Beauty Never Dies

by Cameron Jace

  But who am I to complain? In your eyes, I’m just an evil queen, who wanted to murder her daughter, jealous of her young beauty.

  I have to admit that beauty does have a lot to do with this story, in an ugly way.

  The majestic celebration with the king and queen of Red was mainly to assure everyone that the Sorrows and Reds would always protect each other in the ageless war against the demons outside the borders trying to spread their cursed disease to the locals.

  However, that was not all.

  After dinner, I couldn’t take my eyes off their nine-year-old prince. Such a beauty, the boy was. He was well-mannered and shook my hand with such delicacy like I’d never seen before, but he seemed bored in the presence of the elders like us. His beautiful eyes were scanning the castle for the princess.

  I asked my husband to summon our daughter and introduce her to the prince, hoping that cupid would strike his arrow and bind their hearts with velvet threads of love forever. Who else could I think of being my daughter’s husband after many years to come?

  As our loyal servant escorted my lovely Snow White down the stairs, her black hair waved down her back on the white dress she wore. She looked paler than usual that day – the sun had become her worst enemy lately; she wouldn’t go out in daylight, and her room was darkened with curtains rolled down over the windows. However, she stood looking fabulous like a princess, licking her blood-red lips the moment she laid eyes on the beautiful prince. It was appetite at first sight.

  The prince seemed taken by her as well. When the prince’s and princess’s eyes met, the elders exchanged murmurs and started talking about how beautiful they were. The sun splayed through the curtains and suddenly, Snow White didn’t mind the sunlight in the prince’s presence. They played together and he chased her across the castle, but Shew was deceivingly smart in hiding and manipulating, always with that doe-eyed smile on her face.

  My eyes followed them everywhere they went in the castle. I was worried, for the prince was one of those boys who had an infinite appetite for girls. However young the Reds were, their men had a reputation of growing up and becoming womanizers, but they also had a reputation of being irresistible to women. Shew had an uncanny appetite for beautiful boys at such a young age. I could see it in her eyes whenever she met one.

  What I feared happened eventually. I caught the prince pushing Snow White gently into a corner, and God only knows what that beautiful mischievous nine-year-old had in mind.

  As I parted them, my husband summoned for one of his favorite young huntsmen, about Snow White’s age. The king liked to train young boys he trusted to become huntsmen and later help him defend the kingdom against the demons lurking outside its borders. The young huntsman was to escort the prince and the princess so that nothing crazy would happen.

  The crowd was waiting for us outside to celebrate the day the two kingdoms had become alliances – and maybe more than that in the future. We, the elders, approached the people, and headed out to the balcony when we heard a sudden scream behind us.

  I tuned back, my heart racing, praying that it wasn’t what I feared. I was too late.

  The young prince was lying on the floor, shuddering helplessly as if possessed by demonic spirits, like a fish throbbing for breath out of water. His eyes were all white as he screamed in pain. I could spot the two bite marks on his neck and blood trickling down onto the white and black marble floor.

  I looked for the huntsman, but he was gone.

  Tilting my head, I saw her, my daughter Snow White, standing in the middle of the castle hall with blood dripping from her lips, but still looking as innocent as a white dove, as if she only overdosed on red cherry-flavored ice cream – we didn’t have that in the 18th century, but you get the picture.

  As we ran toward the prince, she seemed astonished at the prince’s fainting, wondering why he didn’t like her biting him, why her bite had hurt him, as if she thought of it like a kiss or something, and I thought the prince was a danger to her. She looked at me with her fangs drawn out, but still with those doe eyes, pleading as if she were the victim, not the predator.

  “What happened to him?” she wondered as my husband used his magical powers to erase the king and queen’s memory to make them forget what happened. He was such a master at the dark arts, but he used them wisely.

  “Take her away from here.” He growled as he held the boy and laid him on a table. “I know how to save him.” He locked himself alone with the boy in the room, for he didn’t want anyone, not even me, to see how he would resurrect the prince.

  I pulled my daughter away, up the stairs, to wash her face and her blood-stained dress. She licked the prince’s blood from her hands like licking melted chocolate from the palm of your hands.

  “You can’t do that.” I yelled.

  I wasn’t surprised though. I knew what she was a long time ago, but I needed to catch her at the right moment to see her change with my own eyes. Still, my love for her chained me and stopped me from reproaching her properly. It was as if I were teaching her the etiquette of how not to drop a plate or a spoon while she was eating.

  “Can’t do what?” She sounded confused, still licking her lips.

  “You can’t just bite anyone you want to.” I gritted my teeth.

  “But he’s so yummy mother,” she said, “so yummy; didn’t you see how cute he is?”

  I rolled my eyes and held back a smile. That must have been the demonic part in me that wanted to smile at my daughter biting a boy she thought was yummy. Don’t all of us girlies like to do that from time to time?

  I allowed reason to win over and managed to knot my face. “Still, that’s no excuse Shew.”

  “Why?”

  “You just can’t. There are some rules that girls should just follow without asking.”

  “But I want more.” She stomped her feet stubbornly, and that tint of gold gleamed in her eyes again. She didn’t understand the darkness she possessed inside her. Her darkness was spontaneous and childish. But how long would she only be a beautiful monster, before the cocoon her darkness was wrapped in would give up and split open?

  “More. More. More.” She repeated.

  “Stop it.” I lost control and screamed at her in her face.

  That’s when the light in her face dimmed …

  She bowed her head down, as she was looking at the floor, I could feel her body heating up in my hands. I think I heard a growl from somewhere inside of her. I could only see her forehead wrinkling tightly behind strands of black hair as her skin slowly died into a paler color. Letting go of her hands, I swallowed my shriek so that she wouldn’t sense my fear. Whatever disease or curse possessed her, I couldn’t allow myself to lose control and sovereignty over her. I was her mother; I was the Queen of Sorrow.

  It was at that very moment that I first noticed that we had become rivals, not mother and daughter.

  “I know what this is all about.” She sighed in a lower tone, still not looking at me.

  My heart raced. I was afraid that when she raised her head again, I would see those golden, scary eyes of her again. I was afraid they would be blackened by sorrow like her grandfather’s. I was alone with her on the second floor of the castle. I regretted that I hadn’t stayed closer to my husband. What would become of her now? What would become of me?

  I doubted that she would only want to suck on my thumb this time.

  “Did you hear me, mother?” She repeated with her head down.

  “I did, darling.” I said reluctantly, trying to fake being confident “Wh-h-at is it about?”

  Eventually, she raised her head …

  “I think the prince doesn’t like me.” She said with her blue eyes filled with unborn tears.

  There were no fangs or golden eyes to be seen. She was just a seven-year-old girl, with blood dripping from her lips, experiencing rejection for the first time in her short life span. I was too confused and overwhelmed to explain to her that the prince, almost dying from her bite
, wasn’t rejecting her, but that you don’t bite some yummy boy and expect him to giggle and jump rope for you.

  “It’s not that he didn’t like you,” I said, holding her in my arms, letting her smear her bloody face onto my royal dress. “it’s—“

  “What then?” She sobbed in my arms. Her skin was cold as ice. So I made up a lie: “It’s just that you don’t bite someone you like so soon, things don’t happen that way Shew. You need to spend a lot of time together first. Get to know each other and make sure that he wants you to bite him by then.”

  “Really?” she gazed happily into my eyes. “Can I try again, then? I promise I’ll let him spend all the time he wants with me first.”

  I washed her and tucked her in bed, reciting that story about the sleeping beauty kissed awake by the prince. As her eyes closed, I wondered whether Sleeping Beauty also bit the prince after he kissed her. Maybe the prince’s kiss wasn’t a kiss. Maybe it was a bite.

  In the following years, we managed to keep her away from other children since she was attracted to biting those who were her age, especially the yummy ones.

  My husband sent for doctors, they sailed over from Germany, Transylvania, and Italy to solve the mystery and cure her disease or curse as discreetly as possible. None of them had a solution, not even the famous Dutch doctor Frederich Van Helsing. She bit a couple of them though.

  It was the end the 18th century and Snow White’s curse seemed to spread everywhere. People were turning into what the locals called vampires all the time, and were hunted and killed however young their age. They ripped out their hearts after burning them at the stake, it was rumored that the heart and the liver were the center of the disease. It was called the vampire craze, a historical event that the Brothers Grimm couldn’t forge since it was documented by other historians, starting from Europe and spreading overseas to the Kingdom of Sorrow. Until this very day, it still bothers me that no one noticed that the Brothers Grimm wrote the fairytale fifteen years after the notorious vampire craze.

  We couldn’t risk anyone knowing about her, so we locked her in the castle, waiting until she turned sixteen years of age. A gypsy healer told us that this was when she would heal, that her soul would weigh exactly 21 grams when she was sixteen. The weight of the soul was measured in a mysterious way that I didn’t know, but the soul’s weight was part of the weight of the heart and could be only measured by weighing the heart with some ancient instrument that I had never heard of before. No heart can be cured before it grows big enough to caress a soul that weighs 21 grams inside it. We were waiting for Snow White’s heart until she became sixteen years old.

  One night, when she was eight, she came to my room late at night while my husband was out in the battlefields.

  “Shew?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply, but approached me in the dark as if she were sleepwalking, and stopped by the bed. Her face glittered in the candle light. I saw that tint of gold in her eyes again like golden fireflies shimmering in the dark.

  She didn’t talk. She just pulled my hand from under the sheets and sucked on my thumb after pricking it with the edge of her fangs. She only drank a couple of drops and smiled at me with her now-not chubby cheeks. She looked incredibly lively and more beautiful after she did. My daughter was a beautiful monster.

  It was not her intention to hurt me. She loved me as much as I loved her.

  “Mom?” she wondered as she tucked herself under the sheets and hugged me. To tell you the truth, she didn’t say mom. She addressed me by my real name, which I prefer to keep to myself for now. I don’t think that you’d understand if I told you who I really am. “Do you remember the day I was born?” she asked.

  I wondered why she asked because I did remember it clearly, like looking into a pure crystal ball. It was a strange day, a very strange day.

  “Do you?” I wondered, running my hand through her hair.

  “No. But I have these dreams where I am someone really important in this world like my father, a fearless warrior. I have to choose between saving the world,” she stopped for a second. “or destroying it.”

  Then she went to sleep.

  ***

  By the time I finished my story, Jacob was dead.

  “That’s enough for a Deadtime story,” I whispered to him and shut his eyes with my hands. I placed two mirror coins onto them to block his eyes from looking into the Dreamworld from the afterlife. “Still you’d wonder about me, right? If I was so tender and she was such a monster, how did I become what I am now?” I let out a painful laugh. “Well, that’s a long story, Jacob.”

  I made sure I placed the mirror coins on his eyes so everyone knew I was here when Jacob died. This was my trademark. The mirror coins were exclusively mine. I made them from the shards of a shattered mirror that I broke myself after it had witnessed death. A mirror that witnessed death is as dear to me as a poisoned apple that steals breath.

  After turning around to leave the cottage, I stopped for a moment because I saw something. There were seven items on a round table beside the door:

  A fork,

  A plate,

  A cup,

  Gingerbread,

  A chair,

  A knife and some magical beans.

  Each item belonged to one of the Lost Seven.

  “Ha. So you did know who they are, Jacob,” I sighed, fiddling with the items. “I swear I will find them and make them remember. And when I do,” I said as I opened a small box with a dead heart in it. “This heart’s soul will weigh exactly 21 grams. And this heart will be mine.” I closed the box and tucked it in my pocket.

  I pursed my heart-shaped lips and killed the candlelight with the cherry scent of my breath. As the darkness came down slowly upon the room, I pulled out my copper hand-mirror and gazed at my beauty. Yes, I gazed at myself in the dark because this was the only way I could see my beauty. But soon, when I find the Lost Seven and kill her, I would change this and be able to see my reflection in daylight once again.

  “Mirror mirror in my hand,” I hissed in the dark. “Who is fairest in the Dreamland?” I said as the mirror started reflecting my beautiful face, glinting with a hue of shiny gold. I smiled in the dark without expecting an answer. The mirror rippled like water. The glittering was enough of an answer from to me. . Looking closer, I noticed that my skin was a little paler underneath the eyes, just a little. “All right,” I mumbled. “Time for a mix of blood, milk and dark chocolate to fix that.”

  But I had one other important question for my copper mirror. “Mirror mirror of hell and heaven,” I hissed again. “Who else knows about the Lost Seven?”

  Even though the girl in the mirror scared the bejeez out of me, I needed to hear an answer. The girl in the mirror was a girl you might knew of, Wilhelm, but tasting her name on one’s tongue was deadly ever after, so I preferred not to call her by her name. When the mirror began to ripple again, I preferred not to look at her scary face.

  “The lost seven, they must die,” The girl in the mirror said in her squeaky voice. “One who could help up is a boy who can fly.” She explained and then disappeared.

  “Thank you, M—“ I was about say her name. “Thank you, Mirror.” I tucked the hand mirror in, pulled my chin up, preparing to leave.

  “Peter Pan,” I said to myself. “How I hate to see you again.” I sighed, as I had no choice but look for him. He knew about the Lost Seven, and I needed every clue I can get.

  Once I opened the door of the cottage, heading out into the snowy night. A shriek curled my lips into a bitter smile, for what I saw, I didn’t expect. Not tonight.

  As I stepped outside, snow fell upon me, splashing onto my face and my cheeks, tasting of cherry, apples, and every other red fruit or vegetable. This snow wasn’t white. It was red snow, and I knew what it meant.

  I knew it was a trick, her trick. Soon, the red falling snow would taste of blood.

  The Grimm Diaries Prequels #2

  Ashes to Ashes & Cinder to Cinder

/>   as told by Alice Grimm

  The remains of the dead witch’s skeleton were found in a small town near Venice in Italy. To inspect it, I had to fool my teachers in California and tell them that my German grandma died, and that I had to fly overseas to attend her funeral. No one even asked me to have my parents call the school to confirm my claim. When you are a descendant of the Brothers Grimm, everybody treats you like a modern-day Cinderella.

  Ironically, I was flying over to Venice to find the real Cinderella. The one everybody accidentally killed when they believed that she was a fairy tale character and didn’t exist.

  It didn’t take me much time to travel from Germany to Venice. I was so curious to see the corpse: an 800-year-old Italian witch. She was found by archeologists with seven nails driven to her jaw. Gruesome stuff. My perfect taste.

  “Why seven nails?” I asked Bella, the Italian archeologist’s assistance while standing over the grave in broad daylight. Bella was about twenty-four years old, seven years older than I was. I am sure her name wasn’t Bella. Some of the investigators around the world preferred not to make their names known to others. “No one really knows,” She said. “It was what they used to do to European witches in general, nailing them in the jaw.”

  “You mean women who were accused of witchcraft,” I corrected her. Women had been burned, crucified, and killed for practicing things like playing a game of dice, which was considered witchcraft at that time. I hate when someone calls them witches because they weren't. “We all know these women were innocent.”

  “Whatever,” Bella said absently as I noticed her wearing those white gloves. It was ironic that I was the one defending witches, since my ancestors had taught me to search for the likes of them all of my life. Not only witches, but fairy tale characters that secretly lived among us. Sometimes, they didn’t even know who they were.

  “What’s really interesting is that the skeleton was wrapped up in a shroud and nailed to the ground.”

  “Any reason for that?” I wondered.