Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
The cottage in the fens of England is modest. The once immaculate shutters hang crooked but clean, and the path cracked but newly swept. The night and it's minimal lighting hides the other imperfections that would be visible in the day, and the tall trees growing adjacent the house mask the cracked plaster that should have been repaired years before. But the house is not entirely decrepit. It has the air of a place where one does not expect to stay for any extended length of time, almost as if it lacks the ability to become a home---and it does.
The place is a halfway house; a place to live while the cares of a debtor are sorted and the lives of his wife and two daughters put on hold---the lives of three women: the witch, the obscure, and the imp. That is how the people know them; whether or not they would earn these titles, even the girl of ashes would not know. But at night they all sleep, no longer exhausted from the days' activities; their workload slows with each passing day. The debtor does not come home, and each day, they can pay back a little more; though he works in an industry bereft of profit. But his family does not question his dealings, the witch thinks only of the money she stands to gain and the children, of the lives they could live.
But the village people cannot abide by the so obviously corrupt dealings of a merchant that does not sell a thing, yet still manages to pay off his bills and support his family. So when the village men, parched with the thirst that comes from too much alcohol, advance on the unprotected dwelling, they are in a rage that cannot be stopped by the pleadings of their wives or of the two young girls they are intent on murdering. The mother, experienced in ale's effects on men already fueled by suspicion, wakes at the poundings on her door and awakens her daughters with the screams of someone frightened, but not surprised (or entirely unprepared) for the threat to her own life.
"We must get away from this place! Up, you lump-kin daughters, up! -or this sleep is your last!" With a rough shake, she wakes her daughters, one groggy from sleep, and the other simple from birth. Iris, taking her drooling sister in hand, crawls around on the floor trying to find their shoes.
The mother, Margarethe, rummages in the closet and pulls out a sack. She runs to the window and hesitates only a second when a voice from behind the door says, "A knife to your throat! You'll swallow my sharp blade. Open up!" A moment later, a bump as of someone being hit, seemingly as punishment for a protest and the words, "And the husband is boxed on the head, bleeding into his bog, and we'll have his wicked wife next, and those girls!" The other daughter, Ruth, weeps uncontrollably into her sleeve, her cries loud torrents of despair that contrast sharply with her size.
The woman pushes the girl and tries to enlist the help of the smaller one, but she just stands, staring at the door, paralyzed with fear for her father and for the world crashing down around her. The woman takes Iris by the shoulders and screams into her face. "The Devil himself may send out a whiskery hound to sniff us out, but we've no choice! Come, girls, come!" Finally, they make it through the window and, just as the door splinters, Iris can feel a prick at her foot still in the room. A prick, like the sharp and pointy nails of the imp Margarethe wished into being. But looking back, nothing is there, only the remnant of their existence in the forms of scattered bills and thrown bedclothes.
And Iris sprints, running from the demon sniffing the midnight air, on the hunt, chasing after them with the intensity that comes from the thrill of having a victim. Suddenly, an orange light illuminates the sky around her but she doesn't glance back---she can't; she might find the demon, hungry to nip their ankles and sip their blood.