by
Joshua Ewing Weber
It’s lurking. It’s built into the
foundation, this ruin of the naked reality that waits. Wooden wheels crack for future breaks, under
carriages of evil purpose, trailing the hooves of foaming horses. The colors are black, gray; the night is
frightening, unknown.
Feelings–brooding, contemptuous feelings, insecurity: the cannibalism of
the inevitable. It’s moving unannounced,
yet, it’s coming, rolling over the woods, through the swamps, carrying the promise
of its broken purpose.
Being thirteen wasn’t easy.
She knew this to be true because her father had told her so, and he had
once been thirteen for a whole year, while she had only been so now for a
week. It was difficult for the young
girl to differentiate thirteen from twelve, or even eleven for that
matter. Life didn’t seem to move in
that way, where she could compliment or disparage one particular year or
another. She could do it with days, and
sometimes weeks, but years were blocks of time measured by adults. They told her it seemed like only yesterday
that she was still a little girl, and what a surprise it is to see the young
lady she had grown into over the last year and that it’s a wonder how tall she’s
gotten. She didn’t feel any taller.
The only things that definitively changed for her in any given year was her
teacher, and this new one was the worst ever, the absolute, no doubt about it
worst ever. It was because of this
woman, Mrs. Sheffield, that the young girl had had the conversation with her
father about being thirteen, about how it wasn’t easy.
“Look,” he had said to her, as he tucked her in to bed. The faint sound of her mother came from the
kitchen, moving plates. “It’s one
year. I know you don’t like her. But I promise that she has the very best
intentions. It seems like forever, yes,
but it’s really not. You’ll be fine,
and next year, you’ll have another teacher, and you will barely remember this
mean old Mrs. Sheffield.” He wrapped
the covers around her tight, tucked in all the way down to her toes, the way
she liked it. She smiled. She trusted
her father. She thought he knew
everything.
“Good night, Cinderella,” he said, kissing her small little forehead with
his rough sandpaper lips.
In the streets
there are things people say, rumors that seeth to gnaw at the powerful. They say it’s the end of the world. Little girls sometimes disappear. A King is slaughtered, his eyes gouged by
his mother. The sun comes up, and the
grass is green, and the day is hot and the nights, too. Shadows lie lifeless; there’s too many now
to bury, so the bodies are burned in heaps.
Packs of wild dogs fight in the alleys; children race paper boats down
currents of sewage. It is hot now, but
it will be winter soon.
She walked to the
schoolhouse every day with two of her friends, Molly and Beatrice. She had been walking with them to school for
as long as she could remember. All three came from wealthy families, so they
were well fed and well dressed and all three had immaculate curls, and bows,
and walked with good posture. They
talked little girl talk, all about the immediate, or tomorrow, nothing ever
about yesterday.
It was Monday.
“I am going to be a nun when I grow up,” Cinderella told them.
“Oh, and I am going to be in the opera,” said Molly. They were almost at the school.
Beatrice said, “I am going to be a teacher. And marry a prince.”
This was a typical exchange, although the professions often changed.
“A teacher!” Cinderella
exclaimed. “Like Mrs. Sheffield?”
Beatrice pulled on one of her longer curls and then let it go, so that it
sprang up and bounced. “I don’t know
why you dislike Mrs. Sheffield so.
She’s very nice, and she gives us hard candy every Friday.”
“Well,” said Cinderella, reaching out to pull back the school’s wooden
gate, “if she treated you the way she treats me, you wouldn’t like her,
either.”
She stepped in through the gate; the other two girls were close
behind. Then they froze. In their path stood Mrs. Sheffield, her
hands on her hips.
“And who is it she wouldn’t like, Ms. Cinderella?”
Cinderella had—on more than one occasion—considered Mrs. Sheffield’s voice
to be the vilest sound she had ever known. It was high-pitched, and faux
melodious, straining to sound pretty, or human. It made Cinderella’s skin crawl.
“I think you girls might want to get inside and get ready for the day.”
The three girls nodded and hurried past their teacher to the class.
“Ms. Cinderella, perhaps you might stay behind for a moment?”
Cinderella’s heart sank. Here it
was the first day of the week, school hadn’t even started yet, and she had
already managed to get into trouble.
She turned, and stood before her teacher. She knew what was coming.
It was times like these that she wished Molly or Beatrice was around, or
any of the other children. They did not
know what Mrs. Sheffield could do.
There was no way for her to describe it, either. She’d thought about telling her father, but
she didn’t want him to worry about it too much. The lingering illness of her mother was hanging on him, and he
had enough to deal with right now without having to listen to Cinderella’s
crazy stories about her teacher. She had decided to deal with it the best she
could. But it didn’t stop her from
being scared.
Mrs. Sheffield waited until Molly and Beatrice made it inside the school,
then she listened quietly to the air for a moment before it began. She looked down at Cinderella, who was
dressed in a pink frilly dress that came down to her knees and had puffy
shoulders and short sleeves.
Then it began to happen. Cinderella
had watched it many times now, and gone over it in her head, but she found it
impossible to describe or understand what it was. She’d heard stories of shape-shifters and changelings and
werewolves, and always their transformations were bold and striking, their evil
manifested so obviously, or uncontrollably.
She concluded that Mrs. Sheffield was something different. What she was, though, was still, to
Cinderella, a mystery.
The change began in her nose. It
moved, and her nostrils bulged, and then her eyes grew away from one another,
slightly, so that they set themselves too far apart. Her face rippled from the eyes until the mouth, ears, cheekbones,
forehead, hair and chin had all shifted in a subtle wave of movement, and she
moved her face close to the young girl’s and her breath was hot and stunk like
urine. Watching these changes you could
almost convince yourself they weren’t happening. Each one seemed more imperceptible than the one before it. When the eyes were changing you’d forget to
look at the ears, and then when you did you couldn’t remember if they had
moved, too, or if that was how they were before the nose had changed. In the end, all that was certain was that
Mrs. Sheffield looked horrible, and that Mrs. Sheffield saved this look for
Cinderella. Mrs. Sheffield’s voice
dropped down, down, from its high, strangled origins to a sound that Cinderella
recognized from the very far-left keys of the piano.
“gargblbrgardlgblrdaaldndhf. grdabsbda. rabgbrdgba.”
She was interrupted by the sound of children approaching the school on the
other side of the gate. Mrs. Sheffield
pulled herself up from Cinderella and glanced in their direction. As they turned the latch she looked down at
Cinderella. Her face had changed back.
“I’m glad we could have this talk,” she said to Cinderella, her voice once
again soprano and cracking.
Cinderella trudged into the school while Mrs. Sheffield stayed in the yard
to greet the children as they arrived.
Cinderella walked across her class and sat in her customary seat between
Molly and Beatrice.
“What happened?” asked Molly, the girls close to falling from their chairs
with anticipation.
Cinderella’s eyes were focused into narrow anger. “I have to clean the piss-pots,” she said. She took out some chalk and wrote her name
on her slate in cursive, over and over.
The other girls shook their heads.
“Maybe you should just
try and get along with her,” advised Beatrice.
The chalk in Cinderella’s hand broke against her slate and she made her
hand into a little fist.
“Maybe you should just
shut up!” she said and slammed her fist down on her empty desk.
It had never been
Cinderella’s intention to discover this thing about her teacher. She had stumbled upon it, like you might
stumble upon someone picking their nose when they think no one will
notice. It was the second day of class. She had forgotten her homework assignment
and had come back to the deserted school to retrieve it. Mrs. Sheffield sat at her desk in the empty
room, motionless, her mouth open, drool slipping out of the side. The evil face looked like a mask. At first, Cinderella tried to convince
herself she was imagining it, or dreaming, or misinterpreting what it was she
was seeing. But it was real, and Mrs.
Sheffield saw her there, in the doorway, staring at her with bulging,
frightened eyes, and holding her breath.
Mrs. Sheffield turned to the young girl, her face a wreck of mixed-up
muscles, and she smiled, as if she were happy about something, something that
could only mean doom for Cinderella in the school year to come.
Crows, their
beak’s blood red black, screeching overhead, thousands of them. Rivers stagnate, run backwards; vines chokes
the gray dead trees. Rain. Weapons.
New dark machinery, ropes, wood.
Clergy in rags, their heads shaved, bowed, afraid to tell anyone that
they no longer believe. How could
they? Public executions; Jack Ketch
eats their parts. Torture. Crowds of coughing citizens. Science.
The sweeping death, the corpses piled at the side of the cobbled
streets, the carts of bodies, stacked, limbs dragging. The rats.
The cold. Winter.
Cinderella’s father was
an important man. She wasn’t quite sure
what he did, but she knew many people relied on him for money and work. They lived on an enormous estate, with many
rooms. There was even a tower;
something neither Molly nor Beatrice had at their houses. She daydreamed about telling her father
about Mrs. Sheffield, the truth about the way she really was, and about his
having her removed and banished from the school. She imagined Mrs. Sheffield as a beggar, forced to roam the
streets, relying on the pity of others for survival. And when Cinderella passed her, begging there, she would offer
her nothing, and laugh, and tell her she had gotten what she deserved. Mrs. Sheffield had children from a previous
marriage. Her husband had died, or was
killed by her is what Cinderella thought. Cinderella did not know the children;
they were older than she and went to school far away. But Cinderella imagined them coming home to discover their mother
destitute and withered—her face permanently changed and disgusting. It was her favorite daydream, and she
thought that God and Mrs. Sheffield’s husband must be pleased that at least she
knew the truth about this horrible woman.
Cinderella has been
cleaning the pots at the school for several months. Her conflicts with Mrs. Sheffield have escalated to a fever
pitch. Mrs. Sheffield has threatened to
expel the girl from the school, and she has struck her face with the back of
her hand twice.
She decides that it is time for her father to discover the truth. But she knows she can’t simply tell him; it
is too much to believe from a thirteen year old girl, and so she embarks upon a
plan to have Mrs. Sheffield reveal her demonic self, her true self, in front of
her father.
It is late, nearing midnight at Cinderella’s home. Outside, far away you can hear wolves
howling, and wind rushing over the hills.
Inside, Cinderella talks with her father near the room where her mother
lies. He takes Cinderella’s hand and
leads her down the hall.
“She’s sleeping, darling,
but she told me to tell you that she wants you to wake her up and wish her a
good morning before you go to school tomorrow.”
“How is she feeling?”
“She’s fine,” her father
said. “She’s in need of rest, that’s
all.”
“Father?”
“Yes?” he asked. She could tell his thoughts were somewhere
else.
“Mrs. Sheffield wishes to
speak with you tomorrow after school.”
He returned from that
other place, and he smiled at his daughter.
“Oh, Cinderella, what have you done now?”
“I haven’t done anything.
I don’t know why she wants to see you.”
“Well, I will go there
then, and I hope I won’t be disappointed by what I hear. Tell her to expect me.”
At school the next day,
Cinderella did everything she could to anger her teacher. She began by incorrectly labeling Manchester
as the capital of Ireland and then followed that by questioning the purpose of
having a sovereign monarchy. During
lunch, Cinderella pretended to choke on her food, causing the table of girls to
point and yell and scream with laughter.
By mid-afternoon, Cinderella could tell that she was close. All she needed now was one great act, one
final blow to set her plan into unstoppable motion.
The class was practicing
art, paintings of Biblical events, Jesus on the cross. In Cinderella’s painting there were four
crosses. “There is one too many,” Mrs.
Sheffield reminded her. “And there were
no women with Jesus.” Then Mrs.
Sheffield recognized the woman.
Cinderella was a wonderful artist.
Her face twitched and
Cinderella saw her ear move and her eye bend, and then they stopped, as Mrs.
Sheffield regained her composure.
“Please stay after
class,” Mrs. Sheffield choked out before clearing her throat and resuming her
slow critical pace through the class.
The next hour or so crept
by. Cinderella could not concentrate on
anything, as she imagined the climactic scene that was soon to unfold. She hoped her father might carry a dagger,
she was certain that he would use it if there was cause, and she was certain
there would be cause. As the class
began to file past Mrs. Sheffield’s desk and out the door, the boys and girls
scattering out into the free world, Cinderella sat in the back of the class
trying hard not to smile.
And then it began to
happen. Cinderella did not look
up. She stared deep into the finished
wooden desktop, staring far into the old tree’s lifelines, into the knots and
the contusions of hard forest life, and she could hear the change happening at
the front of the class. The breathing
slowed, there was the low sound of the choking voice moaning, and the air had
grown cold and dry; there was a whirring sound, like wind sucking into itself.
She could hear Mrs.
Sheffield’s footsteps move over the class, over the desks, the chairs, climbing
up on to the chalkboard and across the ceiling. Cinderella squeezed her eyes shut, and she worried that her
father might not make it in time, and that she may soon be dead. Of course, then Mrs. Sheffield would really
get it, she thought.
A rush of cold, snowy air
burst into the classroom as the front door flew open, startling
Cinderella. Her little curls blew back
from her face and her father stood at the door looking at her. Over to the side of the room, the deformed
Mrs. Sheffield stood back against the wall, her ragged face frozen in surprised
horror.
“Get your coat,
Cinderella.” Her father did not look
away from her. His eyes seemed strange.
Cinderella looked over at
the haunt-faced teacher, still frozen.
Her father did not follow her eyes.
She looked back at her father, who stared at her quietly, or was he looking
somewhere else, past her, through her?
He would not look at Mrs. Sheffield, and Cinderella wondered if he knew
she was there. She was right beside
him, Cinderella gasped, all he had to do was turn his head and he would see it
for himself.
“Hurry up, baby,” he
said.
“But Father! You haven’t even…”
“It’s your mother,
Cinderella.” He paused, and turned to
go back outside. “She’s gone.”
The night after the
funeral, Cinderella sat in her giant room alone and wept, staring out her
window at the wintry hills and the creeping fog that lined them. She tried not to think about her mother, but
it was hard. At the funeral her father had not spoken to anyone. It was a different side, a side Cinderella
had never before seen. She
noticed—sitting next to him with her hand encased in his–that he had lost
weight. He was almost thin now, and he
stared at the closed casket and he did not weep. But in the night she had heard his grief and it made her feel
more terrible than she already did, anyway.
A carriage pulled up in the front, and she watched as the driver stood down
and opened the door to the passenger, holding his hand out for the inside hand
to take. The hand that came out was
gloved, and pulled after it a long pink arm, cast in ruffles and silk, and then
a hat on top of a giant head of dark hair.
The woman from the carriage stepped onto the path to their house, then
stopped. She looked up to the room
where Cinderella sat looking out the window, and the cold night moon caught the
woman’s face. It was Mrs. Sheffield.
Cinderella thought about
the fact that she had not been to school that day, and she was not surprised in
the least that Mrs. Sheffield would be so evil as to come here and make a
complaint. But now she would finally
get it, Cinderella thought. This was no
time to bother her father.
She could hear the door
open downstairs and her father summoned by a servant, and she sat in her room
and watched the carriage parked outside, the driver smoking and leaning on the
wheel. After a couple of minutes, Mrs.
Sheffield emerged and returned to the carriage and left. Cinderella had expected to hear shouting or
commotion, but this was just as well; seeing Mrs. Sheffield turned away, back
out into the cold where she belonged made her happy. She knew Mrs. Sheffield’s whining would echo meaningless against
her father’s noble ears.
Three months pass. It is
Spring. There are secret lines in the
back streets for the witches with godless cures. And secret doctors who will still the little hearts, before they
are broken by the nature of this world.
The moon is hidden. Mrs.
Sheffield’s two daughters cross the heart of the forest, over the snapping dry
nighttime branches that litter the ground.
They ride fast, past shallow, unmarked graves; their driver carries the
threat of gunpowder and a whip to snap at the bands of thieves and distempered
ghosts. They ride all night, and all
day and then all night again, then tomorrow they will attend their mother’s
wedding; they conspire in whispers and wonder what it will be like, having a
new stepsister.