The empty dream of a glass figurine.
Drip…drip…drip…
Rain washed over glass hair, glass face, glass hands, washing away pigeon gifts and the smattering of dirt on glass feet.
There were rumors in the city about the glasswork statue that stood on a small hill near an old cottage. A masterpiece they all praised, realism personified, humanity captured, but…wasn't there something not quite right about it?
The statue of was of a simple nature, a girl, perhaps of seven, perhaps of seventeen, standing frozen, eyes closed, forever taking a bite of a glass apple. A moment in time encased in delicate transparency.
Every Sunday, the old caretaker would come out and open the large gates to his grassy knolled Arcadia, allowing the people of the town to view the little girl trapped, to admire the craftsmanship, for did not those tears look real, as if the apple was the bitterest of poisons to be forced down an unwilling throat, did not the shimmering locks look soft to the touch, as if the teeth of a comb had recently glided through, did not the lips look pliant and waiting?
Sometimes, the little glass girl would seem to speak, a disembodied voice floating from sugar-spun clouds and imagined pink daisy mouth, and would ask for her prince in white.
And sometimes, one would almost reach out and touch the statue and kiss those sleeping lips.
But then…the caretaker would shout, though what depended on his moods, which seemed to cycle as frequently as days of the week, and one's eyes would open to lips pressed against the apple instead.
As more and more people fell to madness near the statue, convinced that the little glass girl was truly alive, that she had been trapped by a wicked queen, that she needed only her true love's kiss to wake, the city councilors became worried, which of course was their job to be.
And so in their distress and ignorance, they passed an ordinance, city ordinance 2238a, that prohibited anyone to be on the old caretaker's property, including the old caretaker himself.
Slowly, slowly, slowly did the glass statue wither. Where there once was smooth glass skin, lined imperceptibly with the most natural of creases, now there were hundreds of thin fractures, formed almost as if from a burden of despair and lost hope weighed down on the fragile glass girl.
Then one day lightening stuck the weakened glass, shattering it in an explosion of melting colors and false rainbows.
Among the confusion and violent beauty, a pale image of a girl that was once upon a time had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony smiled.
"A shame", she whispered as her ghost fluttered into the charged air, "No one came after all."