The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Snow Child
by Christina Sng

I.

It was the last day of autumn
When they tore me from my family,

Gouged out my eyes in a hurry,
The cold steel of the spoons

Still frost against my sockets
When they threw me into the forest

With only my lovey,
And left me to the wolves.

II.

The forest fell silent.
Only the wind whispered,

“Live or die,
It is your choice.”

I heard the wolves circle me,
The soft, muffled crackling

Of fall leaves
Trampled to shreds

Like how they would tear me,
Limb by limb.

Who would take my head?
Who would take my feet?

And my lovey?
Left in the dirt to decompose

In the terrible, cold winter
Alone.

I wanted to weep
But there were no more tears.

There was only blood where
My eyes were once housed.

III.

I refused to die.
I refused to leave her behind.

I ran, one arm flailing, feeling
Ahead of me for obstacles.

The dull ache of my lost eyes
Spurred me on.

Then I fell, sprawled
In the soft pillow of dried leaves,

All of them resigned to death
But me.

My left hand closed
Over a sharp branch.

I pushed myself up,
Still clutching my doll.

The first wolf lunged at me,
Pinning me down.

I stabbed it through its chest,
Yanking the branch out

With a rage
I had never felt before.

IV.

I ran.
This time they did not follow,

The scent
Of their fallen comrade

Thick on me, marking me
As a predator.

I had won my freedom
And now, a new life beckoned.

Ahead, the voices of two children,
Crisp as day, soared like chimes.

I heard their footsteps pause
When they saw me,

And I heard the wind whisper,
“Save them, save yourself.”

I listened,
And I called to them for help.

V.

For months, the children
Kept me safe

In their small cottage
With a sharp scent of candy.

They were glad for my company
And we spent many evenings

Talking about our families,
How they cast us out to die

For their own benefit
And how, they did not deserve us.

We wept and mourned
And then, we moved on,

Forming our own family,
Gretel, Hansel, and me,

Snow White.

Fiction © Copyright Christina Sng
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Christina Sng:

A Collection of Nightmares

Hold your screams and enter a world of seasonal creatures, dreams of bones, and confessions modeled from open eyes and endless insomnia. Christina Sng’s A Collection of Nightmares is a poetic feast of sleeplessness and shadows, an exquisite exhibition of fear and things better left unsaid. Here are ramblings at the end of the world and a path that leads to a thousand paper cuts at the hands of a skin carver. There are crawlspace whispers, and fresh sheets gently washed with sacrifice and poison, and if you’re careful in this ghost month, these poems will call upon the succubus to tend to your flesh wounds and scars.
These nightmares are sweeping fantasies that electrocute the senses as much as they dull the ache of loneliness by showing you what’s hiding under your bed, in the back of your closet, and inside your head. Sng’s poems dissect and flower, her autopsies are delicate blooms dressed with blood and syntax. Her words are charcoal and cotton, safe yet dressed in an executioner’s garb.
Dream carefully.
You’ve already made your bed.
The nightmares you have now will not be kind.
And you have no one to blame but yourself.

Available on Amazon!

Please don’t forget to visit the other WiHM 12 projects taking place!