Saturday, July 28, 2012

Chapter 1: Unraveling Luck

I can safely say that my life was filled with twists and turns. For instance-for the very early part of my childhood, I had a wonderful life. My father and mother were rich and very loving to me. However, my mother took a turn for the worse and died, leaving my father a widower. He soon found another wife who had two daughters my age-nasty, spiteful girls-and though my stepmother remained cool headed and pleasant around my father, she certainly took no liking to me. In due time, my father died, and all wickedness was revealed. For I am Cinderella, and here is my tale.


I am blond with blue eyes, and am proud to say that I look very much like my beautiful mother.

My step-sisters are quite unattractive. The eldest one, Drizella, is the cruelest. She is bossy and upsetting. Anastasia is childishly mean, pulling pranks and calling me names, but she does not scheme and is rather simple minded.


Drizella has a bony face and lank hair. She has an upturned nose to match her personality. She likes to wear lots of makeup-green eyeshadow, red lipstick, blush, fake eyelashes coated with mascara and lots of eyeliner. 



Despite her skinny body, Anastasia has a plump face and a fat nose. She wears a heavy application of makeup as well. As I said, Anastasia loves to pull pranks. In fact, just yesterday I saw her putting a whoopy cushion down that I'm convinced was set for me. Of course, I merely pulled it out from under the couch cushion, but of course stepmother saw me and assumed I was planting something for her daughters or her, so she yelled at me and assigned more meaningless chores. 


My list of tasks to do were very long and lengthy-make every bed, make all the meals, sweep the floors, clean the windows, the sinks, the tables, the stove, the mirrors, the tub, the toilet, the fridge, the drapes, fill the tub, take out the trash, pay the bills, and do any other little thing that pops into stepmother's scheming mind. On top of my evil stepmother and evil stepsisters, there's Lucifer. Depending on his mood, Lucifer can either be pleasant enough to deal with and rather cute, or he can be a little furry devil.



Today, I woke up and noticed a tiny pimple. I soon got rid of that. Next on my 'To-Do' was making breakfast. I was in the mood for waffles, and we had the ingredients, so I soon went to work.


To my great surprise, we had a visitor! Our next door neighbour, who of course we had never met, greeted us for the first time. I heard the doorbell ring, and you'd think that that might be one chore my stepmother might like to complete herself-after all, no one wants to disgrace the family by letting the girl the dressed in rags to greet a stranger! Oh, no, that would be horrible if a poor girl that was placed in a horrible situation because her father made a grand mistake in his second marriage got to greet some face that might actually be kind to her. But of course, they just went, "CINDERELLA! GET THE DOOR!"



 In fact, we had quite a few neighbors come and greet us. I said hello to the one directly across from us, an Asian man whom I think was named Mitch Lee. When my stepmother saw him, she chased me away to finish cooking and introduced Mitch to my stepsisters, obviously trying to set them up with him, even though they were still teenagers. Of course, my stepmother didn't seem to realize that he was married and not rich.




My stepsisters didn't appear to mind that they were teenagers, that Mitch was obviously married and too old for them, or that there would be no way he would ever be interested in them. For them, it was a chance to practice their flirting skills. As I continued cooking, I watched Drizella nearby as she attempted to woo Mitch. She whispered something in his ear, and for a second it seems Drizella had actually attracted him, but then he turned away at the smell of her breath, obviously disgusted.



I tried not to laugh as Mitch walked away and Drizella glared after him. I noticed my stepmother warding off one of the other neighbours who had come to greet us by calling her trashy. She was a fairly pretty young woman who my stepmother obviously thought was competition for Drizella and Anastasia-as if the two of them didn't compete enough with each other!


As I finished cooking, I noticed that Drizella had managed to catch up with Mitch again and they were talking. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mitch giving Drizella an extremely creepy stare, and thought it might be bad news.



 I tried telling Drizella this, but she simply turned her nose up at me. "You're just jealous of our love, fool. You just want him to be yours. As if any man would ever take you. You are a filthy servant who talks back, that's what you are." As she turned around, she saw her sister attempting to flirt with Mitch as well. "Now look at what you've done!" she hissed before turning on her sister to tell her that Mitch was 'hers'. 



Frustrated with the drama and silliness, I walked over to the window where they were and started to sing. I hoped that I would manage to distract my stepsisters and our visitors and attract enough attention so that my stepmother would notice and calm the girls down. Mitch payed rapt attention, holding still and not breathing so that he could hear me better. When Drizella and Anastasia attempted to start a conversation with him, he shushed them. Anastasia stormed away to her bedroom, upset and moody. Drizella went right to her mother and said in a carrying voice, "Anastasia and Cinderella are trying to flirt with Mitch, mom!"



As Drizella continued complaining to her mother, Lucifer noticed Mitch and did not take kindly to him. With a hiss and a snarl, Lucifer soon ripped Mitch's pants to shreds. Mitch looked at me, confused and taken aback, and he ripped off the shreds of his pants and handed them to me. "Here," he said, obviously trying to sound kind, "You can use these as rags or something." I accepted them without a word. So. Even the guest thinks that I was merely a maid, whose sole goal in life was clean up after other people, when it would take two seconds for them to tidy up after themselves ONCE.


The fact that even her dearly beloved cat despised this man was too much for my stepmother. She seemed to think that he was more trouble than he was worth, so she shooed him from the house like a stray dog. 


He went without complaint-personally I think he was rather glad to have escaped us without being rude. I watched him go from the window. All he had done was try to greet us and be neighbourly, and then what had happened? He had been flirted with by a repulsive child, no, make that two repulsive children. Then he got attacked by a cat-right, so a nice pair of his pants were shredded. On top of that, an unfriendly mother greeted him by asking him to leave. It seems that the kind can never win. 
He looked dejected as he walked away, and I knew exactly how he felt. 


As I turned back, I saw Anastasia, Drizella, and my stepmother on the couch, watching television. There was no room for me. Even Lucifer was there, perched on my stepmother's lap as she leaned in to kiss his nose. The four of them. And then me. All alone. They had each other. I had nobody.

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