Happily Ever After...

The dreams that fill my visions every night are what some would consider to be nightmares. The memories of pain and suffering swimming together in my subconscious with snapshots of the day’s reality. The glimmering chaotic mass is something only I could ever understand. Only I could love. So many years, decades and centuries have passed I am no longer able to recall the original author whose swirling letters create the biography of my life. The life of a princess, stuff from fantasies and dreams. The words told everything: evil, loss, beauty, magic and love. Everything is included, but one important part has been forgotten...the end.

The rest of the characters brought to life around me have long since found their place in the hands of death. Only one is to share this eternal sentence with me. Prince Charming, also frozen in time. Together we look like the pair of lovestruck teenagers we once were. The aging of my mind, not depicted in my angelic features, pushes me away from the boyish serenity he has found in the haze of happiness.

Once I found the holes in my brain, lacking such simple information such as who created me, I began to question. Why wasn’t I aging? Why can I never remember something completely? What’s wrong with my dreams? Eventually the pieces came together and now my only question is what will make it stop?

There is a code is written inside my head by the words of the pen condemning me with an involuntary happiness that could never hold a candle to pure, unforced, joy. The second after “happily ever after” was whispered the feelings of negativity left me. Now, every real emotion I feel is altered into how the code believes it should be. Whether intended or not, my author wrote me a strong mind, strong enough that even the precious words of paradise don’t have the power to penetrate the walls of my subconscious. Giving me freedom in my sleep.

My dreams are so confused with reality, the only thing repeating itself are my looks. Through however much time I’ve traveled nothing has altered from when my slipper was returned. The same youthful glow, buttery locks, and perfectly small feet. Feet so desired by my sisters they drew blood in an attempt to achieve what they saw as perfection.

Now I’m the one turning green with envy, for they have something I do not. Knives cut into their skin with ribbons of blood flowing out in evidence. Wounds not immediately healed, to be forgotten by my never changing body as well as my mind. Never will I see my blood spill out like theirs did, most certainly staining the cobblestones.

Our horses carried us away on to what was supposed to be our happily ever after. This is one of my clearer memories. No negativity adding holes to work around. At first this confused me. That wasn’t happy. At the time though, to me, it was. Practicing the skill of lying to myself, I hid the fact that the thought of their pain made me jubilant. My new skills shielded me from the sadistic truth.

Death is always considered negative. In an attempt to end this cycle of fake emotion and frustration, I decided to create my end in the same manner I was created. Picking up where my author left off, by writing my own death.

Every dark thought must be covered with rainbows and sugar. Every time my breathing stopped or blood started, I forgot the words that lead me to this moment.

At first, lying helped. I could use out of breath instead of no longer breathing. All these seperate little twists of the truth lived in my subconscious. Even in my dreams I had to tiptoe around making sure the code didn’t unravel the words creating my future. This was a new cage, but this one I locked myself in.

Once I was convinced this code was permanent, that no matter what I wrote I would still be where the ancient pen of my creation left off, I gave up. Accepting that I was to be held in this happiness-fogged ever after.

I started to clear my mind of this code by ambushing it with negativity. The blasting lyrics pulsing through the speakers are so riddled with hate and anger their presence disappears in my mind almost instantly. The code of happiness housed in my brain even blocks out the mindless throb of a bass, leaving me with nothing but silence. The closest thing I could come to death’s peaceful embrace. The amount of time this thoughtless pleasure consumed me is unmeasured.

Little did I know, this constant exposure to the code’s deepest fear was weakening it. My breaks from the screams described as music was only from exhaustion induced blackouts. Freeing me to my subconscious. The one place in my head left untouched by the code.

I held a knife for what could have been the thousandth time. This time though, instead of forgetting my dark thoughts and carving a pumpkin into a carriage, I remembered. This time my mission wasn’t forgotten. The pain another difference I noticed.
In the first two decades of my life this would be a message to stop, to put down the knife. Now though, my brain had a new meaning for pain; happiness. Not something aggressive and forced upon me, but genuine happiness. This was something I thought my Prince Charming gave me, but I realized this is something only I could only give myself.

Finally, so far away from this truth, the code I’ve lived by for so long, it broke. Every fake emotion left. The memories it hid came back. In its place every paper cut or morbid thought. The memories are what kept me alive as the blood left my body. The rush of memories projecting on the back of my eyelids got stronger. Somewhere in my newly freed mind I felt the blood too quicken its pace. Churning in my body to discover a cut for escape.

The film of my life was more alive than ever as I heard the lyrics I could only dream about. The screaming, growling music is what lulled me into a sleep I would never awake from, not even with the lips of my Prince Charming.

Now I walk through the isle of pain towards an altar where I shall marry my sweet savior of death.