Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves

This is how the story is supposed to go; Once upon a time there was a princess. She was beautiful and kind and good but not everything around her was. There were terrible things, things she needed to be rescued from but she could not save herself.

She waited and waited, praying for something to happen, someone to save her until one day a brave knight or price or huntsman arrived and stole her away from the tower, from the evil queen, from the dragon or witch or demon.

That is how the story is supposed to go, or at least, how they say it goes.

But not all stories are true.

Not all processes wait.

She never waited, she never bothered. She grew up in a strong house, a house where her mother taught her how to fight and her father taught her how to rule. She grew up in a land where no one was going to save her but herself, not out of cruelty but because they knew she could do it, knew she was strong enough.

So when the dragons come, she is the one who slays them, when the demons knock on her door, she vanquishes them. When the witches and thieves and tricksters come, she raises her sword and her spells and her hands and pushes them away, defeats them with everything she has in her.

Because she is not a princess who waits. She is not a daughter who sits passively. She is a wicked girl, a strong girl, a powerful girl. She will never be the girl who waited, who pined who wished and dreamed and wondered.

She is a princess and she carries her own swords and she saves herself.

Breaking down.

It hurts.

That's all he can think of, all he can concentrate on. The pain, the feeling of being broken, torn apart, gutted.

Everything he is bleeds out, scooped out from within him and is spilled 9ouut so that he can see, it stains the table, stains the floor and their hands. He knows it's on their hands and he would be shaking if he could, he would be getting sick to his stomach if he had one.

But he doesn't, everything he did have is slowly being stripped away from him and soon he won't be anything, a shell, a husk, a mockery of what he had been before this.

They finish taking everything from inside him and he feels so empty, so lost. He can barely hold on, surprised that he's still conscious at this point, that he has remained to keep his awareness this long.

And then, when the knife starts cutting into him, he wishes for nothing but sweet darkness, nothing but the blessed unconsciousness.

He doesn't get it though.

Instead he feels the knife hacking away at him, slicing through his flesh as the carve him, make him into what they want, morph and distort and mutilate him.

he wonders if anyone would recognize him, if anyone would know what he had been before they got a hold of him.

He doesn't know and he doesn't really think he wants to.

Eventually they finish, get bored or decide that they're done. he doesn't know, he doesn't care. The pain is still there but it's dulled now. He's not sure if it's because he no longer can feel anything or if it's simply because things aren't as bad as they had been.

They put something warm within him, fire kisses him as they get it to balance within him and it almost feels good, the only thing in this sick ritual that does. It burns but he likes the burning, the warms. it's better than the cold metal of the knife.

Maybe that's all it is, something that's better than the alternative. He's stopped trying to figure it out.

They set him outside and it's only then that he lets himself fee again, really feel. His insides are exposed, the candle warming him in the chilled October night. Then he looks around, looks at the porches around him.

And again, he wonders why he was not given the ability to get sick, why he could not cry or break down or anything.

Because on every porch there was another like him, another pumpkin, broken down and mutilated in the name of a season, in the name of the Harvest.

His forced smile aches and he knows that they all ache too, that they would be screaming if they could.