Not-So-Happily-Ever-After

Cinderella, Part 2

 Many days passed, and Ella’s small glimmer of hope was fading quickly. Sir Castellum never returned after her break-down, which she figured wasn’t a good sign. Soon after the knight disappeared, a small young woman appeared, bringing food, water, and an odd tasting liquid that Ella soon figured out was medicine prescribed by the court physician. Once she started hearing strange noises, she decided she wasn’t going to take the medicine, but guards soon appeared (Sir Castellum not among them), and it was forced down her throat. Alone on her own floor in her own cell, Ella had almost no human contact. Henry never once visited, not that it mattered anymore. But Ella was never truly alone anymore.

    Voices plagued her waking moments, the nonstop whispering, and sometimes shouting and screaming, depriving her of the sleep she so desperately needed. A few days later, the hallucinations joined the list. Walls would randomly disappear to reveal a dark void. Torches would randomly go out, their absent flame still giving off light. Because of this, dark shadows appeared under her once perfect face. She stopped eating, causing her to lose weight to the point where her clothes hung off her frame like a slave wearing a canvas sack.

    After only one month had passed, the physician was called to examine her as her condition seemed to get worse and worse. But he decided she simply was not getting enough medicine, and tripled her dosage. To the physician’s dismay, this only made her worse, and all the while, Henry never spoke of his wife, and over the years, the people forgot about the girl who had stolen Henry’s heart, and disappeared a few months later. Later, Ella would find that he remarried her step-sister Anastasia, after she convinced him Cinderella had always been mad, and that she had only been trying to save him from Cinderella’s cracked mind.

     But the one thing that no one could have realized was that the tiny amounts of Mercury in her medicine was the cause of her madness, so increasing her dosage only made her madness worse, to the point that stopping her “treatment” wouldn’t rescue her fractured mind and body.

     The scullery maid, whose name was Emily, was often heard telling stories of the girl who went from slave, to queen, to prisoner of her own mind. She told of tales of the screams that would suddenly fill the silence, and the miniscule muttering that could occasionally be heard if you listened hard enough. Of the seemingly random bouts of furry, with angry shrieks, pounding on the door, and scratching at anything in reach. Her once beautiful but strong hands reduced to bloody, scarred messes from the frequent attacks.

     Her hair, once silky, clean and neatly pulled back into a beautiful and elegant bun, now sat plopped on top of her head like year old road kill. It was caked with dried blood with small bald patches from when she ripped at her own skull in weak attempts to stop all the noise. Her makeup was smeared permanently down her once pretty face from the wracking sobs and angry tears that went on eternally, and her skin marred by the scars of her scratching. Her dress lay around her in shreds, once a beautiful remake of the gown in which she had met Henry. Now, it would only be the shell of a memory, and a reminder of everything she lost. Ella, once the kindest, most loving girl in the kingdom, was mad, and nothing, not even her fairy-god mother, could save her now.