Cinder--A Mixed Up Fairytale

A Story by Of The Gifted

A princess with mental problems??? Uh-oh!

Cinderella awoke with a start. She wasn’t sure why, and she felt…strange. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something seemed off. She also had the distinct feeling that someone was watching her. Peeking out from beneath the covers, Cinder--she hated being called by her real name--scanned her bedroom in the dark. Even with the moonlight shining through her window, she couldn’t see a thing.

She slowly got out of her bed, wincing when its old wood creaked. Looking behind her shoulder with each step, Cinder quickly tiptoed across the room and--with shaking hands--lit a candle. As soon as the flame appeared on the wick, she whirled around, expecting someone to be standing there, ready to pounce. But she didn’t see anyone. With a sigh of relief, she walked across the now dimly lit room to her bed. As she lifted her covers to get back in, she heard an “oink!” and a few snorts.

Cinder froze, fear gripping her veins like a falling climber holding on to a rope for dear life. She waited and listened for other sounds, but didn’t hear anything else. As she got into her bed, she tried to ignore the bad feeling deep down in her stomach. Attempting to rationalize to get rid of it, she told herself it was just her imagination. Next, she told herself to just stop being paranoid, but that didn’t work either. Cinder had struggled with paranoia since she was twelve years old. She couldn’t remember how it started, but it had gotten worse with each passing year. Now at age nineteen, it’d gotten so bad that in the back of each drawer of her dresser, she’d hidden nearly twenty weapons altogether. Knives, bows and arrows, shurikens, you name it. She even kept broken shards of glass in her dresser. Under the bed were axes, swords, and saws. In fact, she’d even hidden a few knives under her pillows, “just in case”’ as she put it.

Cinder finally drifted off to sleep. Hours later, she awoke to the soft tweets of birds outside her castle. Oh, how she hated those birds! They were never in sync when they sang. They excreted their waste in random places, never in just one designated area. Never bothered to look where they pooped, never cared to clean it up. And their beaks! The top half was always slightly longer than the bottom half. Their tweeting never made a rhythm, just a jumbled mess of squeaks and creaks. What made it worse that morning was that there were 3 birds-an odd number-sitting on her window ledge!

She just couldn’t take the inharmonious tweeting and the odd quantity of birds, so Cinder rolled out of bed and stomped all the way to her window. Upon reaching it, she grabbed a handful of rocks (from a pile beneath the window neatly stacked into a perfect pyramid, just for mornings like this) and threw them out the window, screaming until the birds flew away. She’d tried to hit them, but not a single bird was hit because she forgot to put her glasses on.

That’s another thing. Aside from having paranoia and a ridiculous case of OCD, Cinder had terrible anger management issues. The maids who worked the morning shifts used to come running to her bedroom every morning because of her screaming fits over the birds, but they’d gotten so used to it by now that they hadn’t even so much as blinked when Cinder’s screams echoed through the castle.

“Oh, those stupid birds,” Cinder muttered angrily as she rearranged the leftover rocks. Once they were back in a perfect pyramid again, she stood up and stalked over to her dusty old toy chest in a corner of the room. She kicked it several times and screamed “I hate those birds! I hate them! I hate them! I hate them! If they come back tomorrow, I’ll KILL THEM!!” Then she turned around and walked out the bedroom door with a huge smile plastered on her face, happy to start the new sunny day.

Oh poor, poor Cinderella. Loaded with multiple mental disorders, one of them being--as you’ve just witnessed--bipolarity. Hopefully, it won’t get worse after what happens next.

Cinder hastily ate breakfast and brushed her teeth. She was eager to get outside; she loved the outdoors. In fact, the rose garden was her favorite part of the castle grounds. She happily skipped to her bedroom to dress and gussy herself up for a stroll outdoors. When she was done, she stared at herself in the mirror for a brief moment.

Cinder admired her reflection of long blonde hair, two blue eyes under a black pair of glasses, and pale, acne-free skin. Strangely, she’d always been free of pimples, even when she’d first hit puberty several years back. Her stepmother told her that the reason why she’d always had acne-free skin and developed multiple mental disorders was because her real mother dropped her as a baby. When she’d bent down to pick her up, she accidentally kicked her a few feet away. She did this over and over until Cinder finally skidded into the wall and appeared to be seeing stars. Her mother was embarrassed that she couldn’t pick up a single infant, while on the other hand, the father thought the incident was absolutely hilarious. This Cinderella never grew up to be your ordinary “I-want-to-go-to-the-ball-and-marry-the-prince” Cinderella. She became more of an “I-don’t-want-to-go-to-the-ball-and-I-want-to-beat-up-the-prince” Cinderella.

Cinder didn’t have very many friends. Over half of the Gingerbread Palace population was scared of her-even her step-family. Unlike in the Cinderella story most know and love, Cinder’s stepmom and stepsisters never told her to anything. They were so afraid of her they just did everything themselves.

Cinder quickly put on her makeup: thick black eyeliner and mascara, then dark, very dark red lipstick. As she turned away from her dresser to put on her boots, she saw that the books on her bookcase weren’t set up in an orderly fashion. She’d always color-coordinated and alphabetized them: purple books A-Z on the top shelf, blue books A-Z on the ninth shelf, green A-Z on the eighth, yellow A-Z on the seventh, and so on. But this time, the blue books were on the fourth shelf and the red books on the top shelf. In fact, all of the books were misplaced, but she specifically remembered seeing the books in the right order when she went to bed the night before. The maids couldn’t have done it. They were on specific orders to never, ever mess with Cinder’s bookcase. The last time they’d tried to clean her bookcase she’d gotten so mad at the mere sight of the unorganized books that she’d punched several maids, breaking their noses.

It wasn’t just the misplaced books that bothered her; something else seemed to be wrong. She decided to count the books and realized that she was missing a book. She had had 48 books, but now she had 47. If Cinder wasn’t boiling mad when she saw the scattered books, she sure was now! Why was she even angrier that she’d counted 47 books, you ask? It was an odd number! Her ridiculous case of OCD had led her to hate odd quantities even more than mismatched colors.

Perplexed and fuming, Cinder stared at the bookcase, trying to figure out who could’ve done such a thing. Then a sudden thought occurred to her. She relayed the events from the previous night in her mind. The “oink!”, the snorts, the feeling that she was being watched, and the strange feeling that something was “off” about her room.

Cinder thought about this for a while. Who, or what, had made those the snorts? She thought long and hard until she realized the culprits were the Three Little Pigs. “Who else in the palace snorts and oinks?” she thought to herself. It had to have those three mischievous pigs!”

Cinder ran to her neatly placed row of shoes and put a pair of boots on. She hastily tied the laces, making sure that both bows looked exactly the same. Then she ran out the door with a matchbox in her dress pocket and all the way to the castle exit, looking behind her shoulder every time she rounded a corner. She was about to order the guards to bring down the bridge so she could leave, but changed her mind. “What if they haven’t even left yet?” she thought. Cinder asked the guards if anyone had left the castle between then and the day before. She didn’t get much of an answer. One guard replied with a shrug, one guard was asleep, and several others just looked at her like she’d grown a second head.

Cinder rolled her eyes with a sigh and stalked out to the gardens beside the castle. Once she’d reached the rose garden though, she’d completely forgotten about the dastardly little pigs and began to skip happily through it, smelling her favorite roses along the way.

A little while later, she was just about to leave the rose garden when she heard a snort. Cinder looked every which way, trying to find the source of the noise. “I bet it’s those arrogant, trouble-making little pigs who stole my book last night!” she thought angrily. As if on cue, an oink sounded from behind her. She whirled around and saw a pink ear and a pig foot sticking out from behind a rosebush. After realizing there was an odd quantity of each body part, Cinder went berserk.

“Oh, you stupid, horrible, horrible little pigs!” I know you took my book!” Cinder screamed. “Give it back!” She was baffled to hear laughter and snickering from behind the bush. “How on earth is this situation funny to them?” she thought.

“Why should we, Cylinder?” a nasally voice called out from behind the rosebush. This encouraged a new round of chuckles.

Cinder narrowed her eyes. Her voice deepened into a low growl. “Because I’ll kill you if you don’t. And my name. Isn’t. Cylinder. It’s. CINDER!!!”

“You’ll kill us? Oh please, Cinderblock. You and what army?” another voice sounded from behind the bush. All three pigs burst out laughing and snorting.

Now this is where Cinder’s bipolarity kicked into overdrive. It hadn’t appeared since earlier that morning after screaming at the birds to leave. The disorder seemed to be tired of waiting for its turn to show its face, therefore deciding to resurface on its own.

Cinder grinned-a huge grin that spread so wide she looked more insane than happy. Even so, she was as happy as one could ever be. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d felt like she’d won the lottery. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a matchbox.

“If you guys don’t give me back my book, I’ll set the rosebush you’re hiding behind on fire. There wouldn’t be any point in trying to get away once it’s burning because by the time you’ll have seen the flames, at least part of your bodies will have already been burnt. Flames spread pretty fast, you know.” When they didn’t budge, Cinder added “Mmmm. I could really go for some fresh, hot bacon right about now.” She licked her lips and made a loud slurping sound.

Finally, they crept out from behind the bush and faced her, a look of terror written on their faces. Cinder triumphantly stared back at them. The pig on the right wore overalls and a straw hat. Cinder guessed that he had been the one with the straw house before the Big Bad Wolf blew it down. The one on the left wore overalls too, but had a plaid long-sleeved shirt under it and an ax in his hand. He looked about ready to throw it at her. Cinder thought he looked like a lumberjack and realized that he was probably the one with the house of sticks before the Big Bad Wolf came along. Her gaze lingered on him for a while; she was wary of his ax. In the middle stood the pig whom she assumed had the brick house. He wore a black suit and a red tie. Cinder turned back to the lumberjack and spoke.

“Throw that ax at me and you’re dead. The guards will have you in minutes. I’m a princess, remember?” Looking back at how the guards “answered” her question earlier, she realized that that wasn’t really true at all. She was glad the lumberjack seemed to buy it though. His eyes grew wide in terror and he dropped the ax on the ground.

Without warning, the Three Little Pigs took off running. Cinder was suddenly angry all over again. She chased them around the castle grounds. Along the moat, through the vegetable gardens, around trees and flower boxes, and right back to the rose garden. The pigs stopped first, panting, but Cinder was so enraged that she’d built up too much adrenaline to be tired.

While they were still trying to recover from the run, she walked briskly to the edge of the castle grounds, where the land had stopped short and stretched downward like a steep cliff toward the moat. She grabbed a handful of rocks, stuffed them into her dress pocket, and ran back to the pigs. They were just catching their breath when Cinder held two rocks in one hand (not one, but two-it had to be even) and raised her fist as if she were about to throw them at the lowdown, rotten little pigs.

“No no no! Please don’t hurt us! We’ll give the book back! Honest!” the Three Little Pigs cried.

“Then leave it right where you are and never, ever come back,” Cinder replied with a snarl. “Hurry up before I change my mind and decide to have pork chops for dinner tonight.”

The Three Little Pigs nodded and dropped the book on the ground. Then they turned and ran away as fast as they could. They never did come back to the castle.

Cinder, eager to put the book back on its shelf and rearrange her bookcase, ran back into the castle. Holding only one book instead of an even amount of books was bothering her, so she ran as fast as she could. Again, she felt the distinct feeling that someone was watching her, so she looked behind her shoulder with every few steps she took.

Why all this madness over a book, you ask? Well that’s just for you to ask Cinderella yourself. Anyway, everyone lived happily ever after.*

*Except for Cinderella--she ended up in asylum two months later.