Ugly

Rating: PG/K+

Genre: Angst

Summary: The drawing of the pig in the dressing room and Martha's missing make-up.

Authors Note: Another lovely anecdote born from too many hours of playing this game. Oh well- I hear no complaints.

Disclaimer: I don't own Rule of Rose. It belongs to Atlus.

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NOTE: For whatever reason, when I uploaded my recent batch of stories onto this website, all of the punctuation was gone. No Idea why. So if you see a punctuation error, that's why. I went through and tried to pick out and fix as many as I could, but I might have missed some.

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Amanda knew that she was in for some serious trouble if Miss Martha caught her pilfering her make-up. Martha was not renowned for her kindness to children, never mind to the group of orphans she consistently presided over.

This would earn Amanda a beating, most likely with a broom (or, depending on how angry Martha was, whatever happened to be in reach).

But this was worth it, yes it was. Amanda viewed her time with Martha's make-up as her one opportunity to feel pretty.

Amanda was, in fact, a pretty girl, if not a little on the round side. She had a lovely smile, and her blonde hair was shiny and neatly curled into bouncy, adorable little pigtails.

Pig.

Now there was a barnyard animal she'd become familiar with.

The other girls didn't make her feel pretty, and the boys teased her like little boys often tease little girls. They called her a pig, all of them, and drew mean pictures of little, fat pigs with pretty blonde hair.

They made her feel so ugly.

By comparison, she knew that no one would look at her as pretty, either, especially not with girls like Diana, Clara, Wendy and even filthy little Jennifer around.

That was why she so often locked herself away in the sewing room, all by herself, fixing clothes and linen and finally just sewing rags together, something that angered Martha because it was such a waste of thread and time.

Really, what else was she to spend her time doing? Hob-knobbing with the others? They all hated her! Even more than pretty, wretched, adorable, filthy little Jenn-i-fer!

And so that was why she stole Martha's make-up and went into one of the tiny dressing rooms in the orphanage, left over from whatever it had been before it became the home for so many forgotten children.

Make-up was a privilege reserved for adults. For women, not little girls, and she'd be damned if every little girl in this orphanage didn't want to grow up and get out as fast as possible. Wanted to be ladies, beautiful women who mattered to someone. Anyone.

Grownups didn't get picked on or pushed around. They didn't get bullied. They didn't lead miserable lives in bad orphanages.

Amanda loved the dressing room, because it looked just like a movie stars dressing room, just darker and not as well kept as the real ones undoubtedly were.

She shut the door behind her, clutching her contraband prize with glee as she flipped on the light with her free left hand. She smiled, giggled, hopped up onto one of the stools and looked into the mirror-

And froze.

On the mirror, drawn in a familiar, waxy residue of red crayon, was a crude picture of a pig.

This one didn't have the pigtails, but it conveyed the message quite clearly.

Amanda felt like crying as she saw her reflection imposed behind the pigs face. But then, slowly, she drew the lipstick from Marthas make-up bag. She applied it slowly to her lips.

Then her cheeks.

Then her teeth.

She smiled

Then screamed.

-End