At dawn on the sixteenth of April, the Princess Rosalie was on its maiden voyage. A bottle of champagne broken on the bow signifying its departure with a crew of professional sailors to ensure its arrival to port.

However, one woman sought to change the fate of the ship. With a dagger by her side and a vendetta in her mind, she was a stow away. Two nights in, she donned a dark cloak and a billowy white blouse to carry out her plan of attack. The captain’s quarters were barred, but the lock was easily picked by her nimble fingers. A thin, even slice to the throat by a steady hand was all it took for the brute to fall into a different sleep, one he would never wake from. A sleep his wife had put him in.

She made her way around the vessel, her flowing chestnut locks bathed in moonbeams flowing from the night sky. The sailors were sleepy and caught by surprise. Needless to say, they all died.

I AM A RIDICULOUSLY HOPELESS ROMANTIC.....AHHHHHHHHH COME ON like THE PLOT WAS LIKE THIS GIRL BROKE UP WITH THIS GUY, AND THEN SHE WAS SO DEVASTATED, SHE RECKLESSLY WENT ONTO THE ROAD, GOT HERSELF HIT AND THIS BOY SAVED HER... AND AHHHHHHHHHHHH I ACTUALLY CRIEDDDDDD WITH JOYYY

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

https://www.wattpad.com/437152720-the-worst-karma-x-reader-chapter-1

My parents subjected me to Bambi when I was a child.

While there was much trauma to be had in this supposed family film, the most traumatizing scene for me was not the matricide of the prince of the forest, but the horrors described by a friendly old owl on the condition of being “twitterpainted.”

Granted this was meant to be humorous, but the scenes following most definitely were not as poor Bambi and his friends were all inevitably zombified by the end of the film.

Growing up I watched many of my friends fall victim to this disease and realized early on that friend owl was right - losing your head was simply not worth it. Hence I quickly put up all my defenses and bunkered down into curmudgeonhood at the tender but intelligent age of twelve.

Eventually they got me on pity. I was set up on Valentine’s Day a decade later by coworkers and thus ended my single streak. Yet I eventually ran from that and other potential relationships, as the seriousness of the situation kicked in. Did I really want to tie myself up in something so permanent? Lose sight of my own life?

One New Year’s I found myself the inadvertant victim of what I’ve since learned is called “car therapy”; people have discovered its best to talk about uncomfortable subjects with someone while driving in a car. The idea is that within the confines of a moving vehicle it’s easier to force folks to talk things out - mainly because they can’t escape, but also because the soothing motion of the vehicle and having a destination drives home the idea that by talking it out you’re moving forward. Frankly, reading the description to myself out loud, I wonder if Americans aren’t friggin’ twitterpainted idiots when it comes to their cars....

Anyway - back to this late night January drive: the weather was awful, with pouring buckets of rain (never thunder, though, blasted California) and my current paramour drove us northwards towards the home of friends far away to visit on our holiday weekend off. I hadn’t exactly relished the idea of spending my New Year’s Eve stuck in a car, but since I didn’t have to drive I relented. Yet no one had told me that the driver expected me to keep them awake the entire drive with cheery conversation.

Normally that’s not a problem for me, as typically I’m babbling about whatever nerdy topic I’m enamored with at the time. I am not prepared for the sudden -

“So, what are your goals for the next five years?”

“Do you see yourself getting a house?”

“How about kids?”

“Retirement?”

For reference this particular relationship was about three months in; we’d met around Halloween, and were now spending all the holidays together like good lonely people do. If there is a time frame for when to talk about these issues perhaps three months isn’t too early, really; but for me, pretty sure any time was too early given I seriously considered how hard I would hit the pavement driving 55 miles on wet road.

The truly sad thing was...I had no answers to these questions. I hadn’t thought about what I wanted to do in five years. I’d never considered buying a house - gosh, that was a pipe dream in this state - and kids? Come on! If you can’t even afford a house what’s the point of filling it with little debt-mongers? At this point in my life I wasn’t even sure I’d ever afford to retire, let along support other mouths to feed.

Needless to say my lack of responses / optimism did not go over well. We argued, mostly about the necessity of having something to live for - an argument I fought mostly out of pride, not any sort of principle. I figured this might be our last holiday trip together and wondered if it was too late to find a drinking buddy for St. Patrick’s Day.

Ten years later that person still drives me crazy - in rainy weather or otherwise. I may not have had life goals, but apparently that didn’t mean losing my seat in the car it just meant being a passenger on someone else’s ride until I figured it out.

Being “twitterpainted” hasn’t zombified me; rather it’s injected life into the mindless living corpse I’d been before.

Should we ever hit the kiddos mark we are never watching Bambi.

(and you thought Disney princesses ruined romantic relationships - ha)

As water streams down these window panes I think of her, you know.

The little girl I used to be.

The girl who would race outside when the sky quit weeping,

clutching worms between chubby fingers,

lifting them from the driveway before dad's car could crush their writhing bodies.

That girl who wiped slimy hands against a faded skirt,

grinning in satisfaction at the creatures she had deposited in the garden.

That girl knew she was a savior.

Someone to be admired.

...but these days it seems like I am more worm than girl.

When I find a place I belong I am plucked away,

only to be deposited somewhere forgin.

They tell me it's for my own good-

if I was just a little less naive I would see that.

After all, I'm a helpless, helpless creature, and must be saved.

for once, though, I want to feel the sun on my face

as I inch my way towards being something greater

and maybe I'll be crushed for my efforts.

Scorched by the sun until there is nothing left but a shriveled corpse...

but I'd like to think that if I reach high enough

there is something magnificent lurking just beyond the edge of what is familiar.

I'd like to think that one day I will not be defined by these earthen walls,

the ones that smell of ancient things long forgotten.

Sometimes it seems as if we only remember to live

when we are reminded life is a fragile thing.

One to be fought for.

I don't need a savior.

I need a little bit of sunshine,

a few raindrops

and a moment to be reckless.

You can see La Gritona from my home.

Sandra Cisneros wrote about it. It’s a lot uglier than she thinks — it’s full of trash and sludge and oil and spit and piss and shit. Un infierno.

That is what I live in: hell. It’s a miserable kind of place, the kind of place you escape from, never look back, write horror stories about. But that’s my home and remains my home, I’m writing to you not from a place of wisdom of past of escape but within el infierno — consumida.

But don’t misunderstand me. This is no home. This is a shithole, this place I live in, this place I never escaped from. Yo no soy Cleófilas, I am what she would have become if she had stayed…

I was married at the age of seventeen. I actually finished high school, sort of. I got a certificate that says I have some education. That’s more than my mother had because my father never let her out of his sight once he met her.

He met me dancing. We danced cumbia. I was repulsed by his stomach; it pressed against me when he pulled me close and I felt repelled by both our bodies yet he continued to pull me forward until I found his face above mine and then touching, his mouth open like he was trying to swallow me whole. He smelled like cigarettes and mezcal.

We were married shortly after, he having a job and being twelve years my senior it was a good match according to my father. He was kind enough to me at first. He liked to fuck me in the mornings, I would wake up with him curled around me and already inside me. I yelled the first time and he gripped my mouth so I would be quiet; after that he always held my mouth when we fucked. He fucked me on top at night, this time his hand around my throat. Sometimes his eyes bore into mine but I always looked away and he would laugh.

And then I had Daniel. Like his father, we gave him a name for prosperity. I never called him Daniel, though. Always Luz, which his father kept telling me is a girl’s name and would slap me for making him un maricón but I insisted, only quiet when his father was gone and we were alone, Luz, Luz, Luz, mi amor.

Daniel was somehow so intelligent, despite being born from my husband and myself. He got perfect grades in school, but he would still play with his friends as if he weren’t concerned, he could just do his algebra, sums that I couldn’t even imagine myself.

I couldn’t have another kid. At first, I got lucky. And then I did it on purpose, once Daniel was four and I returned home from the store and Daniel had a black eye and his father told me he had fallen but I knew that was a lie because I had the same mark from yesterday’s burnt desayuno. And things only got worse.

So when I started missing my period a few months later, I stopped eating. I would give in sometimes and make myself puke. I made my body un infierno so that she would not have to enter this one. She came out of me two months later, without ever showing; he never knew.

And then Daniel was ten and his grades were still perfect and he was my love and my hope. I didn’t know what it meant to love until I knew him. I loved him, mi Lucito, mi cielito, mi mundo.

And then he came home one day and he was mad drunk, scary as he usually is. But I didn’t know it, I would have calmed him down, I would have let him fuck me however he wanted, to the point at which I bled and cried I would have let him do anything to me so that he wouldn’t find Daniel but I had stepped outside, I was hanging up the wash, I was looking at La Gritona, the serene sludge, and I heard a sound and I heard Daniel screaming. I could feel my heart break when I found him, his eye gone his face bleeding the pipe in his hand.

It took Daniel for me to finally tell him what he was pendejo puto de mierda…

I am what she would have been if she had stayed. I am with mi cielito here below, enterrada, enterrados, muertos. I live in el infierno, el infierno de La Gritona below her gurgling stream, a whisper to a scream to encompassing me, every minute day year década; por cuánto tiempo hemos estado aquí?