Lips as Red as Blood

Hair as black as coal…skin as white as snow…lips as red as blood…

Oh, if only people knew where the blood on those lips came from, maybe then I wouldn’t shackled to a wall, talking to myself as I wait for a trial I don’t deserve for a crime that…well, I did try to commit, but righteously so. Anyone would have done it if they knew what I do about that girl.

Everyone thinks that she’s so pure, that Snow White, the Fairest of Them All, but it’s only because they have been pulled under her spell. Not me, though. My Magic Mirror has protected me from her influence. That’s why I keep a shard of it hanging between my bosoms, to deflect her mesmerizing gaze and prevent it from grabbing hold of me as it has so many others.

I will soon be validated. Unfortunately, it will cost the life—more likely lives—of yet another of my citizens, but there is nothing I can do about it behind these stone walls.

I had a chance to do something about it, back when I was Queen. (Sigh. That feels like so long ago now. It must have only been—what? Three days? Maybe four? But I digress.) I should have never trusted the task to another, but he had been my most faithful, my most competed, Hunter. He had been trained for threats like her. If I had just taken on the task myself, then he would not have victim to her charms and been sent…who knows where!

I suppose it was merciful, how she handled my Hunter. At least she only sent him away. Not like those poor miners. They’re nothing but feedbags for her now. Shriveled up beyond imaginable, to the point that the villagers now call them “dwarfs”! And to think, they just keep throwing themselves at her, begging her to make them her next meal. The strength of her power—the depth of her inhumanity—is astounding.

Perhaps even I was not as immune to her powers as I had thought. When the time came for me to take her down, instead of driving that stake into her heart, I forced a poisoned apple down her gullet and put her into an eternal sleep, hoping that that would be enough to end her murderous rampage. Now I realize that eternal sleep is not enough to mute Snow White’s mesmerizing aura, for even that damnable Prince fell for her just from her appearance and squeezed the apple right out of her digestive tract.

So here I am, rotting in a dungeon cell while Snow White rules in my place over a veritable feast for the beast inside her. And I have absolutely no way—

Creak

Well, well, there he is now. My prodigal Hunter. Returned to grovel at my feet? No need. All you must do is free me, and we can finish what I started. This time, no hesitation…from either of us.