Happy Ending?

Alexandra was surrounded by the shadows dancing across the pale walls spurred on by the only window carrying a thick beam of light across the tired, grey floor tiles and stale air. She did not seem to be bothered by the iciness penetrating her frail flesh and bones as her skin cracked like a porcelain doll under the moonlight. Silver strands fell, like leaves, one by one, the skull appeared more visibly with glassy, empty eyes. Alexandra, a statue staring at the window with mutilated white long noble garments, did not notice that the large cell door was open behind her, every day was like this, freedom mere feet away but she remained a captive bird abdicating its freedom. A ghost, a blank book devoid of words, attention mysteriously drawn towards the night sky as looking for an escape.

Suddenly, this oppressive quietness was broken and the woman was dragged to sumptuous wooden chambers at the top of a spiralling tower. The nonchalant king asked her, “Does milady want me to remind her why she is here?” Alexandra did not have a mouth of her own, her soul having been sealed away for five long years. Satisfied with this usual outcome, the monarch then whispered in her ear, his breath tainted with a stench of decay, “There is no such thing as a happy ending. If you try to be pure, you will end up stabbed with the failure of your hopes.” He then recounted a dreadful story about change.

Years ago, in an old town where happiness was scarce, but tragedy plenty, a little golden-haired girl was sitting in her humble house, absorbed by the writings of wise men. Her fading mother would always tell her “My child, seeds are planted, but sometimes do not grow, be happy for what is and not what will be.”

The thinker knew better, “For a female protagonist to succeed, she needs to surpass the beast that is man and that will not happen if she works in the land that devours and gives only ashes to all”.

On the weary day of the arrival of the collector, everybody shuddered. They did not know what might unfold, money distributed to the king or corpses to be hanged at the entrance of the palace of despair. As the carriage opened, a ruler with a hunger like no other and a frightened Prince George emerged. “My Lord, the season has not been good for us”, one of his subjects whimpered.

The monster spoke in a sharp, cold tone, “This seems to be the case as a third of the locals will be thrown into the jaws of the nightmares that lurk in the forest.”

Just when the trees were beginning to cry due to impregnation of the air with lamentations, Alexandra appeared in a pile of rocks as if it were a pulpit and made an announcement, “Ghoul, go back to your lair, as I have tamed the untamed”. A creature with the head of a serpent and the body of a scorpion came out of the dark charging at the king who was now a jackal running away cowardly when the prey outsmarts him, abdicating all that he built for his petty life. The boy was spared this embarrassment. Unlike his father, he was a kind soul and had encouraged her to fight back when they were playing once, even if he was too paralyzed to act due to the education of torture endured.

Time went by. The kingdom was being justly ruled by George with the help of his most trusted advisor, who had achieved a magical cooperation between civilization and wilderness. One shiny day a proposal was made and the birds cheered the marriage of the powerful and the humble ones. Alexandra entered the castle and was taken to the highest balcony and from there she saw the forest burning beneath the night sky. “George, help! The children of nature… appear in the sky as black smoke covering the stars! Has your father returned to taste the fear of our people again?” Her knight came, hugged her and threw her into a pit. She landed broken, realizing that innocence is a skin, being shed when the opportunity arises, as all are twisted on the inside, but only some are educated to cultivate it. With her friends and source of power gone, she lost herself in the abyss. Why would a bird fly away from its imprisonment if she had no tree to make a nest on, since every single one had been cut down?

After finishing the tale, George ordered the henchmen “Take my trophy back to its case, since I have already admired it”. He found it strange that they did not obey him like automatons do, but the thought passed as he savoured an old victory. “Tell me, why do you look at the stars when you have lost your spark?”

Instead of the expected silence, she rose up for the first time in an eternity with a deep, mocking voice that replaced her caring one. “I have not been gazing at the dots in the firmament that fight against the emptiness of the void, since that is an illusion. Light is fuelled by dreams that won´t be and fades away eventually, but the hollow space between them does not. It is dark, not empty, its fuel is eternal and is based on what can be created every day, malice”.

George remained still, shocked, as if his perfect house of cards had been blown by the uncaring wind. He was thrown to the same balcony that had transformed Alexandra. “You cannot take away my strength, it is inside me and with it I can control anyone, anything”.

There he was now, a twig ready to be snapped and the frail woman turning into a goddess, eyes, hair and dress as black as the darkest corners of the soul, hands with nails as sharp as a vulture´s. “I loved your lessons, George, but the apprentice now becomes the master”.

George closed his eyes to not see his ending and thought that he heard Alexandra, the little girl, informing him, “There are after all happy endings”, before recognizing the trick, “But not as in fairy tales. Mine will be everyone´s ghastly ending.” She set him on fire with a click of her fingers and as his light disappeared into that terrible night while plummeting down towards the earth below, she wondered, “Well, some cruel men cannot withstand the fall, perhaps only good women are made of never-ending darkness after all.”