New Flash Fiction: Glass Hearts

Today's story - Glass Hearts by E. E. King - could not come at a better time, what with the trailers for the upcoming new Kenneth Branagh movie version of the fairytale Cinderella just hitting the cinema screens. Our story today however is seen (well that's precisely the wrong word, as you will soon appreciate) from the perspective of one of the "Ugly Sisters". And, in case you don't recall this version of the story from your childhood days, this tale is based on the Brothers Grimm version of the Cinderella fable - they called it Aschenputtel - and it is much, well, grimmer!

About our author: E.E. King is a performer, writer, biologist and painter. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” Her books include: Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife, Real Conversations with Imaginary Friends, The Feathernail and Other Gifts and Another Happy Ending.  Her newest novel Blood Prism will be out shortly.

She has won numerous awards - the most recent is the Gemini Flash Fiction Award - and she is a member of SFWA. She has worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain and butterflies in South Central Los Angeles.

elizabetheveking.com 

Glass Hearts
by E. E. King

I can feel the sun on my face. It’s hot. Beads of salt sweet sweat chase down my face like tears. I am surrounded by darkness in day - sore from heel to toe.  Some would say it’s what I deserve. Some would say I chose my own punishment. I say it’s not so easy to know the hidden pathways of the heart. I say you don’t always get what you deserve even if it’s what you ask for. 

You grow up too tall, fat, ugly and over looked.  If it suddenly seems you might just have a shot at happiness, a chance for success. Is it wicked to try to grasp it? 

I doze, lids drooping over empty sockets. I’m so tired. Eunuch wolves howl outside my prison each night keeping me awake. Maybe they were once princes and resent the change. 

Day and night are the same to me; it’s only the temperature that fluctuates.  I used to think that sunset was God’s way of teaching us perspective - all lines converging from a single point below the horizon and spreading off into eternity – but I have lost my sense of proportion. 

I sit trapped in darkness - chilled with an interior cold. Tiny frigid fingers curl around my bones. My body is a coffin.

My punishment for being ill to look on is also my reward - I no longer have to view my ugliness - to see men’s glances slide over me like raw eggs. To notice mothers stare with pity, children with scorn and old women with distaste. I can no longer see my foul face and compare it to my lovely sister’s. Of course I can no longer see my sister either, or anything else.  Not even grey shadows break up my night. The blackbirds did their job well. 

My punishment for being too tall is similarly fitting. Snip-snap a chop of heel and toe and I am no longer towering and straight. In fact I can barely stand - cowering like an old woman, hunched like a mole hill, even though I am but twenty-five.

My surer, tiny and perfect-as-a-glass- slipper sister will be punished too, though she cannot see it yet.  I may lack sight, but I have vision. It stretches above appearances, through facades, behind exteriors and beyond walls. I can see that princes are rarely charming and if they are, they are likely gay or gallivanting. 

Some might say it’s sour grapes, my vision, tainted by bitterness, darkened by envy.  But I say who’s to know that it is not the truth? Rose colored glasses also tint reality.

Some say I was evil, but I did not choose to be ill favored and fat, nasty natured and sour.

Society scorns you-curls your finger around a trigger and acts scandalized when you pull back. You are startled too - after shock is jolting. Gun powder makes you weep. Perhaps I was mourning the soon to be loss of my eyes. 

It’s possible I have been blessed. Unlike my lovely sister I will not have to see my beauty fade and my prince stray. I will not have to watch the inevitable journey into the dark.

I sit, almost in peace-if not for the pain in my feet-which hurt even when elevated.

I have heard of mermaids who traded fins for love - exchanging the freedom of weightless blue seas for false hearts and were similarly rewarded. Receiving sorrow and silence in spite of good intentions and faith... But perhaps it was because they had no souls. Mermaids never do, no matter how good they are.  Is that justice?

Now I sit in the dark sun while the birds eat dried remnants of jellied eyes off my cheeks. The soft caress of feathers and sharp peck of beaks offer a strange comfort. They show me I am not alone in this darkness. Or at least no more than we all are.