Drunk Cinderella

A Little History of a Murderer
----------
My original name is Cater, back when I live in a cave. The strange thing is: after I die, I live again in a different place, in a different time and as a different person. The most amazing phenomenon is I pretty much remember all my lives in the past. Yes, everything. And in every life I have been, I always hurt or kill someone.

----------
Drunk Cinderella

***First Half***

I was stomping on red ants crawling below my table, when I heard Cinderella sing again. She was my neighbor and I hated her. Her voice was so loud I had to close the kitchen windows. Every hour she sings the same song entitled “What the hell is happening to my life?” She wrote that song when she was five, after the time I hit her face with a thin wooden stick. I had to hit her because I was just sitting below the tree at her house’s front, and then she said in a singing tone, “Go away, Jaaack. Lady Tremaine will kiiill you if she seees you here. Awaaay!”

I admit. She is my first crush. I didn’t really close the kitchen window. I left a small space so I could see her through her window. She was cleaning the small circular mirror with the help of these two rats named Gus and Jaq. She was sixteen and her body became sexier and healthier than ever. I hate her because she thinks she has a good voice and she has to repeat the familiar song over and over and over again. But there are a million reasons why I love her: she talks sweet, greets every person she meets at the street, obeys her stepmother and two stepsisters, and licks her lips every two seconds, and many more. The worst thing that happened to me is that since I hit her, she never talked to me again. So I had to make my move.

I opened the kitchen window wide. And shouted: “Hi, Cinderella!”

She opened her room window and when she saw that I was the one who greeted her, she rolled her eyes on me and closed the window again.

I knew how to make her interested in me. So I shouted: “Cinderella, do you know that the Prince will be having a ball tomorrow evening to find a wife?”

She opened her window and stared at me. The two rats also stared at me. Then she said, “What the hell are you saying, Jack?”

She’s never been updated. Well, maybe because her stepmother loved to lock her every day in that small room. She sighed and said, “I’m going to kick your Christmas-balls if I find out that you’re telling a lie.”

I smiled to her and said: “Of course, it’s not a lie. Just don’t tell Lady Tremaine, Anastasia or Drizella about this, okay? You know they will lock you up in that room the whole night if they find out.”

Girls here are very obsessed with attending parties to find a husband. I pity them.

Cinderella and the rats talked privately for a minute, and then she turned to me. She said: “I believe you, Jack. I have to prepare my dress tonight. With the help of the birds and the rats, I will finish the dress before midnight. Thanks, Jack, for the news.”

“You’re welcome, Cinderella. Enjoy the night!”

***Second Half***

It was seven in the evening when we started to eat our dinner. I have my two parents, both too old to work, and my brother who worked as a painter in the Palace. The three of them was out of the house the whole day and only came back home at five in the afternoon. If Cinderella was not my neighbor, I could have died with boredom.

I already finished my bread, when my brother looked at me. I could tell he’s mad. He said to me: “What the heck did you say to Cinderella?”

“What do you mean?” my father asked. “Leave your brother alone. No fighting on this table. It’s dinner time.”

“Your father is right,” added my mother. “We must eat peacefully. God, forgive these children of mine.”

“Birds and rats are roaming around Lady Tremaine’s house,” my brother’s eyes were so intense I had to bow a little. “That means Cinderella is preparing for something. That means when her stepmother and stepsisters come back in that house and see her doing something, she’ll be locked up for two months straight. Jack, why are you so stupid?”

I stayed silent, trying to control my heavy breathing. I was scared of my brother, of what he would do as my consequence. My parents couldn’t speak. Once my brother speaks something serious, we listen to him.

“I repeat, what the heck did you say to Cinderella?”

I needed to say something or else he would knock the table down. So I said: “I said the Prince will be having a Ball tomorrow night to find a wife.”

My parents were stoned and my brother stood from his chair.

“I work in the Palace,” my brother started in a calm way. “I never heard any news that there will be Ball tomorrow. In fact, the Prince himself told me that he will do the wife-hunting party next year. God, Jack, God! I shall tell her right now.”

“No, no, no. I myself will tell her,” I said. “I started it, I must finish it.”

“Okay, fine.”

Before eight, they were already asleep. All lights inside the house were turned off. I sneaked through the dark to the kitchen window. From there, I could see Cinderella, measuring the pale blue dress. It was an ugly dress, it was blue before but the color faded in time. But whatever, an ugly dress, worn by a beautiful lady, is not that bad at all.

I saw many wrong things about her tonight: she smiled a lot, even though the animals around were serious in getting the room clean; she thought her dress was beautiful, and she was dancing with it; even though I was four meters away, I could see that her eyes were bloody red; and, this is the BIG AND, and there was a bottle of beer near her window!

Cinderella was drunk!

Her lips were moving, so I thought she was talking to someone, and then I listened carefully.

She said: “Godmother, can you turn this ugly dress into a beautiful dress?”

But I couldn’t see any person near her. She was talking to herself. The effect of beer in a sixteen-year-old girl is not good to look at. She looked crazy.

Oh, I forgot. I must tell her the truth!

So I shouted loud, knowing that her stepmother was not there yet: “Cinderella, I need to say something to you!”

She didn’t looked back and just kept on talking to an invisible figure requesting for things a poor girl like her can never have. I was about to shout louder when I heard the voice of Lady Tremaine getting closer.

I closed the kitchen window. I heard birds flying and rats running away from that house. I heard her stepsisters screeching voices entering that house. But I could still hear Cinderella chatting. Scared of what would happen, I ran into my room and prayed and slept immediately.

I woke up the next day with an eased feeling. I could tell that her stepmother saw her drunk and told her not to get out of that room for two months straight or worse, forever. So I kept myself busy playing with the insects inside my house knowing that Cinderella couldn’t get out of that house this night.

Seven in the evening came; my parents and my brother and I were eating fish for dinner, when suddenly we heard laughs from the outside. So we got out fast to see whether it was the Joker making offensive jokes or it was the Crazy Man making unfunny stunts.

God, forgive me. It was Cinderella walking elegantly in her ugly pale blue dress. People around her were making fun of her. She turned around and saw me. I could see tears falling down on her pinkish cheeks. Even though we never talk that much, I knew that I was the only human friend she ever had, and I betrayed her.

I realized how heavy the pain I gave to her. My eyes began to tear up. Like someone was stepping on my chest. I closed my eyes and heard my brother said to me: “She loves you. You know that. And you break her heart. And you break your chance.”