to giving out any type of sympathy. The men of the family were taught to be silently strong, not showing their emotions. That had been their mother’s insistence, for their father was quite a passive fellow. It was not spoken openly, but he and his brothers were all taught not to be like their father. Christian had personally never had a problem with those things – his emotions were few. He couldn’t say that he had ever known true happiness or love, but on the other hand, neither had he known true hate.
Mr. Charming took a deep breath then, unsettling the silence in the carriage that had been accompanied only by the clomping of horse feet up the path.
“I’ll do all the talking in there,” Anthony Charming said. “It will be fine.”
“You’re sure?” asked his son.
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Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale (novel preview)
Storie d'amore(Now available as an ebook and in print!) A dark retelling of Cinderella in early America. In an age when cutting up dead bodies is considered taboo, Cindy’s father is a mortician. She is happy with their fascinating life, though controversial, unti...
