Okay, I really didn't know where to put this, so I just figured I'd put it in Mythology since they don't really have a fairy tales category here. These are all my lovely rewritings of classic Disney-esque fairytales with all the happy endings and such. I'm basically saying what would have happened, if it was in the world where no good deed goes unpunished, and people never get what they deserve. This is my rewrite of Cinderella.
There was once a young girl named Ella, living happily with her parents. She was a wonderful child, a dancer, who had everything she wanted. She was able to dance through her life on light feet of carelessness and happiness.
One dark day, her mother disappeared. Her body was found in a deep river outside the city a week later. It was an occurrence that threw Ella's perfect world into chaos.
Ella's father soon married again, to an awful woman with two daughters of her own. All three of the young girl's new family members looked down on her and treated her as an inferior.
Soon after this second marriage, Ella's father disappeared, leaving her at the mercy of her stepmother and stepsisters. The stepmother took advantage of her husbands departure, using it as a way to take anything valuable of Ella's, and everything that had belonged to her late mother as well. She made Ella a servant, and forced her to be slave to every command that her daughters gave the poor girl. The daughters would often smear ashes on Ella's face and push her into the hearth, trying to take away from her beauty, and would call her Cinder-Ella.
For years, Ella endured this kind of treatment. Any form of disobedience that she showed was met with brutal punishment at the hand of her stepmother. She lived without a hope of ever returning to her old life, or any other than the life she was forced into, for several years.
One day her stepsisters brought home news of a ball. This news only made Ella yearn for her old life more, for she loved balls, and the glamour, dancing, and beauty that always ensured. She bitterly helped her stepsisters and stepmother prepare for the ball, holding back tears as she did so and watched their carriage leave, without her, crying in earnest.
Suddenly, an old woman stood before her. Ella could not say how she had made her way into the house, or who she was, but somehow did not care. The woman appeared neither beautiful nor kind, but had a sort of aura of power around her that intrigued Ella. She found herself drawn toward this woman.
"You seem to be missing something." said the woman.
Ella nodded. "I want to go to the ball, but how will I get there? And how can I go like this?" she lamented, gesturing to the dirty servant's gown she wore.
"It is a fine disguise. You could make it to the ball yet." the woman replied calmly.
"I will not go to the ball as a SERVANT!" Ella raged. "I must be seen as a guest there, or not at all!" Her shouts had sent several night birds flying for another refuge, but she did not notice or care.
"Tell me your desires." the woman whispered, making Ella strain to hear her. "I can get you a way to that ball."
She flickered her gaze to the window, and, looking out as well, Ella saw a magnificent white carriage, complete with a coachman and white horses.
"But still, you can NOT expect me to go like this!" Ella exclaimed.
"Indeed." said the woman. Ella looked down to realize all the dirt and grime coating her body and clothes had disappeared.
"How would you like to look for this ball?" the woman asked.
Ella began to immediately describe her dress and adornments at length, without hesitation. She felt them appear around her with the woman's nod.
"Any dancing shoes?" the woman prompted, as Ella realized her feet were bare. She looked around, and caught sight of a glass ornament of her stepmother's - a glass slipper.
"Shoes of glass." she demanded, and felt them appear on her feet.
"Step lightly, now." the woman warned. "It would not do to lose those slippers."
Ella tossed her hair back haughtily. "I always step lightly." she replied. She walked out the door and made her way to the carriage, followed by the woman.
"I hardly need an escort or a chaperone there." she snapped, climbing in and moving to close the door. The woman grabbed her wrist, preventing her from doing so.
"I have something else for you." she said.
"Thank you, but I have all I could need for now." Ella said coolly.
"This is your warning." said the woman, ignoring Ella. "This-" she gestured to Ella's dress and carriage "-will not stay forever. You only have-"
"I need only tonight for this!" Ella interrupted. She pulled her wrist out of the woman's grasp and slammed the door, starting for the ball without a single glance back.
The woman pulled a candle from beneath her cloak and watched it light. She stared at the flickering flame for a few seconds, then tucked it back under her cloak, and disappeared into the waiting darkness.
Ella soon arrived at the ball and walked in with the other young ladies. The girls were announced one by one and led down to the ball. A man approached Ella and asked how she would be announced, as a voice boomed out, "Leora Rose of Meadowglen," greeted with polite applause.
Cinder-Ella Lilia of Escaia." she invented, using her dead mother's name to make her own sound more sophisticated. The voice called out her invented name, and she made her way onto the dance floor, soon to be swept up in the spinning, swirling world of dancers.
Finally, after many dances, Ella made her way to the side of the floor, at one point stumbling and landing badly on one foot. She was horrified to find that the slipper had broken, leaving her with shards of glass stuck deep into her foot. She immediately put her weight on the other foot, with the same result. Ella made her way to the outside, where she dropped to her knees, paying no attention to the damage done to her beautiful dress, and crawled home. Her stepmother found her hors later huddled in the attic, with strips of cloth torn from her mother's wedding dress-the only dress to have survived her stepmother's purge-wrapped around her bloody feet.
The stepmother summoned a doctor immediately, who arrived form the town as quickly as he could. He dug the glass out of Ella's feet and, having examined her, gave a grim verdict-Ella, the young dancer, would have to have both feet amputated.
The amputation was quickly performed, and Ella's stepmother gathered up her few possessions. She cast her out of the house, into the cold and dark of the world outside home. "You are nothing but a nuisance now." her stepmother spat as Ella crawled out the door, locking it behind her.
A few weeks later, an old beggar, who had been driven half-mad with guilt that he felt for leaving his daughter behind after a bad marriage, and from constant wishing for his lost wife to be brought back to him, noticed a body half-buried in the snow. He dug it out and stared at the still face for a moment.
"Lilia…" he whispered, thinking of his lost wife and their daughter he had left behind. He stared down at the body for a few seconds, wiping away the grime obscuring her face.
"No…" he murmured, realizing this was not his lost love. He left the body in the ditch and wandered off, shortly after falling into a river and striking his head, leaving him dead as his daughter.
The bodies were recovered and brought back to the stepmother, who hosted a cheap, quick funeral for them both. After it was over, she wished to get away from the mourners, feeling no sorrow herself for the two dead, and took a walk to the cliffs overlooking the cold, howling sea and the endless night.
She had stepped out to the edge of the cliff, staring out the horizon, when she lost her footing and fell down to the sea's waiting arms. The few witnesses of her fall could have sworn they had seen an old woman appear, holding out a candle, that flickered out as the stepmother fell, then disappeared into the darkness.
And yeah. That was my first rewrite. Don't really know what to think of it. I know it would make my mother traumatized, so I should be proud, it's at least an okay gothic horror story. I was a bit iffy about drawing out the ending, though…