There is no happy ending to this story, so you can stop praying for one now. No fairytale prince come to rescue the sweet, but downtrodden queen. She deserves it, you think, you profess, but There will be no smile on her face as you flip the cover shut and swallow the tears that have welled up in your eyes. You told yourself it wouldn’t happen, you had heard stories about that Queen, that the book would tear you apart limb from symbolic limb and leave you curled on the floor in your own tears and bitter desperation. You wouldn’t get involved with the characters past a brief “hello!” when you passed them by without making eye contact. But here you are, sitting with your hands to your face, lines of stardust filled tears dripping down your cheeks to expose the weakness and shame you feel. How naive you were, to think that this would be a ‘proper fairytale’.

You see, what they never told you was that there never was a knight in shining armour in her story, nor in mine and likely not in yours either. She, the perfect white vision that she is, will spend the rest of her life trying to make up for the pages wasted on a story that had no real plot, no real punishment for the damned and no victory for the good. She, unlike you, had no choice in taking part in this story, she was not warned or given glorious foresight into the emotional war that would lie ahead for her. She was unwilling, unknowing and blind to the Fates and their plans for her. 

There will be no happy ending, as I have said, so lower your hands and tuck away all your hope for a rainy day when things make more sense. “But what of her!” you wonder, “What will happen to her now that you have abandoned her to your spite and malice in the form of words?” I am sure, beyond anything, that you are curious about her fate, as you should be. I am a writer and it is my job to write. To seduce you into bad decisions and unwitting consumption of poisonous and intoxicating words. It makes me smile that you wonder. Well, that pure and soft white and wholly good queen who only ever wanted love? She will rot. 

You see, it does not bother me to know that I have destroyed her. It does not rest heavy on my chest as I fall asleep at night. She was given to me at a time when my own story had just begun, when the Fates were kind enough to let me see past the slippery gauze veil that clouds our vision to what is truly ahead of us. I could see my pain and battles yet to come, I could feel my heart breaking at her hand, in her hands. I knew it all before it happened. So in my despair,and in my thankfulness for the miraculous gift they gave me, I swore to write her story. To raise her up above the world and let you all see her wondrous light that emanated from those dewy eyes, to let you feel her warmth and love. You would grasp the corner of each page and turn it with zeal, excited to feel more of that perceived goodness that you had come to rely on from her. And I, sitting behind my typewriter, with a glass of whiskey and my blessed gift burning as fuel, would tear her down right in front of the very world that came to love her. And love her, you did. It was hard not to. She was unlike anyone else you had ever known, with her big doe eyes and soft white hands. She was sad and confused but you never once doubted  her judgement, she was as unique as the blood that pumped through your quivering heart. I loved her with all of my own as well, and could not see through her sickly sweet coating that hid those gnashing and gnarled teeth behind her soft lips.  I saw that she was deceit in the skin of a lamb, in the arms of a would-be prince. And I, forgetting that I controlled her very existence, fell for her before my thoughts could process what that meant. 

I was destroyed, dear reader, body and soul, before I remembered that she deserved her pain, she deserved all the regret and anger and bitter tears in the world. 

So here you are, still, your brain a mess of tangles and blurred lines of the story I have told you, confused now about who is truly to blame for your tears and broken  heart. For that sense of disappointment you feel deep down in your gut. Should you blame me, as you had initially, for telling you that your dear, sweet Queen, will rot on her throne, with only her half-starved fools to keep her company? Or should you see past your misguided attempt to understand, and blame her, the one you thought was the victim?

It is not my place to decide for you, how your own story will end, or what path you will chose once you have hidden my book away from the light of the world. I cannot tell you that walking down your old wooden stairs to retrieve a cathartic cup of tea is in your best interest, though it may be, nor can I tell you to share any of what I have told you.

I can say only this, all the good in the world is useless if there is no world for it to grow in.