Here is my story, A Heart of Cold, about a fairy tale read to a boy.
This is for my Flash Fiction 30 story challenge. If you would like to know more, comment here or on my profile. Most of the flash fics are to be not so happy ending...
A Heart of Cold
By Ariadne President(True Name)
A boy sat in the confines of his bed, his mom there with him, clutching a book in her hand.
"What story are you to read to me tonight, mommy?" the boy asked, curious upon the story he was to listen to. Insomnia was not the thing that kept him awake, but curiosity. But this curiosity wasn't to kill the cat - it was simply to be told a story.
“Alrighty, then,” his mother answered, flipping to a page in a book entitled “Grimm Reaper’s Fairy Tales”. The book itself was quite dusty to say the least. In it were torn or dog-eared pages that revealed it old condition. She then flipped to page 667, to a fairy tale entitled “ A Heart of Cold”. Each fairy tale in this black paperback book had a small, drawn black and white picture that illustrated what happened in the book. This one had a picture of a medium sized princess with an icy stare that could be felt just by one taking a first glance at the picture.
“I will now read to you, A Heart of Cold,” from hearing this, the boy squealed in delight and bounced up and down in his blue leather covers. “In the very olden time lay a princess named Bella. Unlike the king and queen who were her parents, she had as many as one hundred servants to do her work for her. They would do tasks for her, brushing her hair, picking out her dresses, and even lifting her to her bedroom. And the worse thing yet? She had always threatened to eliminate them with the saying of hers ‘Then off with your head!’
“ It was that saying that made even the knights that shone in armor, king, and queen to become scared of this deadly beauty. There would even be times that the knights would wet their loins without restraint when they came to her presence. When she commanded her servants at one point to pick out all the dresses for her while there were so many at that point, the servants thus declined. She then readied the guillotine for their heads to be severed from their disloyal necks. Then….”
“It was one day, upon Valentine’s Day, did she meet the man of her dreams. Nay, it wasn’t a centaur, nor was it a knight that proudly rode on his stallion. It was a prince from another kingdom. The two fell in love. Nevertheless, did the princess still command over him. This command was to brush her hair. The prince thus told her, he was not good at doing such a thing. And of course, the princess had his head taken off from his neck without hesitation. And that is the story of A Heart of Cold.”
The boy’s mother closed the book and the response from the boy was not of being satisfied, but of being quite disappointed. As the boy went in the covers, ready for his slumber to take him to his subconscious, he then learned… not all stories have a happy ending….
Shigune Matsui Community Member 
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