This Thing of Darkness, I Acknowledge Mine

Trigger Warnings: This story contains themes of abuse, violence and death.

On her deathbed, Ella’s mother had imparted upon her but one piece of wisdom.

“Hell is empty,” She’d whispered. "And all the devils are here.”

Ella’s father had asked for those last words. Ella had looked upon him. Old and feeble and long past the days of weathering the harsh storms at sea.

“Be kind,” She said.

And her father had burst into tears.

The grief veiled their house for a short while. The black curtains remained drawn over the glass windows, and meals were subpar, and the smell of sickness and death clung to the air. No colour could be found anywhere within their estate. Thus, Ella could not miss the sheer shocking pink of Lady Tremaine’s entourage on the foggy morning she arrived at the manor.

Lady Tremaine was a hurricane of a woman. Nothing much of her stayed consistent- not the pitch of her voice, not her extravagant gowns that were switched out by mealtimes, and not her grand stories of adventures upon voyages with her deceased husband.

But Ella’s father had always been an easy man. Ella had known it since she was a child, when it had only been too easy to lose a favourite toy in exchange for a brand new one. But even she had never switched toys quite so fast as her father did wives.

With Lady Tremaine came her two daughters. They were beautiful, well-read and versed in the arts. Ella was less so in each regard; she’d never quite cared for the frivolous aspect of upper-class life.

“You don’t smile much, do you?” The elder said as she curtsied a greeting under the fall leaves. Not necessarily rude, but close enough for Ella to surmise that the three of them would never get along. Not that she’d planned to. Regardless, she was grateful to learn the feeling was mutual, as it gave her the pretense to interact with her new family as little as possible. For the months that came, that was enough. They were distant, but cordial, only meeting at meal times and then leaving to pursue their own interests. For them, embroidery or reading, for Ella- she took her father’s rifle out back and shot pigeons.

Death had always intrigued her. The inevitability of it. Before her mother had passed, it had been a passing fantasy. The idea of a beyond, or not, of this existence from which one could not return. After the concrete evidence of its existence when her mother’s corpse was placed in the ground, the interest had turned more morbid.

Ella approached the animal, as it lay on the ground, unmoving. It was still warm. She felt a flicker of fond heat in her chest.

Inevitable.

It was a voyage, not unlike the ones Lady Tremaine had boasted of being upon, that took Ella’s father. His corpse, unlike those of pigeons shot from the sky, was cold. Ella placed a hand over his chest, clothed in all the finery of the world. There was no beat beneath it.

Lady Tremaine and her sisters sobbed, loud and undignified, at the funeral procession. Ella did not. She stood a step behind, watching as the coffin was lowered down beside her mother’s. There were whispers behind her back. Ones she could hear. Of her inhumanity. Her coldness and marble stillness. The sheer horror of it. Inevitable, Ella thought.

There were changes to the manor in the wake of her father’s death. Mostly due to the sudden lack of income. Lady Tremaine had no funds to speak of, and her daughter's previously long line of wealthy prospects had fled on the eve of their ruin. The three lamented day and night of the crisis they were in, lounging around on the sofas. The staff was dismissed, and the task of fulfilling their role fell on Ella. Not because she knew how to, because she didn’t. Ella herself, after all, had grown up in luxury as well. The chores of the household were unfamiliar to her. But there was a stark lack of volunteers and thus. It was Ella.

Or rather, Cinderella, as her sisters took to calling her. A barely clever wordplay from the cinders of the hearth close to where Ella slept. It wasn’t for lack of room in their spacious but quickly emptying home. But Ella took a liking to being as far away as possible from the trio, and the hearth in the kitchen did so nicely.

She did imagine it, though, on days when the prickle of the name against her ears annoyed her. Imagined Lady Tremaine and her daughters as pigeons suited up in colourful gowns and dresses with cutlery held between their stubbly feathers. She imagined it, setting the table, through the scope of her father’s rifle. It amused her greatly. On other days, it was less amusing because, disinterested in life as Ella had become, she found it wasteful to finish it at the end of a noose.

The daydreams grew more vivid, however, despite her best intentions. Began to seep into the hours and days of the entirety of her life, till she could think of little else. The splash of blood against the tablecloth was brighter, the screams more cutting- the terror more real. It made her giddy with anticipation, though she knew only too well the day would never come. But the thoughts would not disperse.

The letter arrived from the palace on a bright morning on horseback. Perhaps, they hadn’t quite heard of the hard times that had befallen the family, or perhaps they intended to reach as far as they could, even to the bottom edge of nobility for the new bride of the prince. Even so, even if they searched for any girl, it wasn’t really any girl, and if their house's ruin had spread far enough, they surely would not have gotten such an invite. Such was the way of the world, and Ella was too old to lament it.

The invite caused quite a bit of flurry of excitement within their house. The prince! The riches! The sudden rise to fame they would all have! With the exception of Ella, of course, who would likely incur no upward mobility. She wasn’t nearly charming or beautiful or rich enough to delude herself into such a fantasy- and even if she had scoured every last penny they had to make herself look the part of a princess, she doubted she could whisk the man off his feet. Such was not the way of the world, and Ella was too old to lament it.

Her sisters were not. They rushed about, begging and pleading for the fineries they could no longer afford, from their mother, who, while old enough to know better, was equally taken by the delusion of sudden riches. But then again, Ella thought, her sisters were beautiful. And for many a man, that was enough.

The abuse, of course, increased tenfold, since stressful times tended to carry down, and Ella was the bottom rung of their household. And her fantasies grew as well, as the shoes rocketed by her ear, and the screams echoed over the span of the dining table. Fantasies of three pretty heads upon pretty spikes, and she sniggered to herself, but didn’t utter a word, for that would bring the daydreams to an unhappy end.

The night of the ball was dark, the sky littered with the silver tinfoil of stars. A carriage, paid for by credit they did not have, came and whisked away the three fine ladies in their glittering gold and beautiful dresses, and Ella watched with a detached solace from the doorway. She had an ugly bruise caused by a mishap of flailing arms while trying to get the younger of her sisters into her clothes, and it buzzed warmly on her cheek.

The creek that ran past the back of the house gave her some cold calm, though it was momentary. She observed her visage in the shimmering mirror, considering positioning herself above the entranceway and dropping a very heavy piece of furniture onto the heads of the returning guests. If she timed it just right, it would be a swift death. If she didn’t, they would twitch soundlessly, eyes roving into the back of their heads, like animals did sometimes. The thought made her giggle. The water shimmered again and distorted her reflection. In its wake, an old woman stood across her.

“You poor dear!” She exclaimed, slender and beautiful as fairies tended to be. “Do not fret any longer. I will help you!”

Ella listened, disinterested. The woman was bright, in all her being. Colours burst out of her seams, and her bright beaming smile was blinding. In her hand danced a wand that left a trail of glitter. Ella followed its path.

Her meagre clothes were turned into a disproportionately large gown, and her hair coiled itself on the back of her head. The pumpkins burst into a carriage. And on her feet were glass heels- slippers- elegant and sophisticated. They caught in the light.

Ella had never seen such a pair of shoes before.

“They are one of a kind, my dear.” The fairy said proudly, twirling about her, bursting in unbridled joy at nothing in particular. “With no equal. There is only one pair in the entire world.”

Ella looked at them, mesmerized, glitter bouncing off the glass

Ella had been to several affairs such as this in the past, before her father’s death. But there was a measure of scale to it, to the palace. The wealth exuded was only one nobility could mimic, but not embody. It was a rarity in of itself that such an overbearing crowd would be allowed unfiltered in the presence of royalty. Unmonitored and loose under the liberalization of alcohol.

Ella allowed herself a moment of respite, closing her eyes under the brightness of the ballroom. The dress fluttered and twirled around her just right, as magic was wont to do, and the music flowed into her bones like it had never before. The glass slippers were comfortable underneath her. In the stirring of the light, when she opened her eyes, she caught the gaze of a man at the foot of the stairs. The regalia upon his shoulders was unmistakable. Ella let her gaze linger and then turned sharply and purposefully out of the ballroom. She didn’t need to look back through the throngs of bodies to know he was following.

What is it you wish for, my dear? The fairy had asked her.

Ella had stared at the slippers as they glittered and shone happily.

I wish to be inevitable.

The man followed her- through no charm of hers and no will of his. Followed her into the garden, abandoned and alone under the siege of the moon.

Ella lifted her head and felt the tickle of the wind on her face across the bitter bruise. The music played in the distance, and she laughed, delighted in it all. The sound was foreign, even to her own ears. She danced, glass slippers jumping the pools of water and blood, skipping over the prince's corpse, and twirling to their hearts' delight. The clock spelled midnight, and Ella was back in her shroudy clothes. She walked with the maids out of the castle. She strolled along the weary paths alone and let the glass slipper hang bloody and beautiful in her hand. In a care she’d only ever afforded inanimate objects, she placed it upon the mantlepiece.

In the weary hours of the morning when the ladies of the house returned, the shouts of curiosity pitched to the rooftops. A wealthy gift, of an unknown admirer. A prince. Perhaps. And then came the horses and the horsemen and the dogs. They came with a strange glass slipper in hand, from house to house, from maiden to maiden, fitting it upon their heels to find a matching pair. Their search came to an end midday, when the second slipper, much too precious to have thrown away, was found. And Ella watched from her window. For she was little more than a slave. Insignificant and invisible. She watched as the women screamed and begged and sobbed about the unfairness of it all. Once silence had once again befallen her house, Ella returned to her peaceful slumber by the hearth.

In her dreams, she shot pigeons before letting them fall to the inevitability of it all.