Dark YA Blogfest - Week 2

This week for the I Love Dark YA Blogfest I had to write a flash fiction piece of 500 words or less based on this picture:

Thankfully, I had more time to work on my post this week now that my edits are, for the time being, finished, and the second draft of my manuscript in my agents hands. I had some real fun with this one. Check it out . . .

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Fairy Scary Tales - Who Knew?

By S. L. Hennessy 

I hate running. Always did. I used to fake all sorts of medical conditions to get out of track during gym class. I’m sort of wishing I’d practiced a bit more, now that I’m running from the hellish monster intent on using me as the human sacrifice for some sort of dark, ominous spell. Unfortunately, hindsight isn’t as constructive as foresight. And so here I am, my white sacrificial dress irreparably torn, my dainty slippers – which are completely inappropriate when fleeing for one’s life – scuffed and destroyed, wondering where it all went wrong.

I guess I might have made a few mistakes here and there. Looking back, exploring the woods on my own, despite explicit instructions to the contrary . . . might not have been my best plan. Even if my evil stepmother was making my life miserable. It seemed harmless enough at the time. In the daylight. With birds chirping and all that other feel-good atmospheric crap designed to make unsuspecting, angst-ridden teenagers feel completely at ease amongst the dense trees. Guess I should have paid more attention to the meticulous design of it all. And where I was going. Woops.

Upon retrospective, when thick, black mist comes creeping through the branches and silences those sweet, put-you-at ease little birdies – well, maybe that was the time to kick in high gear and get the hell out of there. Live and learn.

It occurs to me now, as I’m being hunted by some indescribably dark creature, that my copy of The Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales might have been more of a field guide than a set of silly stories my dad used to read me at bed time. I usually associate them with princesses and other such nonsense, but the depictions of wolves, cannibalistic witches and way more gore than little kids should be exposed to at young ages are starting to come back to me.

Fairy tales are real. And they’re dangerous. Who knew?